Sabrina Hauser

A sustainable design fiction: Green practices

In this article, we argue that an approach informed by practice theory coupled with design fiction provides useful insights into the role of interaction design with respect to environmental sustainability. We argue that a practice-oriented approach can help interaction designers step away from models of individual behavior and studies of artifacts towards seeing sustainable behaviors as part of multidimensional and interrelated practices and practice elements. We analyze two previously conducted studies. The first study of everyday repair focuses on how people repair their broken objects. The second study of green-DIY examines how green enthusiasts facilitate their practices of making sustainable DIY (do-it-yourself) projects. We describe the practices of everyday repairers and green enthusiasts in terms of materials, competences, and meanings, and the interrelations among those elements, using the framework of Shove et al. [2012]. We argue that understanding the dynamics of practice and their unique configurations is a starting point to redefine the roles of sustainable interaction design (SID). We propose that designers design towards resources and tools in ways that reflect on the challenges of intelligibility of their design interventions in practices. In addition to considering SID in the light of practice theories, we reveal how design fictions are readily incorporated into green practices in ways that transform those practices and hold implications for transformations of design as well. We bring forward opportunities for designers to co-design with DIY enthusiasts, targeted as practitioners in their own right, designing toward or within a design fiction. As a result, we conclude with the possibility for sustainable interaction designers to become practice-oriented designers who design with transparent open strategies and accessible materials and competences.

Morse Things: A Design Inquiry into the Gap Between Things and Us

Applying a thing-centered, material speculation approach we designed the Morse Things to acknowledge and inquire into the gap between things and us. The Morse Things are sets of ceramic bowls and cups networked together to independently communicate through Morse code in an Internet of Things (IoT). We deployed the Morse Things in the households of six interaction design practitioners and researchers for six weeks. Following the deployment, we conducted a workshop to discuss the role of the Morse Things and ultimately the gap between things and people. We reflect on the nature of living with IoT things and discuss insights into the gap between things and humans that led to the idea of a new type of thing in the home that is neither human-centered technology nor non-digital artifacts.

Unselfconscious interaction:a conceptual construct

In this article, we present unselfconscious interaction, a conceptual construct that describes a form of interaction with computational artifacts animated by incremental intersections that lead to improvements in the relationships among artifacts, environments and people. We draw on Christopher Alexander’s notion of goodness of fit and unselfconscious culture, and utilize Erik Stolterman and Mikael Wiberg’s concept-driven interaction research to analyze three interaction design concept artifacts to develop the construct of unselfconscious interaction for human–computer interaction. The resulting construct is comprised of the motivation of goodness of fit that is supported by two design qualities we name open-endedness and lived-with. We describe tensions within the construct, the notion of purposeful purposelessness in design and discuss the features that derive from Alexander’s unselfconscious culture and are to be considered when designing for goodness of fit: resources, adaptation, ensembles, time and anonymity. Our main contribution in this article lies in the articulation of the construct of unselfconscious interaction.

Tutorial Authorship and Hybrid Designers: The Joy (and Frustration) of DIY Tutorials

Tutorials are critical to the success and vitality of DIY practices. In this paper, we elevate the importance of tutorial authorship as one way to maintain and improve the quality of tutorials in DIY. We discuss the role interaction designers can play as hybrid designers, mediating between author and audience to contribute to the improvement of practices of tutorial authorship in DIY. We examine the quality of tutorials through the building and analysis of ten DIY projects and tutorials. We analyze key issues across three categories: 1) competences, components and tools, 2) sequencing, 3) and communication. We offer findings that are both practical guidelines for detailed improvements of tutorials and structural themes for improving tutorial authorship including the themes of accurate information, competences and tools, and tutorial format. In conclusion, we discuss the potential for interaction designers to simultaneously mediate and shape tutorials and tools in a form of hybrid design.

Sfuture: envisioning a sustainable university campus in 2065

This work describes a design fiction project on envisioning a sustainable university campus in the future. The fictional vision called SFUture was carried out through a series of five short films aiming to unlock peoples imagination, encourage reflection, and inspire action towards a more sustainable reality at SFU (Simon Fraser University). We discuss our rationale and strategies of using design fiction as a method as well as how we shared the project.

Eclipse: eliciting the subjective qualities of public places

In this Pictorial we explain and describe Eclipse, a method aimed at eliciting subjective qualities of peoples experiences of and relationships with public places. Our method guides participants to sequentially explore their memories, sensations, sense of place, and stories related to a public place. Our goal is to present this method in a pictorial form to make it more concise and more easily usable by other interaction designers; in this, we want to depict the richness and qualities of the elicitations, and ultimately the subjective qualities of a public place.

Philosophers Living with the Tilting Bowl

This paper reports on a postphenomenological inquiry of six trained philosophers, who as study participants lived with and reflected on a research product we designed known as the Tilting Bowl: a ceramic bowl that unpredictably but gently tilts multiple times daily. The Tilting Bowl is a counterfactual artifact that is designed specifically for this study as part of a material speculation approach to design research. A postphenomenological inquiry looks to describe and analyze accounts of relationships between humans and technological artifacts, and how each mutually shapes the other through mediations that form the human subjectivity and objectivity of any given situation. This paper contributes an empirical account and analysis of the relations that emerged (background and alterity) and the relativistic views that co-constitute the philosophers, Tilting Bowl, and their specific worlds. The findings demonstrate the relevance of this philosophical framing to fundamentally and broadly understand how people engage digital artifacts.

Design activism in the HCI classroom

In HCI, design activism has been practiced but has not been well articulated or discussed. There are examples of activism in the HCI classroom, opening a new avenue of discussion and investigation for the role of design activism in HCI. We present two case studies that show design activism in the classroom as examples from which to learn. We highlight themes and observations to encourage future articulation and practice of design activism in HCI and HCI education.

Understanding guide dog team interactions: design opportunities to support work and play

The visually impaired have been a longstanding and well-recognized user group addressed in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Recently, the study of sighted dog owners and their pets has gained interest in HCI. Despite this, there is a noticeable gap in the field with regards to research on visually impaired owners and their dogs (guide dog teams). This paper presents a study that explores the interactions of guide dog teams revealing a rich, holistic understanding of their everyday lives and needs, across both work and leisure activities. Our findings inform and inspire future research and practices suggesting three opportunity areas: supporting working guide dog teams, enhancing play-interaction through accessible dog toys utilizing sensor technologies, and speculative and exploratory opportunities. This work contributes to the growing research on designing for human-canine teams and motivates future research with guide dog teams.

Deployments of the table-non-table: A Reflection on the Relation Between Theory and Things in the Practice of Design Research

Design-oriented research in HCI has increasingly migrated towards theoretical perspectives to understand the implications of newly crafted technology in everyday life. However, in this context, the relations between theory and understanding the things we make are not always clear, especially the degree to which the nature of research artifacts is revealed through or determined by theory. We examine a series of field deployment studies we conducted with our research artifact table-non-table over the course of four and a half years that we came to see as a postphenomenological inquiry. Importantly, our interpretations of this artifact, methodological concerns, and theoretical groundings evolved over time. We account for and critically reflect on these shifts in the relationship between theory and our design artifact. We detail how theory was enacted and embodied in our design research practice and offer insights into the complex relations between theory and things in design-oriented HCI research.