CHI '13 Sustainability Workshop Report
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Lisa Nathan
May 16, 2013, 5:06:05 PM5/16/13
to sustain...@googlegroups.com
Hello all,
Below is a volunteer generated workshop report from held on Saturday, April 27th, 2013. The workshop was entitled: POST SUSTAINABILITY: A CHI Sustainability Community Workshop (C. Preist, D. Busse, S. Mann, L. Nathan)
After a generative opening talk by Professor Bonnie Nardi and a few other activities - we moved into two open space sessions (one before and one after lunch). Individuals with ideas, questions, challenges, topics they wanted to discuss agreed to faciliate and document their group discussions. The remaining participants joined in discussions for as long as they wished. At the end of each of the two sessions there was a brief reporting back period.
Below are text based summaries (or links to blog entries) that a few of the discussion facilitators volunteered to share with this group. Although each contributor has done a heroic job of coalescing multi faceted conversations into short paragraphs or bullet points - this is not a short email.
Below is a volunteer generated workshop report from held on Saturday, April 27th, 2013. The workshop was entitled: POST SUSTAINABILITY: A CHI Sustainability Community Workshop (C. Preist, D. Busse, S. Mann, L. Nathan)
After a generative opening talk by Professor Bonnie Nardi and a few other activities - we moved into two open space sessions (one before and one after lunch). Individuals with ideas, questions, challenges, topics they wanted to discuss agreed to faciliate and document their group discussions. The remaining participants joined in discussions for as long as they wished. At the end of each of the two sessions there was a brief reporting back period.
Below are text based summaries (or links to blog entries) that a few of the discussion facilitators volunteered to share with this group. Although each contributor has done a heroic job of coalescing multi faceted conversations into short paragraphs or bullet points - this is not a short email.
Treat yourself to a deserved break in your day - with a favorite beverage and the ideas/reflections/provocations shared by your sustainable CHI colleagues.
For a list of workshop attendees and their workshop papers please see - http://sympact.cs.bris.ac.uk/post-sustainability/attendees-and-papers.html
For a list of workshop attendees and their workshop papers please see - http://sympact.cs.bris.ac.uk/post-sustainability/attendees-and-papers.html
warm regards - lisa
_______________________
Tawanna Dillahunt begins with an outline of the workshop
I - 4-minute madness style Introductions (this was a summary of the bios and workshop papers)
II - Bonnie Nardi presented four views on Post-sustainability:
1. Transition between main stream & activist views 2. Beyond persuasion argument 3. Collapse Informatics 4. Moving beyond sustainability
III Key Themes (We went around the room stating key themes that came out of our introductions (what are some overlaps in our research interests, etc…). Below are the key themes that were generated:
• Multiple generations, cultural values, scales
• Community/Building Resilience/Concretizing resilience (what are measures?)
• Practice (Supporting communities that are already doing the "right" things)
• Normative vs Descriptive vs Ethical (Body of Activism)
• Reslience <--> Relationship with individual
• "Normalization" of sustainable behavior
• Post collapse
• Activism
• Positive Futures/Alternative Futures
• Design for sustainability / Post collapse
• Design Patters (are often normative)
• Question of values
• Mutual help
• Narrative change
• ICT for vulnerable groups (post-collapse)
• Sustaining
• Urban gardening (ICT and Food)
• Deep Ecology (Anthroporcentric)
• Drives for change
IV - Generated Key Questions (After generating themes, group members came up with the following key questions, which we then broke out into groups and discussed. We did this again in the afternoon (see round 2 questions generated):
Round 1:
• How do we measure resilience?
• Sustainable Transport & ICT
• How do we know "it" (solutions) is "good"
• Design for sustainability
• How do you change the narrative?
• How do we engage communities?
• Understanding the effects of unintended consequences (how do we deal with it?)
Round 2:
• What is sustainable consumption / over consumption
• How does the collapse scenario and current marginal communities link?
• What is Design Fiction of sustainable HCI
• What are example design patterns for sustainability
V - Breakout sessions (We held separate breakout sessions for each round)
_____________________________________________________________
Collapse scenario and current marginal communities [Facilitator Tawanna Dillahunt]
Thinking systematically, what can we learn from current marginalized groups? For example, one of our team members studied Gypsies and their use of FB (despite the fact that they didn't have bank accounts or ongoing access to technology). They preferred FB over eBay.
In our discussion someone referenced Barath Raghavan from UC Berkeley's work on Networking in the Long emergency (how the big-picture view of energy might reshape the way we think about networking)
Another discussion was raised about the the Post-sustainable terminology. Another way to look at it, more positively is if we view it as Post-"transition"
The rest of our discussion focused on looking at ways in which we can learn from groups that are already living what many would view as post-collapse times, like towns currently in transition (W Oakland for example), or shrinking cities like Detroit. Some examples include the use of Time banks, Growth buds (as Bonnie presented), survivalists, etc. Thoughts included using failed states as potential case studies for post-collapse (states with little to no economic growth to help us understand creative survival strategies)
_____________________________________________________________
What is sustainable consumption? [Facilitator Sara Ilstedt]
Design culture is very pro-consumption, designers are focused on creating new, cool, improved stuff that increases consumption. But many designers are unhappy with this, they need new areas to explore that does not ruin the planet.
We need new narratives, alternative for designer not to enable consumerism. and for people to do other things than shop. Prosumers, conduction. New narratives could also be new motivations for sustainable behaviours, such as checking for email while commuting is a motivation for public transport instead of driving.
We need new business models, that enable companies to earn money while not wasting natural resources. Nudie jeans has a lifetime warranty on their jeans and takes back old jeans when your don’t want them any longer and sells them second hand. Could we change the perception of normality to only by things that outlived you? Could companies then have a business model that was based on repair and upgrading?
Decoupling needs to develop but so far the growth of economy has not separated from the use of energy and resources. Can we promote less resource intensive sectors such as education, massage, therapy ? We like: Upgrading ringtones of your phone, and slowfood, which supports local economy, organic food, is service intensive and costs a lot of money.
Travel and heated spaces are the worst for energy/footprint. Maybe conscious consumption is not that bad after all? How could we change the “normal” vacation to one long journey by train, instead of many short by flights?
Companies and universities could have an unfrequest flyer program. Flight are “taxed” internally and used to subsidies traintravel.
Designers could enable for people to be creative, support a maker and DIY movement. Designers could design “signs” (Baudrillard) and work with user centered procurement and social innovation.
Use HCI to highlight backsides of consumption. For example make sudden inspections on factories, inspect organic farms or crowd source inspections.
Energy efficient programming.
_____________________________________________________________
How do we change the narrative? [Facilator Bran Knowles]
We agreed as a group that one narrative in society that needs changing is the 'technocapitalist' narrative of people as consumers (and that this consumption leads to happiness), and should be replaced by the narrative of people as citizens and otherwise multifaceted individuals. After talking for a long time about the difficulties and ethics of crafting a new narrative, we decided that the community which we could affect the most is our own, and we started talking about how we can change the narrative of sustainable HCI. The leading narrative for this community is the notion of behavior change - that people's behavior can and should be engineered for (often minor) sustainability wins, inevitably treating people in a mechanical way and only addressing them as consumers. Eventually, we thought it would be a really helpful and illuminating excerise to imagine a Design Future for sustainable HCI, to help us think creatively about the future of the discipline and where we'd like it to go. This idea was picked up in the afternoon by another group led by Sabrina.
_____________________________________________________________
Pattern Language [submitted by Bran Knowles but the discussion was facilitated by Steven Haynes]
We were all very interested in the idea of capturing solutions that work for sustainability in the form of patterns, and tried our best to get a couple down on paper. As it turns out, this is very difficult! For one, there are several different templates for patterns, so it was difficult to agree on a template. Secondly, and more crucially, patterns can be developed at different levels of granularity, so it is very hard to decide what level to begin it. As a group, we were somewhat all over the map - some of us wanting really broad patterns, some of us wanting really low-level, concrete patterns. But here are some initial ideas for patterns (none of which did we manage to actually elaborate fully using a pattern template):
1. Decoupling use from ownership - this was actually proposed by Blevis; the idea is that people need to get over the idea of owning their own things, and begin to see value in sharing; e.g. car-sharing schemes
2. Decoupling service from device - the problem is that many so called solutions for sustainability rely on increased access to information using devices like smart phones, which increases the need for people to purchase these things... which ultimately end up in landfill; so this pattern would be to design in such a way that people do not need high-tech devices in order to accesss sustainability wins.
3. Ubiquitous, low-tech signage - related to the above, one solution to the need for greater information is to spend design effort on low-tech communication means, such as proper signage around cities, information printed in appropriate places, etc.; in other words, wherever possible, go for the low-tech solution.
There were others, but you should email Ake for those. The main message to take away from this group is that there is a real excitement about the idea of capturing patterns for sustainability, and there are many of us who intend sincerely to follow up on this.
_____________________________________________________________
Daniel Pargman shared his blog posts on the conference - http://danielpargman.blogspot.se/2013/05/impressions-from-chi-conference.html
and the workshop http://danielpargman.blogspot.fr/2013/04/chi-conference-post-sustainability.html
_______________________
Tawanna Dillahunt begins with an outline of the workshop
I - 4-minute madness style Introductions (this was a summary of the bios and workshop papers)
II - Bonnie Nardi presented four views on Post-sustainability:
1. Transition between main stream & activist views 2. Beyond persuasion argument 3. Collapse Informatics 4. Moving beyond sustainability
III Key Themes (We went around the room stating key themes that came out of our introductions (what are some overlaps in our research interests, etc…). Below are the key themes that were generated:
• Multiple generations, cultural values, scales
• Community/Building Resilience/Concretizing resilience (what are measures?)
• Practice (Supporting communities that are already doing the "right" things)
• Normative vs Descriptive vs Ethical (Body of Activism)
• Reslience <--> Relationship with individual
• "Normalization" of sustainable behavior
• Post collapse
• Activism
• Positive Futures/Alternative Futures
• Design for sustainability / Post collapse
• Design Patters (are often normative)
• Question of values
• Mutual help
• Narrative change
• ICT for vulnerable groups (post-collapse)
• Sustaining
• Urban gardening (ICT and Food)
• Deep Ecology (Anthroporcentric)
• Drives for change
IV - Generated Key Questions (After generating themes, group members came up with the following key questions, which we then broke out into groups and discussed. We did this again in the afternoon (see round 2 questions generated):
Round 1:
• How do we measure resilience?
• Sustainable Transport & ICT
• How do we know "it" (solutions) is "good"
• Design for sustainability
• How do you change the narrative?
• How do we engage communities?
• Understanding the effects of unintended consequences (how do we deal with it?)
Round 2:
• What is sustainable consumption / over consumption
• How does the collapse scenario and current marginal communities link?
• What is Design Fiction of sustainable HCI
• What are example design patterns for sustainability
V - Breakout sessions (We held separate breakout sessions for each round)
_____________________________________________________________
Collapse scenario and current marginal communities [Facilitator Tawanna Dillahunt]
Thinking systematically, what can we learn from current marginalized groups? For example, one of our team members studied Gypsies and their use of FB (despite the fact that they didn't have bank accounts or ongoing access to technology). They preferred FB over eBay.
In our discussion someone referenced Barath Raghavan from UC Berkeley's work on Networking in the Long emergency (how the big-picture view of energy might reshape the way we think about networking)
Another discussion was raised about the the Post-sustainable terminology. Another way to look at it, more positively is if we view it as Post-"transition"
The rest of our discussion focused on looking at ways in which we can learn from groups that are already living what many would view as post-collapse times, like towns currently in transition (W Oakland for example), or shrinking cities like Detroit. Some examples include the use of Time banks, Growth buds (as Bonnie presented), survivalists, etc. Thoughts included using failed states as potential case studies for post-collapse (states with little to no economic growth to help us understand creative survival strategies)
_____________________________________________________________
What is sustainable consumption? [Facilitator Sara Ilstedt]
Design culture is very pro-consumption, designers are focused on creating new, cool, improved stuff that increases consumption. But many designers are unhappy with this, they need new areas to explore that does not ruin the planet.
We need new narratives, alternative for designer not to enable consumerism. and for people to do other things than shop. Prosumers, conduction. New narratives could also be new motivations for sustainable behaviours, such as checking for email while commuting is a motivation for public transport instead of driving.
We need new business models, that enable companies to earn money while not wasting natural resources. Nudie jeans has a lifetime warranty on their jeans and takes back old jeans when your don’t want them any longer and sells them second hand. Could we change the perception of normality to only by things that outlived you? Could companies then have a business model that was based on repair and upgrading?
Decoupling needs to develop but so far the growth of economy has not separated from the use of energy and resources. Can we promote less resource intensive sectors such as education, massage, therapy ? We like: Upgrading ringtones of your phone, and slowfood, which supports local economy, organic food, is service intensive and costs a lot of money.
Travel and heated spaces are the worst for energy/footprint. Maybe conscious consumption is not that bad after all? How could we change the “normal” vacation to one long journey by train, instead of many short by flights?
Companies and universities could have an unfrequest flyer program. Flight are “taxed” internally and used to subsidies traintravel.
Designers could enable for people to be creative, support a maker and DIY movement. Designers could design “signs” (Baudrillard) and work with user centered procurement and social innovation.
Use HCI to highlight backsides of consumption. For example make sudden inspections on factories, inspect organic farms or crowd source inspections.
Energy efficient programming.
_____________________________________________________________
How do we change the narrative? [Facilator Bran Knowles]
We agreed as a group that one narrative in society that needs changing is the 'technocapitalist' narrative of people as consumers (and that this consumption leads to happiness), and should be replaced by the narrative of people as citizens and otherwise multifaceted individuals. After talking for a long time about the difficulties and ethics of crafting a new narrative, we decided that the community which we could affect the most is our own, and we started talking about how we can change the narrative of sustainable HCI. The leading narrative for this community is the notion of behavior change - that people's behavior can and should be engineered for (often minor) sustainability wins, inevitably treating people in a mechanical way and only addressing them as consumers. Eventually, we thought it would be a really helpful and illuminating excerise to imagine a Design Future for sustainable HCI, to help us think creatively about the future of the discipline and where we'd like it to go. This idea was picked up in the afternoon by another group led by Sabrina.
_____________________________________________________________
Pattern Language [submitted by Bran Knowles but the discussion was facilitated by Steven Haynes]
We were all very interested in the idea of capturing solutions that work for sustainability in the form of patterns, and tried our best to get a couple down on paper. As it turns out, this is very difficult! For one, there are several different templates for patterns, so it was difficult to agree on a template. Secondly, and more crucially, patterns can be developed at different levels of granularity, so it is very hard to decide what level to begin it. As a group, we were somewhat all over the map - some of us wanting really broad patterns, some of us wanting really low-level, concrete patterns. But here are some initial ideas for patterns (none of which did we manage to actually elaborate fully using a pattern template):
1. Decoupling use from ownership - this was actually proposed by Blevis; the idea is that people need to get over the idea of owning their own things, and begin to see value in sharing; e.g. car-sharing schemes
2. Decoupling service from device - the problem is that many so called solutions for sustainability rely on increased access to information using devices like smart phones, which increases the need for people to purchase these things... which ultimately end up in landfill; so this pattern would be to design in such a way that people do not need high-tech devices in order to accesss sustainability wins.
3. Ubiquitous, low-tech signage - related to the above, one solution to the need for greater information is to spend design effort on low-tech communication means, such as proper signage around cities, information printed in appropriate places, etc.; in other words, wherever possible, go for the low-tech solution.
There were others, but you should email Ake for those. The main message to take away from this group is that there is a real excitement about the idea of capturing patterns for sustainability, and there are many of us who intend sincerely to follow up on this.
_____________________________________________________________
Daniel Pargman shared his blog posts on the conference - http://danielpargman.blogspot.se/2013/05/impressions-from-chi-conference.html
and the workshop http://danielpargman.blogspot.fr/2013/04/chi-conference-post-sustainability.html
––––––––––––––––––––
Lisa P. Nathan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, First Nations Concentration Coordinator
The iSchool@UBC
Assistant Professor, First Nations Concentration Coordinator
The iSchool@UBC
The University of British Columbia | Vancouver | Canada
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