Exploring Machine Autonomy and Provenance Data in Coffee Consumption

Abstract

Technologies such as distributed ledgers and smart contracts are enabling the emergence of new autonomous systems, and providing enhanced systems to track the provenance of goods. A growing body of work in HCI is exploring the novel challenges of these systems, but there has been little attention paid to their impact on everyday activities. This paper presents a study carried out in 3 office environments for a 1-month period, which explored the impact of an autonomous coffee machine on the everyday activity of coffee consumption. The Bitbarista mediates coffee consumption through autonomous processes, presenting provenance data at the time of purchase while attempting to reduce intermediaries in the coffee trade. Through the report of interactions with and around the Bitbarista, we explore its implications for everyday life, and wider social structures and values. We conclude by offering recommendations for the design of community shared autonomous systems. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design;

User Interface of Blockchain-Based Agri-Food Traceability Applications: A Review

“…The queries could retrieve some specific agri-food products. For instance, the query "blockchain and 'user interface'" did retrieve a blockchainbased autonomous coffee machine [27]. However, the queries excluded the works about blockchain-based coffee supply chains without the "user interface" keyword.…”

“…Exploring machine autonomy and provenance data in coffee consumption: A field study of bitbarista [27] 2018…”

“…Two works [130], [167] also targeted producers, processors, or intermediaries. Other works allow customers to trace food products [126], [163], [166], farmland products [165], agriculture products [168], and specific agri-food products (i.e., coffee [27] and Italian extra-virgin olive oil [169]). Section V-C will discuss the visualization methods in more detail.…”

GeoPact

“…These methods focus thinking on specific aspects and attributes of DLTs and enable participation around high-level thinking, without overloading people with technological concepts. The material qualities of trading coffee [16] and energy [15] supported by DLT have been explored through consumer artefacts, and GeoCoin provides a personal, real-world experience of location-based smart contracts supported by a mobile application [13]. Whilst the smart contracts in GeoCoin were simple, this work demonstrated the importance of roleplay in engaging with smart contracts, and avocated the need for open-ended experiences.…”

Recipes for Programmable Money

“…By creating a rule to put money in and out of a 'treat jar' based on walking 10,000 steps, suddenly, a Fitbit is gaining a form of financial autonomy, and may even start to make payments. While Monzo's integration with IFTTT is limited to moving CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4-9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK one's own money around, projects such as the BitBarista [38] demonstrate how the use of smart contracts might grant devices financial autonomy on an even greater scale. For interaction designers there are clearly opportunities to envisage programmable money that extends the services across which 'banking' can be done and communicated.…”