A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective to Drive Change towards Sustainable Future

Sustainability from an ecological, social and economic perspective requires more attention than ever. To address and to implement the United Nation’s set of sustainability goals is of utmost importance to all scientific communities, including information technology researchers. As a multidisciplinary field located within information technology, Human-computer interaction (HCI) constantly transfers knowledge and skills between the technically-oriented computer science, and psychology, social sciences, design, as well as other disciplines related to sustainability, such as environmental sciences. HCI’s focus embeds technology into personal and societal practices and, thus, greatly influences the way technology is used in everyday life. At the same time, each new technology impacts the way we live. It shapes people’s behavior and experiences. Through this mutual relationship, technological innovations have a great power to transform the world to be more ecological, resource-efficient, and inclusive. Not only can technologies be more resource-friendly, but also they can offer more ecological and social ways of interacting with the world. As a field, HCI is positioned to conceptualize, design and evaluate digital tools, able to suggest and to support the transformation of current into more sustainable lifestyles. Yet, while in principle HCI has all a field needs to contribute to a more sustainable future, it only hesitantly takes on the challenge of establishing sustainability at the heart of designing interactive information systems.

While sustainability is a global goal and needs many stakeholders from countries, organizations, and companies to make the transformation into sustainable societies happen, there is a large potential of individuals to make behavioral changes and contribute to sustainability as an individual and a collective. Digital interactive technology can play a major role in informing, supporting, reflecting, and acting in their everyday life and their individual societal and cultural context. However, this is not a single behavior change challenge in which we just have to offer a mobile app nudging us and that’s it. Making such changes, taking different decisions comes with a large number of tensions such as who decides what the better lifestyle would be, and who could afford that change in their individual context.

Transformation requires goals. A good starting point for central requirements of sustainability are the UN sustainability goals. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, [1], adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and in the future. This agenda “is a plan of action for people, planet, and prosperity” and forms “universal goals and targets which involve the entire world, developed and developing countries alike.” At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which shall provide direction to transform the world via actionable objectives, from ending poverty to ensuring access to clean water and clean energy, to education and decent work for all. The goals assume that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

Digitalization will play an important, even transformative, role in meeting the SDGs, and so can the field of HCI. An open challenge though is to translate these goals into actionable HCI evaluation and design practice, academic and professional, alike.

This workshop brought together scientists related to HCI and sustainability for this Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop. We built on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to identify central opportunities for HCI to advance sustainability in research, education, and everyday information systems. Through a series of interactive discussions, we explored the tensions around a more sustainable map of research topics and approaches suitable for advancing sustainability through HCI research. As the main outcome, the workshop will formulate a manifesto and roadmap for Human-Computer Interaction contributing to our common sustainable future. The core questions of the Perspectives Workshop were

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  When and where is sustainability negotiable? We can observe that humans, and particularly the most disadvantaged, hardly have a chance of a liveable future. What does this mean for designing interactive systems that support sustainable behavior? Is sustainable behavior actually negotiable or a must for all?

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  How do we address conflicts between people’s individual goals, business goals, and global sustainability goals?

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  What can HCI offer for those who cannot afford a more sustainable lifestyle? Lifestyle HCI sustainabiliteers who can feel better versus an inclusive approach? How do we model the contextual factors of individuals who make / do not make sustainable decisions?

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  Can interactive technology help people who want to change to make changes in their lifestyle towards a more sustainable behavior? We contrasted technology that tells people what to do with technology in which persons are involved in the steps of behavior change.

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  Can technology outbalance injustice in the situations in which sustainability challenges are caused by a few?

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  How can technology help people compensate differently, adequately, and fairly?

The 26 participants from all over the world were bringing in different perspectives to the workshop not only from their scientific and methodological background but also their lens of sustainability challenges in and from different areas of the world. Before the workshop, we collected a reading list of own and related work to set the stage for the discussions. For the workshop we invited three talks (online and in-person) that were setting the stage for the role of HCI for a sustainable future, the tensions of making sustainable and unsustainable individual decisions, and if we can or want to live with much less than today and still be happy. Based on the framework of the United Nations Sustainability Goals we discussed the tensions and opportunities for HCI contributing to sustainability for individual SDGs. We used speculative explorations of positive sustainable futures both from a technology perspective as well as from a research and practice perspective.

As a major result from the workshop:

1. 1.

   We selected and discussed SDGs in which HCI can make a contribution to a sustainable future and identified potential and open challenges which we will present in Section 5.

2. 2.

   We used speculation as a form of analysis of possible futures and developed three design fictions in group works in Section 6.

3. 3.

   We identified core areas where HCI can make a contribution to a sustainable future which will be elaborated and published in a manifesto.

Sustainability has tended to focus on individual rather than collective freedoms; the freedom to buy and consume and behave in certain ways, not the freedom of the world’s children and grandchildren to live in a world free of the devastation of climate change. While, many projects, including examples from Africa, use technology to address climate change by, for instance, collecting data, improving predictions or carbon sequestering, technology cannot magically solve climate change on it own. Large scale governmental, community and collective action are needed to really change the supply chains, markets and ways of living and working that support unsustainable consumerism and neoliberal ideas of “choice”. Since, democratic governments have little incentive to make changes that will be unpopular and impact perceived quality of life, they must be pushed into action. Technology can help to empower citizens in this conversation, e.g., using satellite imagery for storytelling. However, with some notable exceptions, most of sustainable HCI is driven by the interests and needs of the Global North and is about individual change. This not only misses the 80 percent of the worlds middle class who will live in Global South in 2030 but misses the point of addressing the global systemic problem. Framing design for sustainability as the informed choice of individual consumers arises because we conceive a market economy to be a natural, not a social, construction in the neoliberal world. As a result grants and funding cycles focus on interventionist innovations not problem solving and disciplinary boundaries determine the types of things we work on and separate research from practice and action. A possible answer is to engage with projects and people on-the-ground doing sustainability work, such as climate scientists and activists, government and policy makers, data scientists and engineers. This may require rethinking HCI and reframing its own isolated and individualist approach. Talk summarized by Nic Bidwell

The talk provided insights into the challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change and discussed the role the digital could play in supporting the necessary transformations. Socio-economic and technological innovations must go hand in hand. Together they provide new opportunities for a transformation towards more sustainability. The talk presented two in-depth examples of how technology can support and drive socio-cultural change in the domain of personal mobility and business models for a circular economy. In general, digital technology must be underwood as a network of opportunities to shape everyday practices to be sustainable. In the mobility domain, for example, traffic management, sharing platforms, virtualisation (meetings, homeoffice), autonomous driving, digital government solutions, as well as new approaches to town planning together create a the transformation, which enables people to be less mobile, to choose eco-friendly modes of transportation (bike, walking, public transport) as well as to make necessary individual mobility more efficient. Talk summarized by Marc Hassenzahl

In light of the threatening consequences of anthropogenic climate change, it seems paramount to reduce individual energy consumption. For example, within the European Union, as much as 24 percent of the yearly energy is consumed by individual households. This is due to the many energy-intensive daily routines or activities of consumers within their households, such as heating, taking hot showers, or doing several courses of laundry a day. Thus, one way to counteract the consequences of climate change would be to reduce energy consumption of these activities, for example, by reducing the room temperature, showering more quickly, or by reducing the amount of laundry and its energy consumption. Unfortunately, consumers rarely act accordingly. A possible explanation is that climate objectives are very abstract and future-oriented goals and, therefore, not easily put into practice. In addition, the many energy-intensive daily activities offer direct gratification through immediate comfort, which will increase their execution. Therefore, consumers might need external support to follow and achieve the abstract goal of reducing individual energy consumption. As most of the energy-consuming activities are linked to or achieved through the use of technology, technology design is a possible leaver to foster behavior change and reduce individual energy consumption. For quite a while now, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) studies how technology could change consumer behavior. Broadly, two different types of approaches are offered: (1) feedback and arguments to persuade consumers to behave differently (e.g., Persuasive Technology) or (2) situational interventions (i.e., “choice architectures”) to prevent impulsive actions and to disturb unconscious unwanted routines. The underlying assumption of persuasion is that users make rational decisions but lack the “right” information and knowledge to do so. From a psychological perspective, this approach is based on the precondition of a reflective system in which behavior emerges as the result of conscious decision-making. In the context of sustainable behavior, technologies designed according to this approach, for example, confront the user with information on how much hot water is consumed during a shower or visualize water as a limited amount that decreases. The underlying assumption of situational interventions is that people primarily do not act rationally but are driven by mostly unconscious impulses, automatic routines, and limited resources to make conscious decisions. In contrast to a reflective system, these approaches build upon an impulsive system in which behavior emerges from previously learned schemata. Technologies that implement this approach, for example, confront users with the choice between a bicycle or a car key to break routines or hide less sustainable choices and even remove them completely.

My research focuses on human-technology experiences and in particular, multimedia and IoT-technology enabled experiences. My activities in these areas are grounded in human-centered approaches and focus on aspects related to the design, evaluation and use practices of different types of media: how can they be made more sustainable and trigger more sustainable use practices? How can we ensure that they are inclusive and put other ethical considerations at the core? More recently, I’m also working on user awareness (and lack of it) of the “invisible” carbon footprint of digital media. How can we support the exploration and uptake of concrete strategies and mechanisms that may help to trigger critical reflection and more conscious and responsible consumption (both from a well-being and environmental point of view)? And how can we – as researchers and educators – push stakeholders with decision power to take action? This week has given me hope and courage to help addressing these and some of the related big questions and challenges.

Personally, I have been interested in the co-existence of ICT and sustainability for 1½ decades, and it has been interesting to see the engagement of some researchers on one side, and the reluctance of scientific communities to pick on the sustainability challenges coming with ICT. As designers of ICT applications and technologies that allow to bridge between various realities (on the continuum between physical and digital experiences), we have great opportunities to make differences in the ways that people perceive and upon sustainability issues. From own previous experience, quality and energy efficiency can well come together, and our knowledge in those areas can enable “Quality of Experience and Sustainability by Design”. In any case, it is very nice to see how the interest in sustainability issues within ICT is taking up speed, which gives hop for more sustainable solutions that enable more sustainable behaviour.

Nearly 15 years ago, I recognised that I had become disatisfied that my research was centred around the creation of novel technologies, without addressing the ways in which these technologies were and are impacting society and the environment. I hadn’t fully appreciated at this time, and perhaps I still don’t, but there’s a deep relationship between technology, economics, society and environment – and also how technology can reinforce and even accelerate unsustainable growth. I went on to study energy use in the home, how we use energy to achieve thermal comfort, how technology can promote or negatively impact environmental and social justice in digitally mediated work, and ICT’s global impacts. This journey has helped me realise that digital technology is a tool for transformation, but it’s also political, economic and embedded almost invisibly in society. What are the roles for technology not just in optimising and tuning an unsustainable way of living; or in plugging supposed information deficits – but in really changing thinking; challenging and making visible the drivers of unsustainability; creating emphathy and radical coordinated action; and driving bold leadership and governance on climate. I enjoyed the perpsectives from meeting people from across the world variously engaged with climate and technology; plus the solidarity and kinship that we’re working together. This reminded me that the climate change impacts are urgent, global, collonial, and that technology also has a role in connecting us with those most impacted. A lasting impression is our “ecopill” design, which helped me confront the pervasive presumption that many (too many?) of us have the choice to consume at the expense of others. It is discomfiting that in the first world at least, we can only seemingly choose a sustainable future if we can afford and buy our way there as a consumer? How do we give space for other non-techno-centric, non-growth centred, and nature respecting paradigms?

My work mainly focuses on the ethical application of labour and how technology influences decisions and lives. My recent work has focused on how our activities affect the environment. In our discipline we often resort to quantitative data before we accept the impact – which is challenging. The climate impact is colloquially settled, but the multifaceted impact is so broad. In many ways technology impacts policy. This has been a story/theme of the workshop. However, equally important is how policy impacts behaviour. I hope that this mutual feedback cycle can be capitalised on, and cause us to develop our technology to feed into this aspect to support a positive impact on sustainability, both for the community in the room – but also more broadly as our work influences colleagues, our institutions, and the wider world.

We need to broaden our understanding of people in different communities with different backgrounds in order to drive sustainable futures. Personally, this is one of the reasons I came to this workshop. Although all participants are working in the academic world, there are various perspectives and lived experiences to learn about. I’m also searching for the next best step to take in my professional world, where to best use my own resources for mitigating climate change and addressing social sustainability challenges. While individual level behavior change is important (and tech can definitely support it), it seems urgent to focus on interaction between different societal levels, such as how HCI could help in deliberative democracy, and also how to determine what kinds of “lifestyles” are okay for people: forming a big picture, looking at and analyzing people’s and communities’ footprints and handprints, providing informed decision support for decision-makers. Already, this workshop has given me a lot of food for thought.

Ever since my PhD research, my work has situated itself at the touching points of design, domestic energy demand and social practice theories. When I moved to the TU Eindhoven’s Industrial Design Department this shifted to a stronger focus on interaction design. I find the HCI community very inspiring due to its diversity of perspectives and generally rigorous & constructive review culture. This exchange of diverse perspectives and constructive atmosphere is also something that I particularly appreciate about this workshop. Like the others present, I am deeply concerned about the state of the world and feel helpless often with regards to the things I can personally do to change this. I find it inspiring and stimulating to find others struggling with very similar challenges and emotions; it eases some of the pain and offers hope and inspiration. I believe HCI and I personally as a researcher and teacher can make a difference. Systemic understanding translated into concrete, strategic interventions can plan a key role here. Thank you very much.

My research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and sustainable global development. I focus on care infrastructures, from global health informatics and integrating data-driven/AI approaches with care to care work(ers), employing care-based methods, as well as planetary care. Also in my role as serving president of SIGCHI, I work towards global inclusivity and (hopefully) a more sustainable ecosystem of HCI conferences. This workshop has been fantastic in bringing together such an incredible group of conversations on sustainability (and the broad, diffuse scope of this word) as well as the sustainable development goals all day yesterday. I plan to take back some of this energy to my research, teaching, and service responsibilities in my university and beyond. Looking forward to many more stimulating discussions over the next few days. Excellent as this experience has been, it would be fantastic to, next time, have/see more participation from those who live and work in the Global South – in Dagstuhl or elsewhere. Front of mind today, as I listen to Jacki O’Neill’s keynote talk, is how we can approach this work more radically, move towards more hybrid ways of operation, work towards doing more with less, and maybe doing less in some ways as well.

My research interests are focused on co-designed/co-created technologies for tropical forest biodiversity conservation, specifically working with rural forest-fringe communities that are commonly excluded from conservation and technology research. I am currently working with bioacoustic technologies that use environmental sound recordings and machine learning to monitor biodiversity. Through interactive visualisation and participatory design methods, I hope to build an interface that acts as a boundary object between conservationists and forest communities and addresses tensions that arise with the “dataification” of forests.

My work as a researcher / educator / designer explores designing tools (of different kinds) for participatory (re-)imagining and futuring in an age of transitions (and crises) in climate, energy, and social inequalities. We need new models – new ways to think and new ways to live – to help us imagine, understand, live, and even what we see as possible in our collective futures. Design and HCI have a role to play, and the urgency of climate crisis makes this really very acute. Design methods can enable people to share their experiences with others, giving voice (or other appropriate metaphor) to underrepresented ideas and hopes, and turning these ideas into experienceable prototypes which we can live with and reflect on, sharing our imaginaries with each other. We can bring plural possible futures to life in the present. I would like the HCI/Sustainability community to explore and value the possibilities of imagination in relation to climate futures, and to value the capabilities to bring alternative models to life.

In light of ever accelerating climate change, we are facing a regional and global challenge to change the way we live towards a more sustainable lifestyle, in order to maintain a livable planet for everyone. Sustainability has emerged as a critical objective in all areas of life and is not bound by disciplines. As designers and practitioners in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), we must contribute to this common goal and re-evaluate our goals and actions. As tempting as it might be, we should not solely seek to contribute by making things more efficient or to solve immediate problems with more technology. Alternatively, I believe we can leverage HCI’s methodological tools and their potential to shape habits and society through technology and applications. One key aspect is the importance of crafting positive narratives for a future sustainable way of living. While the future can be challenging to imagine and change can be intimidating, HCI is accustomed to exploring and visualizing potential future technology, its use, and even its potential societal impacts. By employing speculative methods, HCI researchers and designers can actively engage with different possible futures. Here, approaches such as speculative design and design fiction show promise to depict and negotiate desirable ways of living sustainably, highlighting the positive role technology can play – or where less technology can be beneficial. Speculative prototypes can facilitate discussions about how to rethink practices and aspects of our daily lives to be more sustainable. By visualizing a part of a possible future as if it was real, we can find out what is acceptable or realize how such changes can even spark joy.

In terms of sustainable development, digitalization can be viewed through Jacques Derrida’s concept of pharmakon: a composite of remedy, poison, and scapegoat. This reminds us that (i) different sustainability goals might be sensibly pursued by the means of digitalization, (ii) the processes and products of digitalization may also be harmful and unsustainable, even if the intentions were benign, and (iii) digitalization might be unfairly blamed for the faults elsewhere in our society. I think this is a wonderfully simple, yet powerful framework to regard the complicated relationship between these two megatrends shaping our times. My own contribution to this area has so far focused on developing a course for master students in Human-Computer Interaction, aiming to educate the future UX/interaction designers more critical perspectives, systems thinking, and social scientific viewpoints in general, as well as to underline the importance of sustainability also in this seemingly de-material and apolitical professional field. Additionally, recently we’ve been trying to consider the digital world through the concept of digital excess, and I’ll happily tell more about that another time!

As a academic representing both the Global North and South, my pragmatic sustainability perspective addresses the need for increased awareness in the Global South. Climate change impacts have fueled this awareness, leading many young individuals to initiate community-based projects. Sustainability has become integral to my academic and non-academic work in the Global North. However, significant gaps in understanding sustainability persist across contexts. I aim to identify these gaps and foster unity through collaboration. The recent Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop on A Human-Computer Interaction Perspective to Drive Change Towards a Sustainable Future has been enlightening. Engaging with leading experts in HCI-UX and sustainability, we focus on the well-being of our planet, exploring possibilities, potentials, and challenges to find optimal solutions.

Sustainability has been discussed as a prominent goal in legislation, political, and development processes. Specifically with the current environmental crisis, there is an urgent need for action for radical changes towards sustainable development. Sustainability is the result of practices and behaviours that makes the future life of human and non-human beings better on environmental, social, and economical levels. The question is how to make these radical changes and whether people are ready or willing to make those changes? Through this workshop, we discussed that change should be rather systematic and can primarily be induced through legislation and policies. However, the role of technology in changing towards sustainability through use and interaction with it cannot be ignored. The introduction of new technologies per se could imply new cycles of production which could lead to more CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, we cannot put a stop on production, but we can produce more sustainably and for sustainability. One question is how many products we need, and how can HCI that aims for making more usable, enjoyable products avoid over consumption? Of course, omitting technologies comes with changing the practices around their use. For example, removing the car from a family requires them to redefine their daily commutes, and this only will be possible if they have access to required resources such as public transport, or are physically fit to bike. Another way is to design technologies that change the practices through their use, contribute to sustainability while fulfilling other needs (e.g., riding a scooter improves health besides being a way to commute). Designing technologies that are attractive to people and can be integrate to their daily practices can also contribute to economic growth which is one of the main drives of big players in industry, politics, and legislation.

I research marginalised perspectives on technology through a lens of Critical Access, particularly around embodied computing. There, I’m focusing on issues of (minority) genders & disability (specifically neurodivergent and Deaf populations; though I’m hearing). My work hopes to inform the design & development of technologies in ways that allow for reflection, community and access beyond formalised criteria checklists. The workshop here shows me how social & ecological sustainability are modes that co-constitute each other by necessity. We won’t address issues of the climate catastrophy without decentering our indvidual(istic) experiences and attending to the (human & non-human) others in a love-oriented epistemological relationship.

The vision of ubiquitous computing, characterized by pervasive sensing, computing, and interactive electronic devices, presents significant sustainability challenges. In his talk, Dr. Zhang discussed his research that tackled these sustainability issues in the context of ubiquitous computing. Using a human-centered approach, Dr. Zhang suggested centralizing both computing power and energy on a few wearable devices on the body. This concept aimed to make off-body ubiquitous devices battery-less and computation-free, contributing to their sustainability. To bring this concept to life, Dr. Zhang developed backscatter-based ultra-low-power sensors and interaction-based power transfer mechanisms. These innovations are steps towards creating a more sustainable ubiquitous computing future.

SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing “ensures healthy lives and promotes well-being for all at all ages”. In our discussion, we first agreed on a possible approach and structure for our analysis. Here, the division into three forms of knowledge – system knowledge, target knowledge, and transformation knowledge (e.g., according to Pohl, C., Hirsch Hadorn, G. (2006): Gestaltungsprinzipien für die transdisziplinäre Forschung, Munich: Oekom Verlag) – seemed to be particularly useful for the analysis. This approach is often applied in the context of sustainability science and involves an iterative process of learning, planning, and implementation involving multiple stakeholders and perspectives. Systems knowledge involves understanding the structure and function of the system under study, while target knowledge involves defining clear goals for sustainability. Transformational knowledge refers to the strategies and actions needed to achieve those goals, including identifying potential trade-offs and developing strategies and actions to facilitate transformative change.

The goal to be achieved was set by the SDG 3 “Good Health and Wellbeing ensures healthy lives and promotes well-being for all at all ages”. Therefore, we first focused our discussion on the existing knowledge (i.e., system knowledge) in HCI regarding the goal.

The following items summarize which HCI topics provide system knowledge related to SDG 3:

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  Impact of environment on health and subjective wellbeing:Climate change affects not only the environment but also the health and wellbeing of humans. There are, besides the existence of mankind, also very concrete and short-term interests to stop climate change as soon as possible.

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  Access to healthcare (i.e., inclusive healthcare): Universal access to healthcare is almost non-existent worldwide

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  Data/AI developments and lack of data literacy: More and more data is available. This could be used for the benefit of humanity and nature. At the same time, few people can process and interpret this data. Data is not even a separate subject in school, although it is central in an information age.

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  Intrinsic motivation from people: People and their motivation are deciding factors when it comes to the big transformation.

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  Tech-push solutions rather than supporting human needs: The development of new technologies in HCI is still too much based on new technological rather than social possibilities. Despite a certain technological saturation (i.e., phenomena like “good enough”), enhancing well-being is not at first place in innovation development.

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  Productivity as a driver or innovation rather than subjective wellbeing: The current economic system, to which HCI belongs and contributes, is focused on growth and productivity. Self-determination and an increase in wellbeing have a subordinate role. They are rather soft factors.

The following items represent topics we covered in our discussion of how HCI’s research efforts already contribute to achieving SDG 3:

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  More than one human (design)

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  Personal informatics (self-tracking)

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  Telemedicine/Homecare

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  Explainable/transparent AI

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  Positive design/Experience design

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  Exploration of meaningful design spaces of new technologies

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  Low- or no tech

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  Calm/warm/slow technologies

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  Workplaces that promote wellbeing

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  Physcalisation/visualization of data

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  Healthcare for women

SDG 4 Quality Education (QE) aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and HCI provides a set of opportunities: 1) Improved accessibility to education for everyone, no matter of location, disabilities, socio-economic conditions, and situations in life. HCI promotes lifelong situated and experiential learning (and assessment) opportunities, as well as stakeholder participation in design and operation. 2) New or improved learning experiences. HCI allows for designing digital tools and interfaces that facilitate positive, engaging and effective learning experiences, social connections between teachers and learners from different places, resilience, lifelong and challenge-based education. 3) Improved organisation. HCI supports the right-scaling of educational resources and joint curriculum development. It helps to remove institutional barriers and enables a holistic end-to-end learning process. However, HCI also brings a set of challenges of relevance for any QE-related design process, for instance: 1) Focus on socio-technical aspects beyond infrastructures; 2) Match people and resources; 3) Realise that technologies make their own policies and realities; 4) Increase digital literacy; 5) Teach HCI beyond universities; 6) Articulate our values; 7) Frame societal issues; and 8) Combine research and activism.

Our group looked at the targets and indicators and were in consensus that these were too focused on numbers, and failed to capture meaningfulness of work. We discussed how decent work may or may not be meaningful, and how HCI could focus on work becoming more focused on meaning. As an example, we considered academia and how work models in academia target numbers over quality of life, even though “when we are happy we are performing better” arguably. On the topic of growth, we talked about what would entail “sensible growth” or “slowth” and how this might impact our HCI research and practice. We concluded that “capitalism is likely not saving us.”

We started our discussion on SDG 10 “Reduced inequalities” by an initial reflection on the understanding of inequality and on how “improvement” in this respect may take very different forms. Briefly discussing all goal targets and indicators associated to SDG 10 led to a shared view that (1) the proposed targets are not very radical and that (2) there is a lack of goal targets aiming to reduce growth of those with a higher income as a strategy to address this goal (instead of targeting mainly income growth from below). While we discussed various opportunities for HCI in the context of SDG 10, some of the recurring themes have to do with understanding inequality and barriers to equality at different levels; methods and tools for increasing representation and for giving a voice to those who are currently not heard (based on an understanding of how they want to be voiced) and for ensuring that they are heard; research and practices to unpack bias in technology (e.g., bias in AI) and to transition to more transparent and bias-aware technology. However, there are various barriers to (further) realising the potential role that HCI can play, one of them being how to make people care? How to ensure that relevant activities in this respect trigger action, e.g., at the policy level?

Our starting point was looking at societal and economic drivers that we were seeing as working against environmental and social sustainability. We believe that systemic change is needed to redress the balance between forces of globalisation, environmental and societal exploitation that are working against social and environmental sustainability. Especially in light of recent geo-political changes highlighting how long, remote or complex supply chains can be disrupted and are neither safe nor resilient under assertions and future impacts of climate change.

How is the flow of money, and digitisation of services with environmental and climate impacts, and of labour driving these systems. What role does HCI and the design of digital technologies in reshaping these to better meet local needs and reduce the externality costs? Ultimately, we felt that an opportunity space led in addressing and supporting pro-social and pro-community activities, and addressing and correcting folk theories and anti-climate mis-information and discourses of delay. We saw this as “digital infrastructuring” of sustainability, and promoting better awareness and connection to technologies, business and governmental failures to act with regards to “theft of the commons” to promote pro-sustainable agency in all its forms. We finished with a discussion about how to transform deeply embedded and market led aspirations of consumerism to provide a notion of alternative values to make being more sustainable aspirational, c.f. “attractive sustainability”. How might we amplify and build community around potentially disparate actors, overcome barriers, and give voice for greater solidarity and drive toward pro-sustainable community?

We were aware from the start that a large proportion of HCI (and design) research focused on “sustainability” already arguably addresses SDG 12 – from “design for sustainable behaviour” (e.g. energy use feedback) through applications of social practice theory, to servitisation (product-service systems), etc, it seems as though HCI and design researchers have found the “responsible consumption” aspects of SDG 12 to be something very much within the ambit of their domain. However, we noted that the “production” aspects of SDG 12 were less well-addressed in HCI, at least within the HCI areas that we as a group had experience in. We noted that while aspects like circular economy ideas, sharing economy, alternatives to fast fashion, repairability (and right-to-repair), attention to production and material supply chains (traceability, and the labour practices involved), distribution logistics, and so on, had some currency in design research, they were not so often discussed within mainstream HCI, and yet there were many opportunities, including consideration of how to achieve higher quality digital experiences more sustainably (linking to discussions elsewhere at the Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop about, for example, how academic conference norms might change) which could have significant impact.

Our discussion included noting that while the focus of HCI on SDG 12 topics is often the individual, a refocus on social groups, policymakers, and industry would also offer potentially transformative opportunities. Even with individual-focused HCI work on consumption, it is often about making technologies (or use) more “efficient”, rather than challenging norms, disrupting consumption patterns, doing more with existing things rather than creating new things, or embodying alternative economic models. Is it preferable to consume less, or to consume better? The answer is not as simple as the question sounds. In some ways some of this work could be characterised as greenwashing a “wants” economy rather than addressing underlying issues. Can HCI go beyond the assumptions that if only people have more/better information (a deficit model), they will necessarily consume more responsibly? Can HCI be more radical, showing the magnitude of change needed, and enabling new patterns of living? We explored whether visualisation (or “visibilisation”, maybe using AR) or tangibilisation, making parts of systems that are currently invisible, visible (e.g. showing e-waste and whole product lifecycles), or figures that are relevant – including to decision-makers upstream rather than just consumers – would make a difference. We asked whether HCI could engage with some of the sociological issues such as attachment to products (or ownership, or “the new”), the social value of “success” attributed to material goods, phenomena such as taste regimes, conspicuous consumption, mindless consumption, perceptions of norms around consumption (e.g. through practical “speculative” design enacting different ways of living, or presenting alternative realities to stimulate people’s imaginations) We were also aware that much of this work in HCI has traditionally been centred on a very global north conception of consumption practices and needs, and that contexts, societal norms, assumptions around “development”, and relevant issues to address can be very different in the global south – what local practices, or indigenous knowledges, offer different ways of addressing SDG 12?

We saw taking and supporting climate action as addressing an interconnected and systemic problem, “doing the work”, “promoting the salience” of the need for climate action at multiple stages and by many actors, together, and with greater awareness as to the outcomes. We thus framed HCI in the context of working to address systemic issues that prevent climate inaction.

This could mean holding various stakeholders (broadly cast – governments, businesses, leaders, citizens, scientists) to account. Providing tools to gather or communicate evidence as to the positive and negative impacts of policies impacting the climate, and their effectiveness or unintended consequences, to help identify meaningful positive change. Helping share the experience of climate change as it impacts people, society and environment; recognising that the impacts of climate change are not evenly experienced across the world in space and time. Using this experience as a lever to increase empathy and motivate changes in different stakeholder groups. Addressing the information war, supporting clear narratives, accounts and storytelling around action or inaction. Especially overcoming barriers to appreciate the climate science such as dealing with the inherent uncertainty and challenges of communicating this science, to make it a critical societal topic of debate, where climate inaction is no longer tolerated (c.f. drink driving). Practically, joining and supporting communities to accelerate and infrastructure positive and timely action. And finally, countering discourses of delay and misinformation, avoiding critical misunderstandings and even toxic and subverted discourse.

We saw this as a step change for HCI, from driving more efficient X, or better user experience Y, to deeply engaging with barriers to climate action, positive change, and more transformative and timely action across the systems.

In looking at Sustainable Development Goal 16, Peace, Justice & String Institutions, we began with an overview of the goal targets, which include a broad array of areas. Some of these targets have with concrete outcomes, such as ending abuse of children (16.2), while others have concrete timelines, such as providing legal identity for all by 2030 (16.9); though there was some discussion about the extent and inclusiveness of this with reference to the target to enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies (16.B). In some respects, the group felt there was scope to strengthen the targets, such as only reducing illicit flows of arms (16.4), while in other aspects there were some concerns raised about how the target might conflict with other personal freedoms, such as with the target to strengthen national institutions (16.A). Much of our discussion was focused on the democratic aspects of the goal and its targets, including reducing corruption (16.5), improving transparency (16.6), broadening participation at local (16.7) and international (16.8) levels, and finally regarding increasing access to information (16.10). We considered these targets in relation to aspects that must reflect the inclusiveness of the goal: cultural context, trust in the community, epistemic injustice, and belief in decision makers. We felt that the goal highlighted several opportunities around improving access to data, visibility, and transparency. These areas are strongly supported by HCI, through techniques such as visualisation, data curation, presentation, and structuring information in a customisable and layered experience. Finally, we briefly considered the tensions that were raised in creating a common understanding and allowing space for multiple meanings to be explored. We also touched upon more opportunistic engagement with the goal, and goals, and how this might create further distortion or tension both by actors and through our own work.

Transformation requires critical engagement with possible futures. While many treat the future as something to discover, we understand the future as something – at least in part – to be “made”. In this sense, we not only anticipate future problems based on today but imagine desirable futures to explore and better understand the mindsets, methods and technologies necessary to make these futures happen. [20] argued that an utopian science, a science of possible change, requires research into three different types of knowledge: system knowledge, goal knowledge, and transformation knowledge. Traditionally, science focuses on the production of system knowledge, that is descriptions, models, or theories of how things are. However, to change we need to explore and discuss how things ought to be to set desired goals. Futuring and speculation, for example in the form of design fiction, is one way to critically [10] or constructively [9] engage with possible futures (see also [2] [16] [17] [21]. Speculation is a way to analyse and to better understand the intricate entanglement of technology, people, and policies. It is able to question dominant narratives of technology in general and Human-Computer Interaction and provides starting points to rewrite them.

In the workshop, we introduced positive speculation as a form of analysis of possible futures (see [9]). We formed four groups. The instruction was to start with the knowledge encapsulated in some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) discussed on Tuesday (see section 5), however, to acknowledge their limits, to go beyond them, or to ignore them completely. Groups were then asked to imagine “positive” (meaningful, in line with the SDGs) everyday situations (who, where, activities, feelings) in the near future (2028) and to explore how this situation had been and is still shaped by people, policies, technologies. The groups did so through worldbuilding and storytelling, roleplay and a form of anticipatory ethnography (e.g., [16] ). In general, we encouraged the groups to make their own futures, pick topics they find engaging, without a strong focus on technology.

The results were presented in the form of 20 minute group performances and discussed in the plenum at the end of the day (16:00 – to 18:00).

In the following, we summarize the four speculations as presented by the groups.

In this section, we briefly summarize the themes emerging from the speculations itself and the discussions following the presentations of the speculations.