Conference Agenda

Digital interfaces are becoming increasingly simple and intuitive. However, beneath the surface, the technological infrastructures underlying these interfaces are growing more complex and elusive. This paper draws on theories from human-computer interaction, software studies, and social practice to revisit the notion of the interface as a site of representation and control. By briefly tracing the historical development of digital interfaces, we propose to shift from ideas of representation and control towards a notion of co-performance and negotiation. Through this lens, we reconceptualize the interface as acts of interfacing—a new concept that captures the contested, constructive, and performative character of interaction within large-scale digital systems.

Residential stratification has long governed American cities, as has the under-achievement of children living in urban areas (Sandy & Duncan, 2010). Policymakers, administrators, and educators working to address these systemic inefficacies need to consider intersectional factors to redesign urban schooling carefully. Gentrification often leads to more significant gaps between the socioeconomic classes, increasing the chasm between the needs of residents. How can we enable policymakers, educators, and parents to (1) track socio, cultural, and environmental conditions, (2) learn from the lived experience of underrepresented groups, and (3) design more equitable urban schooling policies? In this paper, the authors share the process of developing a participatory tool, Connect.Ed, which leverages qualitative and quantitative data to make interdependencies visible to improve urban schooling. Resulting in increased accountability among stakeholders, equitable engagement in under-invested neighborhoods, and a collaborative space for community engagement.

With the growing influence of digital transformation on global communities, critically examining the interaction between digital technologies and traditional cultures is becoming more pressing, especially in minority groups. This paper explores the complex relationships between digital technologies and cultural landscape in Eastern Tibet based on a 34-day ethnography study by photographic materials from 28 counties and cities. Through looking into these visual materials, also including observations and interviews, the tension surrounding commercialization, public relations, creative expressions, and the environment are uncovered. We discuss the unintended and pervasive consequences of modernization, including cultural homogenization and the rise of individualism, imagining possible future ways and resilient future.The paper emphasized the significant role of design in shaping these outcomes and advocates for a more inclusive and collective approach to design practices. By understanding and highlighting these dynamics, this paper aims to provide guidance to designers in promoting a resilient and sustainable digital transformation.

Advancing collective capacities relies on innumerable small ‘nano’-actions by individuals which govern, if effectively combined, any institutional (knowledge economy) and societal performance (knowledge society). In this endeavor, scaling people and knowledge connectedness present a key systemic strategy. Successive evolutionary ceilings have been overcome by general-purpose technologies such as language, toolmaking, writing, printing, computerization, and the web. But, as digitization is spreading, digital dividends are not. Facing widening opportunity divides, the elephants in the room are the entropy caused and the attention squandered by today’s ever-accelerating abundance of replicated, fragmented, outdated, and unvetted content. Any solution to this unsustainable wicked state ought to mitigate these constraints by affording systemic citizens the ease of utilizing and contributing to the transdisciplinary knowledge heritage. Using the ‘citizen-led design approach’ theme as a macroscope, the concept and mission of a longitudinal research and start-up project is presented for building a digital platform ecosystem and community for knowledge co-creation.

Contemporary smart product-service systems increasingly enable multiple users to interact with multiple touchpoints of the same system simultaneously. We looked deeper into the use practice of one such smart product-service system, children-owned wearables. Our data comes from a short-term auto-ethnography and a user review analysis of 9 children-owned wearables. Experiences designed for children assume they have limited agency, leading parents to switch roles between being the end and mediating users. As mediating users, parents become service providers for their children. These user dynamics can hinder children’s experience with wearables and their interaction with other wearable users. Our findings extend the theoretical understanding of human-centered design and service design by depicting the significance of multiple and shifting user roles and users as service providers during the use practice of children-owned wearables.