Wild at Home

Abstract

HCI can “turn to the wild” but still stay home. Local community life presents a rich context for understanding challenges and possibilities of information technology. We summarize and reflect upon a program of participatory design research in which we facilitated activities and experiences of our neighbors through developing a series of community-oriented programs and information systems through the past two decades. We organize these reflections around five overlapping themes: visibility of community actors, creation of community information infrastructures, the role of place-based identity and activity in community, the effectiveness of participatory relationships, and the research designs and methods appropriate. We frame these reflections around a conceptual model of community, and the suggestion that the local community can be a living laboratory for HCI in the wild.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jul 01, 2013
Source ID
10.1145/2491500.2491504

Entities

People

  • John M. Carroll
  • Mary Beth Rosson

Organizations

  • Intel Corporation
  • National Science Foundation
  • Office of Naval Research
  • Pennsylvania State University
  • United States Department of Education
  • Virginia Tech

Tags

Readers

  • Defense Technology Research and Development.
  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Systems Analysis and Design