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Engagements2 as ‘HCI Material’: Propagating Community Agency, Through Embedded Technologies

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Human-Computer Interaction. Theoretical Approaches and Design Methods (HCII 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13302))

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Abstract

HCI has material attributes. As a sociotechnical assemblage, HCI mediates and/or translates technologies to public(s) and vice versa. It is malleable, ‘made’ and crafted and as a material media technology changes our relationships to ‘things’, each other and our surrounding world. Thinking through HCI as material allows us to unite disciplines with technologies, ensuring that how we conceptualise work is tangible and applicable. Working from this understanding of HCI, allows the authors to contextualise Engagements2 as an emerging ‘material’ space uniting art, design and other practices often fractured through disciplinary conventions. Traditionally, public engagement encompasses ways organisations engage with external parties. HCI contemporaries, Public Interest Technologies (PITs) empower public stakeholders and municipalities. PITs unravel intractable problems, through design, data, and delivery, thus providing user agency and yields wider societal benefit(s).

We question how digital technologies can transition ‘public(s)’, to sustainable approaches. In time, Engagements2 will be commonplace as technologies (PITs, augmented reality, IoT sensing and more) are embedded into public environment(s), if engagement can be defined as a ‘craft-able’, material concern. The article unites contemporaries in: the public realm, social design, and public engagement methods to identify the: pitfalls, benefits, and opportunities. There is a need for creating a ‘best practice’ roadmap to creative, active engagement. These values go well beyond designing for inclusion and seek for more sustainable and integral interactions, impacts and culture creation.

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Acknowledgements

Funded by: (RCA) Research Office, (RP/CS/157: 800076). Informed by My Naturewatch, EPSRC (Grant EP/P006353/1). Thanks to: Sarah West, Something & Sons, Bailey Richardson, Susan Hamilton & Christie Walker.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London, SW7 2EU, UK

    Rob Phillips, Gail Ramster, Katie Gaudion, Katie Spragg, Hannah Franklin Stewart & Mel Brimfield

  2. University of Brighton, 68 Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY, UK

    Nick Gant

  3. Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry, CV1 5FB, UK

    Mel Jordan

  4. RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    Sarah Teasley

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  1. Rob Phillips
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Correspondence to Rob Phillips .

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  1. The Open University of Japan, Chiba, Japan

    Masaaki Kurosu

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Phillips, R. et al. (2022). Engagements2 as ‘HCI Material’: Propagating Community Agency, Through Embedded Technologies. In: Kurosu, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction. Theoretical Approaches and Design Methods. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13302. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05311-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05311-5_8

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