As the internet thrives on the circulation of easily copied content, ensuring attribution is properly given has been a perennial challenge. Following the rise of synthetic media and generative AI tools, and corresponding technologies which enable detailed media provenance, the picture has become considerably more complicated. We present a design research project to consider the implications of these developments from the perspective of the public, everyday (non-professional) user and ‘mundane content’ creation. Through the design, exhibition, and study of a collaborative storytelling tool, ORAgen Fables, we introduce technologies which enable detailed attribution and media provenance and explore contemporary attitudes and concerns about attribution. Our findings suggest that attribution should be understood as relational and dynamic with users having the right to ongoing management of their attribution. This opens a design space for understanding how technical systems could be deployed to define and ascribe attribution for past and future interactions.

This paper presents the design, deployment and qualitative study of a large-scale, public, generative art exhibition, through which passers-by could create artworks, and mint a non-fungible-token (NFT). Following the month-long exhibition, during which 229 anonymous participants produced artworks, 69 non-transferable NFTs were minted, we surveyed (33) and interviewed (14) expert and novice participants about their experiences. We explored contemporary challenges of owning digital things, and the extent to which NFTs, and 'Web3' technologies offer meaningful forms of ownership. Our findings describe how the inability to trade this NFT, and its unique circumstances of acquisition, made it meaningful in ways that extended beyond its immediate (limited) utility and offered participants something through which to construct identity. Reflecting on the aspirations, contradictions, and misconceptions of forms of ownership enabled by NFTs, we conclude with proposals for renewed attention in HCI to the nature of digital possessions, and the potential for 'ownership design'.

To report the relationship of outpatient portal (OPP) use with clinical risk, area social determinants of health (SDoH), and race/ethnicity among pregnant women. Regression models predicting overall and individual portal feature use (main effects and interactions) based on key variables were specified using log files and clinical data. Overall OPP use among non-Hispanic Black women or patients who lived in lower SDoH neighborhoods were significantly less. High-risk pregnancy patients were likely to use the OPP more than those with normal-risk pregnancy. We found similar associations with individual OPP features, like Visit (scheduling) and My Record (test results). We also found significant interactive associations between race/ethnicity, clinical risk, and SDoH. Non-Hispanic Black women and those living in lower SDoH areas used OPP less than non-Hispanic White women from similar or affluent areas. More research must be conducted to learn of OPP use implications for pregnant women with specific clinical diagnoses.

People’s data practices and their supporting personal informatics are imbued with a wide range of concepts of value that are central to their data imaginaries. They inform how individuals adopt particular products and services. This elusiveness of value creates a challenge for designers to gauge users’ value preferences, which are personal, contextual and abstract. We propose deliberation as a process to operationalise design for elicitation, reflection and value formation, using Live Action Role Play (LARP). The paper demonstrates how our deliberative LARP precipitates the otherwise ethereal data values to unfold in a social setting. We argue that engaging people in reflecting on and playing out their own value formation offers designers more powerful insights to address complex challenges of data-driven societies. We report on our findings that agency and negotiability are key to transcend the politics of preferences in data practices and thus enhance acceptability.

This paper conceptualizes ‘creative transactions’ – payment for creative work – as a rich site for the study, design and innovation of new financial technologies, and ‘special digital monies’. For most, creative labor remains highly precarious and underfunded and those working in the creative industries frequently rely on diverse forms of funding for their work. As a case study, we draw on a corpus of 87 ‘Break Kickstarter’ crowdfunding campaigns, where project creators were encouraged to break conventions and “rethink what a Kickstarter campaign can be”. By studying how these innovative projects broke fundraising conventions and experimented with the transactional attributes of a Kickstarter campaign, we show how they reconfigured the payment for creative work, and developed new relations between creators and their audiences. Drawing on these analyses, we derive new ideas and opportunities for the design of special digital monies to support novel creative transactions beyond crowdfunding campaigns.

Smart contract systems could change the nature of last-mile delivery for the better through enhanced precision, coordination and accountability. However, technological complexity poses a challenge for end-users participating in the design process, making it hard to explore their experiences and incorporate their perspectives. We describe a case study where technological prototypes create smart contract experiences for professional couriers and receptionists, allowing them to speculate about emerging possibilities, whilst remaining grounded in their current practices. Participants enacted a series of deliveries, choreographed by smart contracts, and their responses were explored in post-experience, one-to-one interviews. Working with professionals to explore the potential impact of smart contract technologies, revealed the systemic webs of value underlying their existing work practices. This has implications for design of such technologies, in which increased automation, efficiency and accountability must be delicately balanced with the benefits of sustaining personal values, relationships and agency.

This paper presents GeoPact, an assembly of technological objects that materialises location-aware smart contracts using internet of things and digital ledger technologies. Such contracts may facilitate the creation of distributed systems and services for transport and logistics that are locally constructed and adaptable, thus supporting specific community needs and sustainable objectives. However the technological infrastructures that underpin these systems are complex, making it difficult to engage publics in design processes. GeoPact grounds infrastructure in relatable physical activities, that are linked with holistic views of the system, and creates new experiences for public engagement. In these activities participants were invited to roleplay as couriers, and to progress through delivery scenarios which were governed by smart contracts. Participants and spectators were then encouraged to discuss their reactions, concerns and ideas. This paper illustrates the GeoPact assembly and reflects on our engagement activities.

Decreasing our demand for energy is an important component of the global effort to reduce carbon emissions. Energy consumption, both at home and in the workplace, is greatly influenced by human behaviour. Our research investigates how technological interventions could support behaviour-based energy reduction. This paper reports a Living Lab study on the co-design of a device for improving energy efficiency via behaviour change in a large public-sector organisation. We emphasise the importance of taking a broad view of organisational behaviour, highlighting the complex and indirect ways that it influences energy use. Methods and findings are reported from a series of insight and innovation workshops that we held with staff, and which led to the development of a prototype device - LILEE: The Little Interface for Lab Equipment Efficiency. We describe LILEE and discuss how it embodies wider lessons for the design of effective energy-related behaviour change interventions.

Affective computing research has tended to focus on the recognition of emotional states in individuals, with the intention of enhancing human-computer interaction. In this paper we advocate the need for a shift of attention towards emotional communication between people. To contextualise our views we discuss the ways in which rapid technological advances have impacted society and human psychology over the last decade. By outlining our doctoral research topic, we then highlight how affective computing based research could help us understand and enhance co-present human-human interactions. We are especially interested in studying situations where the interaction is directed towards collaborative creativity, as there is little existing work in this area and we see great potential for real-world applications to stem from our research.