Credit scoring is an increasingly central and contested domain of data and AI governance, frequently framed as a neutral and objective method of assessing risk across diverse economic and political contexts. Based on a nine-month ethnography of credit scoring practices in Nairobi, Kenya, we examined the sociotechnical and institutional work of data science in digital lending. While established regional telcos and banks are leveraging proprietary data to develop digital loan products, algorithmic credit scoring is being transformed by new actors, techniques, and shifting regulations. Our findings show how practitioners construct alternative data using technical and legal workarounds, formulate risk through multiple interpretations, and negotiate model performance via technical and political means. We argue that algorithmic credit scoring is accomplished through the ongoing work of alignment that stabilizes risk under conditions of persistent uncertainty, which takes epistemic, modeling, and contextual forms. Extending work on alignment in HCI, we show how alignment operates as a two-way translation, where models are made “safe for worlds” while those worlds are reshaped to be “safe for models.”

This paper reexamines appropriation in human-computer interaction (HCI), which refers to the unexpected alterations made to artifacts by users. We analyze when earlier informal practices of exchanging airtime for cash became enclosed into proprietary mobile money platforms, and show that this enclosure has a longer history in global telecommunications. Building on interviews with 19 experts in computing, policy, and media, we challenge teleological narratives of the inevitability of mobile money often overlooked in computing and global development. We develop an ‘appropriation matrix’ introducing a dialectic of re- and reverse- appropriation animated by three elements—users, artifacts, and imaginaries—that unexpectedly switch between production and consumption, complicating invention and innovation in formal and informal economies. This matrix may help HCI and development better understand how different values, visions, and practices might have led (or could still lead) to different designs of products like mobile money.

HCI researchers work within spaces of possibility for potential designs of technology. New methods (e.g., user centrism); expected types of interaction (user with device); and potential applications (urban navigation) can extend the boundaries of these possibilities. However, structural and systemic factors can also foreclose them. A recent wide and shallow survey of 116 individuals involved in technology development across 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa reveals how factors of political economy significantly impact upon technological possibilities. Monopolies, international power dynamics, race, and access to capital open or constrain technological possibilities at least as much as device-centric or user-focused constraints do. Though their thrust may have been anticipated by reference to political economic trends, the structural constraints we found were underestimated by technologists even a decade ago. We discuss the implications for technology development in Africa and beyond.

This paper introduces sustainable design applications for small businesses through the Life Cycle Assessment and supply chain publishing platform Sourcemap.org. This web-based tool was developed through a year-long participatory design process with five small businesses in Scotland and in New England. Sourcemap was used as a diagnostic tool for carbon accounting, design and supply chain management. It offers a number of ways to market sustainable practices through embedded and printed visualizations. Our experiences confirm the potential of web sustainability tools and social media to expand the discourse and to negotiate the diverse goals inherent in social and environmental sustainability.