Tom Jenkins

Object-Oriented Publics

Social computing-or computing in a social context-has largely concerned itself with understanding social interaction among and between people. This paper asserts that ignoring material components-including computing itself-as social actors is a mistake. Computing has its own agenda and agencies, and including it as a member of the social milieu provides a means of producing design objects that attend to how technology use can extend beyond merely amplifying or augmenting human actions. In this paper, we offer examples of projects that utilize the capacity of object-oriented publics to both analyze the conditions and consequences around existing publics and engage with matters of concern inherent to emerging publics. Considering how computing as an actor contributes to the construction of publics provides insight into the design of computational systems that address issues. We end by introducing the idea of the object ecology as a way to coordinate design approaches to computational publics.

Designing Speculative Civics

As human computer interaction design research continues to expand domains, civics is emerging as an important subject through which to explore how computation shapes our public lives. In this paper we present and reflect upon a series of research through design (RtD) projects that investigate speculative civic contexts. From this, we identify and discuss tactics that can be employed in RtD projects: RtD as Representations of Systems Yet-to-Come, RtD as Prototyping Systems and RtD as Use of a System. Then we identify and discuss thematic interpretations of civics that emerged through our designs: Mediated Civics, Computed Civics, and Proxied Civics. This work contributes to discourses of speculative design, research through design, and those of civics in human computer interaction design research.

Tackling engagement in computing with computational music remixing

In this paper, we describe EarSketch, an integrated curriculum, software toolset, and social media website, grounded in constructionist principles, that targets introductory high school computing education. We hypothesize that the use of collaborative computational music composition and remixing may avoid some of the engagement and culture-specific issues that other approaches, both in music and other media, have had. We discuss the design of EarSketch, its use in a pilot summer camp, and the evaluation results from that pilot.

Designing the "Things" of the IoT

Building objects that question implicit assumptions of common systems can help to reframe technological artifacts. This work builds on an inexpensive prototyping platform that augments everyday objects in minimal ways as an early move towards engaging with the Internet of Things as a site for contestation in interaction design. These intend to account for a broader understanding of design as generating political objects - design things - that draw from the work of Bruno Latour and Studio Atelier. Finally, it introduces the concept of object ecologies as a way to both analyze existing ecosystems of design objects and generate new, speculative ones.

EarSketch: An integrated approach to teaching introductory computer music

EarSketch is an all-in-one approach to supporting a holistic introductory course to computer music as an artistic pursuit and a research practice. Targeted to the high school and undergraduate levels, EarSketch enables students to acquire a strong foundation in electroacoustic composition, computer music research and computer science. It integrates a Python programming environment with a commercial digital audio workstation program (Cockos’ Reaper) to provide a unified environment within which students can use programmatic techniques in tandem with more traditional music production strategies to compose music. In this paper we discuss the context and goals of EarSketch, its design and implementation, and its use in a pilot summer camp for high school students.

Attending to Objects as Outcomes of Design Research

The goal for this workshop is to provide a venue at CHI for research through design practitioners to materially share their work with each other. Conversation will largely be centered upon a discussion of objects produced through a research through design process. Bringing together researchers as well as their physical work is a means of gaining insight into the practices and outcomes of research through design. If research through design is to continue to develop as a research practice for generating knowledge within HCI, this requires developing ways of attending to its made, material outcomes. The premise of this workshop is simple: We need additional spaces for interacting with and reflecting upon material design outcomes at CHI. The goal of this workshop is to experiment with such a space, and to initially do so without a strong theoretical or conceptual framing.

Devotional gardening tools

Gardening as an activity is devotional, built on the idea that through practice and effort, particular results can be obtained. Devotion is performative, taking time, skill, and repetition to get the results that you want. Human-scale farming depends on the labor of people to get things done, relying on hand tools and particular kinesthetic actions to change the earth in a plot. Digital media technologies afford the creation of tools that can materialize rhetoric, creating alternate functionality emphasizing issues of practice through use. Creating gardening implements that build on the repetitive physical nature of gardening work allows handwork to become something broader: representative of, more reflexive and meditative technological practice. \

The Things of Design Research: Diversity in Objects and Outcomes

The goal for this workshop is to further experiment with a venue at CHI for practitioners of research through design to share their work with each other. This workshop, following a successful workshop in CHI 2016, will be centered upon a discussion of objects produced through a research through design process. Bringing together researchers as well as their physical work serves to gain insight into the practices and outcomes of research through design. If research through design is to continue to develop as a research practice for generating knowledge within HCI, this requires developing ways of attending to its made-material outcomes. The premise of this workshop is simple: We need additional social spaces and platforms for interacting with and reflecting upon material design outcomes at CHI. The goal of this workshop is to keep experimenting with such a space, with an emphasis on how prototyping and making in a research through design context produces design things.

Crafting a place for attending to the things of design at CHI

Over the past two years, we have organized workshops at the CHI conference that have focused on the “Things of Design Research. The goal of these workshops is simple: to explore and develop a venue at CHI for research through design (RtD) practitioners to materially share their work with each other. RtD often centers on the making of things— artifacts, systems, services, or other knowledge in the interaction-design and human-computer interaction (CHI) research communities. Yet, over the years, we have felt that the things of design research have remained conspicuously overlooked, under-engaged with, and, for the most part, absent from the CHI conference. If RtD is to continue to develop as a research practice in the HCI community—and we want to build a community of designers doing research with and through designed objects—we need more things at CHI.

Prototyping speculative objects for the internet of things

Digital media technologies allow the systems to be created that are rhetorical and create alternate values and experiences. Building objects that question these assumptions can help to reframe technological artifacts. Building inexpensive prototyping platforms that augment everyday objects in minimalist ways is a proposal for an alternative to existing, human-centered Internet of Things (IoT) devices. These platforms begin to move towards interactions among and between things as a bottom-up design study into ubiquitous small-scale computing and its aesthetic applications.