Thinking Outside the (Tool) Box: Empowering People with Toolkits Pradthana Jarusriboonchai
Nicolai Brodersen Hansen
Faculty of Art and Design
Department of Industrial Design
University of Lapland
TU Eindhoven
Pradthana.jarusriboonchai
[email protected]
@ulapland.fi Janis Lena Meissner Open Lab Newcastle University
[email protected]
Ben Schouten Department of Industrial Design TU Eindhoven
[email protected]
Abstract Toolkits enable individuals to create and design their own technologies. With more toolkits being commercially available, movements such as the Maker Movements has led to a hype around Do-It-Yourself and Making practices. This development aligns with the Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
[email protected]. NordiCHI'18, September 29-October 3, 2018, Oslo, Norway © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6437-9/18/09 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3240167.3240263
recent HCI research agenda, which is calling for user empowerment. Yet, the Maker Movement has been criticised for lacking diversity and practicality in the broader world. The question remains how toolkits can afford and sustain wider participation of different communities in technology design. This workshop aims to identify ways in which toolkits can empower people. By bringing together researchers, designers, and practitioners with an interest in DIY/making toolkits for people from diverse backgrounds, for different purposes, and in a variety of project contexts, we see a particular potential in discussing how HCI research could contribute and unpack toolkits as tools for empowerment and thinking about the role of making in broader practice.
Author Keywords Toolkits, empowerment, engagement, design, development, practices, in the wild, making, DIY.
ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.
Background and Motivations This workshop incorporates two recent development related to technology and empowerment. First, the increasing number of toolkits have become available
Workshop Themes Theme 1: Purposes of Toolkits The general purpose of toolkits is to simplify and speed up the technology creation process [2,3]. However, they are also used for other purposes, for example, as a learning tool, as a means for therapy, or to actively involve people in participatory technology design. We will discuss participant’s purposes in the use toolkits in communities. Theme 2: Design and Choice of Toolkits We will discuss the motives and wider goals of deploying toolkits in a community. With numerous toolkits are available, how and why do participants choose certain toolkits over others to be used in a certain community? If a new toolkit is designed, what are the rationales behind its design? We will also discuss how toolkits are intended to be used versus how they are actually used.
that can enable people to create their own technologies. Second, the recent HCI research agendas have placed emphasis on designing technology for user empowerment and offer a very wide range of approaches to how and why to do accomplish this [15]. Toolkits Toolkits often refer to a set of components that are used to design and prototype interactive systems [2,7,9]. They generally hide complex low-level implementations to simplify and speed up the creation process, allowing users to focus on creative designs rather than on the technical details [2,3]. Phidgets [3] or the well-known Arduino are examples toolkits initially designed and used to teach interaction design, engineering, and computer science in schools and universities, who are, yet, naïve in technology design. However, soon, these toolkits have also been well received beyond the academic context. Many toolkits are now available as commercial products for a wide target group. Indeed, a growing number of people have started to use toolkits for building their own technologies in their spare time. This has given rise to the so-called Maker Movement, a technology-fuelled DIY culture with a central ethos around sharing [1]. Many makerspaces [18] and online communities (e.g., [19]) have been established where members share resources, ideas, creations, skills and knowledge. HCI for Empowerment Emerging HCI research agendas call for technologies being designed for user empowerment. [10,13]. Rogers and Marsden [13] encourage HCI researchers to move beyond considering people as recipients. Instead, people should be given opportunities to design and innovate themselves within their own contexts. The
Maker Movement seems to well align with this user empowerment research agenda. An increasing number of HCI researchers have investigated hackathons, Maker events and Makerspaces to understand community empowerment and roles of technologies in communities [17,18]. The Maker Movements, Do-ItYourself Cultures and Participatory Design workshop at CHI 2018 [16] brought together researchers to discuss the implications that DIY/Making culture has for HCI research. Beyond Maker Community and DIY Toolkits Despite forming such a dynamic and creative community, the Maker Movement has been criticised for lacking demographic diversity [1]. Furthermore, making in general is still questioned if it actually can go beyond being one’s hobby and realise its capacity to give agency to people to design their own technologies for everyday use [1,4]. While HCI research has already learned a lot from the, by now, well-established maker community in terms of possibilities for DIY-technologies and empowerment of tech-savvy citizens, the next question to be asked is how DIY/making practices and tools could also empower and enable innovations in other communities. Despite the trend to design and develop tools to empower users [6,13], there is little discussion and reflection on the uses of toolkits in practices out and about. Most HCI research publications focus on the novelty of respective toolkits (e.g., [5,12]), users’ creations using toolkits [5,11], or user experiences with toolkits in short-term workshop sessions [8,14]. We believe that it is also important to acknowledge and understand the challenges faced in deploying toolkits in communities. Such an understanding would help us
Workshop Themes (cont.) Theme 3: Engaging People in Technology Design We will discuss in how DIY/Making practices are applied and what kind of frictions or tensions are encountered when toolkits are introduced to engage communities in technology design. How are these frictions different from one context to another? What are strategies to overcome these frictions? Theme 4: Impacts of Toolkits in Communities Researchers and designers have different ways to apply toolkits in communities. The last theme focuses on impacts toolkits have created in a community and the process of moving from research/design-led activities with toolkits towards communities appropriating toolkits and technology design on their own.
design and deploy toolkits that have a lasting impact not only in the HCI research community, but also in broader and more diverse communities.
Show and Tell. Participants will present and reflect on their own work through the lens of the four discussion themes. The presentation will be done in the form of poster/demo presentation.
Workshop Aims and Themes This workshop aims to bring together a diverse group of researchers, designers, and practitioners with an interest or have used different DIY/making toolkits in different communities. We encourage sharing insights, discuss experience, and identify key challenges and strategies for designing and using toolkits to engage people in technology design. The goal is to identify different ways in which toolkits can empower people and establish new connections with those developing toolkits or using toolkits as research tools. In addition, we also seek to identify key issues and common practices that can lead to success or failure in applying toolkits and DIY/making practices in different communities. During the workshop, we break down our discussion into four main themes below. See the sidebars for detail explanation of each themes. § Purposes of Toolkits § Design and Choice of Toolkits § Engaging People in Technology Design
Round Table Discussion. Participants are split into groups based on types of communities/people they have worked with. In each group, participants discuss all four themes, addressing the set of questions asked in each theme. At the end of the session, the participants altogether will reflect on the outcomes from a more generic perspective, considering different contexts, communities and groups of people. Group Work on “how would we do it differently”. Participants will work in the same group as before. They will be asked to re-design the approach and toolkits that they engage with their target community with the key insights gained from the previous session.
Acknowledgement Hansen’s is funded by the research programme ‘STEC: Smart Technologies, Empowered Citizens’ with project number 652.001.005
References
§ Impacts of Toolkits in Communities
1. David Cuartielles, Jonathan Bean, and Daniela Rosner. 2015. Conversations on making. interactions 22, 1: 22– 24.
Workshop Structure
2. Saul Greenberg. 2007. Toolkits and interface creativity. Multimedia Tools and Applications 32, 2: 139–159.
The workshop consists of three parts: show and tell, group work on purposes of toolkits, and round table discussion. Show and tell and the round table discussion will be in the morning. Group work will be in the afternoon.
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