Interactive computing systems increasingly allow for experimental evaluations of fundamental issues in law, government, and society. In this paper, we describe a participatory simulation of the Accountable Capitalism Act, a bill proposed in 2018 by US Senator Elizabeth Warren. We present findings from an empirical study conducted using this system, relating to the impact of 1) interactive visualization and 2) the Accountable Capitalism Act legal framework on the behavior of participants acting as corporate directors. From this study, we draw lessons about research possibilities at the juncture of HCI and legal and policy studies. This study contributes an analysis and evaluation of a design probe used to investigate potential impacts of the Accountable Capitalism Act, experimental evidence from a study conducted using the design probe, and guidance for future participatory simulations that seek to inform the design of social institutions.

This paper argues that designers committed to advancing justice and other non-market values must attend not only to the design of objects, processes, and situations, but also to the wider economic and cultural imaginaries of design as a social role. The paper illustrates the argument through the case of Turkopticon, originally an activist tool for workers in Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), built by the authors and maintained since 2009. The paper analyzes public depictions of Turkopticon which cast designers as creative innovators and AMT workers as without agency or capacity to change their situation. We argue that designers' elevated status as workers in knowledge economies can have practical consequences for the politics of their design work. We explain the consequences of this status for Turkopticon and how we adapted our approach in response over the long term. We argue for analyses of power in design work that account for and develop counters to hegemonic beliefs and practices about design as high-status labor.

This paper, submitted to the Design Fictions track at ACM GROUP 2016, is a review of a non-existent book, "Reading Elinor Ostrom in Silicon Valley: Exploring Institutional Diversity on the Internet," edited by a non-existent researcher named Kieran X. Yuval and published in 2021 (a date, at time of writing, decidedly in the future) by NJU Press, a non-existent academic press. In contrast to the fictitious nature of the editor, book, and press, Elinor Ostrom was a real person and everything described about her and her work in the paper is, to the best of the author's knowledge, true.

As HCI researchers have explored the possibilities of human computation, they have paid less attention to ethics and values of crowdwork. This paper offers an analysis of Amazon Mechanical Turk, a popular human computation system, as a site of technically mediated worker-employer relations. We argue that human computation currently relies on worker invisibility. We then present Turkopticon, an activist system that allows workers to publicize and evaluate their relationships with employers. As a common infrastructure, Turkopticon also enables workers to engage one another in mutual aid. We conclude by discussing the potentials and challenges of sustaining activist technologies that intervene in large, existing socio-technical systems.

What happens if efforts to achieve sustainability fail? Research in many fields argues that contemporary global industrial civilization will not persist indefinitely in its current form, and may, like many past human societies, eventually collapse. Arguments in environmental studies, anthropology, and other fields indicate that this transformation could begin within the next half-century. While imminent collapse is far from certain, it is prudent to consider now how to develop sociotechnical systems for use in these scenarios. We introduce the notion of collapse informatics—the study, design, and development of sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity. We sketch the design space of collapse informatics and a variety of example projects. We ask how notions of practice—theorized as collective activity in the “here and now”—can shift to the future since collapse has yet to occur.

Research in many fields argues that contemporary global industrial civilization will not persist indefinitely in its current form, and may, like many past human societies, eventually collapse. Arguments in environmental studies, anthropology, and other fields indicate that this transformation could begin within the next half-century. While imminent collapse is far from certain, it is prudent to consider now how to develop sociotechnical systems for use in these scenarios. We introduce the notion of collapse informatics---the study, design, and development of sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity---as a complement to ICT4D and mitigation-oriented sustainable HCI. We draw on a variety of literatures to offer a set of relevant concepts and articulate the relationships among them to orient and evaluate collapse informatics work. Observing that collapse informatics poses a unique class of cross-cultural design problems, we sketch the design space of collapse informatics and provide a variety of example projects. We explore points of connection and distinction between collapse informatics and sustainable HCI, ICT4D, and crisis informatics. Finally, we discuss next steps and comment on the potential value of collapse informatics work even in the event that collapse never occurs.

As HCI is applied in increasingly diverse contexts, it is important to consider situations in which computational or information technologies may be less appropriate. This paper presents a series of questions that can help researchers, designers, and practitioners articulate a technology's appropriateness or inappropriateness. Use of these questions is demonstrated via examples from the literature. The paper concludes with specific arguments for improving the conduct of HCI. This paper provides a means for understanding and articulating the limits of HCI technologies, an important but heretofore under-explored contribution to the field.