We present an approach to more sustainable organising and facilitating of data physicalization workshops, via the creation of the ZeroWaste PhysKit — a data physicalization kit that can be used across multiple workshops without either loss of materials or the production of waste. We outline the practices we employed in the creation of the kit, which constitute a novel approach to sustainable physicalization, as well as reflections based on three case studies, to prompt discussion and facilitate replication and iteration by other practitioners and researchers.

Figure 1: The Prompt Machine, a tangible learning tool for integrated AI in education.(A) Pupils write assignments.(B) Pupils input their written assignments.(C) Pupils modify their texts using tangible prompt cubes.(D) Pupils receive physical print outs of modified texts.(E) Teachers facilitate reflections and discussions about modified texts with pupils.

Against the backdrop of a growing concern with environmental sustainability across HCI research and design, TEI'24 was the first version of the conference to include a sustainability chair. In conjunction with this increasing interest in sustainability, we organised a Studio at TEI'24 to engage the community in a conversation about the sustainability of conferences by using data physicalizations to mediate this discussion. In a one-day Studio, the organisers and attendees constructed two large-scale input physicalizations that were deployed at the conference venue to collect data around conference sustainability from TEI attendees. In this pictorial, we present the outcomes of this Studio, including the two input physicalizations and the collected data. We offer a description of the strategies we employed to design in a more sustainable way, as well as reflections on input physicalizations and the opportunities and challenges they present for facilitating data-driven dialogue.

This paper examines the collaborative work of residents, housing associations, and property owners to manage household waste in the context of a multi-apartment housing complex. Framed within the feminist ecological perspective of digital environmental stewardship - that is, how diverse actors, motivations, and capacities producing care for the environment that can be digitally mediated - we unpack how the many involved actors work together to keep waste in place, maintain the local waste system, and call on 'responsibility' as a means to produce sustainable actions and accountability. We frame these practices of waste management within the mundane work of sociotechnical innovation. Borrowing from Jackson's notion of repair work, we weave together an argument for the novel and valuable contribution to CSCW sustainability research grounded in the everyday contingent emergencies of environmental care. We argue for approaches to sustainability that reflect both the work to maintain sustainability -not just to produce it- and aspects of the 'good enough', a locally and reflexively produced equilibrium between maintenance and repair. We conclude by discussing their relevance for the design of sociotechnical interventions that mediate practices of care in waste management.

Against the backdrop of a climate crisis, HCI researchers and designers are reflecting upon, reconsidering, and re-imagining the work that we do through the lens of sustainability. In this Studio, we propose to adopt this critical perspective to Sustainable HCI through an examination and reflection on the environmental impact of research conferences. Our Studio builds upon our prior work that explored sustainable methods and toolkits for facilitating data physicalization workshops. We apply the tools and strategies developed through this prior work within a Studio in which participants are facilitated to engage with, reflect upon, and create with data relating to the sustainability of HCI conferences such as Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI). Through the creation of data artefacts that can be displayed, worn, or shared throughout the conference beyond the Studio, we aim to spark wider conversations about the environmental sustainability of TEI2024, as well as HCI conferences more generally.

Today there is a wealth of data available detailing the climate impact of our actions, including the CO2 emissions from academic flying. Despite this, such data is hard to engage with in the abstract, leading to little practical action. In this paper, we investigate how to support processes of collectively working through and making sense of environmental data about academic flying through data physicalisation. Drawing on the results from a series of workshops with stakeholders at our own university, in which we have designed and deployed a data physicalisation of flight data, we describe this process and discuss lessons learned with a focus on material, engagement with data and ethics.

The climate impact of our food consumption is a key issue to sustainability. Yet understanding the food system and the impact it has can be difficult given its abstract nature. In this paper, we report on a Research through Design project aimed at designing and evaluating a data physicalization for supporting collective sense-making of the climate impact of food. Throughout the design process, we have explored the materiality of CO2 emissions and ways to design with less resource use. The resulting data physicalization, Carbon Scales, was evaluated in a three-week field study with 27 participants. Our findings show that collective sense-making can be enabled through interactive data physicalizations and that this can lead to carbon literacy. We expand on a) sustainability through design by arguing for the value of artifacts that let people stay in the interaction as this can support collective sense-making and b) sustainability in design by showcasing the value of designing with an interaction-first and materials-second mindset.

Waste management in urban areas is a complex process, encompassing a variety of activities (e.g., acquiring, sorting, disposing), actors (e.g., single individuals, waste collectors, condominium associations), and capacities (e.g., from household recycling stations to physical infrastructures such as recycling and sorting facilities). Whereas previous HCI design research has tackled problems with waste management from an individual, behavioral change perspective, we approach this design space through a feminist ecological design perspective of Digital Environmental Stewardship. Through a combination of qualitative empirical data and materials generated at design workshops, we outline challenges related to waste management in a complex of five multi-apartment buildings. We propose a number of design explorations addressing such challenges, and reflect on the generative role of the DES framework in framing design from a collective and ecological perspective.

Data have played an extensive role in sustainable HCI research by informing the impacts of our behavior on the environment and helping us make better environmental choices. However, in the area of sustainable food consumption and sustainable HCI, there is little investigation on the roles of food data for the design of technology. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of sustainable-conscious individuals’ food data seeking experiences. Our results show the way in which the current food data is challenging our understanding of its environmental impacts, which concern data of availability, data representations, and data cultures. Drawing from Loukissas’ six critical data principles, we discuss how “locality” and ”place” could cast a new insight on food and its sustainability. We also offer possible design directions for sustainable HCI technologies utilizing food data.