Wild at Home: The Neighborhood as a Living Laboratory for HCI

  • Authors:
  • John M. Carroll;Mary Beth Rosson

  • Affiliations:
  • The Pennsylvania State University;The Pennsylvania State University

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) - Special Issue of “The Turn to The Wild”
  • Year:
  • 2013

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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.