This paper details ethnographic methods, experiences, and insights from an ethnographer and an industry engaged complex systems engineer in how to study resilience in blockchain-based DAOs as a novel field site....
Genre: Paper
Designed for Care: Systems of Care and Accountability in the Work of Mobility
In this paper we explore the idea of a system of care through a city transit system. We argue that a systematic orientation to care is central to what makes a transit system work for people. Further, we suggest that this care orientation is recognized as such, even though it is not apparent in...
Human API as a Research Source in Health Care
This paper illustrates how the concept of “Human API” can help post-treatment cancer patients with challenges they face once they are released from the hospital. The results and implications of this semester long graduate project will help illuminate how the Human API through its various data...
Friction by Machine: How to Slow Down Reasoning with Computational Methods
This paper provides a theoretical alternative to the prevailing perception of machine learning as synonymous with...
Building Resilient Futures in the Virtual Everyday: Virtual Worlds and the Social Resilience of Teens during COVID-19
Virtual worlds have been central to an imagined future in which advances in technology propel new social practices. The recent focus within the technology industry on the “metaverse” is the latest iteration of...
Accessibility as Apparatus: How the Friction Filled Experience of Using Hearing Aids with a PC Led a Corporation to Design for Accessibility
This paper presents ethnographic studies of hard of hearing (HoH) users that had significant impacts on the...
Frictions in the Future of Work
The concept of the "future of work", though widely-referenced in mainstream media and policy discourse, remains...
Calibrating Agency: Human-Autonomy Teaming and the Future of Work amid Highly Automated Systems
This paper explores how the design of everyday interactions with artificial intelligence in work systems relates to broader issues of interest to social scientists and ethicists: namely human well-being and social inequality. The paper uses experience designing human interactions with highly...
A.I. among Us: Agency in a World of Cameras and Recognition Systems
This paper reports on the use and perceptions of deployed A.I. and recognition social-material assemblages in China and the USA. A kaleidoscope of “boutique” instantiations is presented to show how meanings are emerging around A.I. and recognition. A model is presented to highlight that not all...
Designing Good Jobs: Participatory Ethnography and Prototyping in Service-oriented Work Ecosystems
Three service design projects, in hospitality, finance, and health care, highlight how to design for agency in the workplace, including the implementation of automated and data-driven tools. Inspired by Tacchi, Slater, and Hearn's work on ethnographic action research, Amartya Sen's capabilities...