Lisa P. Nathan

Multi-lifespan information system design: a research initiative for the hci community

This CHI Note proposes a new research initiative for the HCI community: multi-lifespan information system design. The central idea begins with the identification of categories of problems that are unlikely to be solved within a single human lifespan. Three such categories are proposed: limitations of the human psyche, limitations of the structure of society, and slower moving natural time-scales. We then examine possible opportunities and roles for information systems to help construct longer-term solutions to such problems and, in turn, identify key challenges for such systems. Finally, we conclude by discussing significant real world problems that would benefit from a multi-lifespan design approach and point to open questions. This CHI Notes key contribution entails the articulation of a promising new research initiative for the HCI community.

Envisioning systemic effects on persons and society throughout interactive system design

The design, development, and deployment of interactive systems can substantively impact individuals, society, and the natural environment, now and potentially well into the future. Yet, a scarcity of methods exists to support long-term, emergent, systemic thinking in interactive design practice. Toward addressing this gap, we propose four envisioning criteria --- stakeholders, time, values, and pervasiveness -- distilled from prior work in urban planning, design noir, and Value Sensitive Design. We characterize how the criteria can support systemic thinking, illustrate the integration of the envisioning criteria into established design practice (scenariobased design), and provide strategic activities to serve as generative envisioning tools. We conclude with suggestions for use and future work. Key contributions include: 1) four envisioning criteria to support systemic thinking, 2) value scenarios (extending scenario-based design), and 3) strategic activities for engaging the envisioning criteria in interactive system design practice.

Next steps for sustainable HCI

In this forum we highlight innovative thought, design, and research in the area of interaction design and sustainability, illustrating the diversity of approaches across HCI communities. ---Lisa Nathan and Samuel Mann, Editors

Value scenarios: a technique for envisioning systemic effects of new technologies

In this paper we argue that there is a scarcity of methods which support critical, systemic, long-term thinking in current design practice, technology development and deployment. To address this need we introduce value scenarios, an extension of scenario-based design which can support envisioning the systemic effects of new technologies. We identify and describe five key elements of value scenarios; stakeholders, pervasiveness, time, systemic effects, and value implications. We provide two examples of value scenarios, which draw from our current work on urban simulation and human-robotic interaction . We conclude with suggestions for how value scenarios might be used by others.

Envisioning across generations: a multi-lifespan information system for international justice in rwanda

With this research we investigate how to account for multi-generational perspectives in the design of multi-lifespan information systems, particularly in support of long-term peace-building and international justice. We do our work in the context of the publicly available Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal testbed, a historically significant collection of video interviews with personnel from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In the research reported here, we worked with 109 Rwandan adults and youth from perpetrator and survivor communities in three provincial cities in Rwanda (Byumba, Kibuye, and Gisenyi) to understand the potentials and challenges they envision for the interview collection. Participants envisioned five categories of long-term positive outcomes for individuals and society from a multi-lifespan information system for the interview collection; and eight categories of challenges to realize those potential outcomes. In terms of multi-generational perspectives, while adults and youth tended to share an overall vision for the long-term potential of such a system, adults emphasized actionable tasks while youth educational benefits. Based on the findings, we highlight issues for appropriation of multi-lifespan information systems and reflect on our methods for eliciting multi-generational perspectives on information system design in a post-conflict society.

Defining the role of HCI in the challenges of sustainability

Sustainability is an increasingly prominent and critical theme in the field of HCI. More needs to be known about how to critique and assess design from the perspective of sustainability, and how to integrate sustainability into the practice of HCI. This workshop focuses on achieving this integration, identifying challenges, and defining directions for Sustainable Interaction Design (SID).

CHI at the barricades: an activist agenda?

Technology plays an increasingly important role in enabling activist agendas, supporting activist activities and self-organization, bringing people together on causes they support and developing tools and platforms to scaffold activist activities. This panel explores both the role of HCI in activism and activism in HCI.

Beyond the hype: sustainability & HCI

In this panel we explore: (1) the burgeoning discourse on sustainability concerns within HCI, (2) the material and behavioral challenges of sustainability in relation to interaction design, (3) the benefits and risks involved in labeling a project or product as environmentally sustainable, and (4) implications of taking on (or ignoring) sustainability as a research, design, and teaching topic for HCI.

Values as Hypotheses: Design, Inquiry, and the Service of Values

Values: A Problem of Practice The question of the relationship of design and values has sparked much scholarship during the past 30 years. These investigations have led to the growing consensus that design is not a neutral activity; rather, it is value-laden: design is laden with, or bears, values. Despite substantial agreement that design is value-laden, significant variation arises in understanding how and why design bears values.1 Some scholars argue that artifacts act to determine what is possible and impossible in human engagements with the world—that is, products bear consequences that affect what we value in human life and living.2 Others note that products, broadly conceived, bear the conscious and unconscious intentions, values, and politics of the individuals and corporations that designed them.3 Some scholars propose that designed products bear the preferences and values of those who use them,4 while others view values as ideals, and design bears the burden of approximating an ideal.5 Others speak of products as embodying values, as valuebearing material expression.6 Others emphasize the capacity of designers and publics to give voice to values, to contest and argue for what should be valued; here, values are born and borne in argument.7 None of these positions offers a definitive, settled, or uncontested account of the relation of design and values. This scholarship, however, has led to calls for practitioners to explicitly address values in their everyday design practice. Values-oriented practitioners not only are faced with a variety of theoretical understandings; they also regularly encounter the empirical fact that a given value (e.g., autonomy) can be both valuable and not valuable in its participation in design products and practices. Batya Friedman provides a useful example that illustrates this problem. She describes a situation in which a new computer workstation, designed to support speech input and multimedia, includes a built-in, always-on microphone. When a user of this workstation wishes to have a conversation that is not recorded, she must go through multiple steps to turn off the microphone—a cumbersome solution. Out of this case, Friedman explores the concept of autonomy, she asks: 1 For a thorough scholarly explication of the history of ethics and design from a European perspective see, Anna Valtonen, “Back and Forth with Ethics in Product Development—A History of Ethical Responsibility as a Design Driver in Europe” (presentation, Conference of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM), CergyPontoise, France, October 13, 2006). 2 Bruno Latour, “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), 225–58. 3 Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,” in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for the Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19–39. 4 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1st edition, Annette Lavers, trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972); cf. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957). 5 Victor J. Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). 6 Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects (Boston: August Media, 2001). 7 Carl DiSalvo, Adversarial Design (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012).

Sustainable information practice: An ethnographic investigation

This project develops the concept of sustainable information practice within the field of information science. The inquiry is grounded by data from a study of 2 ecovillages, intentional communities striving to ground their daily activities in a set of core values related to sustainability. Ethnographic methods employed for over 2 years resulted in data from hundreds of hours of participant observation, semistructured interviews with 22 community members, and a diverse collection of community images and texts. Analysis of the data highlights the tensions that arose and remained as community members experienced breakdowns between community values related to sustainability and their daily information practices. Contributions to the field of information science include the development of the concept of sustainable information practice, an analysis of why community members felt unable to adapt their information practices to better match community concepts of sustainability, and an assessment of the methodological challenges of information practice inquiry within a communal, nonwork environment. Most broadly, this work contributes to our larger understanding of the challenges faced by those attempting to identify and develop more sustainable information practices. In addition, findings from this investigation call into question previous claims that groups of individuals with strong value commitments can adapt their use of information tools to better support their values. In contrast, this work suggests that information practices can be particularly resilient to local, value-based adaptation.