the “history tablecloth,” developed by the interaction Research studio (Goldsmith’s college, university of London), is an example of embedding computing in everyday objects. When items are left on the cloth it begins to glow beneath them, creating a slowly expanding halo. When the items are removed, the glow gradually fades.

 

in question will be designed to serve. Depending on the values of interest, this analysis might need to draw on disciplines as diverse as philosophy, psychology, art, sociology, cultural studies, and architecture, for example. It might also mean collaborating with the stakeholders behind the technology to ascertain what kinds of enduring values they expect their users to derive from the product.

toP: PhotograPh courtesy of interaction research studio, Bottom: PhotograPh By hiroko masuike

Consider, for example, that there might be an interest in developing new interactive tabletop applications for working with digital photos. The understand stage of the work would involve clarifying what kinds of human values might be made possible through such interactions. Is it about supporting social connectivity around photographs? About play and creativity with digital images? About archiving photographs and other materials in order to preserve and honor family history? Or is it about allowing individuals to reflect on their personal past through images? The list could go on.

Ultimately, this stage is about making basic choices. It requires specifying up front the kinds of users targeted, and in which domains of activity, environments, or cultures. In other words, the stage involves choosing the values being designed for. Its investigations will then point to some fundamental research that needs to be conducted,

relevant research that has already been carried out, or some combination of the two. The stage may equally well involve experts from diverse disciplines, such as social historians, game designers, or specialists in the psychology of memory, to cite but a few.

Further, the extended approach to HCI is intended to enable human values to be folded into the mix not just at the understand stage but the other four stages as well. In the report, we give fuller examples of how choices made about the human values of interest can

provide guidance in the study, design, build, and evaluate phases. Key here is that the analysis should not just take into account people’s interactions with computer technology but also with the environment, with everyday objects, with other human beings, and with the changing landscape that the “new tech” brings to their world.

Forming new partnerships. Aside from changes in methodology, HCI also needs to develop partnerships with other disciplines that traditionally have not been part of the field. One reason has been outlined here—that different human values, as expressed in diverse contexts, point to the need for all kinds of expertise to deeply understand and creatively design for the relationships between those values and technology.

But other reasons have to do with questions that are even more difficult for the field of HCI alone to address. As we have outlined, new computer technologies and the transformations they are bringing about raise issues with much broader societal, moral, and ethical implications than HCI has had to deal with in the past. It is not clear that all of these concerns are within the scope of the field, but certainly HCI needs to be part of a wider interdisciplinary exchange. Technologies that store personal data, that take on new roles and responsibilities in our lives, that alter our behavior in public places, and that track our movements and

 

the latest billboards (such as those by Quividi) judge the gender and approximate age of people viewing them, with the potential of changing the nature of the advertisements they display. technologies like these highlight the increasingly hybrid forms that interaction takes, as well as the scope of the “data” used to authenticate such interactions.