Prior research has studied the detrimental impact of algorithmic management on gig workers and strategies that workers devise in response. However, little work has investigated alternative platform designs to promote worker well-being, particularly from workers' own perspectives. We use a participatory design approach wherein workers explore their algorithmic imaginaries to co-design interventions that center their lived experiences, preferences, and well-being in algorithmic management. Our interview and participatory design sessions highlight how various design dimensions of algorithmic management, including information asymmetries and unfair, manipulative incentives, hurt worker well-being. Workers generate designs to address these issues while considering competing interests of the platforms, customers, and themselves, such as information translucency, incentives co-configured by workers and platforms, worker-centered data-driven insights for well-being, and collective driver data sharing. Our work offers a case study that responds to a call for designing worker-centered digital work and contributes to emerging literature on algorithmic work.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3501866
Even entrepreneurs whose businesses are not technological (e.g., handmade goods) need to be able to use a wide range of computing technologies in order to achieve their business goals. In this paper, we follow a participatory action research approach and collaborate with various stakeholders at an entrepreneurial co-working space to design "Tech Help Desk", an on-going technical service for entrepreneurs. Our model for technical assistance is strategic, in how it is designed to fit the context of local entrepreneurs, and responsive, in how it prioritizes emergent needs. From our engagements with 19 entrepreneurs and support personnel, we reflect on the challenges with existing technology support for non-technological entrepreneurs. Our work highlights the importance of ensuring technological support services can adapt based on entrepreneurs' ever-evolving priorities, preferences and constraints. Furthermore, we find technological support services should maintain broad technical support for entrepreneurs' long tail of computing challenges.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517708
It is difficult to design systems that honor the complex and often contradictory emotions that can be surfaced by sensitive encounters with recommender systems. To explore the design and ethical considerations in this space, we interviewed 20 people who had recently seen sensitive content through Facebook's Memories feature. Interviewees typically described how (1) expectedness, (2) context of viewing, and (3) what we describe as "affective sense-making" were important factors for how they perceived "bittersweet" content, a sensitizing concept from our interviews that we expand upon. To address these user needs, we pose provocations to support critical work in this area and we suggest that researchers and designers: (1) draw inspiration from no/low-technology artifacts, (2) use empirical research to identify contextual features that have negative impacts on users, and (3) conduct user studies on affective sense-making. CAUTION: This paper discusses difficult subject matter related to death and relationships.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3502049
In this paper we present \textit{Immersive Speculative Enactments} (ISEs), a novel concept that extends conventional Speculative Enactments to Virtual Reality. Through ISEs, participants are immersed in a speculative world depicted by the designers and can engage with it in its truest envisioned form. We explore this concept via four scenarios with increasing technological uncertainty: a glimpse in the daily life of the parent of a newborn baby; a Mixed Reality experience supporting hybrid classrooms; two wearable devices that present a pet's emotional state and needs; and an enactment on the effect of communication delay across interplanetary distances. We discuss the concept of ISEs and contrast them to other forms of speculation, provide guidelines on how to design them, as well as reflecting on the challenges, limitations, and potential associated with the role of ISEs in the HCI discourse.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3517492