Data Work: How Energy Advisors and Clients Make IoT Data Accountable

Abstract

Abstract. We present fieldwork findings from the deployment of an interactive sensing system that supports the work of energy advisors who give face-to-face advice to low-income households in the UK. We focus on how the system and the data it produced are articulated in the interactions between professional energy advisors and their clients, and how they collaboratively anticipate, rehearse, and perform data work. In addition to documenting how the system was appropriated in advisory work, we elaborate the 'overhead cost' of building collaborative action into connected devices and sensing systems, and the commensurate need to support discrete workflows and accountability systems to enable the methodical incorporation of the IoT into collaborative action. We contribute an elaboration of the social, collaborative methods of data work relevant to those who seek to design and study collaborative IoT systems.

Maintainer Perspectives on Data-driven Transport Asset Management and the Future Role of the Internet-of-Things

“…At its simplest the concern is with a set of issues first highlighted by Grudin in 'Why CSCW applications fail' [14] and extended by Bowers in 'The work to make the network work' [13] -that is, the range and interaction of various technical, human and organisational factors that contribute to the success, or failure, of the deployment of information technology in work settings; and the need to use 'experiences from the field' to shape and reorganise the CSCW research agenda. We have extended this analysis by considering factors relating to the use of data and in particular the future promise of the IoT, contributing to the debate in understanding aspects of 'data work' found in Fischer et al [11], and the Ludwig et al [41] notion of an 'internet of practices' through documenting phenomena -drainage maintenance and monitoring -as an aspect of everyday work practice, taking seriously the cooperation between objects (i.e. assets), technology and people that feeds the vision of the IoT as a cooperative enterprise.…”

“…Emerging from work involving energy advisors, data work [12] a nascent area of CSCW research that attempts to broaden the understanding of "social practices in and through which IoT data is accountably collected, used and acted upon" [11] provides a suitable lens in which to focus our research. Therefore, we align with Fischer et al's motivations in attempting to address the "arguably underdeveloped" [11] perspective of data work but situated within the highly cooperative work of drainage surface-water management. Although, here we attempt to apply a much broader investigative lens, that encompasses engagements with a diverse range of actors across two sectors.…”

Probing IoT-based consumer services: ‘insights’ from the connected shower

“…Thus, in turning to consider our findings, we explicate the cooperative work that is required to contextualise the data and discriminate or elaborate the meaning of connected shower users' activity. The doing of this 'data work' [18] recognises the gap Tolmie et al speak about is a gap between what sensors sense and what people do. In bridging this gap through the doing of data work, the field worker and participants produce insight into mundane showering activities and practices and the future potential of shower-oriented IoT services.…”

“…Their studies of the deployment of wireless sensing devices monitoring electricity use, indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, light, and CO 2 to support the delivery of energy advise to households afflicted by fuel poverty elaborate the indexical and opaque relationship of sensor data to the social and material circumstances of its production and a range of 'members' methods' for introducing and situating IoT devices in the home and subsequently unpacking the data's indexicality to enable situated action (e.g., the giving of situationally appropriate advice) [17]. Reflecting on the general insights furnished by their studies, Fischer et al [18] note,…”

“…So in addition to explicating the orders of reasoning implicated in contextualising the data, which speak to sustainability concerns in one way or another, we also attend to the ways in which those orders of reasoning were reflexively elicited so that we might understand something of the interactional accomplishment of context and its relevance to the design of autonomous consumer-oriented IoT services. Of particular note here is the 'data work' [18] occasioned by the exit interviews with users of the connected shower and the methodological ways in which the doing of that work is ordered and accomplished to furnish insights into the social and material circumstances of the sensor data's production. These insights elaborate the contextual relationship between local household routines, individual showering routines, seasonal variations, moral and economic considerations, and impact of domestic infrastructure on the temporal patterns of showering and water consumption detected by the connected shower.…”