This paper uses document theory to analyze Discover, a partially free-to-use application developed by Facebook’s philanthropic initiative Connectivity and released in the Philippines in May 2020. Discover’s design is predicated on the conviction that access to valorized forms of technology—in this case, popular websites viewed via the Internet—promises benefits to marginalized users who are presumed to lack resources needed to fully participate in contemporary informational capitalism. Document theory in HCI provides a framework that allows us to analyze the most popular websites as rendered by Discover. We argue that Discover's logic of redaction and form moderation reproduces the very structural inequality that access to the Internet frequently claims to ameliorate. We conclude by pointing to potential applications of our approach in research at the intersection of HCI, ICT4D, and political economy.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445754
Across the United States, a growing number of school districts are turning to matching algorithms to assign students to public schools. The designers of these algorithms aimed to promote values such as transparency, equity, and community in the process. However, school districts have encountered practical challenges in their deployment. In fact, San Francisco Unified School District voted to stop using and completely redesign their student assignment algorithm because it was frustrating for families and it was not promoting educational equity in practice. We analyze this system using a Value Sensitive Design approach and find that one reason values are not met in practice is that the system relies on modeling assumptions about families’ priorities, constraints, and goals that clash with the real world. These assumptions overlook the complex barriers to ideal participation that many families face, particularly because of socioeconomic inequalities. We argue that direct, ongoing engagement with stakeholders is central to aligning algorithmic values with real world conditions. In doing so we must broaden how we evaluate algorithms while recognizing the limitations of purely algorithmic solutions in addressing complex socio-political problems.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445748
From robots to autonomous vehicles, the design of artificial moral agents (AMAs) is an area of growing interest to HCI, and rising concern for the implications of deploying moral machines raises questions about which ethical frameworks are being used in AMAs. We performed a literature review to identify and synthesize key themes in how ethical theories have been applied to AMAs. We reviewed 53 papers and performed a thematic analysis to describe and synthesize the current conversation across HCI. We found many describe the value of ethical theories and implement them as technical contributions, but very few conduct empirical studies in real settings. Furthermore, we found AMA development is dominated by two ethical theories: deontology and consequentialism. We argue that the focus on deontology and consequentialism risks creating AMAs based on a narrow set of Western ethical values and concepts at the expense of other forms of moral reasoning.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445102
There is increasing interest within the HCI community about working with living organisms in the design of interactive systems. Bioartists and community lab participants have worked with living organisms for decades. Their motivations for doing so include artistic expression, design innovation, and activism. We interviewed 12 artists, community lab organizers, and researchers who work with or facilitate work with living organisms. Participants expressed perspectives on working with living organisms and described bioart as an effective practice for engaging and informing the public, fostering transdisciplinary collaborations, and facilitating inspiration and learning from organic processes. They also discussed questions of agency and consent, among other ethical issues in this context. Based on our findings, we present future directions to investigate the potential of hybrid living media interfaces to engage and educate human users, open up possibilities for transdisciplinary collaborations, and participate in ethical dialogues on emerging technologies in a new way.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445060
Hybrid interactive systems that combine living and digital components can engage, educate, and inform users, and are of growing interest in the HCI community. Advances in synthetic biology are transforming what is possible to do with these living media interfaces (LMIs). Bioart is a practice in which artists, often using synthetic biology methods, work with living organisms to creatively explore the human relationship with nonhuman organisms. We present results from an interview study with expert bioartists as well as our hands-on experience in a bioart project where we created poetry-infused wine by encoding and inserting a Persian Sufi poem into the DNA sequence of living yeast cells. We find that engaging in bioart practice generates transdisciplinary fluency with implications for access and activism and our understanding of the qualities of living media. We further explore the qualitative aspects of interacting directly with DNA and implications for sustainable futures.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445408
Makerspaces are being introduced in a wide variety of settings, including community settings such as schools and libraries. Older adults are one group for whom making agendas are being pursued, with envisioned outcomes such as supporting agency and well-being. However, research on making and DIY with older adults typically study individuals who are already engaged in making practices or bring individuals in to a technology environment that has already been created. In this paper, we study the older adult-driven formation of a makerspace in an independent living community. Through an ethnographically-informed approach, we studied the ways that individuals considered appropriate allocation of resources towards a makerspace, scoped activities, evaluated goals, and made tradeoffs. Our analysis is centered around describing the way that this makerspace formed as well as three ways that individuals made sense of the makerspace as the planning unfolded: the openness of a space that promises to cater to interests of the population; the promise of a makerspace to involve more residents in technology, but the need to obscure the technology to make it appealing; and a valuation of the return on investment for limited financial and space resources. Our discussion contributes to supporting and studying early adoption of technology by older adults, complicates visions of “making for all,” and presents considerations regarding the often under-specified community of a makerspace.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445146
As digital fabrication machines become widespread, online communities have provided space for diverse practitioners to share their work, troubleshoot, and socialize. These communities pioneer increasingly novel fabrication workflows, and it is critical that we understand and conceptualize these workflows beyond traditional manufacturing models. To this end, we conduct a qualitative study of \textbf{\#PlotterTwitter}, an online community developing custom hardware and software tools to create artwork with computer-controlled drawing machines known as plotters. We documented and analyzed emergent themes where the traditional interpretation of digital fabrication workflows fails to capture important nuances and nascent directions. We find that \#PlotterTwitter makers champion creative exploration of interwoven digital and physical materials over a predictable series of steps. We discuss how this challenges long-running views of digital fabrication and propose design implications for future frameworks and toolkits to account for this breadth of practice.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445653
This paper turns to one of HCI’s central value systems, i.e. its commitments to usefulness and the ideal that technology enables social progress, productivity, and excellence. Specifically, we examine how the seemingly “positive” ideal to make technology “useful” – i.e. to build systems and devices that advance social and technological progress – masks various forms of violence and injustice such as colonial othering, racist exclusions, and exploitation. Drawing from ethnographic research, we show how design and computing methods from design thinking to agile theory and entrepreneurial approaches in tech production and higher education are the latest techniques in the cultivation of useful bodies on behalf of the state, the corporation, the university, and the economy. Aligning with feminist, critical race, and critical computing commitments, this paper offers a genealogical approach to show how injustice and violence endure, despite and because of a narrative of progress and positive change.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445237
The centrality of the biometric point of sale (POS) machine in the administration of food security in Indian’s public distribution system (PDS) invites scrutiny for its primacy as a non-negotiable artifact in the monthly PDS process. In this paper, I critically examine how the POS machine emerges as a site for varying imaginaries of a technologically-mediated welfare system for the three primary stakeholders of the PDS, consisting of the beneficiaries, dealers, and state administrators. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the paper traces the histories of interaction and portraitures that the three stakeholders bring to their description and interpretation of the POS machine. It shows that an active POS machine provokes the stakeholders in the PDS to view it as an artifact that invites engagement on practical, moral, and knowledge dimensions. The varying ‘biographies’ that stakeholders narrate of the POS machine, collectively reveal the design, disposition, and functioning of a social justice infrastructure that rests on the compulsions of biometric technologies to improve inclusion and deter corruption in welfare delivery.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445553
In this paper, we report insights from the design and delivery of a process that invited distinct groups of citizens to co-develop and apply social impact assessment criteria for the purpose of reviewing research proposals on HCI, social justice, and digital technologies. We describe our process, designed to create dialogic spaces that foster critical engagements with technologies and social issues, cooperation, and peer-support. In our findings, we explore how people defined and contextualised social impact in lived experiences, negotiated and legitimised their role as reviewers, and articulated the value of HCI research for social justice. We reflect on the significance of involving citizens in the commissioning of research that addresses inequalities and social justice in technology design and draw implications for HCI researchers concerned with ethical dimensions of technology. The work contributes to HCI and civic engagement’s traditions to develop effective participatory methods and collaborative processes to produce digital technologies that support social justice.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445113
There has been growing interest in the application of AI for Social Good, motivated by scarce and unequal resources globally. We focus on the case of AI in frontline health, a Social Good domain that is increasingly a topic of significant attention. We offer a thematic discourse analysis of scientific and grey literature to identify prominent applications of AI in frontline health, motivations driving this work, stakeholders involved, and levels of engagement with the local context. We then uncover design considerations for these systems, situated in data from three years of ethnographic fieldwork with women frontline health workers and women from marginalized communities in Delhi (India). Finally, we outline an agenda for AI systems that target Social Good, drawing from literature on HCI4D, post-development critique, and transnational feminist theory. Our paper thus offers a critical and ethnographic perspective to inform the design of AI systems that target Social Good outcomes.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445130
Virtual Reality (VR) holds the promise of immersing people in virtual worlds. However, initial work on the relationship between VR and disability suggests that VR is a body-centric technology that poses barriers for disabled users. We supplement this work with a theoretical analysis of immersive VR through the lens of Surrogate Body theory, a concept from media theory for the structured examination of interactive media in use. Leveraging Critical Disability Studies, particularly the theory of the Minority Body, we explore the assumptions about bodies inherent in VR, and we reflect on implications of these assumptions when disabled people engage with the technology. Our findings show that VR is an inherently ableist technology that assumes a ‘corporeal standard’ (i.e., an ‘ideal’, non-disabled human body), and fails to adequately accommodate disabled people. We conclude with implications for HCI research on VR, and discuss design approaches that foster inclusive technology development.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445196