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Background: Smart home technologies have the potential to support aging in place; however, older people’s perceptions of the value of smart homes may be influenced by their access to the information gathered by the technology. This information is needed to support their informed decision-making. Limited research has been conducted on how best to design visualizations of smart home data in keeping with the needs and wishes of older people. Objective: We aimed to investigate the design options that impact the usefulness of smart home systems, older people’s information needs, their perceptions of data visualization, and the ways they would like information displayed to them. Methods: We used a qualitative approach to empower the participants as co-designers. Data collection comprised a sequence of methods such as interviews, observation, focus groups, scenario design, probes, and design workshops. Each phase informed the next. Overall, 13 older adults (n=8, 62% female and n=5, 38% male; aged 65-89 years) consented to participate. A thematic approach was used to analyze the data set, and participants were actively involved in designing the in-home interface, which enabled them to better conceptualize their needs. Results: The information collected was clustered into 5 themes: enabling home, health, and self-monitoring; enabling opportunities for social inclusion and engagement; enhancing cognitive abilities; customizability of the display; and promoting inclusion in recreation and leisure activities. These themes informed 5 design sessions in which participants co-designed visual metaphors for the themes based on their own experiences in an age-inclusive manner. Together, the participants produced a user-friendly prototype, which they chose to call My Buddy. They found it useful to receive social and cognitive triggers, as well as recommendations for special diets or activities based on their mood, health, and social status. Conclusions: Smart home data visualization is much more than a nice-to-have option. Visualization is a must-have feature because it deepens the understanding of the information collected and means that technology provides information of value and relevance to older people. This may improve the acceptability and perceived utility of in-home technology. By understanding what older people want to know from smart home technology and considering how to visualize data in ways that work for them, we can provide an appropriate in-home interface. Such an interface would suggest ways or opportunities to connect and socialize; stimulate contact with close friends or family members; maintain awareness of health and well-being; provide support in decision-making, cognitive tasks, and daily life activities; and monitor health status. Older adults are the best co-designers for the development of visual metaphors that resonate with their own experiences. Our findings promote the development of technologies that foreground and reflect the information needs of older people and engage them as designers of the display. QC 20230626

Waste management in urban areas is a complex process, encompassing a variety of activities (e.g., acquiring, sorting, disposing),actors (e.g., single individuals, waste collectors, condominium associations), and capacities (e.g., from household recycling stationsto physical infrastructures such as recycling and sorting facilities).Whereas previous HCI design research has tackled problems withwaste management from an individual, behavioral change perspective, we approach this design space through a feminist ecologicaldesign perspective of Digital Environmental Stewardship. Througha combination of qualitative empirical data and materials generated at design workshops, we outline challenges related to wastemanagement in a complex of five multi-apartment buildings. Wepropose a number of design explorations addressing such challenges, and reflect on the generative role of the DES framework inframing design from a collective and ecological perspective. QC 20230627

The changes that have come about through the increased speed, ubiquity, and scale of computational systems require a reconceptualisation of how we think about and study the relationship between humans and computers. Driven by the increased production of data in interaction and the transfer of value from interaction to data, we argue that computing that fundamentally impacts human-computer relations is no longer happening only in interaction but also without and outside interaction. While recent arguments have highlighted interaction as a problematic concept for HCI — challenging what constitute users, use, the human, and the computer in interaction — we propose post-interaction computing as one means to conceptualise a fourth wave of HCI. We propose four concepts — immediacy, (un)intentionality, interaction effects, and instability — that can help us in identifying and slicing our objects of analysis in new ways that better match the challenges that HCI is now faced with.

We present the design of a toolkit that explores textile materials with electronics as interaction material for intimate health literacy, and method for engaging women in self-care. This toolkit includes a series of artifacts designed for research. A range of design and craft techniques were used, and materials explored, as medium to engender conversations between communities of women on practices of intimate care. The toolkit consists of a set of materials for the following two activities 1) body mapping and 2) do-it-yourself (DIY) wearable eTextiles. We present findings from our case study that included iterations with the toolkit within four discrete workshops, and a total of 22 women and girls age range 15-52.Our approach draws from feminist biology to assimilate notions of embodiment and bodily functions in ways that are conducive to knowledge production. Within this study we put a focus on interweaving aesthetics with the material landscape of electronic textiles and the body; making with and through DIY artefacts supported by technology-enabled materials, to shape and strengthen knowledge of processes within and between bodies. We contribute a designerly approach to creating bodily awareness through hands-on engagement with crafting technology.

In this chapter, we draw on social practice theory framings of energy use (and other resource consumption that leads to the emission of harmful greenhouse gases) to develop some assertions for what such theoretical underpinnings mean for the business of doing design for sustainability. We conclude that we need effective ways for doing transdisciplinary research and design; we need ways of working at broader temporal scales that account for historical and future trajectories of practice in design; and we propose a framework of social practice theory and design fiction as a promising approach to augment existing practice-oriented design.