research-article

Understanding why we preserve some things and discard others in the context of interaction design

Authors:

Erik Stolterman,

Eli BlevisAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1053 - 1062

https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518862

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

This paper takes up the problem of understanding why we preserve some things passionately and discard others without thought. We briefly report on the theoretical literature relating to this question, both in terms of existing literature in HCI, as well as in terms of related literatures that can advance the understanding for the HCI community. We use this reading to refine our frameworks for understanding durability in digital artifice as an issue of sustainable interaction design in HCI. Next, we report in detail on our ongoing work in collecting personal inventories of digital artifice in the home context. We relate our prior and most current personal inventories collections to the framework that owes to our reading of the theoretical literature. Finally, we summarize the theoretical implications and findings of our personal inventories work in terms of implications for the design of digital artifice in a manner that is more durable.

References

[1]

Ayres, R.U. (1995). Life cycle analysis: A critique. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. 14. 199--223.

[2]

Blevis, E. (2007). Sustainable interaction design: invention&disposal, renewal&reuse. In Proc. of CHI '08. ACM press, New York, NY. 503--512.

Digital Library

[3]

Blevis, E.&Stolterman, E. (2007). Ensoulment and Sustainable Interaction Design. In Proc. of IASDR 2007. Hong Kong.

[4]

Blythe, M., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A.,&Wright, P. (Eds.). (2003). Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Digital Library

[5]

Buechley, L., Paulos, E., Rosner, D., Williams, A. (2009). DIY FOR CHI: Methods, Communities, and Values of Reuse and Customization. In Ext. Abs. of CHI '09. ACM press, New York, NY.

Digital Library

[6]

Chapman, J. (2005). Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences And Empathy. Earthscan.

[7]

Cooper, T. (2005). Inadequate Life? Evidence of Consumer Attitudes to Product Obsolescence Journal of Consumer Policy. 27. 421--449.

[8]

Cooper, T. (2002). Durable consumption: reflections on product life cycles and the throwaway society. In Hertwich, E. (ed.) Proc. of Lifecycle Approaches to Sustainable Consumption Workshop. 11--27.

[9]

Csíkszentmihályi, M.&Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981). The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. Cambridge University Press.

[10]

Durgee, J. (2001). Soul Branding: How to do it. Design Management Journal (Winter). 40--45.

[11]

Foth, M., Satchell, C., Paulos, E., Igoe, T.,&Ratti, C. (2008). Persuasive Pervasive Technology and Environmental Sustainability. In Proc. Pervasive '08 Workshops.

[12]

Fry, T. (2008). Design Futuring. Berg Publishing.

[13]

Gaver, W., Bowers, J., Boucher, A., Law, A., Pennington, S., and Villar, N. (2006). The history tablecloth: illuminating domestic activity. In Proc. of DIS '06. ACM press, New York, NY, 199--208.

Digital Library

[14]

Hanks, K., Odom, W., Roedl, D.,&Blevis, E. (2008). Sustainable millennials: attitudes towards sustainability and the material effects of interactive technologies. In Proc. of CHI '08. ACM Press, New York, NY. 333--342.

Digital Library

[15]

Hasbrouck, J., Igoe, T., Mankoff, J.,&Woodruff, A. (2007). Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values. In Proc. Ubicomp '07 Workshops. 567--568.

[16]

Hertvich, E. (2002). Introduction to Life Cycle Approaches to Sustainable Consumption. In Hertvich, E. (Ed.). In Proc. Lifecycle Approaches to Sustainable Consumption. 2(3).

[17]

Huang, E.M.&Truong, K.N. (2008). Breaking the Disposable Technology Paradigm: Opportunities for Sustainable Interaction Design for Mobile Phones. In Proc. of CHI '08. ACM Press, New York, NY. 323--332.

Digital Library

[18]

Hurst, A., Mankoff, J., Dey, A. K., and Hudson, S. E. (2007). Dirty desktops: using a patina of magnetic mouse dust to make common interactor targets easier to select. In Proc. of UIST '07. ACM press, New York, NY, 183--186.

Digital Library

[19]

Jordan, P.W. (2002). Designing Pleasurable Products: An Introduction to the New Human Factors. CRC Press.

[20]

Mankoff, J.C., Blevis, E., Borning, A., Friedman, B., Fussell, S. R., Hasbrouck, J., Woodruff, A.,&Sengers, P. (2007). Environmental sustainability and interaction. In Ext. Abs. of CHI '07. ACM press, New York, NY. 2121--2124.

Digital Library

[21]

McDonough, W.&Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press. New York.

[22]

Nathan, L.P., Blevis, E., Friedman, B., Hasbrouck, J.,&Sengers, P. (2008). Beyond the hype: sustainability&HCI. In Ext. Abs. CHI '08. 2273--2276.

Digital Library

[23]

Nelson H.G.&Stolterman E. (2003). Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. Educational Technology Publications Englewood Cliffs.

Digital Library

[24]

Norman, D.A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Basic Books.

[25]

Odom, W. (2008). Personal inventories: toward durable human-product relationships. In Ext. Abs. CHI '08. ACM Press, New York, NY. 3777--3782.

Digital Library

[26]

Odom, W., Blevis, E.,&Stolterman, E. (2008). SUSTAINABLY OURS. Personal Inventories in the Context of Sustainability&Interaction Design. ACM Interactions XV(5). 16--20.

Digital Library

[27]

Paulos, E., Forth, M., Satchell, S., Kim, Y., Dourish, P.,&Choi, J. (2008, in press). Ubiquitous Sustainability: Citizen Science&Activism. In Proc of Ubicomp '08 Workshops.

[28]

Petrelli, D., Whittaker, S.,&Brockmeier, J. (2008). AutoTopography: what can physical mementos tell us about digital memories? In Proc. of CHI '08. ACM Press, New York, NY. 53--62.

Digital Library

[29]

van Hinte, E. (ed) (1997). Eternally Yours: visions on product endurance, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.

[30]

Verbeek, P-P. (2006). Acting Artifacts - the Technological Mediation of Action, in Verbeek, P.P.&Slob, A. (Eds.). User Behavior and Technology Development - Shaping Sustainable Relations between Consumers and Technologies. 53--60. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

[31]

Verbeek, P-P. (2005). What Things Do - Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. The Pennsylvania State Press.

[32]

Verbeek, P-P.&Kockelkoren, P. (1998). The Things That Matter. In Design Issues. MIT Press, 14(3). 28--42.

[33]

von Weizsäcker, E, Lovins, A.,&Lovins, H. (1997). Factor Four. London: Earthscan.

[34]

Walker, S. (2006). Object Lessons: Enduring Artifacts and Sustainable Solutions. Design Issues. MIT Press, 22(1). 20--31.

[35]

Woodruff, A., Hasbrouck, J., and Augustin, S. (2008). A bright green perspective on sustainable choices. In Proc. of CHI '08. ACM Press, New York, NY. 313--322.

Digital Library

[36]

Woolley, M. (2003). Choreographing obsolescence - ecodesign: the pleasure/dissatisfaction cycle. In Proc. of DPPI '03. ACM Press, New York, NY, 77--81.

Digital Library

Cited By

Besana NKrogh PPetersen MSpallazzo D(2024)Expanding the Concept of Sustainable Interaction Design: A Systematic ReviewSustainability10.3390/su1617748616:17(7486)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177486
Ankenbauer SBrewer R(2024)Spirits in the Material World: Older Adults' Personal Curation of Memory ArtifactsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869958:CSCW2(1-35)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686995
Goree SAppleby GCrandall DSu N(2024)Attention is All They Need: Exploring the Media Archaeology of the Computer Vision Research PaperProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869558:CSCW2(1-25)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686955
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Understanding why we preserve some things and discard others in the context of interaction design

Recommendations

Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse
CHI '07: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

This paper presents the perspective that sustainability can and should be a central focus of interaction design-a perspective that is termed Sustainable Interaction Design (SID). As a starting point for a perspective of sustainability, design is defined ...
Understanding interaction design practices
CHI '11: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

There is an undesirable gap between HCI research aimed at influencing interaction design practice and the practitioners in question. To close this gap, we advocate a theoretical and methodological focus on the day-to-day, lived experience of designers. ...
Facilitation of sustainability through appropriation-enabling design
MIDI '13: Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimedia, Interaction, Design and Innovation

We propose that sustainable interaction design can benefit from the notion of appropriation-enabling design in the sense that designing for appropriation can promote renewal and reuse of software and hardware artifacts. To this end, we establish the ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2009

2426 pages

ISBN:9781605582467

DOI:10.1145/1518701

General Chairs:
Dan R. Olsen
Brigham Young University
,
Richard B. Arthur
Brigham Young University
,
Program Chairs:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Saul Greenberg
University of Calgary

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 April 2009

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI '09

Sponsor:

CHI '09: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 4 - 9, 2009

MA, Boston, USA

Acceptance Rates

CHI '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,130 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

172
Total Citations
View Citations
2,953
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)241
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)81

Reflects downloads up to 18 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Besana NKrogh PPetersen MSpallazzo D(2024)Expanding the Concept of Sustainable Interaction Design: A Systematic ReviewSustainability10.3390/su1617748616:17(7486)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177486
Ankenbauer SBrewer R(2024)Spirits in the Material World: Older Adults' Personal Curation of Memory ArtifactsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869958:CSCW2(1-35)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686995
Goree SAppleby GCrandall DSu N(2024)Attention is All They Need: Exploring the Media Archaeology of the Computer Vision Research PaperProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869558:CSCW2(1-25)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3686955
Yu TShakeri GKoelle M(2024)"If you don't feel guilty, you won't take responsibility" - Co-Speculating on Digital Technologies That Encourage Sustainable ConsumptionProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685374(1-18)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3679318.3685374
Lu J(2024)Empowering End-Users Toward Roles in Sustainable ComputingCompanion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3656156.3665131(55-58)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3656156.3665131
Lechelt SGorkovenko KSpeed C(2024)On Disused Connected Devices: Understanding Disuse, “Holding On,” and Barriers to CircularityACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36511712:2(1-27)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3651171
Muntean RHennessy KMills CAntle A(2024)Untangling Cables: A Case Study of the Life & Afterlife of Digital Devices in Academic ResearchProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661540(653-667)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3643834.3661540
Hornbæk KLyngs UIarygina OSkov M(2024)“You Can Find a Part of my Life in Every Single App”: An Interview Study of What Makes Smartphone Applications Special to Their UsersProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642820(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642820
Lakier MVogel D(2024)Digital Knick-Knacks: Standalone Audiovisual Digital Possessions or Embellishments in Digital EnvironmentsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642695(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642695
Pollini AGiacobone G(2024)Rely on Available Resources: Designing Sustainability Education Technologies for Low Resources ScenariosFor Nature/With Nature: New Sustainable Design Scenarios10.1007/978-3-031-53122-4_45(761-781)Online publication date: 4-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53122-4_45
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents