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.

When learning programming concepts, beginners face challenges that lead to decreased motivation, Game-Based Learning (GBL) uses game principles to make learning more engaging, and VR has been explored as a way to enhance GBL further. This paper explores the impact of Virtual Reality (VR) on learning programming, and we developed Codeseum to compare whether VR-based learning is perceived as more engaging and usable than a desktop game counterpart. The experiment with ten participants included data from questionnaires, interviews, and structured observations. The quantitative analysis indicated that VR was perceived as inducing higher focused attention, aesthetic appeal, and reward, while the thematic analysis provided discussion elements of seven themes, including interaction, engagement, and physical expressions from the participants. Overall, the desktop application had better accessibility, whereas the immersive interactions from Codeseum in VR induced higher levels of enjoyment and engagement. Our study contributes insights into the potential of VR in education, mainly teaching coding skills in engaging ways, and offers information to adopt immersive technologies in teaching practice.

This work-in-progress presents the design of an XR prototype for the purpose of educating basic cybersecurity concepts. We have designed an experimental virtual reality cyberspace to visualise data traffic over network, enabling the user to interact with VR representations of data packets. Our objective was to help the user better conceptualise abstract cybersecurity topics such as encryption and decryption, firewall and malicious data. Additionally, to better stimuli the sense of immersion we have used Peltier thermoelectric modules and Arduino Uno to experiment with multisensory XR. Furthermore, we reflect on early evaluation of this experimental prototype and present potential paths for future improvements.

Recent developments in gaze tracking present new opportunities for social computing. This paper presents a study of Tama, a gaze actuated smart speaker. Tama was designed taking advantage of research on gaze in conversation. Rather than being activated with a wake word (such as "Ok Google") Tama detects the gaze of a user, moving an articulated 'head' to achieve mutual gaze. We tested Tama's use in a multi-party conversation task, with users successfully activating and receiving a response to over 371 queries (over 10 trials). When Tama worked well, there was no significant difference in length of interaction. However, interactions with Tama had a higher rate of repeated queries, causing longer interactions overall. Video analysis lets us explain the problems users had interacting with gaze. In the discussion, we describe implications for designing new gaze systems, using gaze both as input and output. We also discuss how the relationship to anthropomorphic design and taking advantage of learned skills of interaction. Finally, two paths for future work are proposed, one in the field of speech agents, and the second in using human gaze as an interaction modality more widely.

As interactive objects get embedded into different cultural contexts and take on more varied material forms, the relationship between interaction design and crafting practices in the physical domain is becoming increasingly interwoven. In this paper, we present an explorative project that involved intense collaborations between the areas of interaction design and silversmith practice. A main focus of the investigation concerned ways of surfacing conductive metals in interactive artefacts through the making of small, three-dimensional, and close-to-skin sensors. We reflect on insights made during this process, focusing on the challenges of combining the two knowledge areas on a level of materials, tools and techniques. In particular, we discuss qualities that silversmith crafting brings forth that can inform future directions of interaction design in terms of interaction gestalts, design values and hybrid crafting practices, more broadly.

Through our art project, Metaphone, we explored a particular form of aesthetics referred to in the arts tradition as machine aesthetics. The Metaphone machine collects the participant's bio-data, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Heart Rate (HR), creating a process of movement, painting and sound. The machine behaves in machine-like, aesthetically evocative ways: a shaft on two large wheels rotates on the floor, carrying paint that is dripped onto a large sheet of aquarelle paper on the floor according to bio-sensor data. A soundscape rhythmically follows the bio-sensor data, but also has its own machine-like sounds. Six commentators were invited to interact with the machine. They reported a strangely relaxing atmosphere induced by the machine. Based on these experiences we discuss how different art styles can help to describe aesthetics in interaction design generally, and how machine aesthetics in particular can be used to create interesting, sustained, stylistically coherent interactions.

In this studio we explore the design of interactive electronic accessories made from natural materials such as wood, copper, silver, wool and leather. A set of handcrafted sensor components along with easy to use sensor boards that connect with example smartphone software, will be utilized as a toolkit for the studio activities. Participants will, through hands-on activity, create with, learn about and discuss the role of natural materials in the design of wearable interactive designs.

Designing with digital materials is sometimes challenging due to material properties that are for all practical purposes invisible. Here we present our work on exploring one such material, radio, and how we have worked with making radio a more tangible and accessible design material for multidisciplinary design teams to work with. Starting from an account of a previous project of ours, the LEGA project, we describe a design situation involving radio that exemplifies some of the challenges that working with radio can involve. We thereafter describe how we have used the Inspirational Bits approach to further investigate the peculiarities of radio as an immaterial design material and what possibilities it holds for interactive systems design.

In any design process, a medium's properties need to be considered. This is nothing new in design. Still we find that in HCI and interactive systems design the properties of a technology are often glossed over. That is, technologies are black-boxed without much thought given to how their distinctive properties open up design possibilities. In this paper we describe what we call inspirational bits as a way to become more familiar with the design material in HCI, the digital material. We describe inspirational bits as quick and dirty but fully working systems in both hardware and software built with the aim of exposing one or several of the dynamic properties of a digital material. We also show how they provide a means of sharing design knowledge across the members of a multi-disciplined design team.

This paper describes experiences from development and deployment of the Lega, a hand held device for physical sharing of experiences during an art exhibition. Touching and moving the device in different ways creates a tactile trace that can be experienced by others through their own device. The system was successfully deployed at an art exhibition for two months where user studies were performed. Here we present some general observations regarding the systems performance and discuss issues that we encountered.