Symbiotic Encounters

Abstract

Recent sustainable HCI research has advocated "working with nature" as a potentially efficacious alternative to human efforts to control it: yet it is less clear how to do so. We contribute to the theoretical aspect of this research by presenting an ethnographic study on alternative farming practices, in which the farm is not so much a system but an assemblage characterized by multiple systems or rationalities always evolving and changing. In them, relationships among species alternate between mutually beneficial in one moment (or season), and harmful in the next. If HCI is to participate in and to support working with nature, we believe that it will have to situate itself within such assemblages and temporalities. In this work, we look into nontraditional users (e.g., nonhumans) and emerging forms of uses (e.g., interactions between human and other species) to help open a design space for technological interventions. We offer three ethnographic accounts in which farmers-and ourselves as researchers-learn to notice, respond, and engage in symbiotic encounters with companion species and the living soil itself. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Sustainability; • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design.

E-seed

“…With the increased concern about environmental degradation attributed to human activities, nowadays humans are trying to build a more sustainable future. Liu et al summarized some popular theories of the symbiotic encounter between farmers, or researchers, and nature [26]. They conducted indepth interviews with local farmers and confirmed that the best use of HCI in the farming industry is to democratize innovation and technology as well as technologies that disseminate methods.…”

Ordinary User Experiences at Work

“…However, some research addresses usability and UX in specific work domains, such as administration [9], health [53], manufacturing [45], and maritime work [27]. The work domain that we study in this paper is horticulture, or more broadly agriculture, which is an emerging area in HCI research (e.g., [25,64,85,88]). In the following, we structure the presentation of related work around the four elements of Figure 1 and, wherever possible, limit our examples to the studies most relevant to the horticultural domain.…”

“…[101]. However, actors can also be novices (e.g., apprentices, guests, students) or even non-human actors such as 'companion species' (e.g., plants, molds, bacteria [64]).…”

“…While the outcome of work tasks matter to UX at work, so does the manner in which the tasks are performed (e.g., the grower spending time exploring visualizations because this is enjoyable and interesting to do). Liu et al [64] argue that a radical focus on instrumentality, such as task efficiency, is very different from approaching agricultural work tasks as sustainable and collective caring from which actors derive immediate pleasure and meaning. Although a task may have produced the desired outcome, there might still be problems with the way in which this outcome was reached, such as expending resources excessively or involving tedious interaction sequences [78].…”

Research Journeys

“…For us, escaping busy urban university lives it offers peace and tranquility (right) -getting away from it all. For those that live there, we might imagine the contrast between rural beauty and work practices in our partial perspective: primary production activities are evident in farming, fishing and transport (left) [23]. The swimmers are not just locals but also visitors: suggesting that tourism is now a consideration alongside traditional employment.…”