Smart garments and circular-economy endeavours nurture imaginaries of sustainable futures. However, these trends’ intersection involves privacy risks: when the smart garments are recycled, their biometric data should be erased, to protect earlier users’ privacy. Unfortunately, this data erasure may not always occur. To examine privacy perceptions connected with reused smart garments, we conducted a two-week speculative enactment, preceded with systemic future scenario development. Eight participants wore a reused smart shirt prototype that seemed to leak a prior user’s data. The participants initially disregarded privacy problems associated with smart-garment reuse but changed their perceptions upon recognising risks of surveillance and of private data’s disclosure to the garment’s future users. Discussing the systemic future scenarios with participants spotlighted implications for future privacy related to data ownership, the digital divide, and environmental authoritarianism. These findings call for anticipatory approaches that heighten sensitivity to uncertainty and implicit assumptions in researching privacy in possible futures.

Many researchers work to design pro-democratic systems and interventions, but they rarely engage with users' ideals for political discussions.We examine these ideals through a purposive sample of Finnish students.We identify rules that people linked to the roles bound up with these ideals 'should' follow and the sorts of qualities aligned with them.Our qualitative analysis pinpointed four qualities of the ideal discussant: being committed, competent, sincere, and accountable.Also, three traits of the audience envisioned for them proved prominent -members of this ideal audience seek out political discussions that feature those fitting the ideal-discussant role, strive to avoid merely strengthening their pre-existing views, and attempt to reward or punish those meshing with or contradicting the ideal, respectively.The discussion concludes with a reflection on conditions in which these qualities may conflict with broader ideals for discussion or with each other and how design could account for such conflicts.

HCI is future-oriented by nature: it explores new human--technology interactions and applies the findings to promote and shape vital visions of society. Still, the visions of futures in HCI publications seem largely implicit, techno-deterministic, narrow, and lacking in roadmaps and attention to uncertainties. A literature review centered on this problem examined futuring and its forms in the ACM Digital Library's most frequently cited HCI publications. This analysis entailed developing the four-category framework SPIN, informed by futures studies literature. The results confirm that, while technology indeed drives futuring in HCI, a growing body of HCI research is coming to challenge techno-centric visions. Emerging foci of HCI futuring demonstrate active exploration of uncertainty, a focus on human experience, and contestation of dominant narratives. The paper concludes with insight illuminating factors behind techno-centrism's continued dominance of HCI discourse, as grounding for five opportunities for the field to expand its contribution to futures and anticipation research.

Like any form of technology, social media services embed values. To examine how societal values may be present in these systems, we focus on exploring political ideology as a value system. We organised four co-design workshops with political representatives from five major parties in Finland to investigate what values they would incorporate into social media services. The participants were divided into one right-leaning group, two left-leaning groups, and one mixed group. This approach allows us to examine the differences in social media services designed by groups with different political ideologies i.e., value systems. We analysed produced artefacts (early-stage paper mockups) to identify different features and affordances for each group and then contrasted the ideological compositions. Our results revealed a clear distinction between groups: the right-leaning group favoured market-based visibility, while left-leaning groups rejected such design principles in favour of open profile work. Additionally, we found tentative differences in design outcomes along the liberal-conservative dimension. These findings underscore the importance of acknowledging existing political value systems in the design of social computing systems. They also highlight the need for further research to map out political ideologies in technology design.

In HCI and design research, it has recently been suggested that, instead of risks and threats, uncertainties can be generative resources. This aligns particularly well with practice-based design research and research through design (RtD), where uncertainties are pervasive and unavoidable due to the approach’s interest in open-ended problems, contexts under transformation and unknown futures. Building on the idea that uncertainties drive design activity, we describe the design process as framing acts where a designer-researcher moves along perceived uncertainties. We identify three dynamics for a generative mode of working with uncertainties that can make designers aware of uncertainties, circle in towards those that appear essential while seeking to avoid others and stay with those that offer new perspectives. We exemplify these dynamics by drawing from our experiences from three RtD projects and highlight this viewpoint’s value in providing new reflective tools for designer-researchers.

Global and systemic sustainability challenges increasingly require innovation teams to incorporate holistic, long-term thinking into their ideation. Since a comprehensive foresight process would prove too burdensome, faster methods are needed. The Future Ripples method was devised to meet this need through reflective practice in four consecutive workshops. It builds on the well-known Futures Wheel foresight method, which offers a collaborative process for brainstorming consequences and impacts. Additionally, the new approach encompasses scanning for weak signals and trends while catering to innovation teams. Analysis of the workshop activities and outcomes suggests that the Future Ripples method can nurture the anticipation skills of innovation teams and help them develop diverse, novel, yet plausible futures. The paper also discusses the role of reflection, metaphors, and the balance between critical and creative thinking in developing holistic futures.

Social wearables promise to augment and enhance social interactions. However, despite two decades of HCI research on wearables, we are yet to see widespread adoption of social wearables into everyday life. More in-situ investigations into the social dynamics and cultural practices afforded by wearing interactive technology are needed to understand the drivers and barriers to adoption. To this end, we study social wearables in the context of Nordic student culture and the students’ practice of adorning boiler suits. Through a co-creation process, we designed Digi Merkki, a personalised interactive clothing patch. In a two-week elicitation diary study, we captured how 16 students adopted Digi Merkki into their social practices. We found that Digi Merkki afforded a variety of social interaction strategies, including sharing, spamming, and stealing pictures, which supported meaning-making and community-building. Based on our findings, we articulate “Memetic Expression” as a strong concept for designing social wearables.

Various mobile technologies proofed to enhance peoples collocated social interactions. In particular, user-generated presentations of self have proven beneficial, albeit in specific social settings. This field study interviewed 30 participants for their attitudes towards personal sharing in six public settings in a Nordic metropolitan area. We asked participants to draw what they want to share on an attachable paper sticker. We observed retention towards sharing in places with a more heterogeneous audience. Predominantly people’s attitudes towards sharing depended on an individual’s current context. Our results highlight the symbolic act of sharing in public as a factor for placing personal public displays. Further, we suggest leveraging the different strategies of extroverts and introverts for collocated social interactions.

Recent innovations in fashion and smart textiles have contributed new visions of wearable computing, addressing the body through the cultural and social self. In this work, we draw on speculative design, maker technologies, and zoomorphism to explore how wearables might support sociability, and present Hooze, a fashion accessory that entices touch through its zoomorphic qualities and visual appearance. We describe our design and prototyping process, and reflect on how Hooze inspires transformative designs of wearables.

Organizational factors influence the success of security initiatives in software development. Security audits and developer training can motivate development teams to adopt security practices, but their interplay with organizational structures and routines remains unclear. We studied how security consultancy affected organizational routines in a software development group. Security consultants tested their product, reported vulnerabilities, and delivered a security training. We followed the group during and after consultancy events. As a result of the consultancy, group members improved their understanding of security issues, but could not effect a change of routines within the given organizational structure. They handled vulnerabilities in a stabilization routine without changes in feature development, where security remained intangible. Interestingly, group members acknowledged an unfulfilled need for change but defended the structure inhibiting change. Security initiatives need to consider this interplay of structure and situated practice, and manage change in addition to providing expertise and tools.

For the automotive domain shape-changing interfaces hold potential as an interaction modality since they offer modalities that do not rely on the driver's vision such as traditional screen-based interfaces. In this paper we present a shape-changing car-seat backrest that lets the driver haptically sense obstacles in the rear periphery. We implemented a prototype with a 4 × 4 array of servomotors that changes the shape of the car-seat backrest. In comparison to other approaches that often use the seat for vibro-cues or warnings signals, our approach delivers a continuous dorsal sensory augmentation of the rear periphery. The prototype was studied for its capability on transporting spatial information haptically in a pilot study with 10 participants. The lab study revealed that the interface is able to induce sensory augmentation. Most of the participants were able to spatially locate the stimuli.