How might alternative encounters with personal hiking data support practices of noticing nature as well as changes in one's self over time? To investigate this question, we conducted a multi-year first person study with Capra—a system that combines the collection and exploration of hiking experiences in nature with an emphasis on longer-term, occasional yet indefinite use. Over several years, three researchers that represented different hiking frequencies, paces, locations, and life stages concurrently and independently hiked, used, and lived with Capra. Findings revealed unique individual and collective changes in attitude among the team, from an initial interest in intentionally capturing specific natural phenomena towards a shift in attentiveness when re-exploring hikes as well as when hiking outdoors. It is these insights that emerged through our long-term experiences with Capra that we present and reflect on in this paper.

As music streaming libraries continually grow and digitally capture elements of our evolving life histories, finding meaningful ways to revisit, reflect on, and share these collections—both individually and socially—has become increasingly important. This pictorial unpacks the creation of Queue Player, a network of four domestic music players that enable synchronous distributed co-listening across geographical distance and for the long-term exploration of the collective listening histories among four close friends. Adopting a Research through Design (RtD) approach, we examine how Queue Player mobilizes a slow technology lens to support experiences of social presence, interaction, and reflection that unfold over time. We provide a detailed critical-reflective account of key design decisions and frictions that shaped the development of this slow technology research product. In doing so, we contribute insights on designing with tempo as an embodied temporal interaction modality and offer strategies for supporting ongoing engagement with collective digital archives.

Teenagers are in a unique position, having known no other reality than the current exploitative model of the data economy, and are particularly at risk of harm from it. Using a classroom intervention with 31 Grade 9 students, we deployed co-created Metaphor Workbooks as a tool to foster critical and reflexive thinking about their phones and data. Our research advances the HCI community's understanding of teenagers’ entanglements with the data economy, by highlighting how they experience it through their critical, reflective, and creative responses. This alludes to ways in which future initiatives could better support teenagers in developing a critical relationship with data. We identify key gaps in their understanding of the data economy and emphasize the need for critical data literacy interventions to address their limited understanding, complex emotional relationships with their phones, and the pervasive influence of technology addiction narratives.

We describe the design and deployment of Queue Player, four networked domestic music players that combine music listening histories of close friends to explore new potentialities for interacting with this shared archive. We deployed the Queue Players with four close friends living in separate homes for six weeks. Our goals are to (i) explore how this system might enable co-listening experiences that foster social presence, interaction, and reflection and (ii) empirically explore conceptual propositions related to slow technology. Findings revealed that, after overcoming initial frictions, Queue Player became integrated in participants’ lives and triggered a range of social interactions and reflections on past life experiences. They also showed that Queue Player provoked questions on the benefits and limits of data capturing one's life history as well as the role and pace of technology in everyday life at home. Findings are interpreted to present opportunities for future HCI research and practice.

As the practice of hiking becomes captured through personal data, it is timely to consider how technology might support noticing and connecting to nature as well as one's self over time. Capra is a system we designed that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term use. In this pictorial, we unpack our process of making a short film that aims to communicate the workings and experience of Capra to a broader audience. We encountered frictions in mobilizing key theoretical concepts framing Capra as a Research through Design (RtD) artifact in the making of our film. We reflect on tactics for working through such frictions, how they can support future work, and how the filmmaking process can offer a valuable approach for distributing RtD artifacts to broader audiences.

As the practice of hiking becomes increasingly captured through personal data, it is timely to consider what kinds of alternative data encounters might support forms of noticing and connecting to nature as well as one's self and life history over time. To investigate this emerging design space, we designed Capra — a system that brings together the capture, storage, and exploration of personal hiking data with an emphasis on longer-term, occasional yet indefinite use. Over four years, our team adopted a designer-researcher approach where we progressively designed, built, refined, and tested Capra. This process produced frictions in terms of balancing unobtrusiveness, transforming hiking data into evolving interconnected elements in the archive, and managing the sheer quantity and diversity of information with our goal of supporting open-ended and ongoing engagements. It is these insights that emerged through the practice-based design research approach involved in creating Capra that we reflect on in this paper.

Sound is a preferred and dominant medium that people with blindness use to capture, share and reflect on meaningful moments in their lives. Within the timeframe of 12 months, we worked with seven people with blindness and two of their sighted loved ones to engage in a multi-stage co-creative design process involving multiple steps building toward the final co-design workshop. We report three types of sonic mementos, designed together with the participants, that Encapsulate, Augment and Re-imagine personal audio recordings into more interesting and meaningful sonic memories. Building on these sonic mementos, we critically reflect and describe insights into designing sound that supports personal and social experiences of reminiscence for people with blindness through sound. We propose design opportunities to promote collective remembering between people with blindness and their sighted loved ones and design recommendations for remembering through sound.

Introspection is the practice of looking inward for ongoing self-examination. It involves considering one's past experiences and asking questions about the present and future. Our work investigates how AI could open new possibilities for supporting introspective experiences. Adopting a design fiction approach, we created a fictional company called Meta.Aware to contextualize 4 different Introspective AI product concepts in the form of video sketches. We used the Meta.Aware platform to conduct interviews with 17 participants, using the 4 concept videos as prompts for discussion. Participants had a range of reactions related to perceived benefits and tensions in this emerging design space. We interpret these results to outline future design directions for mobilizing AI as a resource to support introspective experiences over time, as well as to reflect on issues and dilemmas bound to this emerging design space.

Introspection is the practice of looking inward and examining our ideas, thoughts, and feelings. It involves considering past experiences and asking questions about the future. We report on a design research inquiry that explores Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with personal data, as a resource for introspection. We investigate how AI might offer possibilities for generating alternative perspectives on one's life to support introspection and paradoxes that this might raise. We describe our design-led inquiry, motivate fi approaches to introspective practice as opportunities for potential Introspective AI interventions, and explore them through seven design proposals. Taken together, our proposals provoke questions around how introspective AI might be critiqued, imagined, and designed. We conclude with a reflection on our work and the opportunities it suggests for future research and practice.