No easy compromise: Sustainability and the dilemmas and dynamics of change
Paper in proceeding, 2014

Sustainable HCI grapples with how to use technology design to make social change. This is made difficult by recurring dilemmas about how to truly make change, like how to increase the scale and duration of design impact. In this essay, we reflect on our own journey to better understand design for social change by taking inspiration from two groups that have long engaged in making change towards sustainability-simple living and organic farm families. We describe 5 key dilemmas that both the families and HCI designers struggle with and reflect on how we can learn from families' practices to negotiate these dilemmas. We contribute a deepened understanding of the dilemmas of and opportunities for making change for sustainable HCI.

organic farming

advocacy

design

change

sustainable HCI

simple living

sustainability

activism

Author

Maria Håkansson

Chalmers, Applied Information Technology (Chalmers), Interaction design

Phoebe Sengers

Cornell University

Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14)

1025-1034
978-145032902-6 (ISBN)

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories

Human Computer Interaction

DOI

10.1145/2598510.2598569

ISBN

978-145032902-6

More information

Latest update

4/12/2018