- University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton
E. Sussex
BN1 9HR, UK
Ann Light
University of Sussex, School of Engineering and Informatics, Faculty Member
This table describes thematically scholarly efforts on the short-term rental service Airbnb, as well as its (non-profit) alternatives. Specifically, it presents three overarching research spheres: (1) interpersonal interactions and... more
This table describes thematically scholarly efforts on the short-term rental service Airbnb, as well as its (non-profit) alternatives. Specifically, it presents three overarching research spheres: (1) interpersonal interactions and social-technical practices; (2) implications of the Airbnb platform on local communities and their economies; and (3) alternatives to Airbnb and platform capitalism.
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Networked thermostats, fitness monitors, and door locks show that the Internet of Things can (and will) enable new ways for people to interact with the world around them. But designing connected products for consumers brings new... more
Networked thermostats, fitness monitors, and door locks show that the Internet of Things can (and will) enable new ways for people to interact with the world around them. But designing connected products for consumers brings new challenges beyond conventional software UI and interaction design. This book provides experienced UX designers and technologists with a clear and practical roadmap for approaching consumer product strategy and design in this novel market. By drawing on the best of current design practice and academic research, Designing Connected Products delivers sound advice for working with cross-device interactions and the complex ecosystems inherent in IoT technology.
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The Politics of Design: Act 1 is about participation and political engagement in current design practices. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the 15th edition of the international Participatory Design Conference, which is... more
The Politics of Design: Act 1 is about participation and political engagement in current design practices. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the 15th edition of the international Participatory Design Conference, which is being organised this August in Hasselt and Genk. UHasselt – Faculty of Architecture, LUCA School of Arts, Z33 – House for Contemporary Art, the City of Hasselt and the City of Genk will present these 20 works in order to enter into the debate on public space and on the politics of design. This 'first act’ is the first exhibition in a longer trajectory that aims to start new collaborations in a local, regional and international context, and will result in a 'final act' in 2020: The Politics of Design Festival. The exhibition presents three thematic events that make tangible the politics of ways in which participation is given form. These 'ways to participate' are: BODY (participating as an individual and as a physical body through ...
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Uncertainty is prevalent characteristic of contemporary life, and a central challenge of HCI. This one-day workshop will explore how HCI has and might continue to engage uncertainty as a generative feature in design, as opposed to a force... more
Uncertainty is prevalent characteristic of contemporary life, and a central challenge of HCI. This one-day workshop will explore how HCI has and might continue to engage uncertainty as a generative feature in design, as opposed to a force to mitigate and control. We hope to convene researchers from broad ranging areas to explore the many ways in which uncertainty appears in our research and the different types of responses that HCI has to offer. There is an incredible variety of conceptual formulations of uncertainty and related ideas like risk, ambiguity, and suspense that raise both difficult challenges as well as significant opportunities for creative engagement with societal challenges. During the workshop, we won't seek to "solve" uncertainty but rather expand the ways in which we think about and navigate it. In doing so, we will experiment with and contribute to new practices, methods, and concepts for embracing uncertainty. Outcomes of the workshop will include documentation of exercises designed to evoke uncertainty in participants, concept mappings, and a collection of short essays written and refined by participants.
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This workshop addresses the changing nature of work and the important role of exchange platforms as both intermediaries and managers. It aims to bring together interdisciplinary and critical scholars working on the power dynamics of... more
This workshop addresses the changing nature of work and the important role of exchange platforms as both intermediaries and managers. It aims to bring together interdisciplinary and critical scholars working on the power dynamics of digitally mediated labor. By doing so, the workshop provides a forum for discussing current and future research opportunities on the digital economy, including the sharing economy, the platform economy, the gig economy, and other adjacent framings. Of particular interest to this workshop is the intersection between worker and provider subjectivities and the roles platforms take in managing work through algorithms and software. Our one-day workshop accommodates up to 20 participants.
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Design fictions are increasingly important and prevalent within HCI, though they are created through diverse practices and approaches and take many diverse forms. The goal of this workshop is both to create an overview of this diversity... more
Design fictions are increasingly important and prevalent within HCI, though they are created through diverse practices and approaches and take many diverse forms. The goal of this workshop is both to create an overview of this diversity and to move towards a shared vision of design fiction within the CHI community. With this goal in mind, we invite reports, analyses, and examples of design fictions. An outcome will be development of a summary of the current state-of-the-art seeded by a diversity of perspectives within CHI, a descriptive orientation to this important domain of practices and outcomes, and a proposed set of evaluation guidelines for reviewers of design fiction submissions.
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Participatory Design's focus on people comes from a social democratic vision. However, as climate and existential crises press us to consider wellbeing beyond humans alone, we ask what a pluriversal design agenda might include and... more
Participatory Design's focus on people comes from a social democratic vision. However, as climate and existential crises press us to consider wellbeing beyond humans alone, we ask what a pluriversal design agenda might include and what could be articulated as ‘participatory’? Necessarily, this inquiry has limits, as participation usually implies human voice, rights, representation and structures of decision-making. This paper commits to these concerns while asking ethical, political and onto-epistemological questions regarding how worlds and futures are shaped when more-than-human entities – plants, animals, rocks, rivers and spirits – participate in our becoming? We offer a meeting of feminist techno-science with practices and philosophies from Japan and beyond to offer thought experiments in engaging with difference and plurality. And we give several examples of practice situated at ontological boundaries to offer some novel thoughts on ‘participation otherwise’, always-participating-with-many and the futures this could usher in.
Research Interests: Computer Science, Ontology, Epistemology, Feminist Theory, Japanese Philosophy, and 15 moreParticipatory Design, Politics, Citizen Journalism, Democracy, Shinto, Existentialism, New Materialism, Feminist STS, Indigenous Cosmologies, Human centered design, Ontological Turn, Situated, Futures Contract, More Than Human, and Pluriversal Design
This workshop asks participatory designers and researchers to consider how they write about their work and what role there is for novel approaches to expression, forms drawn from other disciplines, and open and playful texts. As we bring... more
This workshop asks participatory designers and researchers to consider how they write about their work and what role there is for novel approaches to expression, forms drawn from other disciplines, and open and playful texts. As we bring social science and humanities sensibilities to bear on designing with others; as we conduct experiments in infrastructuring and sociotechnical assemblages; as we ask what participation means in different contexts and types of futuring, can we find voice to match our innovations? How do reflexivity, positionality, autobiography and auto-ethnography fit into our reflections on designing? How far are we making our practice even as we write? Is the page a contemplative or collaborative space? Does the tyranny of the conference paper overwrite everything? Join us for this day of reading, writing and discussion about how we tell the stories that matter most to us.
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ABSTRACT Motivated by a concern with mindlessness in living and designing and how it might lead to outcomes that are poorly considered in their broader ecology, we ask: what if we imagine technology conceived with mindfulness in mind? To... more
ABSTRACT Motivated by a concern with mindlessness in living and designing and how it might lead to outcomes that are poorly considered in their broader ecology, we ask: what if we imagine technology conceived with mindfulness in mind? To develop this thought, we examine two ‘found designs’ that have a cultural significance and are deeply embedded in everyday practices – the cigarette and the torii gate. These objects are seen as somewhere between a detour or a portal for the authors in practicing mindfulness. Using these examples, we discuss the subtle space between designing for mindfulness, which we believe is unachievable, and being aware as designers that the tools we make can have this further potential use.
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This paper will investigate the use of an intelligent tutoring system to overcome problems with clinical teaching. Although, there are a number of medical diagnosis expert systems which have been designed to help medical students and... more
This paper will investigate the use of an intelligent tutoring system to overcome problems with clinical teaching. Although, there are a number of medical diagnosis expert systems which have been designed to help medical students and medical practitioners in deciding about diagnosis, little of these systems studied students difficulties with clinical diagnosis . This research investigated some of these problems such as: the anchoring problem, forcing the diagnosis and endless enquiry
This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. ... LIGHT, Ann and MISKELLY, C. (2009). Brokering between heads and hearts: an analysis of designing for... more
This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. ... LIGHT, Ann and MISKELLY, C. (2009). Brokering between heads and hearts: an analysis of designing for social change. In: Undisciplined! Design ...
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While scalability and growth are key concerns for mainstream, venture-backed digital platforms, local and location-oriented collaborative economies are diverse in their approaches to evolving and achieving social change. Their aims and... more
While scalability and growth are key concerns for mainstream, venture-backed digital platforms, local and location-oriented collaborative economies are diverse in their approaches to evolving and achieving social change. Their aims and tactics differ when it comes to broadening their activities across contexts, spreading their concept, or seeking to make a bigger impact by promoting co-operation. This paper draws on three pairs of European, community-centred initiatives which reveal alternative views on scale, growth, and impact. We argue thatproliferation -- a concept that emphasises how something gets started and then travels in perhaps unexpected ways -- offers an alternative toscaling, which we understand as the use of digital networks in a monocultural way to capture an ever-growing number of participants. Considering proliferation is, thus, a way to reorient and enrich discussions on impact, ambitions, modes of organising, and the use of collaborative technologies. In illustra...
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As we rely upon increasingly complex sociotechnical systems to support ourselves and, by extension, the structures of society, it becomes yet more important to consider how ethics and values intertwine in design activity. Numerous methods... more
As we rely upon increasingly complex sociotechnical systems to support ourselves and, by extension, the structures of society, it becomes yet more important to consider how ethics and values intertwine in design activity. Numerous methods that address issues related to ethics and value-centeredness in design activity exist, but it is unclear what role the design research and practice communities should play in shaping the future of these design approaches. Importantly, how might researchers and practitioners become more aware of the normative assumptions that underlie both their design activity and the design artifacts that result?
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The world machine is a new archetype for a socio-technical system drawing together a group of tools that combine computational powers with a social agenda of cross-world collaboration in resistance to dominant market rhetoric.... more
The world machine is a new archetype for a socio-technical system drawing together a group of tools that combine computational powers with a social agenda of cross-world collaboration in resistance to dominant market rhetoric. Specifically, we look at how powers to connect, sense and infer can be combined and turned to crowd-sourcing public engagement with shared world issues - as an alternative to business-as-usual in the context of developing and deploying networked technology. We combine theoretical aspects of world machines, such as what a political entity of this kind might seek to do, and practical exercises that focus on design, with a view to exploring viability and examining what a related research agenda might involve.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Computer Science, Design, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Assistive Technology, and 14 moreSocial Care For Older People, Social Policy For Older People, Gerontology (Social Sciences), HCI, Ageing and Health, Sociology of Ageing, Older people, Social Gerontology, Active Ageing, Hq, RA, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, T, and Ageing
Abstract The workshop will consider the ways in which authority is distributed throughout the design process, what kind of authority inheres in design, and also the ways that we design authority into processes and materials. We will... more
Abstract The workshop will consider the ways in which authority is distributed throughout the design process, what kind of authority inheres in design, and also the ways that we design authority into processes and materials. We will explore the relationship between particular ...
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Research Interests: Sociology, Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, Information Technology, Development Economics, and 11 moreDevelopment Studies, Project Management, International Development, Community Development, Negotiation, Supply Chain, Interdisciplinary research, Conceptual Design, W, Boundary Object, and beneficiary
Scholarly research has a long history of appropriating people’s experience. This paper describes a reflexive process which brings together academic researchers and community groups to explore the most effective means of sharing knowledge... more
Scholarly research has a long history of appropriating people’s experience. This paper describes a reflexive process which brings together academic researchers and community groups to explore the most effective means of sharing knowledge in research projects in such a way that a balanced exchange takes place. In doing so, it raises many of the ethical and practical challenges that occur in power structures which do not support the meeting of all interests equally when working with different kinds of expertise and understandings of knowledge construction. It touches on four themes: informed consent, exchange, voice and shared credit, and identifies the learning to be had from considering community needs when conducting participatory design.
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We present a study of preparation for and celebration of an English Christmas, with particular stress on temporal aspects, including duration, anticipation and repetition. We asked nine households to document their countdown to Christmas... more
We present a study of preparation for and celebration of an English Christmas, with particular stress on temporal aspects, including duration, anticipation and repetition. We asked nine households to document their countdown to Christmas using media and diaries, and interviewed them before and after. We detail how time appears in the accounts, from the staging of collaborative preparations to the gift of attention, and consider what the collected insights offer for supporting the design of technology, given that one of our findings on media and ICT use was how it dwindles as focus concentrates on the present, and those present, for the days of the festivities. In doing so, we challenge the dominant efficiency paradigm in HCI.
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Research Interests: Psychology, Higher Education, Methodology, Service Quality, Evaluation, and 12 moreUnited Kingdom, Library and Information Studies, Project evaluation, Interview, Library Service Quality, Critical Incident Technique, Internet Use, Information Service, Library Information Science, Library information, PROJECT, and Social Science
This paper suggests a method for gathering and interpreting people's accounts of experiences with technology to inform design. The method combines an interviewing technique that seeks to collect detailed... more
This paper suggests a method for gathering and interpreting people's accounts of experiences with technology to inform design. The method combines an interviewing technique that seeks to collect detailed retrospective accounts with discourse analysis as a way of making sense of them. After a description of what each part might contribute, a study looking at what happens when people enter
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, Research Methods and Methodology, Research Methodology, and 8 moreUser Experience (UX), Qualitative methodology, User Centred Design, User Interface, Usability and user experience, Information Design, Interview, and Psychology and Cognitive Sciences
Research Interests: Information Science, Library Science, Digital Libraries, Knowledge Management, Information Management, and 15 moreMedical Education, E Government, Atherosclerosis, Library and Information Science, Digital Preservation, Libraries of the Future, Medicine, Astronomy, Digital Asset Management, Humans, Digital Era, Library and Archival Science, Digital Humanites, Library, and Medical and Health Sciences
This paper explores the story behind a crowdfunding service as an example of sharing technology. Research in a small neighborhood of London showed how locally-developed initiatives can differ in tone, scale, ambition and practice to those... more
This paper explores the story behind a crowdfunding service as an example of sharing technology. Research in a small neighborhood of London showed how locally-developed initiatives can differ in tone, scale, ambition and practice to those getting attention in the so-called sharing economy. In local accounts, we see an emphasis on organizing together to create shared spaces for collaborative use of resources and joint ownership of projects and places. Whereas, many global business models feature significant elements of renting, leasing and hiring and focus only on resource management, sometimes at the expense of community growth. The service we discuss is based in the area we studied and has a collective model of sharing, but hopes to be part of the new global movement. We use this hybridity to problematize issues of culture, place and scalability in developing sharing resources and addressing sustainability concerns. We relate this to the motivation, rhetoric and design choices of o...
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Too often in social research for design, academic knowledge is privileged at the expense of other knowledge and ways of knowing, although by overlooking insights from other participants this academic meaning-making may be wasteful and/or... more
Too often in social research for design, academic knowledge is privileged at the expense of other knowledge and ways of knowing, although by overlooking insights from other participants this academic meaning-making may be wasteful and/or damaging to relations. In this paper, we describe a project that focuses on establishing academic/community relations to look at how knowledge issues are handled in setting up participative projects. We touch on the ethics of the ‘informed consent’ required for the ethics approval process and that of generating and sharing project outcomes in a way that reflects team membership, considering how to share credit, encourage diverse opinion and ensure some value in participating for all participants. Since a key outcome of the study is intended to be policy recommendations as to how to involve community groups in research projects, we take a highly reflexive approach. We reflect here on how we, as academic researchers, became participants and what we ma...
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In the last hours of CHI 2017, a group of researchers from universities and businesses across the northern hemisphere sat down together to consider “Taking Action in a Changing World”. The title of the special interest group (SIG) is... more
In the last hours of CHI 2017, a group of researchers from universities and businesses across the northern hemisphere sat down together to consider “Taking Action in a Changing World”. The title of the special interest group (SIG) is significant; it speaks of having an impact, of the politics on which we wish to have an impact, and also the dynamism of the structures and systems around us. There is no special mention of technology. In other words, it is a departure from business-as-usual HCI.
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This essay argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of generative anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up... more
This essay argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of generative anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up the democratically-oriented practices of some participatory design research to definitions of anthropology allows the essay to explore the role of intervention in social process. And, challenging definitional boundaries, the essay examines design as a participatory tool for cultural change, creating and interogating futures (and the idea of futures). In analysing how designing moves towards change in the world, the essay brings together design research and concepts from anthropology to help us better understand and operationalise our interventions and pursue them in a fair and sustainable manner.
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In this paper, we present a taxonomy for understanding designs and designing of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) in the field of ‘Social Action’. We use the term ‘Social Action’ to refer to activities of individuals and... more
In this paper, we present a taxonomy for understanding designs and designing of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) in the field of ‘Social Action’. We use the term ‘Social Action’ to refer to activities of individuals and organisations in civil society, which are oriented towards social (rather than primarily economic) goals. We then apply the term e-Social Action to refer to the application of ICT in these activities. This definition incorporates a wide range of initiatives, varying from: trade-unions logging safety inspections on ships, Age Concern York organising volunteers to place on-line supermarket orders on behalf of housebound elderly people; the International Red Cross using logistics software to deliver emergency aid; and Martus.org providing technology to enable victims of human-rights abuse to report their experience whilst protecting their anonymity and thus avoiding reprisals. To study designing in this broad space, it is necessary to understand key dimens...
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This paper argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up the... more
This paper argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up the democratically-oriented practices of some participatory design research to definitions of anthropology allows the essay to explore the role of intervention in social process. And, challenging definitional boundaries, it examines design as a participatory tool for cultural change, creating and interrogating futures (and the idea of futures). In analysing how designing moves towards change in the world, the paper brings together design research and anthropological concepts to help us better understand and operationalise our interventions and pursue them in a fair and sustainable manner.
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On a generic level, caring can be described as "everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our 'world' so that we can live in it as well as possible" (Fisher and Tronto, 1990). This paper asks how we as... more
On a generic level, caring can be described as "everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our 'world' so that we can live in it as well as possible" (Fisher and Tronto, 1990). This paper asks how we as design researchers in Scandinavia come to care, for our world and more specifically for the local NORDES community. We do this by describing how we have maintained, continued and added (as a practice of repair) in relation to the most recent NORDES summer school (2018). The summer school invited students to work with tensions between despair, in a site marked and haunted (Tsing et al., 2017) by the aftermath of industrial design practices and hope, by making time for soil (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) in a community-supported agricultural scheme. The paper invites you to share some cruxes and insights that emerged, and to imagine teaching with care as a collective process that attempts to bring things together, not as oppositions, but as generative and p...
Introduction Experience as lived is a persistent, endlessly modulating phenomenon; experience as conceived by the CHI community is an incremental, valenced tool for supporting judgements about technology design. Experience as welcomed... more
Introduction Experience as lived is a persistent, endlessly modulating phenomenon; experience as conceived by the CHI community is an incremental, valenced tool for supporting judgements about technology design. Experience as welcomed into the CHI researcher’s stable is not a stream of consciousness revealing undigested sensory stimuli. It is a carefully packaged entity, extracted in such a way as to emphasise the act of using, to prioritise affect and aesthetics (see, for instance, Lavie and Tractinsky 2004) and to collect serviceable feelings. In fact, one tendency in ‘user experience’ research is to produce measurements and metrics (eg Law et al 2008) which seek to make experience calculable so that it can be absorbed neatly into the design process. It is often approached with a questionnaire that requires summative reflective statements: Was it a good experience? Did the interface create pleasure? (Equally often, there is a conspicuous subtext: Will the consumer buy something fr...
In this panel, we will engage with the conference's membership and friends to consider directions for the possible futures of practice-centered computing. This panel is not targeting or aiming to result in a single, agreed... more
In this panel, we will engage with the conference's membership and friends to consider directions for the possible futures of practice-centered computing. This panel is not targeting or aiming to result in a single, agreed "universal” vision, nor to ask for a shared vision among the panelists and the audience. Rather, we offer several and diverse vision statements by distinguished and innovative ECSCW scholars, being experts in their specific domain or context of research. These statements will be necessarily incomplete until the ECSCW membership has joined the discussion, offering their own, additional visions of the futures of the field. With this, the panel aims to engage in a discussion that foresees exciting future research directions for the field of ECSCW but likewise also unveils potential hurdles the community might face.
Design research has recently turned to theoretical perspectives, including care ethics and posthumanism, to counter the industrial processes that have led to climate crisis. As design theorists and ethnographers of interaction, we... more
Design research has recently turned to theoretical perspectives, including care ethics and posthumanism, to counter the industrial processes that have led to climate crisis. As design theorists and ethnographers of interaction, we researched experimental eco-farming in a community that shared many of these theoretical and ideological commitments. Our goal was not to offer an account of use and provide design implications in support of it. Instead, we chose to identify concrete practices and artifacts that embody the sorts of industrial transformations that we are seeking—even if they are manifest in an imperfect or partial form. We encountered practices focused on community building, local resilience to climate disruptions, experiments in eco-farming, economic survival, and attracting the next generation. One interlocutor translated these concerns into a simple binary, asking, “do we want to live here?” This paper contributes to a design research agenda that might (eventually) provide an affirmative answer.
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In this late breaking work, we present preliminary results from a portion of an auto-ethnography in which an HCI scholar drove for both Uber and Lyft over the course of 4 months, recording his thoughts about the driving experience as well... more
In this late breaking work, we present preliminary results from a portion of an auto-ethnography in which an HCI scholar drove for both Uber and Lyft over the course of 4 months, recording his thoughts about the driving experience as well as his experiences with-and emails from-both platforms. The first phase of results we present here are based on several text analyses of the collected emails, as well as a preliminary examination of field notes in relation to these emails. We found that while Uber and Lyft participate in the gig economy in almost identical ways, the difference in tone apparent through each platform's messaging could lead to conflicting experiences for drivers. We identify implications for the potential future analyses of our autoethnographic data in relation to this psycholinguistic analysis.