Internet and increased datafication, signify a new era for civic society. Social media, fundraising tools, digital petitions, social media analytics, greatly facilitate the ability to activate, organize and raise public opinion. At the same time, the technology entails algorithmic surveillance and risks of being exposed to threats and hatred. For people at risk, undocumented refugees or people with protected identity, the lack of digital infrastructures also means great difficulties. While research points to these opportunities and risks, there is lack of research on how civic society deals with the increased datafication, and what methods, tools, and strategies are used on the field. The purpose of this workshop is therefore to gather researchers who investigate the impact of digitalization on civil society, both for established NGOs and informal activism.

This one-day hybrid workshop builds on previous feminist CSCW workshops to explore feminist theoretical and methodological approaches that have provided us with useful tools to see things differently and make space for change. Since its inception over a decade ago, feminist HCI has progressed from the margins to mainstream HCI, with numerous references in the literature. Feminist HCI has also evolved to incorporate other critical HCI practices such as Queer HCI, participatory design, and speculative design. While feminist approaches have grown in popularity and become mainstream, it is getting more difficult to distinguish the feminist emancipatory core from other attempts of developing and improving society in various ways. In this workshop, we therefore want to revisit our feminist roots, where theory is a liberatory and creative practice, motivated by affect, curiosity, and wonder. From this standpoint, we consider which of our feminist tools can make a significant difference today, in a highly datafied world. The goal of this workshop is to; 1) create an inventory of feminist theories and concepts that have had an impact on our work as designers, educators, researchers, and activists; 2) develop a feminist toolbox for the CSCW community to strengthen our feminist literacy.

In this paper, we explore how activists and human rights defenders deal with datafication. This work demonstrates how data can be a valuable resource in activism and campaign planning. In addition, data and lack of data also complicate daily life for people in vulnerable positions, for example, when contacting government agencies, schools, and medical facilities . Data from four types of human rights activism formed the basis of our analysis. They include volunteers and employees of NGOs dealing with refugee and migrant issues, homelessness, poverty, sexual minorities, and women's shelters. The study was done in Sweden, where the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws limit the handling and storage of personal data. The following five major themes emerge from the analysis of data from our interview study: Affording personal integrity, Data poverty, Protective data practices, Drawing attention to data, and Systems and data routines. In addition, this study shows how activists and the organizations that they support are exposed to contradictory aspects of data; on one hand, deliberately exposing data about marginalized/minoritized groups, while on the other, making sure those groups, along with activists themselves, are not exposed. Most important, the data laws and regulations are not adjusted to the needs of the most vulnerable in society, and therefore, actions of civil disobedience are necessary to care for vulnerable populations through data.

This paper examines experiences of mindfulness and meditationapplications for handling stress and emotional strain. We presenta qualitative interview study. The analysis focuses particularly onthe role of persuasive functions in the applications, such as notifications,history tracking, maintaining a daily streak, etc. Theresults suggest that persuasive design patterns can interfere withthe original user needs. While providing some advantages for supportingthe establishment of a meditation habit, persuasive designpatterns also create friction between the application and the users’intentions to reduce stress. We critically examine how persuasivedesign patterns, intended for increasing performance and personalimprovement, may affect the users of meditation apps. Finally, wediscuss how persuasive design patterns in the major meditationapps have been instrumental in recontextualizing meditation froma spiritual practice to a productivity practice.

Sustainable HCI attempts to shift focus beyond humans, to care for both ourselves and our environment. In this paper, we build on this growing interest and contribute with a design ethnography of urban farming. We focus on practices of observing and gathering data about the environment which we frame as ‘noticing’. In our analysis, three approaches to noticing the environment were iden- tified, and design suggestions were developed for each approach: Green Thumbs (control-oriented), Dirty Nails (sensibility-oriented) and BeeNoculars (appreciation-oriented). The design suggestions, presented as posters, focus on ways to improve the alignment of the acquisition and display of data with the identified approaches. We discuss two themes: the noticing and balancing of systemic rela- tions and needs, and sensory-rich experiences of the environment. The paper contributes to a broader discussion in HCI of how tech- nologies could create a different understanding of and relationship to the environment.

More-than-human-centred design is a growing field in HCI (human-computer interaction) that account for non-human actors in design processes (such as animals, plants, and microbes but also autonomous technologies). While the rationale for more-than-human-centred design is clear, there is a lack of design methods grounded in this thinking. We articulate the idea of noticing as a method for approaching design spaces as systems of mutual interdependence between organisms. The findings are based on a longitudinal ethnographic study of urban farming—including the study of urban farmers’ practices and use of technologies with a focus on the interplay between humans and non-humans, such as plants and microbes. We articulate noticing as a phenomenon and show examples of urban farmers’ practices of noticing. We discuss principles for designing with the interdependencies of several organisms based on what is noticed in a setting. We argue that the way we have separated ideas about the environment and human experience is a part of the sustainability problem—and suggest noticing as an approach that instead combines positive human experiences and the needs of the environment.

In urban farming communities, enthusiasts adopt urban land and cooperatively develop the space with organic cultivations. This kind of gardening is guided by several ideals, which are part of the farmers’ motivation. However, gardening alone cannot meet the requirements for establishing a community in the city environment. The activities and ideals of the urban farms need to be negotiated and articulated to various stakeholders, including local establishments, other citizens, and city governments. Based on a three-year field study of urban community farms in three countries, we describe how the negotiation and articulation of the organizational, material, and ideological boundaries unfolded both internally and externally in these communities. We provide concrete empirical examples of how such communities develop, what their challenges are, and how they can be supported by technology. We use the lens of civic engagement as a point of departure to situate urban farming and community technologies as a phenomenon. The main contributions of this paper are accounts of the kind of articulation work that volunteer-based civic engagement communities face and design qualities related to this boundary articulation.

One way of using public green spaces is to allow cultivation by citizens. Community gardening has proven to have many social benefits and can undoubtedly contribute to a sustainable society in a variety of ways. Yet while being clearly attractive for both citizens and officials, it does not always flourish in practice. In this study we draw on interviews with park engineers working in the city of Stockholm to analyze why community gardening is not more prevalent, despite the clearly existing political and popular will to promote it. The study shows that there are significant differences between Stockholm City's district administrations. Through applying implementation theory, we show that relatively small variations in local resources, expertise, and interests fundamentally shape the outcome of community gardening initiatives. It is also shown that unclear guidelines and a lack of horizontal and vertical communication constitute institutional barriers to the implementation, development, and resilience of community gardening in the districts of Stockholm. © 2020 Masaryk University.

Research on environmental sustainability in HCI is investigating the opportunities and hindrances technologies pose on living sustainably, beyond direct material impact of production, use and disposal. With this background, we focus on the smartphone camera as a tool that allows users to quickly and relatively effortlessly depict, save, share, access, augment or amplify information about the environment. Based on two years of participant observation studies, we present examples of how urban farmers use the smartphone camera as a tool in their practice. We discuss how the smartphone camera mediates human experiences of the environment and how certain uses of the camera may contribute to environmental sustainability. We highlight how the smartphone camera used as a tool in gardening was experienced to support (a) feelings of closeness or bonds towards the local environment and (b) the creation and sharing of knowledge.

This study explores how students within higher education perceive different types of peer review feedback and how that feedback affects their learning. The study builds on a previous paper [1] where the Blackboard peer assessment tool was used, and compared three feedback conditions: positive, mixed, and negative. The findings strongly indicated that students preferred negative feedback, corresponding to earlier research showing that experienced students seem to benefit from negative feedback [2].

To explore the students perception on feedback, we designed an academic course to incorporate peer review assessment. The course was held during autumn 2018 and included 75 bachelor students. Students were required to individually complete a set of four review assignments using the school’s learning management system, ITs learning (ITs). Each of the four peer review assignments were designed to represent a different approach to feedback. The first assignment instructed the students to only give positive feedback in the review process; e.g., “choose three things that are positive”. The second assignment had instructions without suggesting valence in the feedback and asked the students to “examine how the argumentation is included in the text”. The third assignment instructed the students to provide negative feedback, by asking them to “point towards at least three areas for improvement”. The fourth assignment instructed the students to validate the feasibility of a written research proposal by their study peer, again without suggesting a valence of positive or negative. By consciously designing the four peer review assignments to produce specific kinds of feedback, we aimed to learn more about how the students experience such different types of peer review.

Based on focus group interviews, we have so far found that the students perceive it harder to give positive compared than negative feedback. They also perceive giving feedback, rather than receiving feedback, as a more important experience in learning. The latter will be especially interesting when compared against earlier research [3] which showed that providing peer feedback had several potential learning benefits for the provider. A preliminary finding of our study is that the transition from earlier levels of design critique during digital development projects to academically founded criticism and review requires careful instructions and pedagogic considerations. In order to further evaluate the students' experience, a questionnaire will be distributed at the end of the course (end of Oct. 2018).

The findings presented in this study aim to work as a backdrop for future discussions about how to design peer-review assignments in higher education to increase students’ academic literacy.

References:

[1] Kidd, J., Hankins, M., “The effects of peer review in students learning: a comparison of positive and negative feedback.”. 10th International Technology, Education and Development Conference, Valencia, Spain, March 7-9, 2016.

[2] Fishbach, A., Eyal, T., & Finkelstein, S. R., “How positive and negative feedback motivate goal pursuit.” in Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(8), 517-530, 2010.

[3] Van Popta, E., Kral, M., Camp, G., Martens, R. L., & Simons, P. R. J., “Exploring the value of peer feedback in online learning for the provider.” in Educational Research Review, 20, 24-34, 2017.

The paper reports on a study of community gardening in Stockholm. We contribute to the body of knowledge about the sustainability of community gardens and this new form of citizen-led initiatives in Stockholm, with the ambition of creating a debate about the best way to sustain and develop these initiatives in Sweden. We argue that although community gardening may provide leverage for means of developing a sustainable city, it is a marginal phenomenon and contributes little to sustainable development its present form. Through interviews we have investigated how the citizens and municipality officers of Stockholm try to adapt to the renewed interest in community gardening by looking at the policy makers’, municipality officers’ and grassroots movements’ incentives to start community gardens. We specifically focus on how the community gardeners articulate their reasons for participating in collaborative initiatives in the city and how these expectations evolve when they are faced with the reality of gardening and the problems relating to producing food in the city. We have found that there are a growing number of citizens and local authorities advocating community gardening, but the sustainability and endurance of gardens are hampered by vague responsibilities, lack of leadership and unclear expectations of the outcome. Community gardening cases in Stockholm contribute to the debate by exemplifying how formal (e.g. policy making) and informal advocacy (e.g. civic engagement in community gardening) groups are collaborating, but also showing that they often have different agendas and initial motivations for setting up new gardens. We argue that uncritical enthusiasm results in an overly instrumental approach to governance of community gardening and that the sustainability and endurance of the community gardening is not an issue that the governing bodies plan for, and hence it is forgotten. We suggest some routes forward, involving employing facilitators from various stakeholders such as the municipality, housing companies and various NGOs.

This paper presents a case study of an interactive performance that was produced and designed to encourage civic engagement and reflection in relation to the social tensions in a low-income suburb, mostly inhabited by people with immigrant backgrounds. The design of the technological setup in the performance encouraged participation by means of text entries that audience members could share with others. The analysis draws on the corpus of interview and observational data collected, as well as the related text messages that were shared during the performance. We illustrate the different levels at which citizens make sense of societal issues they are concerned about, as well as the audience-citizens' perception of participating in such an artistic experience.

Despite increasing interest, Sustainable HCI has been critiqued for doing too little, and perhaps also at times for doing the wrong things. Still, a field like Human-Computer Interaction should aim at being part of transforming our society into a more sustainable one. But how do we do that, and, what are we aiming for? With this workshop, we propose that HCI should start working with the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that were formally adopted by the UN in September 2015. How can Sustainable HCI be inspired by, and contribute to these goals? What should we in the field of HCI do more of, and what should we perhaps do less of? In what areas should we form partnerships in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goals and with whom should we partner?

In the global North, there has been a considerable renewed interest for urban agriculture (UA) as a means to re-localize food systems by shortening food supply chains. This can be done by local food initiatives, such as community gardens. This paper is iscussing community gardens in Stockholm. We have choose to look at community gardens under the lens of neoliberal governmentality. Material has been gathered through participatory attendants on meetings, interviews and surveys. The results show that in Stockholm one can to some extent see urban gardening practices as agents of counter-neoliberal urban transformation. But also as an expression of the new rurality were the citizens desire to shorten the food chain and re connect with their food and to create new food regimes.

In this paper we focus on interaction design as the practice of designing interactive and digital products, services, systems and/or environments. Of interest in the area of interaction design is people’s use of designed things, which also makes it relevant to relate interaction design to the social norms present in society, such as gendered norms. We present three different cases in which we have analyzed different aspects of interface design and put a specific focus on interaction design as a carrier of social and gendered norms. The first case concerns a qualitative study of how young girls interact with and present themselves in a photo blog website. The second case is a study of the way that young women entrepreneurs use the functionality of social media to mold an attractive online persona (an invented, or adjusted, character that one wants to put forward). The third case is based on a study of the development of the national youth counseling site in Sweden. By using the concepts of interference and social norms as analytic tools, we exemplify various ways in which social norms, such as gender norms, diversity, power relations, equality, marginalization, etc. are part of interaction design and how the interface design reinforces norms and provides a far from neutral arena. In this paper, gender is highlighted in relation to social norms and values in society and social expectations and hierarchies. On the basis of our findings from the three different cases, we argue that there is a need to unpack how digital design embeds gender norms and to demonstrate how the relationship between norms and design can be critically examined.

The EcoFriends application was developed as an attempt tosupport grocery shopping adjusted to vegetables’seasonality through a performative approach to interactionand interactive applications. The design aimed at criticalreflection and inspiration among users, rather thanachieving a certain kind of persuasion. This guided thepractical design to be modelled around open-endednessand social voices to challenge ideas and points of view. Weargue that research addressing design for interactions aboutvalue-laden concepts such as sustainable action need tofind ways of supporting various knowledge discourses, bydistinguishing between performative and representationaltechnologies. The approach allowed us to identify anumber of design challenges regarding interactivetechnology and interaction design in relation to aspects ofknowledge and truth, trust, negotiation and responsibility.

Although digital artefacts constitute a fundamental part of thecontemporary lifestyle it is seldom discussed how the use of such objects affect the way we understand the world. We propose a new concept, norm-­critical design, in which the unit of analysis is the interaction design consisting of technology, interaction, images, sounds, text and how they together construct meaning. We argue that there is a need to unpack how digital design embeds norms and to examine how the relationship between norms and design can becritically examined. We base our discussion on studies of online youth counselling.

This paper introduces Express Location, a mobile web application, supporting drivers in delivery service in the daily coordination of work. Remote communication and cooperation takes place on a shared map view around the drivers’ locations and next stop, through a drawing/doodling tool and multiple visual object representations. The aim is to understand the working situation and the use of locations in the daily work to better support the coordination of mobile delivery work.

Critical perspectives are rare in human-computer-interaction (HCI) research. Although digital artifacts constitute a fundamental part of the contemporary lifestyle it is seldom discussed how the use of such objects affect the way we understand the world. We propose a new concept, norm-critical design, in which the unit of analysis is the interaction design consisting of technology, interaction, images, sounds, text and how they together construct meaning.  We argue that there is a need to unpack how digital design embeds norms and to examine how the relationship between norms and design can be critically examined.

     The discussion in this paper is based on two different empirical studies. First we will discuss how normative structures are present in the image blog site bilddagboken.se The other empirical material that we discuss is a case study of the design work in a youth counselling site in Sweden (umo.se). The case study gives examples of how different design elements are used in the design and development of websites in order to create a norm-critical experience for the users. We describe how these concerns affect the design outcome in the development of an animation about love.

We are observing that the current body of CSCW research is focusing either on stable workplaces with a single cooperative unit or on mobile work, with highly mobile professionals. We are attempting to fill the gap between workplace and mobile with a field study of student work, which we regard as exhibiting a high degree of nomadicity. After comparing student work with centres of coordination and mobility work, we unpack the notion of nomadicity as a work condition, constituted by a complex of discontinuities, leading to work partitioning and re-assembly. We draw design and methodological implications.

Some important research has been undertaken in recent years on knowledgemanagement within the CSCW community, drawing attention to the inherently socialproperties of knowledge and how it is shared. Much of this work has demonstrated thecomplex and sophisticated needs of so-called knowledge workers, and the requirementfor better understandings of knowledge sharing processes. The example we present inthis paper is that of knowledge work in emergency calls at SOS Alarm in Sweden, currentlyof interest because of a planned new system that will allow for centre-to-centrecase coordination and not only within the centre. What makes such a case interesting isthat workers in this context face an unlimited variety of incidents that require interpretation,decision and coordination, many of which require the deployment of local knowledgeand, as importantly, have to be dealt with in a timely fashion. In this paper we focus onhow a number of people work to combine their knowledge and expertise in a time effectiveway.

The research problem explored in this thesis is how technology and work practice are related in coordinative situations (collocated and over distance). Further, the problem of how this kind of research results can be transformed and used in the development of new technology is discussed.

Air Traffic Control and Emergency Call Centers are the two domains where the complex process of coordination in a time and safety critical setting has been studied. The methodological approach taken in the field studies is ethnographic, a qualitative method with a descriptive outcome. Air traffic controllers focus on keeping the airspace organized so that the aircraft are separated at all times, as well as are given an economic route by e.g. slowing down so that they do not have to wait in the air for traffic ahead. In order to manage the control of the national airspace, it is divided into geographical sectors each of which is controlled by 1-2 controllers. The aircraft cross many sectors during one flight and each time they cross a sector border there is a handover of responsibility between the controllers. The controllers have a large number of tools that they orchestrate in order to maintain control and keep records of the orders given to the pilots. The situation in one sector has therefore been locally stored at their work position. It is shown in the thesis how the social interaction and the technology support are ordered to broadcast the locally stored information.

Emergency call centers at SOS Alarm are in contrast to the ATC centers fully computerized. The operators use CoordCom, a system that is currently in the process of being renewed. When a telephone call to the emergency number 112 is received in one of the 20 local centers in Sweden, a receiving operator initiates the case by interviewing the caller in order to categorize the incident. Often, an incident consists of a number of conditions that together make an emergency. It is shown that accountability of decisions and local knowledge of the center’s responsibility area are two important parts of coordination at SOS Alarm.

A question that has been of interest during the studies is what possibilities ethnographic observations provide when used as a starting point in a design project. The final study provided a description of how the ethnographic material from the emergency call center study was explored and transformed in order to create concrete functionality and design.

The thesis contributes with examples from the workplace studies of how people interact with each other through the technology and how skills, local knowledge and professional concerns shape the interaction. It also contributes with reflections on how descriptions and experiences of work practice and technology use in the field can serve as a foundation in shaping and designing new ideas and new functionality for future systems.

The papers included in this thesis shows results on four issues in relation to coordination and technology:

-Coordinative work practice and implications in using video/audio in a distributed setting

-Support for accountability in decision-making in a distributed setting

-The role of local knowledge and combined expertise in a local collocated center

-The transformation of ethnographic observations in the design process

The thesis also shows the importance of a further definition of the dichotomy of collocated and distributed work in order to inform technology. An analysis of the dichotomy based on the field study results is presented in the thesis.

From the multitude of workplace studies that we have seen during the last decades, it has been shown that a common environment to a large extent supports coordination of work. The use of common artifacts and awareness of the co-workers activities effortlessly afford communication of the current state of work. Inevitably, a question arises: how can we get similar support for distributed groups? One idea has been to use a continuously open video and/or audio link, i.e. a media space, to support the informal coordination possibilities that are lacking in a distributed setting. In this paper, two cases from air traffic control are presented, where the long-term use of video and audio links plays an important role for communicating real-time updates of the state of work. The possibility to overhear and oversee what the colleagues are doing in remote positions reduces to a large extent the amount of obtrusive and time-consuming phone calls. The features and the successful use of these so-called focused media spaces are discussed in this paper.

Work in control rooms, or so-called Centers of coordination, challenges both humans and technology. The people working there have to be able to make quick decisions as well as be alert during less busy times. The work has to be coordinated within the group, since the operators are much depending on each other's work. This places special demands on the technology; it should be fast, trustworthy and easy to manipulate so that the complexity of the work is reduced.SOS Alarm is a company that is responsible for managing the telephone calls made to the emergency telephone number 112 in Sweden. The SOS operators receive, categorize, document, dispatch and monitor the incoming cases. This paper discusses SOS operators work; how they coordinate the information and tasks between them; how the technology supports that work. This study presents a fully computerized setting, compared to many other studies of centers of coordination that are not.

Work in control rooms, or so-called Centers of coordination, places demands both on humans and technology. The people working there have to be able to make quick decisions as well as be alert during less busy times. The work has to be coordinated within the group, since the operators are much depending on each other's work. This places special demands on the technology; it should be fast, trustworthy and easy to manipulate so that the complexity of the work is reduced. This type of work has been a source of interest in the research area of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, especially so since the needs for real-time coordination is great in these settings.

SOS Alarm is a company that is responsible for managing the telephone calls made to the emergency number 112 in Sweden. They have 20 centers covering Sweden. This thesis present an overview of the SOS operators work; how they coordinate the information and tasks between them; how the technology supports that work. This study presents a fully computerized setting, compared to many other studies of centers of coordination that are not.

This ethnographic workplace study has been inspired by ethnomethodological perspectives as well as earlier field studies of work and technology use. Its main results are a description of the work practice and technology at two centers, implications for design of a new computer aided dispatch system that is currently developed at SOS Alarm and general design ideas for control rooms.

Cooperation in time-critical and physically distributed worksettings, such as air traffic control, requires extensive coordinationbetween the involved actors. For this coordination to beefficient the controllers rely both on the comprehensive use ofrules and procedures, and on artifacts supporting them infollowing these procedures. At the Copenhagen Air TrafficControl Center this coordination is largely carried out throughthe use of a flight plan database system, paper flight strips, anda closed-circuit television system. In relation to the introductionof a new and increasingly automated system in the year 2003 this paper discusses the coordinative functions served bythese three, soon to be replaced, artifacts from a design perspective.Despite the skepticism expressed in previous research,our results show that a further computerization couldbe successful if the coordinative functions the system currentlyfulfills are properly preserved.