Most research depends to some extent on technologies and computational infrastructures including, and perhaps especially, HCI.Despite the noted environmental impacts associated with information communication technology (ICT) globally, to date little consideration has been given as to how to limit the impact of research and innovation processes themselves.Working to understand the technical and cultural drivers of this impact within the specific but resource-intensive domain of High Performance Computing (HPC), we conducted 25 interviews with academic researchers, providers, funders, and commissioners of HPC.We find intersecting sociocultural and technical dimensions that link to research institutions like conferences, funders, and universities that reinforce and embed, rather than challenge, expectations of growth and waste.At a time when large scale cloud systems, generative AI and ever larger models are multiplying, we argue to de-escalate demand for computing, aiming for more moderate, responsible and meaningful use of computational infrastructures-including within HCI itself.

Mobile phone usage is widespread in rural Kenya, and digital services delivering livelihood-specific information can potentially aid development and mitigate climate impacts. However, to be embraced by individuals and communities, information should be delivered in ways that integrate with current community practices. We present an interview study with 24 community "information sharers", investigating information sharing practices and technology use within rural dryland pastoralist communities in Isiolo county. This region experiences frequent droughts exacerbated by climate change, and information regarding weather, water and climate is especially relevant. We found diverse ways in which information is obtained and shared to support dryland lives and livelihoods, with smartphones playing a prominent role. Notably, WhatsApp is widely used and integrates well with existing practices. However, inconsistency in the access and provision of information can lead to inequalities within and between communities. We offer several design recommendations for information provision systems in these settings.

Pastoralists in Somaliland are suffering the impacts of climate change, and need relevant, timely, and practical information about water resources and pastures. However, these communities are sparsely distributed and distant from decision-making centres, which impedes rapid dissemination of climate-related information that could allow them to build resilience to climate impacts. Although smartphone adoption rates are low, mobile services are widespread across Somaliland, presenting opportunities for supporting communities through mobile technologies. We interviewed 30 Somali pastoralists to understand their climate information needs, access to technology, and the potential for technology support. We also conducted a focus group with four Somali development experts to explore the cultural context and possible impacts of different design choices. Our results highlight and explore tensions around different design directions, and suggest possible ways to mitigate these. Designing systems that navigate such considerations can contribute to much-needed climate resilience for pastoralist communities in Somaliland and beyond.

Climate services are systems that provide climate and climate-related information to inform decision making around the world. Despite these systems featuring diverse interactions between technologies and a variety of user groups, and frequent calls in the literature for more a more user-centred focus, HCI researchers do not appear to have engaged much with this active research area. In this paper, we demonstrate this lack of interaction via a systematic literature search and offer possible explanations for this. We also map out opportunities for how HCI researchers can use their highly relevant skillsets to contribute to this research and aid climate change adaptation, notably around the user-facing elements of climate services. Finally, we offer some reasons why HCI researchers might want to engage, such as furthering existing HCI research avenues, and creating new ones through collaborations with researchers in disciplines such as climate science, development, and policy.

We present the DIMPACT /dimpækt/ tool for environmental assessments of digital services. The tool enables digital media providers to calculate energy consumption and associated environmental impact across the entire product system, including datacentres, networks and user devices. It is based on accepted standard methodologies and applies state-of-the-art research. The DIMPACT tool is used by major media organisations for environmental reporting and to support development of strategies to reduce environmental impact. It has significantly advanced the knowledge of carbon emissions of video streaming. The tool is part of the wider DIMPACT project of companies that collaborate to exchange knowledge, engage suppliers and expand the scope of the tool. In this text we provide an overview of workings of tool and its methodological foundation.

We present the EAM toolkit for life cycle modelling and impact analysis in environmental assessments. The open source toolkit was specifically designed to support maintainability and verification of models within integrated assessments, and has been used in research and industry. The tool offers features to support complex Life Cycle Assessment, including dynamic and scenario modelling, uncertainty and sensitivity analysis, a flexible domain specific modelling language and a visual editor. In this introduction we present the main features of the toolkit, summarise the high-level components and illustrate its use.

Traditional approaches to psychotherapy emphasise face-to-face contact between patients and therapists. In contrast, current computerised approaches tend to minimise this contact. This can limit the range of mental health difficulties for which computerised approaches are effective. Here, we explore an alternative approach that integrates face-to-face contact, electronic contact, online collaboration, and support for between-session activities. Our discussion is grounded in the design of a platform to deliver psychotherapy for depression. We report findings of an 11-month pragmatic study in which 17 patients received treatment for depression via the platform. Results show how design decisions had a significant impact on the dynamics of therapeutic sessions and the establishment of patient-therapist relationships. For example, the use of instant messaging for synchronous, in-session contact slowed communication, but also provided a valuable space for reflection and helped to maintain session focus. We discuss the impact of flexibility and the potential of integrated approaches to both enhance and reduce patient engagement.

Recent research has advocated for a broader conception of evaluation for Sustainable HCI (SHCI), using interdisciplinary insights and methods. In this paper, we put this into practice to conduct an evaluation of Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) of digital services. We explore how SID can contribute to corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategies. We show how a Digital Service Provider (DSP) might incorporate SID into their design process and quantitatively evaluate a specific SID intervention by combining user analytics data with environmental life cycle assessment. We illustrate this by considering YouTube. Replacing user analytics data with aggregate estimates from publicly available sources, we estimate emissions associated with the deployment of YouTube to be approximately 10MtCO2e p.a. We estimate emissions reductions enabled through the use of an SID intervention from prior literature to be approximately 300KtCO2e p.a., and demonstrate that this is significant when considered alongside other emissions reduction interventions used by DSPs.

Interactive devices and the services they support are reliant on the cloud and the digital infrastructure supporting it. The environmental impacts of this infrastructure are substantial and for particular services the infrastructure can account for up to 85% of the total impact. In this paper, we apply the principles of Sustainable Interaction Design to cloud services use of the digital infrastructure. We perform a critical analysis of current design practice with regard to interactive services, which we identify as the cornucopian paradigm. We show how user-centered design principles induce environmental impacts in different ways, and combine with technical and business drivers to drive growth of the infrastructure through a reinforcing feedback cycle. We then create a design rubric, substantially extending that of Blevis [6], to cover impacts of the digital infrastructure. In doing so, we engage in design criticism, identifying examples (both actual and potential) of good and bad practice. We then extend this rubric beyond an eco-efficiency paradigm to consider deeper and more radical perspectives on sustainability, and finish with future directions for exploration.

This paper presents results of a controlled trial using a clash-of-clans style game as an extrinsic motivator to encourage revision in 15-16 year olds preparing for a maths exam. The trial demonstrates a statistically significant improvement in performance among those using the game. We discuss differences between our work and a previous trial that showed no performance improvement from an extrinsically linked educational game, and present hypotheses as to why the game structure we used may be effective within our chosen deployment environment.

Engagement, motivation and active contribution by digital volunteers are key requirements for crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Many systems use competitive elements, for example point scoring and leaderboards, to achieve these ends. However, while competition may motivate some people, it can have a neutral or demotivating effect on others. In this paper we explore theories of personal and social norms and investigate normification as an alternative approach to engagement, to be used alongside or instead of competitive strategies. We provide a systematic review of existing crowdsourcing and citizen science literature and categorise the ways that theories of norms have been incorporated to date. We then present qualitative interview data from a pro-environmental crowdsourcing study, Close the Door, which reveals normalising attitudes in certain participants. We assess how this links with competitive behaviour and participant performance. Based on our findings and analysis of norm theories, we consider the implications for designers wishing to use normification as an engagement strategy in crowdsourcing and citizen science systems.

Community activist groups typically rely on core groups of highly motivated members. In this paper we consider how crowdsourcing strategies can be used to supplement the activities of pro-environmental community activists, thus increasing the scalability of their campaigns. We focus on mobile data collection applications and strategies that can be used to engage casual participants in pro-environmental data collection. We report the results of a study that used both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the impact of different motivational factors and strategies, including both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. The study compared and provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of two extrinsic motivation strategies, pointification - a subset of gamification - and financial incentives. Prior environmental interest is also assessed as an intrinsic motivation factor. In contrast to previous HCI research on pro-environmental technology, much of which has focused on individual behavior change, this paper offers new insights and recommendations on the design of systems that target groups and communities.

The use of information and communication technology and the web-based products it provides is responsible for significant emissions of greenhouse gases. In order to enable the reduction of emissions during the design of such products, it is necessary to estimate as accurately as possible their carbon impact over the entire product system. In this work we describe a new method which combines models of energy consumption during the use of digital media with models of the behavior of the audience. We apply this method to conduct an assessment of the annual carbon emissions for the product suite of a major international news organization. We then demonstrate its use for green design by evaluating the impacts of five different interventions on the product suite. We find that carbon footprint of the online newspaper amounts to approximately 7700 tCO2e per year, of which 75% are caused by the user devices. Among the evaluated scenarios a significant uptake of eReaders in favor of PCs has the greatest reduction potential. Our results also show that even a significant reduction of data volume on a web page would only result in small overall energy savings.

We present an analysis of the potential worldwide demand for downloaded data and the resulting energy requirements of the cloud. Assuming that the average westerner's media consumption moves fully online but does not rise substantially beyond current levels, and the global middle class reach western levels of consumption, we estimate the overall demand to be 3200 MB/day per person, totaling 2570 Exabytes per year by the world population. We estimate the current energy demand for bandwidth to be 4 Wh/MB, based on two independent sources of data. We conclude that the average power required to support this activity would be 1175 GW at current levels of efficiency, and that a factor 60 performance improvement would be needed if infrastructure energy is to be provided by 1% of renewable energy capacity in 2030. By looking at historical trends in energy efficiency, we observe that this would be reached around 2021 if these trends continue. We document potential new applications that might require bandwidth capacity beyond our estimate. We also outline behavior change strategies that could be used to reduce the overall demand for bandwidth if historical performance improvements are not maintained, and as interim measures prior to efficiencies being realized.

Setting up electronic business-to-business relationships is time-consuming and costly. It has been eased to a certain extent by standard such as RosettaNet, which use XML and XML Schema technologies to define standardized syntax messages used in interactions. However, this standardization has necessarily maintained some flexibility to allow companies with different internal processes to comply with the standard. Furthermore, the standard is syntactic, rather than semantic. Semantic constraints on interactions are currently represented informally. In this paper, we describe an application of Semantic Web technology to enhance RosettaNet and further reduce cost and time. Businesses can represent the possible ways they are able to interact as semantic and syntactic constraints. Two businesses can determine if they are able to without altering their business process by sharing constraints, and finding if the overall set is satisfiable. If it is not, they can use the data to determine what changes need to be made to their business processes. They can also use the other business' constraints to verify or generate documents which meet the constraints, and so are usable by the other business. The system integrates with current RosettaNet standards and tools through the use of a translation suite able to transform XML Schema into DAML+OIL and XML into RDF.

Service composition is the act of taking several component products or services, and bundling them together to meet the needs of a given customer. In the future, service composition will play an increasingly important role in e-commerce, and automation will be desirable to improve speed and efficiency of customer response. In this paper, we consider a service composition agent that both buys components and sells services through auctions. It buys component services by participating in many English auctions. It sells composite services by participating in Request-for-Quotes reverse auctions. Because it does not hold a long-term inventory of component services, it must take risks; it must make offers in reverse auctions prior to purchasing all the components needed, and must bid in English auctions prior to having a guaranteed customer for the composite good. We present algorithms that is able to manage this risk, by appropriately bidding/offering in many auctions and reverse auctions simultaneously. The algorithms will withdraw from one set of possible auctions and move to another set if this will produce a better-expected outcome, but will effectively manage the risk of accidentally winning outstanding bids/offers during the withdrawal process. We illustrate the behavior of these algorithms through a set of worked examples.

If an e-services approach to electronic commerce is to become widespread, standardisation of ontologies, message content and message protocols will be necessary. In this paper, we present a lifecycle of a business-to-business e-commerce interaction, and show how the Semantic Web can support a service description language that can be used throughout this lifecycle. By using DAML, we develop a service description language sufficiently expressive and flexible to be used not only in advertisements, but also in matchmaking queries, negotiation proposals and agreements. We also identify which operations must be carried out on this description language if the B2B lifecycle is to be fully supported. We do not propose specific standard protocols, but instead argue that our operators are able to support a wide variety of interaction protocols, and so will be fundamental irrespective of which protocols are finally adopted.