Daniela K. Rosner

Tag Clouds: Data Analysis Tool or Social Signaller?

We examine the recent information visualization phenomenon known as tag clouds, which are an interesting combination of data visualization, web design element, and social marker. Using qualitative methods, we find evidence that those who use tag clouds do so primarily because they are perceived as having an inherently social or personal component, in that they suggest what a person or a group of people is doing or is interested in, and to some degree how that changes over time; they are visually dynamic and thus suggest activity; they are a compact alternative to a long list; they signal that a site has tags; and they are perceived as being fun, popular, and/or hip. The primary reasons people object to tag clouds are their visual aesthetics, their questionable usability, their popularity among certain design circles, and what is perceived as a bias towards popular ideas and the downgrading of alternative views.

Learning from IKEA hacking: i'm not one to decoupage a tabletop and call it a day.

We present a qualitative study based on interviews with nine IKEA Hackers - people who go online to share the process of repurposing IKEA products to create personalized objects. Whether they were making a self-conscious artistic statement or simply modifying a towel rack to fit in a small bathroom, IKEA hackers illuminate an emergent practice that provides insights into contemporary changes in creativity. We discuss the motivations for IKEA hacking and explore the impact of information technology on do-it-yourself culture, design, and HCI.

Reflections on craft: probing the creative process of everyday knitters

Crafters today blend age-old techniques such as weaving and pottery with new information and communication technologies such as podcasts, online instructions, and blogs. This intersection of tradition and modernity provides an interesting site for understanding the adoption of new technology. We present a qualitative study of seven knitters introduced to Spyn - a system that enables the association of digitally recorded messages with physical locations on knit fabric. We gave knitters Spyn in order to elicit their reflections on their craft practices and learn from their interactions with material, people, and technology. While creating artifacts for friends and loved ones, knitters expanded the creative and communicative potential of their craftwork: knitters envisioned travel journals in knitted potholders and sung lullabies in knitted hats. We describe how these unusual craft activities provide a useful lens onto contemporary technological appropriation.

The material practices of collaboration

Drawing on a three-month bookbinding apprenticeship, this paper examines how peoples coordination work is tightly bound up in material practices, the union of material arrangements and social relations. Through the construction of a book, I reveal how sensitivities to delicacy, flexibility and delay emerge through detailed engagements with the book, the binders and the workshop environment. From small adjustments of the hand, to the coordination and exchange of materials and tools, the accomplishment of each task rests on how digital and age-old resources are woven into everyday collaborative practice. This approach extends how computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) frames and mobilizes the material to recognize materials as compositional elements, surfaces and flows. It also contributes to conversations on digital materiality by emphasizing the temporality of material practice. Thus, I use the bookbinding workshop as a resource for understanding the ways materials, techniques, and relationships are continually rebound in a digital age.

DIY for CHI: methods, communities, and values of reuse and customization

People tinker, hack, fix, reuse, and assemble materials in creative and unexpected ways, often codifying and sharing their production process with others. Do-it-yourself (DIY) encompasses a range of design activities that have become increasingly prominent in online discussion forums and blogs, in addition to a small-but-growing presence in professional/research forums such as CHI. This workshop will explore DIY practice from the ground up--examining DIY as a set of methods, communities, values and goals and examining its impact in the domains of traditional crafts, technology development, and sustainable design.

Hacking Culture, Not Devices: Access and Recognition in Feminist Hackerspaces

This paper examines the motivations, activities, and ideals of people organizing feminist hackerspaces: collaborative workspaces developed to support womens creative and professional pursuits. Drawing on interviews, participant observation and archival data collected across the Pacific Northwest over nine months, we show how members of these spaces use small-scale collaborative design and acts of making to work out their place in society in ways that contest widely accepted understandings of hacking, technology, and collaboration. In designing how the space should look, feel, and run, members reframe activities seldom associated with technical work (e.g., weaving, identity workshops) as forms of hacking. In so doing, they shift concerns for women in technology from questions of access (who is included) to questions of recognition (who is visible) while grappling with productive ambiguities in between. We describe lessons these tension present for examining womens relations with technology in CSCW.

Making cultures: empowerment, participation, and democracy - or not?

Making has transformed from a fringe and hobbyist practice into a professionalizing field and an emerging industry. Enthusiasts laud its potential to democratize technology, improve the workforce, empower consumers, encourage citizen science, and contribute to the global economy. Yet critics counter that in the West, making often remains a hobby for the privileged and seems to be increasingly co-opted by corporate interests. This panel brings together HCI scholars and practitioners active in making, handwork, DIY, crafts, and tool design to examine and debate the visions that come from maker cultures.

Materiality matters---experience materials

conceptualize the inseparability of digital materials, user experiences, and the social context. Aiming to address the current theoretical discourse in HCI focused on conceptualizing material integrations under the notion of materiality, we realized our panel session was quite timely. In browsing the technical program of last year’s CHI conference, we noticed that it contained at least three full papers on materials and materiality, one best paper, one alt.chi talk, two Doctoral Consortium papers, two posters, one interactivity presentation, one video presentation, and one complete paper session explicitly focused on materiality as a way to conceptualize these issues. We sought to contribute to this vibrant stream of research in our field.

Crafting quality in design: integrity, creativity, and public sensibility

This paper aims to enrich the design research communitys notions of quality by turning to the techniques and values of master craftspeople. We describe and analyze interviews conducted with elite craft practitioners in the US and Taiwan to consider how they perceive and produce quality. The crafters articulate a consensus view of interaction with integrity. American participants tend to frame their understanding of quality in terms of self-expression through a creative interaction with materials, while participants from Taiwan emphasize the role of communities in establishing---and benefitting from---craft quality. As HCI continues to turn to design approaches on account of their strengths producing works of socio-cultural relevance and value, our study sheds light on the qualities of interacting with integrity, the pleasures of self-expression through creative interaction with materials, and the practical benefits of positioning creative work in relation to the material resources, aesthetic tastes, and socio-economic needs of a public.

Resisting Alignment: Code and Clay

Today thousands of artists, designers, and craftspeople turn to digital fabrication tools to invent and manufacture new forms. They use vector-graphics software to sketch models, laser-cutters to customize parts, and 3D printers to generate prototypes. However, how our experiences of expressivity, skill and value shift with these developments remains under-explored. This paper describes our early engagements with emerging fabrication technologies in the domain of ceramics, one of our oldest and most enduring artistic mediums. In particular, we detail a collaboration with Helen Martino that resulted in the Sound Bowl, a vessel designed to record an audio message through surface undulations, much like a vinyl record. As an example of design as inquiry, we developed the bowl to explore the integration of digital fabrication in ceramics production. In the process, we found new and intriguing tensions in the entanglement of code and clay: contrasting temporal frames, blurred traces of breakage, and coinciding human senses. We discuss implications of these observations on the nature and organization of embodied interaction.