Competing Currencies

Abstract

We present results of a qualitative study of the information systems used by college and university food banks and find that their inventory systems are characterized by the patchwork use of multiple units of measurementcurrencies-collected at different points in their workflow for different stakeholders. Considerations of whether to track information by item count, points, monetary value, or weight are immensely political and privilege some stakeholders over others. We contribute to an emergent body of research in computer-supported cooperative work about the ways in which the politics of measurement influences the design of organizational information systems through an explanation of the ways that these different currencies embody politics and stymie design at the most mundane level of the information system-the unit of measurement.

Sorting Out Valuation in the Charity Shop

“…Prior work on value-centred design has already highlighted the challenges of designing for multiple stakeholders and competing values. Voida et al point to this explicitly in the context of data-driven services through a study of the inventory and stock-taking systems in low-income food banks or pantries [76]. In this work they highlight how different units of measurement are employed at different points in the provision of food bank services; in the end, the choices of these units act as several 'competing currencies', each appealing to the differing values of a range of stakeholders.…”

“…As HCI scholars have become astutely aware of the politics of data, and the value-judgments made in data-driven technologies (e.g. [8,18,49,61,69,76]), our aim here is to take these issues together in order to consider how we might better design such systems. Here, we are staking out a position that goes beyond designing for certain values [32], and instead explores how we might design for valuation processes that better mediate a multitude of values, by bridging or creating differentiated ties as Miller and Zelizer each propose.…”

“…We propose that by reflecting on these different examples of 'value translation', as a tentative theoretical framework, we might navigate the implications and troubles of datafication [5,61,69,76] when attempting to design 'data-driven innovation' (distributed ledger technologies in our case) in new contexts.…”

“…In design, negotiating these politics can, at times, seem intractable. Some things must be counted or valued ahead of others -valuation is after all a process of "how people, things and idea(l)s are ordered in relation to one another" [42]; the alternative entails the "messiness of a system that tries desperately to be all things to all people" [76]. In the context of designing a visualization of academic funding metrics, Elsden et al [22] run into similar trouble, noting a trade-off between metrics becoming a useful 'standard reference point' while somehow maintaining the possibility for a 'multiplicity' of perspectives and meanings on the data.…”

Programmable Donations

“…Prior work has already considered features of specific giving platforms that foreshadow the possibilities of programmable donations. Work by Lee et al [25] and Voida et al [40] points to the challenge of reconciling competing views of fairness in design of data-driven philanthropic systems. Researchers have developed systems to optimize the distribution of crowdfunding support [43] and the weighting of recommendations for a donation platform [33].…”