HCI as a means to prosociality in the economy

Abstract

HCI research often involves intervening in the economic lives of people, but researchers only rarely give explicit consideration to what actually constitutes prosociality in the economy.Much has been said previously regarding sustainability but this has largely focused on environmental rather than interpersonal relations. This paper provides an analysis of how prosocial HCI has been discussed and continues to be defined as a research field. Based on a corpus of published works, we describe a variety of genres of work relating to prosocial HCI. Key intellectual differences are explored, including the epistemological and ethical positions involved in designing for prosocial outcomes as well as how HCI researchers posit economic decisionmaking. Finally, emerging issues and opportunities for further debate and collaboration are discussed in turn.

This Changes Sustainable HCI

“…[25]), precluding the ability for us to re-negotiate its nature. A number of SHCI works have pointed out the extent to which ICTs have shaped the economy [27,38,56,70]-for good or for bad-and have argued that HCI can harness this potential to affect a justice based economy [27,34,66,64,91]. Many of these works propose new design sensibilities: for example, considering whether technology disproportionately benefits a particular class of people [27], or democratizing technological production [99].…”

“…Many of these works propose new design sensibilities: for example, considering whether technology disproportionately benefits a particular class of people [27], or democratizing technological production [99]. Others propose designing to support positive and just economic transactions [13,34,54,106], or supporting various agents on the ground who "seek to transform existing social arrangements, such as the norms of increasing economic growth and maximizing shareholder returns without regard to ecological or social consequences" [91] (cf. [12]).…”

Thrown under the bus and outrunning it! The logic of Didi and taxi drivers’ labour and activism in the on-demand economy

“…Platforms like Uber and Lyft claim to grant flexibility to private car owners and allow them to work on their own schedule. The prosocial design (Harvey et al, 2014) of the platform that encourages communication and social interaction with drivers also complicates the character of taxi services (Glöss et al, 2016; Raval and Dourish, 2016). Ride-hailing apps seem to render street hails an inefficient means of getting taxi service.…”

Social Justice-Oriented Interaction Design

“…Grappling with these politics is particularly challenging given the field's historical inclinations towards treating technological development as unquestionably progressive, or approaching research and design in an apolitical and ahistorical manner [see critiques by 9,83,123]. The recent growing interest in research related to large scale social issues underscores the imperative to heed more general calls for HCI researchers and designers to ask not only what is technologically possible, but also how to design ethically, responsibly, and with accountability -and to thoughtfully consider whether design is even an appropriate intervention in a given situation [8,9,12,14,32,33,43,60,83,111,114]. In this paper, we develop social justice-oriented interaction design as one response to these concerns and provocations.…”