Money is increasingly accessed through multifunctional digital platforms via mobile payment and banking apps that offer various financial services, several of which integrate social media connectivity. In China, Alipay and WeChat Pay handle billions of transactions annually to the extent that physical cards and cash are rarely carried or used. These platforms have been described as ‘walled gardens’ because financial transfers cannot be made directly between them. While Alipay and WeChat Pay share similar transactional components, they differ in their financial products, constraints, interdependencies and social media integrations, and each offers different interactional possibilities for users to meet their everyday financial needs. We examine how users navigate infrastructural payment problems, perform financial management across different platforms and accounts, deal with ‘trouble’ in making payments, and weave their social and financial lives across platforms to create interoperability between these otherwise disconnected services. Our analysis suggests these apps do not just initiate, record and track payments, but are actively configured by users through interconnected social, transactional and money-management practices, and that user interactions and digital payment practices are shaped by complex socio-financial arrangements. We discuss the findings, drawing implications for designing social-financial interactions in bridging disconnected services.

Abstract Control rooms have long been a key domain of investigation in HCI and CSCW as sites for understanding distributed work and fragmented settings, as well as the role and design of digital technologies in that work. Although research has tended to focus mainly on ‘command and control’ configurations, such as rail transport, ambulance dispatch, air traffic and CCTV rooms, centres of coordination shaped by artistic and performative concerns have much to contribute. Our study examines how a professional team of artists and volunteers stage manage and direct the performance of a mixed reality game from a central control room, with remote runners performing live video streaming from the streets nearby to online players. We focus on the work undertaken by team members to bring this about, exploring three key elements that enable it. First, we detail how team members oriented to the work as an artistic performance produced for an audience, how they produced compelling, varied content for online players, and how the quality of the work was ongoingly assessed. Second, we unpack the organisational hierarchy in the control room’s division of labour, and how this was designed to manage the challenges of restricted informational visibility there. Third, we explore the interactional accomplishment of the performance by looking at the role of radio announcements from the event’s director to orchestrate how the performance developed over time. Announcements were used to resolve trouble and provide instructions for avoiding future performative problems; but more centrally, to give artistic direction to runners in order to shape the performance itself. To close we discuss how this study of a performance impacts CSCW’s understandings of control room work, how the problem of ‘diffuse’ tasks like artistic work is co-ordinated, and how orientations towards quality as an artistic concern is manifest in / as control room practices. We also reflect on hierarchical and horizontal control room arrangements, and the role of video as both collaborative resource and product. Graphical abstract

Facial recognition technology (FRT) has become a significant topic in CSCW owing to widespread adoption and related criticisms: the use of FRT is often considered an assault on privacy or a kind of neo-phrenology. This discussion has revolved around uses of FRT for identification, which are often non-voluntary, in particular for surveillance wherein people are (by and large) unwittingly recognized by FRT systems. At the same time, we have also seen a rise of forms of FRT for verification (e.g., passport control or Apple's Face ID), which typically are overt and interactive. In this paper we study an interactive FRT system used for guest check-in at a hotel in China. We show how guests and bystanders engage in 'self-disciplining work' by controlling their facial (and bodily) comportment both to get recognized and at times to avoid recognition. From our analysis we discuss the role of preparatory and remedial work, as well as dehumanization, and the importance of CSCW paying closer attention to the significance of interactional compliance for people using and bystanding facial recognition technologies.

Mobile video calling technologies have become a critical link to connect distributed families. However, these technologies have been principally designed for video calling between two parties, whereas family video calls involve young children often comprise three parties, namely a co-present adult (a parent or grandparent) helping with the interaction between the child and another remote adult. We examine how manipulation of phone cameras and management of co-present children is used to stage parent-child interactions. We present results from a video-ethnographic study based on 40 video recordings of video calls between 'left-behind' children and their migrant parents in China. Our analysis reveals a key practice of 'facilitation work', performed by grandparents, as a crucial feature of three-party calls. Facilitation work offers a new concept for HCI's broader conceptualisation of mobile video calling, suggesting revisions that design might take into consideration for triadic interactions in general.

We present a study of a mixed reality game called 'I'd Hide You' that involves live video streaming from the city streets. We chart the significant challenges facing performers on the streets who must simultaneously engage in the game, stream compelling video footage featuring themselves, and interact with a remote online audience. We reveal how these street performers manage four key tensions: between their body and camera; between the demands of online audiences and what takes place on-the-street; between what appears 'frontstage' on camera versus what happens 'backstage'; and balancing being a player of the game with being a performer. By reflecting on how they achieve this, we are able to draw out wider lessons for future interfaces aimed at supporting people broadcasting video of themselves to online audiences while engaged in games, sports and other demanding real-world activities.