University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Toward sustainable and resilient communities with HCI: physical structures and socio-cultural factors

(USC Thesis Other)

Toward sustainable and resilient communities with HCI: physical structures and socio-cultural factors

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Content Toward Sustainable and Resilient Communities with HCI:
Physical Structures and Socio-Cultural Factors
by
Sarah Cooney
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMPUTER SCIENCE)
August 2022
Copyright 2022 Sarah Cooney
Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated . . .
To the memory of my grandparents George and Gloria Orren. May this
accomplishment be a testament to their constant love and support for their family, in
particular for their grandchildren.
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my advisor Barath Raghavan for not only guiding me through the research
found in this dissertation, but for showing me what it means to develop an independent research
agenda and supporting me in the pursuit of a faculty career.
I would like to thank my committee members, Professors Ramesh Govindan, Bistra Dilkina,
Heather Culbertson, and Hajar Yazdiha for their feedback and guidance.
I would like to thank all of my friends including those who were with me on this journey and
those who supported me from afar.
I would especially like to thank my fiance, Brendan Szefinski for continuously letting me know
how much he believed in me and my ability to finish this degree.
Finally, I would like to thank my family. Particularly my parents, Marcia and David Cooney,
and my brother, Andrew Cooney; also my future in-laws, Colleen and Joe Szefinski and Shannon
Szefinski; andofcourse, myextendedfamily—grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, andthelike—
too numerous to name, for all of their care and support over these five years.
iii
Table of Contents
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
List Of Tables viii
List Of Figures x
Abstract xiii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1.1 Sustainability, Resilience, and Well-being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Sustainable HCI and Practice Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 My Research Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.1 Physical Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.2 Socio-Cultural Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Outline of this Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 2: Social Infrastructure in HCI Research 11
2.1 The Research Spectrum for Social Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 Speculation and Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.1 Prior Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.1 Prior Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4.1 Prior Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5.1 Prior Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.6 Community Hand-Off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6.1 Prior Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.7 Positioning my Scholarship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Chapter 3: PatternPainter: A Tool for Citizen-Led Design 25
3.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.2 A Pattern Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.1 Citizens as Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.2 Beyond Citizen Sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.4 PatternPainter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.4.1 Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
iv
3.4.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4.3 Why PatternPainter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.5.1 Scenarios and Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5.2 Experiment 1: Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.5.3 Experiment 2: Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.6 Data and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.6.1 Quantitative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.6.2 Qualitative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 4: The CommYOUnity Data Project:
Exploring Novice Evaluations of Urban Spaces 58
4.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.3 CommYOUnity Data Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.3.1 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.3.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.3.2.1 Description vs. Prescription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.3.2.2 Personal Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.3.2.3 Community Pride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.3.2.4 Beauty of Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.3.2.5 Problem with No Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.3.2.6 Meta-Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.4 CommYOUnity Data Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.4.1 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.4.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.4.2.1 Expert vs. Novice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.4.2.2 Reemerging Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.4.2.3 New Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.5.1 Neighborhood Asset Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.5.2 A Day in the Neighborhood Storybot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.5.3 Co-Creative Image Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Chapter 5: Generative AI as a Tool for Speculative Urban Futures 86
5.1 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.2 Style Transfer for Imagining Urban Revitalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2.1 Pix2Pix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2.2 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.2.1 Dataset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.2.2 Experiment Setups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.2.3.1 Experiment One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2.3.2 Experiment 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2.3.3 Experiment 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.2.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3 Generative Algorithms for Creating Multi-Use Urban Infrastructure . . . . . . . . 98
5.3.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
v
5.3.2 RuDalle - Text2Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.3.3 RuDalle - Optimized Image Prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.3.4 BigSleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.3.5 VQGAN + CLIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.3.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Chapter 6: Religion and Spirituality in CHI: A Review 105
6.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.1.1 Religion vs. Spirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.1.2 A Brief History of Religon and Spirituality in HCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.1.3 Positionality Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.2 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.3 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.3.1 Focused Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.3.2 Covering Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.3.3 Finding Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.3.4 Peripheral Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.4 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Chapter 7: Alternative Pathways to Caring for Limits:
The Case of Ecospirituality 126
7.1 Catholicism & Ecospirituality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.2 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
7.2.1 Sustainable HCI & Computing Within Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
7.2.2 Religion and Sustainability in HCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7.3 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
7.3.1 Study Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.3.2 Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.3.3 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
7.3.4 Positionality Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
7.3.5 Acknowledgment of Harms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
7.4 Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.4.1 Conceptualizing limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.4.1.1 Limits as transcending the current moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.4.1.2 Nature as intrinsically good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
7.4.1.3 Faith and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
7.4.2 Operationalizing Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
7.4.2.1 Top-Down Operationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7.4.2.2 Bottom-Up Operationalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
7.4.3 Technologizing Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7.4.3.1 Nurturing Connections Globally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7.4.3.2 Limits to Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Chapter 8: Conclusion and ongoing work 152
8.0.1 Physical Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
8.0.2 Socio-cultural Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Reference List 154
vi
Appendix A
Supplemental Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
A.1 RuDalle - Text2Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
A.2 RuDalle - Optimized Image Prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
A.3 BigSleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
A.4 VQGAN + CLIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
vii
List Of Tables
3.1 The 12 scenarios used to implement and evaluate PatternPainter. The scenarios
are based on various uses for public space outlined in Alexander’s pattern language
[28]. They are divided into three groups for evaluation purposes. . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.2 The eight metrics used to evaluate the designs produced by PatternPainter. Each
design from part 1 of the experiments was rated on these metrics on a scale of 1-7
on these metrics during part 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3 The top metrics representing each scenario as determined by the research team.
For scenario C3, there was no metric agreed upon by all three members of the
research team. The metrics given were agreed upon by two of the three members. . 45
3.4 The average rating (out of 7) for each metric for each of the 12 scenarios. Bold
denotesthemetricwiththehighestaverage. Italics denotesthemetricstheresearch
teamchoseasmostrepresentativeforthescenario. Matchingoftheboldanditalics
indicates that participants successfully communicated the scenario’s purpose in
their designs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.1 Caption Word Length. The five number summary and mean for the number of
words in the submitted captions.
*This was an outlier; the second largest caption is 90 words.
**Without the outlying maximum, the mean is 38 words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.2 The six themes that emerged from an analysis of the images and captions submit-
ted to the CommYOUnity Data Site. The third column indicates the number of
submissions displaying each theme—note a submission can display multiple themes. 67
4.3 Six images submitted to the CommYOUnity Site Project that were included in the
Survey Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.4 The number of survey responses per image broken down by Novice and Expert
respondents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.1 The FID Scores ([198]) for each of our experiments.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2 Some of the best results achieved by the default Pix2Pix setup. Showing from left
to right the real before image, the real image after the street intervention, and
finally the generated image. Images from Belgium, Brazil, and Canada, respectively. 92
viii
5.3 Some of the bad results from the generic Pix2Pix Setup. Showing from left to right
the real before image, the real image after the street intervention, and finally the
generated image. Images from Australia, Belgium, Spain, and the United States,
respectively. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.4 Images from four countries (top to bottom: Czech Republic, France, Korea, and
Italy) which show very different ground truth, but highly similar generated images. 94
5.5 A comparison of the images generated by Pix2Pix with 200 epochs and 400 epochs.
Ground truth images can be found in Table 5.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
6.1 The number of papers in each of Buie’s first four categories [86], published at CHI
per year from 2013 - 2021. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.2 The number of CHI papers from 2013-2021containingeachofthefourmajorworld
religions—Christianity, Ilsam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—excluding the six search
terms: spiritual, spirituality, religion, faith, numinous, and transcendent. *Search
results for Christianity also contain instances of the name Christian and schools
names containing the word Christian. These results have not been filtered for
relevance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.1 Meaning of Catholic terms used in the paper (see: [345]) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
7.2 A summary of interviewee details. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
ix
List Of Figures
1.1 The Contextual Wheel of Practice as presented in [136]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1 The Research Spectrum for Social Infrastructure, consisting of five labeled points:
Speculation and Design, Implementation, Maintenance, Engagement, and Commu-
nity Hand-Off, representing various research paradigms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.1 AplandevelopedbyresidentsataparticipatoryworkshopforrevampingtheHoover
Triangle, a traffic triangle in Los Angeles on Hoover Street, between 23rd and 24th
Streets. Theplan, likeothersdevelopedduringtheworkshop, clearlyindicatesthat
shade was a priority for residents [444].. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2 The scenario for PatternPainter: an empty urban lot ripe for repair. . . . . . . . . 38
3.3 ThePatternPainteruserinterfacedisplayingscenarioB2withapartiallycompleted
design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4 The practice scene, which participants in experiment one were asked to replicate.
The scene purposefully includes a variety of objects at different locations as well as
some that are rotated from their initial position in order to familiarize users with
all of the different object controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.5 From top to bottom: Examples of designs for scenarios A4, B1, and C2, which
successfully conveyed the purpose and use to survey respondents. . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.6 From top to bottom and left to right, the models which were mistaken for other
things: goat (far right side) as a dog, garden beds (far left side) as sandboxes,
miniature adventure park (right side) as a skate ramp, and statues (throughout)
were simply unclear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.1 One of the images submitted to the CommYOUnity Data Site Project, with the
caption, “The local town pool has long been a prime spot at which families can play
and kids can hang out with their friends over the summer. Though the facilities
are very dated, it is an invaluable resource that the community has. ” . . . . . . . 58
4.2 The homepage for the CommYOUnity Data Site Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
x
4.3 Theme: Description vs. Prescription
Caption: Crowded beach on a weekend with the ocean waves crashing. Some people
are swimming or playing in the waves while others sit or stand on the sand. Lots of
colorful umbrellas catch the eye along with some orange flags. Beach houses follow
the shore all the way to the visible peninsula in the background with a hint of clouds
on top of it. The beautiful blue sky completes the view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.4 Theme: Personal Story
Caption: I love that this nearby restaurant has a lovely outdoor pavilion where
we have been able to dine during this pandemic. They have been cautious about
observing all the recommended safety protocols and we usually go mid-afternoon so
it feels very safe. It has been a much appreciated treat to be able to go there, sit
in the shade, enjoy a cool breeze and order anything from a simple to an elaborate
meal during a time of so many restrictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.5 Theme: Community Pride
Caption: This is the playground at the [TOWN NAME] Village Green. The park
started to fall into disrepair a few years ago but a new Village Green association of
locals have organized to keep things up. This just got fresh mulch. . . . . . . . . . 71
4.6 Theme: Beauty of Nature
Caption: Here is the park on an overcast morning. It would be nice to see more
people using this beautiful space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.7 Theme: Problem with No Solution
Caption: For people riding their bikes down from our student center, the new rock
field looks like a disaster waiting to happen! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.8 Theme: Meta-Problems
Caption: I live in a rural area. There are very few businesses around me, but I’m
okay with that because I enjoy the wide open space and the benefits of living in
the quiet countryside. Transportation can be problematic where I live if you don’t
own a car. I like that it’s spacious, safe, clean, and picturesque. The sunsets are
beautiful, and the stars can be easily seen at night. It is a nice place to live, and
there are not many improvements I would recommend making. . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.1 An example of a ground truth image and the segmented foreground. . . . . . . . . 90
5.2 Images created by ruDalle Text2Image for the prompt a bus shelter with a garden
on top. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
5.3 Text2Image images of gardens (left), bus shelters (center), and rooftop gardens
(right) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.4 Left: images produced by the optimized image prompt notebook for the prompt a
bus shelter with a garden roof. Right: The associated image used as an initialization.102
5.5 BigSleep images of Bus Shelters with garden roofs generated by each of the four
prompts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
xi
5.6 VQGAN+CLIPimagesproducedforthepromptabusshelterwitharooftopgarden.
Theleftimageisgeneratedfromtextonly. Therightusedaninitialimageprompt*.
*This image is from 850 iterations as the loss was spiking at 1000. . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.7 VQGAN+CLIP images produced using the imagenet dataset for the prompt a bus
shelter with a rooftop garden. The left image is generated with 1,000 iterations, the
right with 10,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.1 The number of papers per year which were included in the 254 relevant papers. . . 113
6.2 The percentage of papers (out of 242) in each of the four categories—focused,
covering, finding, and peripheral. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
A.1 Text2Image images of Bus Shelters with garden roofs generated by each of the four
prompts: a bus shelter with a garden on top (top left); a bus shelter with a garden
roof (top right); a bus shelter with a rooftop garden (bottom left); and a city bus
shelter with a garden on top (bottom right). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
A.2 The image of a Bus Shelter used to initialize the Optimized Image Prompt generator.192
A.3 Optimized Image Prompt images of Bus Shelters with garden roofs generated by
eachofthefourprompts: a bus shelter with a garden on top (topleft); a bus shelter
with a garden roof (top right); a bus shelter with a rooftop garden (bottom left);
and a city bus shelter with a garden on top (bottom right). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
A.4 Big Sleep images generated using the prompt a bus shelter with a garden on top.
The left image was generated without the tag “realistic” in comparison to the right
image where this tag was added. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
xii
Abstract
Today more than ever we are faced with urgent, global-scale sustainability challenges. Scientists
are urging everyone to contribute, and this includes the computing community. The Sustainable
Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI) community has been working on these kinds of sustainabil-
ity problems for almost two decades now. My research builds on the work of this community, in
particular the use of Practice Theory to examine the external structures that act on individuals,
often hampering their ability to make sustainable decisions. Using both qualitative and quanti-
tative methods from human-computer interaction, my research aim is to find local solutions to
global sustainability challenges while increasing community resilience and individual well-being.
First, I look at physical infrastructure through the lens of “social infrastructure”. I build
a prototype software, PatternPainter, to enable ordinary individuals to create 3D visualizations
for designs of new social spaces on abandoned land in their communities. Evaluation shows this
prototype allows individuals without design training to successfully create designs in 3D. I then
turn to qualitative methods from HCI, specifically photo elicitation and surveys, to add context
by examining how trained designers and untrained citizens view their physical environments dif-
ferently in the CommYOUnity Data Study. The observations from this study can be used to
inform building future technologies in the social infrastructure space. Finally, I turn to automa-
tion. I create a pipeline using the Pix2Pix style transfer algorithm and semantic segmentation to
automate the process of revitalizing city streets for pedestrian use.
In parallel, I also examine religion as a socio-cultural factor impacting sustainable decision
making. This builds on previous work in SHCI, which suggests that it is important to understand
xiii
the social, cultural, and psychological motivations behind sustainable decision making, so that
more effective technological solutions to facilitate these decisions can be built. To that end, I
conducted an interview study with 14 individuals from Catholic organizations who are involved
in sustainability work from a faith-based lens. I show how the insights from this study might be
used to build future technology in this space.
xiv
Chapter 1
Introduction
Our world has become increasingly globalized over the last few decades. It is now possible for
us to eat food grown halfway across the globe [117], to have any product we want shipped to us
almost instantly [51, 226], and to collaborate with colleagues across the country in real time [216].
However, despite many benefits, this increased globalization and the associated industrialization
has also ushered in a wave of serious global challenges, one of the most significant being severe
environmental degradation and climate change. The challenges of global sustainability are one of
the core motivations of my research.
Paradoxically, despite the global nature of the climate crisis, it has made us more reliant
than ever on our local communities. This is particularly true when shocks threaten our global
systems, showing how fragile they truly are. These shocks are becoming increasingly common
[117, 332, 429]. Climate scientists predict that extreme weather events and natural disasters are
going to become more common as the long term effects of climate change play out [439]. In recent
years, in the US alone, we have seen examples like worsening wildfire seasons in California [491]
and out of character winter weather in southern states [301].
Since beginning my research, we have also been hit by a global pandemic [114], which has
further motivated my research agenda. Like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic has also
demonstrated just how reliant we are on our local communities when it comes to our well-being.
1
While global travel almost halted and domestic shipping faced delays, we had to rely on our
neighbors and community members, not only for resources, but also to engage in practices like
masking and distancing to keep us all healthy [219, 312, 509]. Furthermore, scientists predict that
thismaynotbethelastpandemicweseeinourlifetimes[339,404]. Giventheseexamples, among
others, it is clear that we need to build resilient local communities as a buffer against failure in
these fragile global networks.
Thus, the main aim of my research is:
to find local solutions to global sustainability challenges while increasing community
resilience and individual well-being.
1.1 Sustainability, Resilience, and Well-being
I define the three key terms that underscore this agenda: sustainability, resilience, and well-being.
I define sustainability using the widely accepted definition from the United Nations Com-
missiononEnvironmentandDevelopmentas the ability of the present generation to meet its needs
while ensuring the ability of future generations to meet their needs [482]. In the present moment,
this requires substantial changes to lifestyle, particularly for many in high-income nations, to
avoid global calamities such as warming beyond 2
◦ C [54] or collapse due to the over-consumption
of non-renewable resources [304].
I define Resilience as the ability to weather and recover from shocks with minimal loss. These
shocks can be naturally occurring, such as natural disasters or man-made like financial crash.
Loss can come in various forms including loss of life, health, homes, financial resources, or safety
and security.
Idefine well-being asthe ability of individual community members to meet their needs. These
needscanincludephysicalneedssuchasfoodandshelter,emotionalneedssuchasfeelingsofsafety
or security, and social needs such as feelings of belonging within a community [77, 300].
2
It is important to note that while I adopt these definitions for the purpose of this dissertation,
sustainability, resilience, and well-being have all been heavily studied on their own in wide variety
of contexts [34, 45, 176, 355, 390, 415, 435] However, diving deeply into into these alternate
contexts and definitions is beyond the scope of this dissertation.
It is crucial to look at these three concepts together as they are complementary and often a
narrow focus on one will not succeed because the others are lacking. For example, links have
been made between sustainable behavior and psychological well-being [110], between resilience in
communities and individual well-being during natural disasters [245], and between resilience and
sustainability in various social-ecological systems [402]. While social science fields such as sociol-
ogy and psychology have made these connections, the Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction
(SHCI) community has not traditionally looked at these concepts in tandem. Rather, SHCI has
often focused on a narrowed vision of sustainability, which I discuss in more detail in the next
section.
While there were practitioners of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as early as the 1960s,
(see for example [135, 276]), it emerged in earnest as a sub-field of computer science in the early
1980s. It first gained traction largely in Scandinavia in response to the growing use of personal
computing technology in the workplace. The CHI conference also emerged during this time, held
for the first time in 1982, and annually since 1985 [3].As the years passed and computing became
more pervasive outside the workplace, HCI evolved to study all manner of factors intersecting
with technology use [73]. One of these factors was environmental sustainability, and by 2010,
Sustainable HCI (SHCI) had emerged as a sub-field in its own right [127]. In the next section,
I show how the dominant themes of research in SHCI have failed to engage substantially with
factors such as resilience and well-being, instead focusing on an individualist, consumer-centric
model. Ithenintroducemyownresearchthreads, groundedinresilienceandwell-being, andshow
how they differ from the dominant framing.
3
1.2 Sustainable HCI and Practice Theory
This section presents an overview of the history of and dominant themes in sustainable HCI.
Practice Theory has been introduced as an alternative to the traditional approach, and I discuss
how my research fits within this paradigm.
Sustainable HCI (SHCI) is considered by the HCI community to have started in 2007 with
the landmark article by Eli Blevis, in which he coined the term Sustainable Interaction Design
(SID) [66]. Three years later, DiSalvo et al. would coin the term Sustainble HCI (SHCI) in [127].
In this review of the literature, they found that one theme dominated: “persuasive technology”,
systemsdesignedtopersuadetheusertochangetheirbehavior, oftenresourceusage, insomeway
to produce more sustainable results [127]. This was followed by “ambient displays” as similarly
data-driven response which aims to enact behavior change by showing users data about their
environmental impact in some meaningful or creative manner [127].
Over the next half decade or so, these dominant methods would be criticized several times
over for their individual, rationalistic, consumer-driven focus [84, 248, 247, 249, 349]. However,
despite these criticisms data-driven, persuasive-type solutions continue to thrive in SCHI [144,
183, 189, 225, 282, 375]. In short, theconsiderationofotherfactorsasconnectedtosustainability,
for example community resilience and individual well-being, have largely been ignored.
One alternative attempting to correct this oversight which has gained traction is practice the-
ory. Practice theory focuses on how people engage in practices and the associated societal and
infrastructural structures that influence these practices instead of focusing on people as rational
consumers separate from the influence of outside elements [136, 190]. In particular, Entwistle
et al. introduced the Contextual Wheel of Practice in [136] as a framework for understanding
Practice Theory in relation to sustainable decision making. Their paper also provides a more
comprehensive overview of the theory and its history. Figure 1.1 shows the figure from [136],
which breaks down the four main components of a practice: The Individual, Societal Structure,
4
Infrastructure, and Near Materiality. The four factors interact to influence how people go about
their day to day activities or practices, including choosing those that are more sustainable. For
example, Entwistle et al. discuss how the infrastructure of a shared laundry room and the so-
cietal structures surrounding quiet hours in a shared living space influenced when residents in a
university dorm chose to do laundry and how these factors prevented them from doing laundry at
specific times when more sustainable energy was available [136]. Despite individual motivations
to live sustainably, these external factors made it difficult for them to do so. In what follows, I
show how Practice Theory provides a unifying framework for my two research threads.
Figure 1.1: The Contextual Wheel of Practice as presented in [136].
5
1.3 My Research Themes
My research looks to help people make sustainable choices outside of the individualistic, data-
drivenframeworkthatpermeatesSHCI,andtodosoinawaythatpromotescommunityresilience
and individual well-being. To do so, I turn to Practice Theory, using the contextual wheel of
practice as a guide (See Figure 1.1 and [136]). Rather than focusing on the Individual, my
research consists of two threads focusing on Infrastructure and Societal Structures, respectively.
As is pointed out in [136], while my work focuses on these two particular quadrants, all of the
quadrants overlap to some extent influencing one another, and this is true of my work as well.
In particular, my work looks at the following topics:
1. Building tools to help communities design physical urban environments that promote sus-
tainability, resilience, and well-being.
2. Analyzing the deeply embedded socio-cultural factors, in particular religion, that motivate
people to care for the environment and make sustainable choices, which allow us to build to
better tools and computing systems in the future.
In the next two sub-sections, I briefly overview each of these topics in more detail.
1.3.1 Physical Structures
Scholars have shown that, all other factors aside, one way to create resilient communities is to
buildlocalsocialcapital—”featuresofsocialorganization,suchasnetworks,norms,andtrust,that
facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” [370]. Social capital has been shown
to help communities prepare for and recover from natural disasters [318, 393]. In particular, so-
ciologist Eric Klinenberg showed that during the 1995 Chicago heatwave, people in communities
with higher levels of social capital fared better through the disaster, with fewer deaths and hospi-
talizations related to the heat [245]. Scholarship has also shown social capital to be beneficial to
communities in a number of other disparate ways, including for public health outcomes [128, 385],
6
especially for aging populations [230], and for creating a thriving local tourism sector [209, 327].
Unfortunately, scholarship has also shown that social capital is on the decline, particularly in the
US [363, 370]. One avenue for increasing social capital is to increase the presence and use of
social infrastructure, which is defined by sociologist Eric Klinenberg in his book Palaces for the
People as, ”the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact” [246]. He
shows how this kind of physical infrastructure leads to community resilience in several settings,
including during natural disasters and recovery.
The goal of this part of my research agenda is to explore how technology can be used to
mediate community-led development of social infrastructure. I specifically focus on community-
led initiatives for a number of reasons. First, local governments are increasingly challenged to
serve their constituents with fewer resources as tax bases shrink and state and federal assistance
becomes more scarce [21, 381]. Another issue with relying on local officials is that bias often
creeps into formal decision making, with whiter, wealthier residents having their voices heard
over residents who are poorer and in racial-minority groups (see for example [138]).
Klinenberg shows, communities with adequate social infrastructure tend to show greater re-
silience in the face of shocks [246], and other scholars have shown the impact of urban infras-
tructure on various aspects of well-being [252, 432, 456]. Furthermore, social infrastructure in
communities also contributes to encouraging sustainable lifestyles in a variety of ways. For exam-
ple, when people’s social needs are met within their neighborhoods they have less need to travel
outside of their communities, lessening their travel-related emissions.
Chapter 2 does a deep dive into the concept of social infrastructure and looks at how the HCI
community has interfaced with the concept.
1.3.2 Socio-Cultural Factors
As Figure 1.1 and [136] show, infrastructure is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to
creating the right conditions for sustainable practices to flourish. The presence of the right
7
infrastructure alone is not necessarily sufficient to motivate its use. Therefore, my second thread
of research dives into the social or cultural factors that induce people to care about sustainable
decision making.
Practice Theory shows how social factors can play into sustainable decision making [136], so
is important to gain a deep understanding of these factors. As Knowles and Eriksson argue in
[249], understanding the underlying psychology of these motivations is important, because the
dominant paradigm of putting responsibility on individual consumers and assuming they will act
withfullrationalityhasprovenineffective. Thisstrategyhasonlysucceededincreatingfeelingsof
guilt and deviance that make it harder for people to engage with problems as daunting as climate
change. In general, HCI research often starts with ethnographic studies of the factors of interest
[322, 362, 451], and papers of a solely ethnographic nature are often an important first step in
HCI for identifying design opportunities for future projects [314, 427, 494].
Inparticular,thissubsetofmyworkfocusesonreligionasasocio-culturalfactorthatmotivates
sustainable living. As Chapter 6 will show, despite repeated calls from various scholars over the
last 15-or-so years, religion has been largely understudied by the HCI community despite the
role it plays in many areas of life that intersect with computing use [86]. Although, this is
beginning to change due to recent work by scholars such as Buie, Hammer, and Rifat among
others [19, 86, 182, 383].
My work builds on recent research by Rifat et al. that makes a connection between the values
of Islam as practiced in Bangladesh and sustainable habits. In contrast to [383], which focuses on
a context in which religion is both largely homogeneous and highly integrated into local politics
and culture, my work focuses on Catholic individuals and organizations promoting and practicing
sustainability in the United States. Chapter 7 details the study and its findings.
8
1.4 Outline of this Dissertation
Thischapterintroducedthelarge-scaleglobalchallengesthatmotivatemyresearch. Ithenbriefly
discussed important concepts and background before outlining my research agenda. This agenda
consists of two threads tied together by the practice theory approach to SHCI.
The next chapter presents a deep dive into the concept of social infrastructure and how it has
beentreatedpreviouslyinHCIresearch. Ithenpositionmyscholarshiponphysicalinfrastructure
in relation to this previous work.
Afterlayingoutthisbackground,IstartedbybuildingPatternPainter,atooltoallowordinary
citizens to create three-dimensional representations of designs for revitalizing empty urban lots
(see Chapter 3). Validation showed this tool can easily be used by people without expertise in
urban design to create meaningful designs.
After validating the prototype, I built the CommYOUnity data site (Chapter 4), turning
to photo-elicitation (a common technique in HCI [167, 174]) to contextualize the knowledge of
ordinarycitizensincomparisontotheknowledgeoftrainedurbandesigners. Thisstudyyieldedsix
insights which can be used in the design of tools for non-experts to engage in urban revitalization
and design. I then use these insights to propose three speculative technologies that put these
observations to work.
At the same time, I also began to explore what automation might offer as part of these tools.
Chapters 5 and ?? present the results of two explorations using the style transfer algorithm
Pix2Pix and a variety of generative algorithms, respectively. These chapters show that generative
AIisapotentiallypromisingavenue,butexistingchallengesincludinglimitedavailabilityofstate-
of-the-art models, resource requirements, and dataset constraints, all play a role in limiting the
utility of these methods in ordinary (i.e., non-research) settings.
In parallel with my work on physical infrastructure, I looked to ethnographic techniques to
begin understanding the socio-cultural factors that support sustainable decision making. For this
9
work, I usedsemi-structured interviewsandinductivetextualanalysis, twocommontechniquesin
ethnographic HCI studies. Specifically, I examined the role of religion in motivating sustainable
choices. In Chapter 6, I present a detailed review of religion in HCI, filling a gap in the literature.
The following chapter (7) presents my study of the practice of Catholic ecospirituality in the
United States and how it can inform the design of technology to motivate sustainable decisions.
Finally, inChapter8Iconcludebydiscussingmyfutureplansforboththreadsofmyresearch.
10
Chapter 2
Social Infrastructure in HCI Research
As mentioned in Chapter 1, the term “Social Infrastructure” was coined by Eric Klinenberg
in [246] to refer to the physical structures in a community that influence how people meet and
interactwithoneanother. Therearevarioustypesofsocialinfrastructurecoveringbothpublicand
private institutions and spanning both indoors and outdoors. For the purposes of my research I
focusmostlyonpublic,outdoorspacessuchasparks,communitygardens,anddowntownshopping
plazas. Othercategoriesofsocialinfrastructureincludepublicindoorspaces, suchaslibrariesand
community centers, and private spaces, both outdoors (private recreation facilities) and indoors
(businesses like cafes, often referred to as “third places”).
Whilethesealternativespacescouldcertainlyproviderichgroundforresearch(seeforexample
[111, 125, 207, 389]), the main aim of my research is facilitating community-led initiatives to
directly design social infrastructure, and public, outdoor spaces offer the most leverage in this
sense. In contrast indoor spaces are likely to have more restrictions surrounding physical change
andprivatespacesareoftenultimatelyprofitdriven, orattheveryleastrelyonprofitstosurvive,
which can constrain the potential for making changes.
Tothatend,inthenextsectionIintroduce“TheResearchSpectrumforSocialInfrastructure”
as a framework for thinking about the ways that HCI research can be leveraged to influence social
infrastructure to increase social capital in communities. The spectrum is marked with five points
11
indicating various research threads in the social infrastructure space. As I will show in the
coming sections, these threads have largely been explored as separate or disjoint. For instance,
many of the previous studies in what we define as the implementation space are either short-term
installations requiring no maintenance, or end without considerations of the project’s long-term
upkeep(communityhand-off). Inaresponsetothispreviouswork,andrecentcallsforscholarship
with longer-term engagement ([158, 387]), the main contribution of this chapter is positioning the
various previous contributions on the spectrum and showing how they contribute to the larger,
overarching agenda of improving social infrastructure (although almost none of the studies use
this term). I end the chapter by position my own work on this spectrum.
2.1 The Research Spectrum for Social Infrastructure
IdevelopedtheResearchSpectrummodelasaframeworkfororganizingpreviousresearchabouta
topic and thinking about the various leverage points where HCI techniques have been applied and
where gaps exist in the research. While I developed the spectrum in terms of social infrastructure
research, I believe it is a more broadly applicable tool that could be used to map the research in
other areas of HCI where a community-engaged model is applied, for example in the context of
mHealth interventions [124, 424, 496] or technology for education [49, 311, 392, 498]. The main
differencewouldbedefiningwhateachofthefivepointsmeansinthisnewcontext, and/oradding
or removing additional points of reference.
The spectrum contains five reference points organized along a roughly temporal scale from
ideation and design through handing the project over to the community. The five reference points
are: speculation and design, implementation, maintenance, engagement, and community hand-
off . Each of these points offers a place where HCI scholars might engage in the development of
community projects such as social infrastructure.
12
Figure 2.1: The Research Spectrum for Social Infrastructure, consisting of five labeled points:
Speculation and Design, Implementation, Maintenance, Engagement, and Community Hand-Off,
representing various research paradigms
It is important to note at the outset that the spectrum is just that, a spectrum, and therefore
the marked points are not rigid boundaries, but general indicators of different types of research.
In the same vein, research projects may not fit neatly under one particular label, but may span
the spectrum crossing into various spaces. However, in order to position research on the spectrum
it is helpful to have some discrete points of reference.
Inthenextfivesections, Iwilldefineeachofthefivereferencepointsinrelationtowhatmakes
it different than the others and give an overview of previous HCI scholarship in the space. Briefly,
speculation and design concerns thinking about new technological tools (speculation) as well as
building tools to help communities think about their spaces (design). Implementation refers to
the act of physically creating new instances of social infrastructure, for instance, building a new
park. Maintenance is the process by which this infrastructure is cared for, particularly in the case
of community-led initiatives such as a community garden. Engagement is about encouraging the
use of this infrastructure, because its benefits are directly tied to its use by the community, not
justitspresence. Finally, communityhand-offlooksatwhathappenstoprojectswhenresearchers
leave a project and the community must take over its care. As I will show over the course of the
subsequent sections, all five of these spaces have been explored by the HCI community.
13
2.2 Speculation and Design
It is important to note that speculation and design are included as one point of reference despite
slight differences between the two because they are closely related. I define speculation as the
act of thinking about potential solutions or ideas for new social infrastructure, often in the form
of new technologies. Often, these speculative solutions are not technologically possible or sound.
Speculation is a means of entering into creative dialogue, but does not require an outcome that is
realistic or actionable. On the other hand, I define the related concept of design to be the act of
creating and planning a solution to be implemented in a particular instance. In essence, design
is an act of speculation under specific and realistic parameters. In some sense, the design phase
‘stops’ just before the actual implementation, which will be discussion in the next section.
2.2.1 Prior Work
In this section, I briefly describe prior work that is purely speculative, then I discuss prior work
in design.
As mentioned, speculation is largely considered a tool to elicit new ideas often in a way that
provokes thought about some kind of issue rather than as a way to actually come up with realistic
ideas for new infrastructure or technology. For example, in [194], participants were asked to think
about how blockchain could be used in new or creative ways to help govern common resources,
but were asked to consider this question from the perspective of non-human stakeholders like
birds, bees, and farm animals. The goal of the project was not to design deployable blockchain
programs, but rather to encourage participants to think more deeply about the resources in their
local food systems. Other examples include, [53], which looks at the inclusion of populations who
areoftenmarginalizedandleftoutoftheparticipatorydesignprocess; [103],whichsimilarto[194]
looks at the inclusion of non-humans in design; and [31], which looks at speculative scenarios for
play in the smart city.
14
Design, then, is speculation under a set of realistic parameters. In the urban planning case,
design typically asks how a space can be improved in some meaningful way. (Although who
defines what constitutes “improvement” may be contested.) The HCI community has engaged
with urban design in a variety of ways. Much of this work has revolved around helping designers
facilitate the participatory design process, eliciting ideas from community members to be turned
into designs by professionals [?, 100, ?].
Oftengamesareusedtocreateamoreplayfulatmosphere, whichhasbeenshowntohelpelicit
better participation [100, 173, 366]. Games can also be used to help people understand problems
from another point of view. For example, Gordon and Schirra’s Participatory Chinatown asks
people to take on the role of various community members allowing them to speculate about
different ways of being in their community as a means of empathizing with the needs of other
residents [173].
2.3 Implementation
I define implementation as the process of creating new infrastructure. For example, putting in a
newparklet (asmallpark)or revitalizingbusstopstoincludeseatingandspaceforengagingwith
fellow riders. This is the physical work that comes after various options have been considered
and a design has been selected to operationalize, setting this stage apart from speculation and
design. Some parts of the implementation process may have a maintenance flavor—for example,
clearing out an abandoned lot to make room for a community garden—but I differentiate the
two by defining maintenance as the act of maintaining existing social infrastructure, not includ-
ing maintenance done in the process of creating new infrastructure. While implementing new
infrastructure might include ”engaging” volunteers to do the work of building the infrastructure,
I separate the sub-goals of implementation and engagement, by defining engagement as the pro-
cess of using existing infrastructure, in contrast with the process of creating new infrastructure.
15
Maintenance may also be part of the long-term process after community hand-off, but I define
community hand-off as setting up the actual process of hand-off so that the work required after
may be performed successfully.
2.3.1 Prior Work
Specifically looking at HCI and related communities, there is a great deal of focus on technology
itself as social infrastructure. For instance in there are numerous works on smart installations
or multi-media displays in public, urban spaces [153, 336, 409, 497]. While these are interesting,
and can be effective ways of engaging citizens, I am more interested in the technological media-
tion of building traditional types of social infrastructure as opposed to the use of media as social
infrastructure. (Although Section 2.5 discussed how technology can be used to augment existing
infrastructure for the purpose of engagement.) One of the main issues with this kind of techno-
logical installation is that they are often temporary installations, which are less likely to lead to
long-term social capital building.
Given the nature of the HCI community, even when projects do implement or work with more
traditional kinds of infrastructure, they often have a technological bent [41, 162, 295, 453]. For
instance, Galweicz et al. worked on building skateboard infrastructure that included interactive
components [162].
Another part of implementation is tools that guide or assist communities with the imple-
mentation process. The computing community, including HCI, has engaged in building tools
to help professionals such as urban planners and architects implement infrastructure projects
[102, 255, 463, 487]. However, as far as I can find, there have not been instances of similar tools
implemented specifically for autonomous use by non-experts.
Another area related to implementation that has been explored in the HCI and CSCW litera-
ture is community resource sharing [41, 141, 303, 483]. Many resource sharing platforms connect
individuals with resources to share [141, 303]. However, more relevant in this case are projects
16
that create a physical space in which resource sharing takes place [41, 483]. For instance, Aseeri
et al.’s Freedge system for food sharing, which built a centrally located fridge where community
members might come to know one another as they stock or take items [41].
2.4 Maintenance
Idefine maintenance astheupkeepdonetoexistingsocialinfrastructure. Thisincludestaskssuch
as keeping park equipment maintained, weeding and watering community gardens, and curating
little free libraries. I specifically focus on work done by community members or local non-profits
as opposed to the work done by local government bodies. Maintenance is an important issue that
often gets left out of studies on urban installations. For practical reasons, many studies are often
short-term pop-ups [155, 329] or end before the installation of new infrastructure even begins
[268]. Maintenance is differentiated from engagement, as focusing specifically on upkeep type
tasks, while defining engagement is getting people to interact with social infrastructure outside of
maintaining the spaces.
2.4.1 Prior Work
That the maintenance space is the area with the least prior work when specifically focused on
upkeep tasks done to social infrastructure by community members. Liao et al. provide a good
overview of community volunteerism practices in a more general sense [275].
If we expand the scope slightly, there are a number of projects designed to forward complaints
about infrastructure of other local issues to city officials to be assigned to city maintenance crews
[76, 321, 351, 481]. One of the major problems that many of these systems have is a lack of
accountability [351]. It is often difficult to follow-up and make sure concerns are addressed by the
city.
17
Developing ways to help citizens get directly involved in maintenance are interesting for a
number of reasons. First, they takes some of the burden off of city governments which may be
strapped for cash and other resources. (Although as Douglas points out, it is important to ensure
that the local government is doing their part, not putting undue burden on citizens or community
groups [129].) Second, being involved in maintenance tasks is a way to bring citizens together
around a common goal, and therefore a way to build additional social capital [469].
One project of interest is the Block-by-Block study [307]. In this study, the authors analyze a
community-led initiative in which participants document issues in their neighborhoods, typically
properties that are not receiving proper upkeep. What is unique about the initiative is that
citizens can choose to forward the issue to the city as a codes violation or mark it to be handled
internally by community intervention. Those complaints sent to the city were typically about
properties owned by absentee landlords who are not a part of the community and are seen as
exploiting the neighborhood by letting their properties fall into disrepair. Those marked to be
handled in a community fashion were typically owned by community residents who, for whatever
reason, needadditionalresourcestokeepuptheirproperties. Thisallowedresidentstobuildtrust
with their neighbors as opposed to working through the official code violation system, which was
seenasremovedfromthelocalcommunityandmightpenalizecommunitymemberswhojustneed
a little extra assistance. Although this is the kind of community-led approach to handling issues
my work seeks to engage with, the properties being maintained in this case were typically owned
by private residents and not necessarily public, social infrastructure.
Another study of interest is the analysis done by Webster et al. of neighborhood book ex-
changes (often popularly referred to as ”little free libraries”) [483]. The study explores how
community members steward their little libraries, and touches on how these ”librarians” work
to make these installations community-oriented spaces by included things like bulletin boards for
local notices or seating. Although the study explores the motivations of these particular residents
18
for stewarding their libraries, it does not look at how this kind of motivation might be built
amongst other community members.
Another project, directly related to engaging community members in tasks such as donating
to local charities or volunteering for local projects is the ACTion Alexandria platform, which
was designed specifically as part of an initiative in the city of Alexandria, Virginia [184]. The
authors who studied the platforms implementation and first few months coined the term ”civic
action brokering” to refer to how it was used to broker relationships between non-profits seeking
assistant, both financial and volunteers, and interested citizens. One of the main findings of the
study was that the full-time staff member dedicated to running the site and working with non-
profits to list their needs was an integral part of its success [184]. This begs the question how
to make a similar system work with less moderation overhead. Another issue analyzed by these
author is the engagement imbalance. This is the idea that there are often a few super-engaged
participants and a whole bunch of one-off participants, and it is not unique to the ACTion
Alexandria platform [184, 275].
Similar to the ACTion Alexandria platform is the general concept of time banking, “a frame-
work for giving and receiving services in exchange for time credits: each person’s time is worth
exactly the same – one hour equals one time credit, whatever the service given...volunteer’s hours
are ‘banked’ and can be ‘withdrawn’ later when they need help themselves” [412]. While many
time banks are used for providing services directly from one person to another, particularly in
the US context, others focus more at the level of community organizations [417]. Carroll et al.
studied the feasibility of integrating volunteerism and time banking in [90], but as far as I can
find their platform was never actually implemented in practice. One major benefit of time banks
is that even in the general case where services are provided individual to individual they have
been shown to increase social capital [511]. However, similar to other participatory platforms,
they suffer from issues of unequal participation by members [298, 417].
19
Anotherpromisingaspectoftimebanksisthattheyareoftenusedbymembersofmarginalized
communities both as a way to access services and contribute back to the community in ways they
may not be able to as part of the formal economy [411, 417]. On a related note, one other
potentially promising method for maintaining social infrastructure is the use of job programs,
particularly those that employ marginalized community members such as at-risk youth or those
returning from recent incarceration [197]. Not only can these programs help maintain social
infrastructure, but they allow their members to participate in both the social capital building
that comes from engaging with social infrastructure and in the local economy. Of course, this
kind of program needs sustained funding and management, which can be difficult, particularly in
row-resource communities.
2.5 Engagement
I define engagement as the process of getting people to use existing social infrastructure. En-
gagement is one of the most challenging pieces of the social infrastructure puzzle. Having a
well-maintained park or community garden is fine, but it is not going to increase community
social capital if no one is using it and thus community members are not interacting with one
another.
2.5.1 Prior Work
WhileIlookatsomestudieswhichspecificallydealwithengagingpeopleintheirlocalcommunities
and in using social infrastructure, engagement is a problem that goes far beyond this use case.
Therefore, I also look at techniques which might be borrowed from other sectors.
One of the biggest trends in technology for local engagement is hyper-local communication
platforms such as NextDoor [286, 299, 320, 473]. While these systems can play a role in building
local social capital and engaging residents to use social infrastructure, there are important ethical
20
considerations that must be addressed. When building online platforms to encourage engagement
we must be sure that these platforms remain spaces which are equitable and friendly for engaging
with fellow community members. Nextdoor [299] is a famously bad example of this. The hyper-
local social media platform has a history of being used for self-surveillance of neighborhoods,
particularly by whiter, wealthier, residents, with online posts of “suspicious” people often leading
to offline consequences for people of color [259, 263].
Although it was mentioned in the implementation section that technology based installations
arenotalwaysthebestoption,theyareusefulforbringingpeopletotherightplaces. Forexample,
AguiarandGreen’stransFORM—acyber-physicalinstallationdesignedtoactivateunusedpublic
spaces[23]. However, it is important to be aware of whether or not these systems create long term
engagement beyond their lifespan.
Another use for technology is in making spaces safer or more friendly for users. In some cases,
this might be through the use of personal applications like Blom et al.’s ComfortZones, which
allowed users to share their location with the rest of the user community as well as tag places
where they had felt unsafe as pedestrians or using transit [71]. However, physical technology
installations can also play a role in making spaces feel safer. For example Zhang et al.’s HelloBox
system,whichusesRFIDtagstoallowparentstoremotelymonitortheirchildrenastheynavigate
the neighborhood and play in a local park [515].
Another heavily used strategy for engagement across use domains is gamification [122]. Gam-
ification has been widely used across a wide variety of domains including in health promotion
[32, 271], in citizen science [210, 344], and in the workplace [253, 257]. It has also been applied ex-
tensivelytotraditionalparticipatoryurbanplanningasameansforengagingresidentswithissues
in their urban environments [100, 173, 366], as was mentioned in Section 2.2.1. Beyond this, it
has also been studied in the context of encouraging residents to explore their cities [59, 348, 437].
In [348], City Explorer, was built to encourage commuters to engage with places along their route
as well as with their fellow commuters. One can imagine creating a similar system to engage
21
residents in visiting social infrastructure in their immediate neighborhoods, as opposed to along
a commute.
Ofcoursenotallurbangamesaredirectlyintendedtoencouragetheuseofsocialinfrastructure
orsocialcapitalbuilding; itcanbeanindirecteffect. Oneofthemostwell-knownexamplesofthis
is Pokemon Go, which swept the world in the summer of 2016 [342]. The game brought people
to various public places to look for Pokemon and to engage in battles with other players. Studies
have shown that Pokemon Go did encourage in-person interaction between collocated players
[341]. However, it is unclear if these interactions led to any meaningful, long-term social capital
building. This is a general theme with gamification approaches; studies show that this kind of
extrinsic motivation to engage in tasks does not necessarily translate to long term engagements
[395]. Other studies of Pokemon Go have highlighted how its geography privileges certain areas
over others, tending to privilege more affluent urban areas [105], which as was mentioned earlier
is an important consideration when doing this kind of work.
Althoughthisworklargelyrefrainsfromdiscussingprivatelyownedbusinesses,localeconomies,
particularlylocallyownedbusinesses,canplayapartincreatingsuccessfulengagementwithsocial
infrastructure. Thisisparticularlytruewhenthisinfrastructureiscloselytiedtothesebusinesses,
such as a main downtown shopping street or nearby public plaza. As Jane Jacobs observes in her
classic planning book The death and life of great American cities, the small business owners on
her street are an important part of the fabric of their thriving community [218]. Particularly for
small businesses that are locally owned, there is some incentive on the part of business owners to
ensure a thriving community, with resources that can be poured back into their business.
One method that has been used as an attempt to bolster local economies is local currencies—
currencies designed to be earned and spent only at businesses within a certain locality [106]. The
concept is quite similar to the time banking concept described in Section 2.4.1, but instead of
being based solely on individual exchange, community currencies can also be spent at select local
22
businessesjustasmainstreamcurrencycan. However,thesecurrenciesoftenhavetroublecatching
on and becoming widely used within communities [106].
As an alternative, Knowles et al. created the BARTER system, an application designed to
persuade community members and local business owners to spend locally without the use of an
alternative currency [250]. I feel that encouraging local spending is a promising approach for
engaging community members, not the least because if community members are spending money
locally, it also means they are spending time locally.
2.6 Community Hand-Off
I define community hand-off as the process by which a research team extracts themselves from an
ongoingproject,leavingit’scontinueduseandmaintenancecompletelyinthehandsofcommunity
members. Therehavebeenrecentcallswithinthecommunitytopaymoreattentiontothisprocess
when doing community engaged scholarship.
2.6.1 Prior Work
As with engagement, the problem of community hand-off goes beyond just social infrastructure
projects, so this section looks at the problem in the broader context of civic technology, not all of
which would necessarily be classified as social infrastructure [47, 454]
One of the main catalysts to look at community hand-off is the question of who benefits from
our research when we do community engaged work [454, 181, 185]? While the researchers clearly
receive benefits, usually in the form of publications and the associated professional currency, it
is less clear that the communities with whom we are working (exploiting some might argue) are
benefiting [48, 185]. In particular, when we swoop in with short-term interventions, but fail
to make provisions to hand these interventions over to the community it is not clear that any
long-term good is actually being done.
23
In [452], Taylor et al. reflect on two projects which were handed off to community members
aftertheresearchershadfinishedwiththem. Theylookatbothwhatwentwell, butalsocritically
examine what went wrong and offer suggestions for future researchers engaged in community
hand-off. Others have since followed suit [48, 181]. Two major lessons have emerged from these
reflections and explorations. The first is to involve citizens from the start so that they have a
comfort level with and ownership of the technology and data needed to keep the project running
[47, 181, 454]. The second is that community champions are incredibly important. As was
indicated with maintenance and engagement, it is typically a small number of participants who
do the bulk to the work in these types of projects. Identifying and working with these users
early on is very important. This can be even more important than sustained funding as money is
irrelevant without someone to do the required work [46].
As Rossitto points out, it canalsobeinstructiveto look atthelongterms effectsofshort-term
community projects and consider tangential effects on community members who may not have
been directly engaged in the research process [387]. This is especially important for short-term
or pop-up installations, which have a limited time to make an impact, but may make an impact
beyond what we might view as the project’s sphere of influence.
2.7 Positioning my Scholarship
My scholarship falls into the realm of speculation and design. In particular, my work looks
at building design tools to help grassroots community organizations without professional design
expertise visualize and plan community revitalization efforts. In the next four chapters I explain
each of my projects in this area in detail.
24
Chapter 3
PatternPainter: A Tool for Citizen-Led Design
ThischapterintroducesPatternPainter,atooltoallowcommunitymemberstoproduce3Ddesigns
to revitalize abandoned urban lots. This project makes the following contributions:
1. We examine how the foundations of “democratization” in the literature—previously ap-
plied in citizen science—inform or contrast with the design of systems for grassroots urban
planning and revitalization.
2. We prototype PatternPainter, a design aid for urban repair projects, which allows 3D ele-
ments to be placed within a scene to easily visualize designs. We use as an exemplar the
scenarioofdesigninganurbanparklet(smallpark)inanabandonedlot,acommonchallenge
in urban areas across the world.
3. We demonstrate PatternPainter’s efficacy through a series of experiments performed on
Amazon’sMechanicalTurk. Ourexperimentsshowthattheprototypesystemcanbyusedby
people with little to no prior experience or training and no expert intervention to effectively
communicate designs for urban repair in the context of an abandoned lot.
Beyondtheseconcretecontributions, ourresultsshowthatordinarypeoplecanproducemean-
ingful designs for an urban repair scenario with little training given the right tools, which we
believe has implications for other design-oriented fields.
25
In the rest of this chapter, I first motivate the project, situating it within the space of democ-
ratizing community engagement within both urban design and citizen science. In the following
two sections, I review relevant background information, introducing Alexander’s classic planning
tome A Pattern Language, which served as a major source of inspiration for this work and then
reviewingrelatedworkincitizenscience, showinghowthedemocratizationofthesefieldsparallels
withurbanplanning. InSection3.4IdiscussthedesignandimplementationofthePatternPainter
tool, and how it differs from other available urban planning software. I then discuss how we eval-
uated the software using a series of Mechanical Turk experiments and discuss the results. Finally,
I conclude with a discussion about lessons learned from the experiments and areas for future work
and investigation in this domain.
3.1 Motivation
In the best of all possible worlds, both the professional and citizen planner would be
using the guide together, as they jointly set about drafting a neighborhood plan... This
book uses a democratic, participatory planning approach, and the planner working
without the people has perhaps picked up the wrong book!
Neighborhood Planning: A Guide for Citizens and Planners, Bernie Jones [229]
In theory, methods for engaging citizens in the urban planning process are highly egalitarian,
placing strong emphasis on democracy and the equality of laypeople and professional planners.
This is evidenced by the quote above from one of the leading manuals on participatory methods
forneighborhoodplanning. Suchapproachestoparticipatorydesignarenotconfinedtotherealm
of urban planning, but are also used in HCI and other fields with prominent design cultures.
26
However, many participatory methods are egalitarian only in their process. When imple-
mented, such a narrowly circumscribed “participation” is insufficient to create egalitarian out-
comes. Indeed, in city revitalization, it is often the case that good processes, such as participa-
tory design, yield little beyond providing cover for the preordained decisions of city officials (see
[113, 218, 386]). In past experiences with city planning the research team has witnessed firsthand
city officials dictating constraints to planners before participatory planning begins, especially re-
garding budgets, and these constraints are often not shared with residents. Such constraints and
objectivescreatepreordainedoutcomesthatarelaterjustifiedbytheplanners[386]. Forexample,
planners may be forced—due to budget, space, and other exogenous constraints—to select those
community-member ideas that align best with official, hidden constraints.
Arnstein’sladderofcitizenparticipationcanbeusedasaguidetoexaminethisdividebetween
theory and practice [38]. Urban planning texts such as Jones’s [229] would have us believe that
participatorymethodsinurbanplanningareintherealmof“degreesofcitizenpower”somewhere
betweenrungssix(partnership)andseven(delegatedpower)onArnstein’sladder. Theideaisthat
citizensareatleastequalsinthedecisionmakingprocess,ifnotholdingslightlymorepower. This
may be the intention, but it is often far from reality. Even the most sincere and well-intentioned
planner cannot easily overcome the weight of bureaucracy and money. Predetermined budgets,
theimpetustoseekonlytheprofitable, theinterestsofpowerfulandwealthystakeholders, limited
avenues for disadvantaged members of the community to weigh in, and lack of adequate time for
eliciting deep citizen participation, among other challenges, are antithetical to a truly democratic
process[373]. Intheresearchers’sexperience, therealityofparticipatorydesigninurbanplanning
typicallyfallsbetweenrungfour(consultation)andrungone(manipulation)onArnstein’sladder.
Our goal in this work is to allow citizens to break out of this limiting urban planning status quo.
An obvious remedy—direct citizen action—is at hand, but it too does not quite achieve the
goal. Theoretically, direct citizen action is known as tactical urbanism (also known as guerilla or
do-it-yourself(DIY)urbanism)[290]. However, asDouglasshowsin[129], manytacticalurbanists
27
have extensive knowledge of urban planning theory and municipal codes, with quite a few of them
actually holding day jobs in city government or urban planning. This highlights two problems
with both today’s urban planning and its DIY alternatives: 1) formal expertise is often seen as
necessary even in a DIY setting and 2) official city-planning processes are broken enough that
even those who work within the system seek to go around it.
1
Thus, in this work, we seek a middle ground. We seek to give ordinary people tools that will
allow them to achieve visceral communication of their goals and desires with planners and city
officials. This cooperation will give citizens more control over their input; unlike participatory
designprocesses,inourapproachthereislessroomforcitizenideasandprioritiestobeabstracted
away by planners or officials creating final designs.
For inspiration, we turn to the citizen science movement. Science is a field that was once ruled
almost exclusively by experts with extensive training and formal degrees. However, the rise of
citizen science has started to change this, democratizing access to the production of knowledge
[347]. Citizen science started as a way for experts to collect and annotate data which they oth-
erwise may not have been able to access—activities which would rate low on Arnstein’s ladder of
participation in the totality of knowledge production [38]. However, citizen science has recently
begunexpandingtoincludeprojectsthatallowcitizenstoengageinthefullknowledge-production
process from forming hypotheses to crafting experiments and analyzing results [346, 371]. Tech-
nologyhasplayedanimportantpartinthisshift, withtechnologicaltoolsguidingordinarypeople
to collect and access data and carry out processes in ways that were once unavailable to them
(see for example [260]).
With citizen science’s democratization in mind, we consider the very first step in the urban re-
vitalizationprocess—creatinganewdesignforaspace. Typically, oncespaceisidentified, experts
use resident feedback to produce a final design. Usually this feedback is abstract, in the form of
priority lists, sketches, or highly abstract designs. Thus the job of the experts is to make concrete
1
We acknowledge that this perspective may be specific to the U.S. and that it is possible that in other countries
the urban planning processes in place today are less bureaucratic and more egalitarian.
28
these abstractions. We allow people to bypass the designer and create their own 3D designs for
urban repair projects without the need for expert assistance.
Positionality Statement. We include this statement to give context regarding the researchers’s
backgrounds and how they might have affected the lens through which urban planning and par-
ticipatory design are viewed, as well as the design of the PatternPainter tool. Despite our best
efforts to maintain neutrality of aestheticwhile designing thetool, someof the designdecisions do
represent to some extent the aesthetic perspectives of the authors. The author of this dissertation
is a white female who was born and raised in a small, rural town in the Mid-Atlantic U.S., in
which both resident-led and local government sponsored events and festivals are a common and
important part of the community structure. The second researcher is a non-white male from the
Western U.S. with family ties to and significant time spent in the Global South, and who has
extensive experience personally implementing successful tactical urbanism-style projects and also
seeing failures of participatory design processes. These experiences and perspectives have led us
to conclude that there is a need for the HCI community to apply its understanding of computing
in such settings to improve the cities around us.
3.2 A Pattern Language
Inthissection,webrieflyintroducetheclassicplanningtome A Pattern Language byAlexanderet
al. The book served as a major source of inspiration for this work. The inside jacket reads, “At
the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses,
streets, and communities...it comessimplyfromtheobservationthatmostofthewonderfulplaces
of the world were not made by architects but by the people,” aligning perfectly with our vision
of a more bottom-up, citizen-led approach to urban planning and repair [28].
29
At the book’s heart is a language of 253 patterns, which the authors note can be used “...to
work with your neighbors, to improve your town and neighborhood. You can use it do design a
houseforyourself,withyourfamily; ortoworkwithotherpeopletodesignanofficeoraworkshop
or a public building like a school.” The authors define a pattern, “The elements of this language
are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again
in our environment, and then describe the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way
that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”
Theoretically, anyone could take Alexander’s language and put together a design for a whole
region or a single room. However, the book’s size (1100+ pages!) and structural complexity are
barriers. Mostpeopledonothavethetimeorenergyneededtodivedeeplyintothebook. Thusin
using it as our inspiration we are able to extract the relevant pieces and present them to potential
usersinaneasierformat. Oneofthethingsweappreciatemostaboutthelanguageisthatitoffers
a framework that is both rooted in expert planning principles and offers significant flexibility for
customization and creativity. This balance is key as we do not want to force a specific aesthetic
or vision on the user. On a similar note, we also like the variety in the patterns. There are
patterns that are common and well-tested. For example, it is well documented that trees (pattern
171) contribute immensely to the livability of a community [42]. However, there are also patterns
that are less commonly accepted, and perhaps even controversial in some cases. For instance,
for lifelong urbanites the idea of animals (pattern 74) living outside of a zoo or farm might be
unthinkable, and sleeping in public (pattern 94) is usually seen as something to eradicate rather
than something to embrace.
In Section 3.4, we describe in more detail how Alexander’s work directly influenced the design
of PatternPainter.
30
3.3 Related Work
Therisingpopularityofcitizenscienceinrecentyearshasledtoagrowthinthenumberofprojects
available to citizens. Several taxonomies have been developed to classify this growing number of
projects. These taxonomies typically classify project by the different levels of engagement they
offer to participants [371, 418, 489]. Like Arnstein’s ladder [38], Shirk et al. develop a spectrum
of five classifications ranging from contractual (participation only in data collection) to collegial
(participation in all stages of the project and related knowledge production) [418]. Their study,
along with others (see [347, 371]), shows that in general, citizen science projects tend toward the
contractual end of the spectrum [418]. Qaurooni et al. coin the term “crowd science” for projects
at this end of the spectrum and use “civic science” to describe projects at the opposite end [371].
Qaurooni et al. relate this dichotomy to the struggles of the participatory design (PD) com-
munity, “in realizing ‘genuine participation’.” [371]. Participatory design has a long history of
struggling with what constitutes quality engagement and how to realize it [107, 234, 455]. These
challenges include, but are not limited to, how to include the voices of socially dis-empowered
populations [171], the monetary costs that PD activities can add to projects in resource-strapped
communities[361], andissuesoftransparencyandaccountability[343,396]. Wepositionourwork
as part of this struggle, in particular the struggle to give more autonomy to grassroots groups
within the community. Teli et al. present this dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up led
PD using the terms, “institutioning, which describes engagement with institutions, and com-
moning, which describes engagement with grassroots communities and by extension alternative
economicframeworksthatchallengethestatusquo”[455]. Wepositionourworkwithinthe”com-
moning” paradigm. In particular, as a tool to help achieve the redundancy of design researchers,
which Teli et al. note ”can be a desirable outcome” [455] when the goal is creating self-sustaining,
grassroots change.
31
While Qaurooni and co-authors focus on PD in broad terms, we narrow the focus to look
specifically at efforts in urban planning and repair. In the following, we will show that their
dichotomy of “crowd” versus “civic” found in citizen science exists in the HCI and Community
Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) communities’ urban planning and repair work, and that
there is a similar bias toward the “crowd” end of the spectrum.
3.3.1 Citizens as Sensors
A majority of citizen science projects position citizens as sensors. They collect and annotate
data or perform other simple tasks, but their role does not go beyond these cursory functions
[78, 369, 457]. We see a similar trend in HCI applications for urban repair [235, 268, 293]. For
instance, Mahyar et al.’s CommunityCrit system enables citizens to voice their concerns and
opinions about community issues via crowd-sourcing technology [293]. This kind of system may
broaden the scope of who is able to voice their concerns when compared to traditional public
meeting, butthedataultimatelystillendsofupinthehandsofgatekeepers(thelocalgovernment
in this case) who get to decide which concerns get addressed.
In [268], Le Dantec et al. show how planners and other stakeholders use route data submitted
by cyclists via a mobile application in workshops about the improvement of local cycling infras-
tructure. Speaking about the data, which for most cyclists was a proxy for traditional, in-person
participation, they note, “The consequence of this shift was a kind of authority without agency,
where the intentions of the cyclists who submitted the data were subordinated by whatever in-
person argument was being made with that very same data at the charrette” [268]. In other
words, the cyclists were not able to clarify or dispute conclusions being drawn using their data
at the meetings. This raises questions as to whether or not route data is enough to ensure the
priorities of the cyclists are met in the final plans.
Agreatdealofresearchintherealmof“crowdscience”applicationscentersonhowtomotivate
participants and sustain engagement [78, 217, 369, 457]. This is also true of research in HCI for
32
GENERATED SCHEMES: TRIANGLE CHALLENGE
group #1 . canopy scheme
The Canopy Scheme highlights the need for shade. Shade-trees delineate three
separate program areas within the triangle marking areas for seating, play, and
discovery.
Figure 3.1: A plan developed by residents at a participatory workshop for revamping the Hoover
Triangle, a traffic triangle in Los Angeles on Hoover Street, between 23rd and 24th Streets. The
plan, like others developed during the workshop, clearly indicates that shade was a priority for
residents [444].
urban planning [22, 146, 235, 367]. One strategy often used to increase engagement in both areas
is gamification: citizen science [75, 78, 369], urban planning [244, 367, 368, 436].
We do not mean to claim that any of this work is inherently bad—far from it. “Crowd
science” has played an important role in helping scientists gather and annotate data, particularly
in a world where “big” data reigns supreme and science funding is continuously being slashed
[20, 310]. Similarly, crowd-sourced urban planning data can be an excellent means of broadening
the scope of participation [268, 368]. This is particularly important in our contemporary moment
as municipal budgets fall [500] and research shows that those citizens who show up to traditional
meetings are not typically representative of the population at large [133].
However, as Le Dantec et al. allude to in [268], there are still issues of accountability and
transparency in how (and if) the data is used in producing final plans and outcomes. In the case
of [268], we do not see what happens beyond the charrettes and stakeholder meetings, whether
33
the publicly expressed desire to include citizen data and participation is realized in the decisions
about where to place new cycling infrastructure.
TaketheHoovertraffictriangleprojectinSouthLosAngelesasacautionaryexample. Thetri-
anglewasanunlovedpieceoflandhometotwobusstopsbetween23rdand24thstreetsonHoover
Street, set to be revamped into a park-like plaza by the city’s streets department [444]. Citizens
clearly expressed through surveys and during participatory workshops that their main priority
for the revamp was ample shade (see one example of a citizen generated design in Figure 3.1).
However, the actual revamp—a product of 2 years of planning and $600,000 in expenses—had
absolutely no shade. Despite the added seating, lighting, and colorful concrete play areas, the
plaza was essentially unusable without protection from the intense Southern California sun. So
commenced “Phase 2”, to revamp the revamp and add the much-needed shade at additional cost
to the local taxpayers who had been very clear about their needs from the beginning [445].
The sub-field of “digital civics” (see for example [40, 107]) has taken on these issues of trans-
parency and accountability. Digital civics works to ”understand the role that digital technologies
can play in supporting relational models of service provision, organization and citizen empower-
ment... and the potential of such models to reconfigure power relations between citizens, com-
munities and the state” [472]. This is valuable work, and we acknowledge that official channels
are often necessary. Official channels are important for things like completing large infrastructure
projects or providing services en masse such as comprehensive regional public transit. However,
there are many instances in which these channels could be bypassed, placing the power directly
into the hands of small groups of motivated citizens. We choose to focus on this more bottom-up,
grassroots methodology for urban repair.
In the next section, we show how citizen science has begun to democratize, putting the power
for knowledge production into the hands of citizens. We show how this parallels movements in
grassroots urban planning and discuss how our work fits into this realm.
34
3.3.2 Beyond Citizen Sensing
Thanks to the work of Pandey et al. [347, 346], Qaurooni et al. [371], and others, citizen science
has started to democratize, using technology to give citizens the power to produce knowledge
directly—what Qaurooni et al. call “civic science” projects.
Some projects such as Hevelius, a tool for remote neurological assessments, are designed to
induce collaboration between citizens and experts for joint knowledge production, but for the
purposes of this paper, we are more interested in projects like Gut Instinct, which guides citizens
to create and test hypotheses on their own without expert intervention [347]. Other examples
of this trend include COSAMED, a system for citizen-led clinical trials [350], and the DIYbio
movement, in which ICTs and open source hardware are designed to allow non-professionals to
engage in research and experimentation in the biological sciences [143] (e.g., monitoring local
water quality [232] and testing the DNA of genetically modified foods [260]).
We see similar trends emerging in the urban planning and repair setting with the rise of
technologically-mediated systems (including social media) for grassroots organizing and action
around urban issues [168]. Examples include work on fighting evictions and gentrification in
Atlanta [39], and dealing with issues surrounding food such as community food sharing [163] and
urban foraging [126].
Most aligned with our work are systems that leverage the power of communities and encour-
age them to engage with their urban surrounds. For instance, Mosconi et al. study the Italian
social streets movement, which uses hyper-local Facebook groups to engage communities in of-
fline activities, including but not limited to the kind of placemaking activities our work looks to
encourage[320]. Sasao et al. have also made strides in the area of engagement outside of offi-
cial channels with the use of systems to engage people in microtasks for community upkeep and
collaborative social activities in existing community spaces [400, 398, 399].
35
Another prime example is the BlockbyBlock system [307] introduced in Section 2.4.1. It was
created by a community member to allow neighbors to collect data on local code violations or
instances of neglect (e.g., overgrown lawns or trash left at abandoned properties), and then en-
couragesthemtotakeactiontohelptheirneighborstomitigatetheseissues[307]. Oneinteresting
aspect of the BlockbyBlock system is that users have the option to send the data to local au-
thorities or to take a citizen-led approach. This choice about how to handle issues is incredibly
important, as it gives the group a chance to promote trust among neighbors, while penalizing
those property owners who might exploit the neighborhood.
Our goal is to promote the same kind of neighborhood cohesion, trust, and social capital as
the projects described above, but in contrast to these efforts, our goal is to encourage a more
comprehensive overhaul of abandoned or similar urban spaces, beginning with the process of
creating and sharing designs. In the next section, we introduce PatternPainter, our tool for
citizen-led redesign of urban spaces such as abandoned lots.
3.4 PatternPainter
When building our prototype system, we were motivated by the following primary goal:
To create a system that allows ordinary residents to produce designs for urban revitalization
projects, effectively communicating their design ideas to their fellow community members without
the aid of a professional designer to guide the process, and with little to no training in system use.
This led to the creation of PatternPainter—named for Alexander’s book, the inspiration for
our work, which is introduced in detail in Section 3.2. In the rest of this section, we first discuss
our design choices. We then discuss the technical implementation of PatternPainter. Finally, we
discuss how PatternPainter differs from other available urban planning programs.
36
3.4.1 Design
Typically, during a participatory planning workshop, residents, led by professional designers,
createabstractrepresentationsofwhattheywouldliketoseeintheproject[229]. Spatialthinking
is not usually directly exposed to residents in the planning step; planning is typically done on a
map,akintoafloorplanorstreetlayout,anddoneinameetingroomorviaonlinequestionnaires,
removedfromthephysicalspaceinquestion[180,340,360,386]. Althoughsomeeffortshavebeen
madetostartincorporatingadditionaltechnologieslike3Dvisualizationandevenvirtualrealityin
the process, these technologies are typicallyusedeither entirelyby orwith the helpof afacilitator
[95, 262] or are too complex and expensive for use by small scale community groups [431].
Figure 3.1 shows an example of this kind of abstract design from a participatory workshop for
the revitalization of a traffic island in South Los Angeles. Professional designers then produce
detailed renderings of a final design. With PatternPainter, we chose to eliminate the abstraction
and engage residents in spatial thinking to allow users to create designs directly in a 3D rendering
ofthespace. Webasedthisdecisiononresearchinto3Dvisualizationversusalternatives. Research
showsthatwhengivenachoicepeoplegenerallyprefer3Dvisualizationto2Dforspatialnavigation
tasks, among others [63, 423]. More importantly, studies of various spatially-based tasks have
found that 3D visualization is, “most useful for tasks that require understanding of the general
shape of 3D objects or the layout of scenes” [433], as well as in complex, spatial-decision making
tasks [274]. Since presentation of the parklet layout is the primary goal of PatternPainter, 3D
visualization is ideal. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence suggests that using 3D visualization can
help people picture themselves in the scene [68]. We feel this is important for PatternPainter to
help increase community buy-in for the suggested upgrades.
We selected an example—turning an abandoned lot into a small park (a parklet)—as the task
around which we designed the system. Abandoned lot revitalization is one of the simplest urban
repair projects, but is known to have a statistically-significant impact on crime rates, mental
37
Figure 3.2: The scenario for PatternPainter: an empty urban lot ripe for repair.
health, and social connectedness of communities [193, 323, 432]. As a target user, we consider the
resident who walks by the lot each day, who would like to see the lot cleaned up and turned into
a community space, who might even participate in a cleanup if they knew how to begin. Such
a user might ask themselves: “where do I start, just clean up the trash, plant a few trees, put
in a bench or two?” These are the questions PatternPainter aims to help residents answer. The
PatternPainter scene is set with an empty lot. The “un-repaired” lot is shown in Figure 3.2. For
the initial tool, the research team came up with a list of items that could be added to the scene.
These items were inspired by some of Alexander’s patterns that deal with uses for public space
and community organization; for example, shopping street, accessible green, local sports, teenage
society, and vegetable garden [28].
3.4.2 Implementation
We built PatternPainter using the Unity game engine [464]. The scene was created using a
combination of public domain images and free assets and textures from the Unity Asset Store.
The 3D models and UI graphics are a combination of public domain images, free assets from
the Unity Asset store, and free models downloaded from Sketchfab [421].
2
We chose to use
2
We will include attribution for the models and images in our public tool release.
38
Figure 3.3: The PatternPainter user interface displaying scenario B2 with a partially completed
design.
Unity, which is freely available for non-commercial use, and to source free models, as we wish
the software to remain as accessible as possible. The user interface, showing scenario B2, can be
seen in Figure 3.3. As we will discuss in the next section, the scenarios were added as part of
our evaluation, and are not intended to be part of the final tool. Game objects can be added to
the scene using the object menu located at the bottom of the interface and manipulated using a
number of mouse and keyboard controls. The camera position and rotation can also be controlled
withkeyboardinput. Ahelpmenudescribingthevariouscontrolscanbedisplayedbyclickingthe
help button in the upper left-hand corner of the interface. The game was exported to javascript
using the WebGL build feature in Unity and hosted on an AWS web server.
3
Upon submission
of a scenario, a screenshot of the scene is saved to the server.
3.4.3 Why PatternPainter?
Finally, we address what PatternPainter offers that is not available in other systems. There are
already a number of software systems for urban planning, many of them much technologically
richer than PatternPainter. However, there are various barriers to adoption that we feel make
3
A fixed scenario can be tried here: http://ec2-3-129-22-64.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com/BuildB. Enter
any text for the mechanical turk ID.
39
theseprevioussystemsunsuitable. OneoftheguidingprinciplesinHCIandCSCWisanawareness
oftheintendeduser, andourintentionwastodesignasystemforall, notjustthosewithacertain
technicalordesignliteracyorwithacertainsocio-economicstatus. Basedonourliteraturereview,
we found that previous urban planning systems exist on a spectrum: professional software, open-
source software, and video games co-opted for planning. With professional systems, the most
substantial barrier is cost. A one year license for ArcGIS Pro, one of the most popular programs
for professional planners, starts at $700 [139]. This is clearly antithetical to the “cheap and fast”
mantraoftacticalurbanism,andoutofreachformanyofthecommunitiesthatcouldmostbenefit
fromurbanrevitalization. Eventhepersonalversion,includingonlyasubsetofthefeaturesinthe
professionalversion,is$100peryear[139]. Evenifacommunitycouldaffordprofessionalplanning
software, another major barrier is expertise. Planning students take entire courses dedicated to
learning this kind of professional software. Unless a neighborhood has a resident with experience
in geographic modeling, geo-databases, and other relevant skills, actually using the software to
produce meaningful plans would be extremely difficult. Open source urban modeling systems
mitigate the issue of cost, but most still require significant technical and geographic expertise
[316]. For example, Borning et al. worked on the popular open-source urban modeling system
UrbanSimtocreateamoduletosimplifytheuseofindicators(valuesusedinassessingthequality
of urban spaces), but even in simplifying the system their target was still professional planners
and modelers, not the ordinary resident [75]. Thus, we felt that our system needed to be even
simpler to use than the current open-source solutions.
The use of city building games such as SimCity and Minecraft in planning education and
participatory workshops is an emerging trend [15, 315]. One such game, Cities: Skylines has an
extensive API that has been used to create realistic models of real cities [8, 118]. While we are
inspired by the interface and capabilities of such games, there are a number of drawbacks that
makeactuallyusingoneofthesegamesasabaseforourprojectinfeasible. Despiterecentresearch
to make creating real city models easier in Cities: Skylines, expert knowledge is still required to
40
format the GIS input on which the model is based and to manually fine-tune the model after
data has been imported [338]. Basing our tool on an existing commercial game would also mean
that users must own a copy of the game and understand how to play it. By creating a simpler,
web-based model we can host the tool cheaply and make it free for use. It also allows us to make
the entire tool open-source.
4
3.5 Evaluation
In this section, we first describe how we arrived at our evaluation plan—a series of experiments
performed on Amazon Mechanical Turk. We then describe each of the two experiments in detail.
As we were beginning development of our prototype system, the COVID-19 pandemic hit
and our city implemented a strict lockdown. As everything moved online, it became clear that we
wouldnotbeabletotestourprototypeinpersonaswehadoriginallyhoped. Atthetime,wewere
looking into several organizations doing work around grassroots advocacy and implementation of
urban revitalization and repair projects whom we hope to partner with for an evaluation, but
had not yet made contact with any organizations. However, as these, often resource-limited,
organizations also saw their projects shut down and worked to move their advocacy online, we
felt that we should not impose on their already limited time and resources with a proposal to test
our prototype until we had done some initial validation ourselves.
This left us with three options for reaching participants: using our personal networks, using
our university’s population, and using a crowdsourcing system like Amazon Mechanical Turk.
We chose not to use our personal networks because having a personal connection to our test
subjects might bias the results. We also chose not to recruit participants through our university
becausethiswouldbiastowardaso-calledWEIRDpopulation[283]. Inparticular, the‘E‘seemed
problematic to us, as university students are potentially be much more technologically savvy than
4
PatternPainter code can currently be obtained upon request, and will be publicly released soon.
41
the general population, as university students in the U.S. are generally required to use numerous
technologicalplatformsinthecourseoftheireducation, evenbeforeCovid. Ourtargetpopulation
may not have this kind of education. The remaining viable option given the restrictions at the
timewascrowdsourcing, andwechosetouseAmazonMechanicalTurkaswehadpriorexperience
with the platform.
Once we determined how to reach participants we had to design an evaluation in line with
the platform. The goal of our evaluation was not to replicate a real world setting, because we
recognizethatthereareuniquechallengesthatcomewithworkinginaparticipatorydesignsetting
[151,154]. Forinstance,werealizethatissuessuchasplaceattachmentwillberelevantinsituated
settings[297]. Ourgoalinsteadwastofocusontheefficacyofthesystem,toprovethatitcouldbe
used by ordinary people without outside help or extensive training to produce meaningful designs
for public, community spaces. This will allow us to approach community groups for future testing
with the knowledge that our proof of concept is sound and instead focus on tailoring the system
to meet their specific needs.
Our previous work with Mechanical Turk impressed upon us the need to have a validation
mechanism for tasks to ensure participants paid proper attention. Furthermore, we would not
be able to observe users interacting with the system or solicit semi-structured feedback in the
moment. This led us away from a traditional usability survey. Instead, we designed a series of
scenarios and metrics to impose more structure on the evaluation and allow for replicability and
generalization across participants. We discuss the scenarios and metrics in detail next.
We recognize that there is some tension in using a global platform like mTurk with essentially
anonymousparticipantsgivenourgoalofempoweringlocal,grassrootsorganizations. However,we
believe that mTurk is a viable way to test the general usability of the platform from an individual
perspective. Recall our goal was to build a platform that could be used by anyone without the
need for extensive training, so that it could be used by community members who may not have
urbandesigntraining. Ourexperimentsweredesignedspecificallytotestthisusabilityaspect. As
42
mentioned, we recognize that there will be aspects of the design which may need to be adjusted
for use by a group in a real, local place. However, given the local circumstances when the research
was being performed, we felt that this approach to testing the usability of the system was the
best choice.
3.5.1 Scenarios and Metrics
In order to add replicability to our experiments and for comparison across participants, we came
up with a set of 12 design scenarios. Like the objects we had added to the initial system, the
scenarios were inspired by some of Alexander’s patterns for community space [28]. The scenarios
can be found in Table 3.1. These scenarios became the basis for the first experiment. We used
standardized language across the scenarios, positioning them as community requests. (Although
tactical urbanism projects may often bypass official channels, it is still important to consider the
community’s needs, not just the wishes of a single individual.) Several of the scenarios are also
somewhat similar. For instance, A2 (theater) and B4 (live music performances). These scenarios
with similar purpose were included, because our goal was to test the communication powers of
our prototype. Similar scenarios would allow us to test the granularity of communication.
Thenextquestionwashowtoevaluatetheefficacyofthedesignsforeachscenario. Weneeded
a way to compare the designs for each scenario as well as to measure how well the designers were
able to communicate the purpose of each scenario using PatternPainter. Thus, we decided to
come up with a quantitative measure of qualities we felt were important for community spaces
based on our reading of urbanism and planning literature (i.e., [28, 218, 246]). We came up with
the eight metrics, which are listed and described in Table 3.2.
Although all of the metrics describe general principles of a well-designed community space,
somemetricsfitcertainscenariosbetterthanothers,andshouldthereforebemoreevidentinthose
scenarios. For example, scenario B3 (a place for children and families) should exhibit high levels
of play and safety, and possibly also recreation. The first author and two other members of the
43
Group A
1 The community wants a space where elderly residents can gather for leisure activities.
2
The community would like to turn this lot into an area where outdoor theater
productions can be held during both the day and evening.
3
The community would like to see this lot across from the town hall transformed into
a place where residents and local leaders can meet one another informally.
4 The community would like to use this space for a community garden.
Group B
1
The community would like to see this area transformed into a space to hold
a local farmers market.
2
The community wants to make this lot into a recreation space that can be used after
school by local teens.
3
The community wants to use this lot as a space where parents can take their children to
promote healthy habits.
4
The community wants to turn the lot into an area where they can gather and host
live music performances.
Group C
1
The community wants to turn this space into a park with plenty of shade and
places to sit and relax.
2
The community would like to see this lot turned into a park that local families
can use with their children.
3 The community wants an after school location for children to study.
4
The community would like to use the lot to set up a monument to their loved ones
who passed away from accidents.
Table 3.1: The 12 scenarios used to implement and evaluate PatternPainter. The scenarios are
based on various uses for public space outlined in Alexander’s pattern language [28]. They are
divided into three groups for evaluation purposes.
research team independently chose what they believed to be the top three metrics representing
each of the scenarios. The top metrics, as shown in Table 3.3, are those that all three team
members chose in the top three. This resulted in a set of one or two top metrics for each scenario.
3.5.2 Experiment 1: Designs
In the first experiment, participants used the tool to design community spaces based on the
scenariosinTable3.1. Thescenarioswerebrokenintothreesetstoavoidover-taxingtheattention
of our participants. Each participant was given one of the three sets of scenarios, which appeared
in randomized order. For any considerations regarding climate or weather participants were
instructed to assume the lot was located in Los Angeles, California, due to its fairly consistent
year-round climate.
44
Metric Description
Shade Are there shady spaces for people to spend time?
Play Are there activities available for children or young people?
Comfort Are there places to sit and relax?
Safety Are there places to supervise children playing, is there lightning for
nighttime activities, etc.?
Access to Nature Are there elements of nature such as trees, flowers, gardens, or animals?
Recreation Are there activities available for adults?
Entertainment Could the area be used for performances, dancing, outdoor dining, etc.?
Sociability Would people enjoy gathering here to spend time with friends?
Table 3.2: The eight metrics used to evaluate the designs produced by PatternPainter. Each
design from part 1 of the experiments was rated on these metrics on a scale of 1-7 on these
metrics during part 2.
Scenario Top Metrics
A1 Comfort
A2 Entertainment
A3 Comfort, Sociability
A4 Access to Nature, Sociability
B1 Recreation, Sociability
B2 Sociability
B3 Play, Safety
B4 Entertainment, Sociability
C1 Shade, Comfort
C2 Play, Safety
C3 Comfort, Safety, Sociability*
C4 Comfort, Access to Nature
Table 3.3: The top metrics representing each scenario as determined by the research team.
For scenario C3, there was no metric agreed upon by all three members of the research team. The
metrics given were agreed upon by two of the three members.
45
Figure 3.4: The practice scene, which participants in experiment one were asked to replicate.
The scene purposefully includes a variety of objects at different locations as well as some that
are rotated from their initial position in order to familiarize users with all of the different object
controls.
Before beginning the scenarios, for practice and validation, participants were asked to repli-
cate the scene shown in Figure 3.4. This ensured participants were familiar with adding and
manipulating objects within the scene. Participants who failed to replicate this test scene were
rejected from the task. For this experiment we used participants who were located in the US and
had achieved “master” status to ensure high-quality data.
5
The experiment was designed to take
under half an hour, and participants were paid $6.00 USD for completing the task.
Eighty-four participants completed the experiment—28 per sets of scenarios.
3.5.3 Experiment 2: Validation
The second experiment was used to evaluate the designs created in the first experiment, which
would determine how well users were able to use PatternPainter to communicate the intended
uses for the space given in the scenarios. Participants were told they were rating designs for
5
In early trials where the master status was not required, we found people would simply leave a jumble of
objects on the screen. Due to the nature of online experiments, it was impossible to tell if it was a problem with
the tool or if the workers simply were not making an effort to complete the task well. We suspected the latter,
but making such assumptions would have biased the data. Master status is conditional to continued review, and
therefore incentivizes workers to take tasks more seriously.
46
revitalizing an abandoned lot in Los Angeles, California. Participants were asked to rate the
designs on the eight metrics, listed in Table 3.2, on a scale of one to seven, as well as to briefly
answer the following questions for each design: Please provide a brief description of how the
community would use this space. Who would use it? What would they do? What is the purpose
of the space?.
The surveys were constructed as follows. Each survey consisted of 15 designs. The first three
were for practice and were taken from initial pilots of the experiment that were not included in
thefinaldatasetofdesigns. Thesewerethesameacrossallsurveys, butweregiveninrandomized
order. This was followed by one design from each scenario, 12 in total, also shown in random
order. This resulted in 28 different surveys, one for each complete set of scenarios collected in
Part 1.
The surveys also contained four attention checks that asked participants to choose a specific
rating. Participants who failed two or more checks or entered nonsense text responses were
rejected. Five responses were collected for each of the surveys, meaning every design from Part 1
received five ratings.
Participants were restricted to users located in the US, but due to the ability to implement
robust attention checks, were not restricted to participants with “master status”. Participants
who completed the first experiment were not eligible to complete this second part. The survey
was designed to take about 20 minutes, and participants were paid $4.00 USD.
In the next section, we discuss the results of both the quantitative and qualitative sections of
the survey.
3.6 Data and Results
In this section, we present the results of the experiments, using both quantitative and qualitative
analysis.
47
3.6.1 Quantitative Analysis
As mentioned, the quantitative data was gathered by asking participants to rate each design on
the eight metrics found in Table 3.2 (shade, play, comfort, safety, access to nature, recreation,
entertainment, and sociability). There were 28 designs for each of the 12 scenarios, and each
design received five ratings for each metric. We averaged these five ratings to obtain a mean
rating for each metric on each scenario. Table 3.4 shows the average rating out of seven for each
metric, for each scenario. Note that given the relatively small sample size we do not perform any
significance testing. For each scenario, the metric with the highest average is in bold, while the
metrics chosen as most representative for each scenario by the research team (see Table 3.3) are
in italics. Thus the metrics in both bold and italics represent a line up between the research team
and the designs.
In nine of twelve cases, the metric with the highest average rating lines up with a metric the
researchteampickedasmostrepresentativeofthescenario. ThethreeexceptionsareA2(outdoor
theater), C1 (park with plenty of shade), and C4 (a monument to lost loved ones), which all rated
highestonsociability. However, inallthreeofthesecasesthemetricschosenbytheresearchteam
were among the top three. This allowed us to be confident that users were able to communicate
the essences of the scenarios through the designs they created on PatternPainter.
Itisworthnotingthatfornineoftwelvescenariossociabilitywasthemosthighlyratedmetric,
and no scenario had an average rating less than five (of seven) on sociability. This tracks with
our goals for the PatternPainter system. While the specific use case for the space is varied across
the scenarios, all of them are intended as a community gathering space, and sociability captures
this general purpose. It is also notable that across the entire table, the highest average rating is
5.82 of 7, while the lowest is 4.18. This indicates that all eight characteristics represent most of
the scenarios to some degree, which tracks with the fact that all eight metrics were derived from
general principles for the design of good community spaces.
48
Example Design Shade Play Comfort Safety Nature Rec. Entertain Social
A1 5.00 4.45 5.18 4.82 4.74 4.67 4.76 5.13
A2 4.46 4.18 5.14 4.93 4.49 4.74 5.12 5.36
A3 4.88 4.47 5.13 4.79 4.61 4.70 4.89 5.56
A4 4.50 4.30 4.47 4.52 5.02 4.67 4.42 5.02
B1 4.88 4.39 4.93 4.87 4.65 4.77 5.06 5.38
B2 4.49 5.14 4.67 4.92 4.66 5.15 4.92 5.38
B3 4.70 5.54 5.07 5.02 4.68 4.97 4.66 5.19
B4 4.47 4.35 5.37 4.92 4.58 4.53 5.09 5.37
C1 5.15 4.69 5.37 4.93 5.11 4.77 4.95 5.47
C2 4.70 5.82 5.03 5.13 4.90 4.90 4.65 5.41
C3 5.14 4.56 5.44 4.92 5.00 4.74 4.92 5.62
C4 4.72 4.55 5.12 4.77 4.71 4.94 4.86 5.26
Table 3.4: The average rating (out of 7) for each metric for each of the 12 scenarios. Bold
denotes the metric with the highest average. Italics denotes the metrics the research team chose
asmostrepresentativeforthescenario. Matchingoftheboldanditalicsindicatesthatparticipants
successfully communicated the scenario’s purpose in their designs.
49
While these quantitative results may indicate the efficacy of our prototype system, we also
analyzed the qualitative responses. This allowed us to better understand which scenarios were
communicated most effectively, and explore other themes that emerged in the responses.
3.6.2 Qualitative Analysis
The qualitative data was gathered by asking participants to describe each design in terms of
by whom it would be used and for what purpose (Please provide a brief description of how the
community would use this space. Who would use it? What would they do? What is the purpose
of the space?).
Due to issues with language fluency of the participants, we did not analyze all of the qual-
itative data. The data was reviewed for clarity by the author, a native English speakers. A
response was retained for analysis if it was deemed to sufficiently answer the prompt and could
be understood with minimal effort to interpret odd or incorrect grammatical structures. There
were three common response types that were discarded:
• Single word or very short answers. These responses were considered insufficient to
fully respond to the prompt. Examples: “park” or “children playing”
• Lists of one or more of the eight metrics. These were also considered insufficient to
fully respond to the prompt.
• Indecipherable grammar. Example: “The place is park reception arrangement of people
of this place. uses of peoples. the place is very nice.”
Asmentioned, therewere28surveyswith5responseseachforatotalof140responsesforeach
scenario. Of the 140 responses we retained 47 responses per scenario. Zero of the five responses
were retained for survey 11. For the other 27 surveys, we retained between 1 and 3 of the 5
responses for each one.
50
The author conducted the textual analysis. The second researcher was available to discuss
any themes that emerged. The data was analyzed both inductively (looking for evidence of
the scenarios) and deductively (looking for other patterns that emerged) [142]. The inductive
analysis consisted of marking those responses which directly or indirectly captured elements of
the scenario. For example, a response directly capturing scenario B1 used the words “farmer’s
market” whereas words like “buy” and “sell” were considered instances of indirect capture. We
then deductively looked for other repeated themes, paying particular attention to instances where
multiple participants proposed a common use for a space not specified by the scenario.
Wejudgedsuccesstobecasesinwhichmostparticipantswereabletoidentifythekeypurpose
ofthescenario,directlyorindirectly,fromthegivendesigns. Thosethatwerecommunicatedmost
successfully were A4 (community garden), B1 (farmers market), and C2 (park for families). For
A4, 20 of 47 responses directly mentioned the phrase “community garden” while another 8 used
words like “growing” and “planting.” In the case of B1, 19 responses used the phrase “farm-
ers market” and another 16 mentioned “vending,” “selling,” or referenced a generic community
market. For scenario C2, 12 responses indicated the space was for children without mention of
families or parents, and 26 directly mentioned either families or parents and children. We believe
thatthesescenariosweremostsuccessfulduetohighlyrecognizableelementsassociatedwitheach
scenario—garden and flowerbeds for A2, market stalls and food carts for B1, and a playground
for C1. Figure 3.5 shows example designs for each of these scenarios featuring these items.
Incontrast, wefoundthatthosescenariosthatweretheleastsuccessfulwerethosewithavery
specificpurpose,butwithoutaspecificsetofhighlyrecognizableandrelatedelements. Thesewere
A1 (space for the elderly), B3 (promoting healthy habits), C3 (study space for students), and C4
(memorial to lost community members). While A1 was rated highly on comfort and sociability,
which we believe would appeal to an elderly population, no response specifically mentioned this
demographic. In contrast to a jungle gym, which is clearly intended for children, there is no
analogous item that clearly signifies the elderly. The designs for B3 seemed to convey that the
51
Figure 3.5: From top to bottom: Examples of designs for scenarios A4, B1, and C2, which
successfully conveyed the purpose and use to survey respondents.
space was meant for children, and a few responses mentioned exercise, but the specific idea of
intentionallypromotinghealthyhabitswaslost. ScenarioC3waslargelyseenasapicnicordining
areaduetowidespreaduseofpicnictablesinmanyofthedesigns. However,knowingtheintended
purpose, it is easy to see how children might gather at these tables to study. No one captured the
intended purpose of the spaces designed for C4, mainly surmising it was a space for relaxation or
art exhibits, due to frequent use of benches and the presence of statues.
52
From these less successful scenarios, it is clear that some scenarios simply need additional
context, but we do not feel that this undermines PatternPainter’s usefulness. In a real-world
use case, additional context would be provided with a design to help users communicate their
intentions. Due to space and attention constraints, we only presented one view of each design in
the survey. Ideally users would be able to show off a variety of angles or a allow 3D interaction
with their designs. Users would likely also be present to explain their design concepts in person
or could provide a written description with their design.
There is also some question as to how the 3D object models chosen for the software affected
the designs. We consider scenario A2 (community theater) as an example. While many responses
captured the general intention of an entertainment space for scenario A2, we might consider
whether the designs would have been more successful had we included a stage as opposed to the
tents and gazebos used to create a makeshift stage area in many designs. We discuss this issue
in more detail in the next section, where we consider areas for improvement and expansion of
PatternPainter.
Another key theme that emerged from the deductive analysis was that some of the elements
were mistaken for other things. The goat was mistaken as a dog, the garden plots for sandboxes,
and what was intended to be a miniature adventure park (see pattern #73 [28]) was mistaken
for a skatepark by five respondents. (A dangerous one at that, as one respondent noted, “Those
are probably dangerous though as they seem unfixed.”) Several respondents were simply unclear
about the statue element referring to it as, “the blocky things” and “THOSE MINECRAFT
SHEEP STATUE THINGS.” Figure 3.6 shows these four items in the context where they were
mistaken for these other things.
In these instances, the unclear 3D models may have failed to communicate the correct context
for the scenario. For instance, the second image in Figure 3.6 is meant to be a community garden
(scenarioA4), butthecombinationofaplaygroundwiththegardenbedscausedthemtolooklike
sandboxes. However, as mentioned previously, in real-world use cases context would be provided
53
Figure3.6: Fromtoptobottomandlefttoright,themodelswhichweremistakenforotherthings:
goat (far right side) as a dog, garden beds (far left side) as sandboxes, miniature adventure park
(right side) as a skate ramp, and statues (throughout) were simply unclear.
with designs to help mitigate such issues. Furthermore, having some models that are flexible in
their use is not inherently bad, as it broadens the scope of objects available to designers, an issue
which we will touch upon in the next section.
Based on these experiments, it is clear that PatternPainter was able to help ordinary people
create and communicate designs for re-purposing an urban lot. Furthermore, participants were
able to do so with no formal training or outside facilitation, indicating that PatternPainter has a
low barrier to entry. However, there are certainly areas for future work and improvement, which
we discuss in the next section.
3.7 Discussion
In this section, we discuss several areas for improvement and future work based on our experi-
mental results. We also reflect on some feedback given to us by Chris Tallman, an expert designer
54
with extensive experience in participatory design for urban planning [450]. Tallman was rec-
ommended to us as an expert commentator because he has experience both working within the
classic participatory system and also working on projects at the boundaries of the system from a
bottom-up perspective. He gave feedback via phone and email after seeing an initial prototype of
the PatternPainter system and reading a first draft of our paper.
Overall, our quantitative and qualitative analysis show that we were successful in creating
a functional, easy-to-use system. Using PatternPainter and the limited set of objects provided,
participants were able to create a diversity of designs for different neighborhood social spaces.
This speaks to the tool’s ultimate ability to allow community members to autonomously explore
designs for community revitalization using a system tailored to local conditions.
However, we are also aware that bottom-up community led initiatives have their own set of
unique challenges separate from the issues in classic participatory design [88, 154]. We expect
that evaluating the system in the context of a complete urban revitalization project may lead to
new insights and challenges.
As mentioned in the previous section, one potential issue is deciding what elements should
be included in the system. We attempted to provide a sufficient array of elements to fit each of
the pre-defined scenarios, but in the future users may want to use PatternPainter to brainstorm
without a clear use case in mind. While we used Alexander’s patterns as inspiration for the
scenarios and elements, as Chris Tallman noted, “I was surprised at both how closely Alexander
and company identified the armature of whole landscape patterns but more so by how many are
missing.” He then asked, “What order of complexity is there to having a tool where the user is
walked through defining their own patterns?” [450].
Going beyond Alexander’s language to capture more local knowledge as well as to solve prob-
lems that have cropped up in the almost 40 years since the book’s 1977 publication is also an
important extension of the work. For instance, the disruption of public education due to the
COVID-19 crisis has shown widespread inequalities in access to broadband internet, with many
55
studentsunabletoaccessonlinelearningtools[29,365]. Thismightleadtoanewpattern: “Public
InternetAccess”thatcallsforpublicWiFihotspotscoveringacityorregion, andspacestogather
to safely use this infrastructure, so that all students can connect to online learning opportunities.
We can only begin to imagine what myriad other patterns communities might define based on
their unique circumstances and cultures.
However, this raises the related question of how to scale and support such a system. Our first
step is to open source the system, which we intend to do with PatternPainter. This does not solve
all the problems associated with scaling and maintaining this kind of system, but it is an enabler
of further refinement and also helps the system to stay free. We are still considering this issue
and other potential solutions.
Another suggestion of Tallman’s was the inclusionof actionitems. He suggeststhinking about
the question, “What actions can you take today?” He proposes comparing the design with a
database of tactical actions, and then listing suggestions that can be taken quickly and easily by
community members. We think this idea is deep and empowering, as it is a first step toward
activating community members to take on the next two phases of the design thinking process—
prototype and test. This is the process by which crosswalks get painted, community gardens get
planted, and neighbors become friends.
The idea of incorporating action items also alludes to the issue of creating sustained engage-
ment in the projects designed by PatternPainter. As Tallman notes, “There are a vast number of
popup community gardens laying fallow.” As we discussed extensively in Section 2.5, sustaining
community engagement in local projects is an issue that has previously been studied in the con-
text of HCI [422], and a problem we are also interested in addressing in future work. However,
addressing it goes beyond the scope of this particular paper.
56
3.8 Conclusion
Leaving city planning to governments (particularly in the U.S. context) has yielded only crum-
bling infrastructure (in 2017 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. a D+ for
infrastructure [33]), slow and unreliable public transit [69, 134, 175], and a dearth of green space,
particularly in areas of lower socioeconomic status [199, 493]. We believe it is time to put city
planning and urban repair back into the hands of the people of each neighborhood. The blue-
collar bus-rider should dictate the bus schedule, not the transit director who drives his SUV to
work; the mother and child navigating broken swings and unshaded park benches should design
the parks, not consultants flown in from out of state; and the urban gardener with no yard should
be free to plant community food forests rather than leaving blighted lots behind the fences of a
city’s public works department. Based on the guiding principles of Alexander’s Patter Language
[28], PatternPainter is a first step toward helping residents take back the power for planning and
repairing their communities. Based on our initial experiments to test its efficacy, the system
shows promise in helping ordinary people create and communicate deigns for urban revitalization
projects with little to no training in design of the system itself. This also has implications for the
democratization of other fields which currently rely on design experts.
Our expert correspondent, Chris Tallman, responded positively to the PatternPainter proto-
type, and suggested a few features to further improve the tool. Based on these suggestions and
our experimental evaluation, our aim for the near future of PatternPainter is to modularize the
system to enable the open-source community to contribute modules for additional patterns, to
integrate GIS to allow for location-specific plans, and to allow for other types of urban repair
beyond abandoned lots. We look forward to getting out and testing the system in the real-world
context.
57
Chapter 4
The CommYOUnity Data Project:
Exploring Novice Evaluations of Urban Spaces
Figure 4.1: One of the images submitted to the CommYOUnity Data Site Project, with the
caption, “The local town pool has long been a prime spot at which families can play and kids
can hang out with their friends over the summer. Though the facilities are very dated, it is an
invaluable resource that the community has. ”
This chapter presents the results of the CommYOUnity Data Project, a pair of exploratory
studies designed to understand how ordinary citizens view their local environments and how
58
this differs from the perspective of trained designers. The main contribution of the project is
a discussion centered around three speculative technologies that put the insights gleaned from
the site and survey to work. Other contributions are: (a) a small dataset of image-caption pairs
depicting and describing urban environments collected from people without design training; (b)
six themes describing how ordinary people use language to describe and reflect on their physical
environments; (c) an exploration of the distinction in language use between trained designers and
ordinarycitizenswhendescribingtheirurbanenvironmentsanddiscussingimprovementstomake.
I first motivate the project with regard to how design has been conceptualized from a pro-
fessional standpoint, and how that paradigm might come to be disrupted through technological
tools. I then review related work on what it means to be a design professional, and how urban
design professionals elicit design ideas from local residents. I describe the first study—the Com-
mYOUnityDataSite—anddiscussrelevantthemesgleanedfromanalysisofthecollecteddata. In
the next section, I describe the follow-up study—the CommYOUnity Data Survey—and its rele-
vant themes. I conclude by presenting a discussion centered around three speculative technologies
that put these insights to work.
4.1 Motivation
In Seeing Like a State, Scott reminds us that until the era of the modern nation state, cities were
organic entities designed over time by the people that resided in them. However, as nation states
rose and sought to centralize power, they began imposing order from the top-down to make cities
“legible”—to impose their abstract way of understanding a city on its physical structure [407].
This resulted in the advent of city “planning,” and the many grid-like cities we see today are a
direct result of this paradigm shift.
Thisimpositionoftop-downorderhaspermeatednearlyeveryaspectofourlives. AsCostanza-
ChockpointsoutintheirbookDesign Justice,“...designfrequentlyreferstoexpertknowledgeand
59
practicescontainedwithinaparticularsetofprofessionalizedfields”[113]. Inessence,thepractice
of design has been commodified and professionalized through a particular set of occupations, one
of which is urban planning. Urban planners, designers, architects, and the like (or perhaps more
accuratelythelocalbureaucracyorprivatedevelopersthatpaythem)havebecomethegatekeepers
of the urban built environment.
Thisposesaproblemwhenitcomestotheexecutionofurbanrepairandrevitalizationprojects,
because relying on experts to facilitate design activities is not always desirable. Time and mone-
tary constraints often leave small-scale urban repair and revitalization projects to be handled by
non-profits with the funds to hire professional planners or the know-how to implement projects
themselves (like [10, 13]), or to motivated local residents (who often have prior planning expertise
or experience [129]), if they get done at all. In other cases, bringing in professionals for this kind
of revitalization project might be a signal of impending gentrification, which can be problematic
for established communities, particularly those on the margins [39, 70, 241].
Despite this imposition of top-down order, and its associated problems, many theorists argue
that design is a “universal practice in human communities,” positioning design as something
we all engage in in our daily lives [113, 200]. With this notion as a premise, the objective of
this study is to examine the process of re-democratizing design knowledge and practice that has
becomecommodified. Tothisend, weexplorethemostbasiclanguageusedby“non-designers”to
describe and evaluate their physical
1
environments. By reflecting on this language in relation to
urban planning scholarship we are able to identify the “knowledge gap” between ordinary citizens
and those who have been trained in the field of urban design. Thus we can effectively answer the
question: “What does it mean to think like a designer?” Our aim is to answer this questions on
two fronts—first if we treat everyone as a designer, and second if we regard design as a specialized
profession—and to assess the differences between these two points of view. We can then use this
information to think about how technology can better be used to serve “non-designers” and help
1
We use physical instead of urban to reflect the fact that participants in the study were from a range of places
including urban, suburban, and rural.
60
theirvoicesbetterbeheardduring“official”designexercisesandprojectsaswellhelpthembetter
complete projects in a grassroots manner without the engagement of “professional” designers.
4.2 Related Work
In this section, I first explore scholarship on what it means to think like a designer in the com-
modified sense. I then explore the methods designers use to elicit ideas from people considered
non-designers during participatory-design activities. In particular, focusing on the context of
urban planning.
As mentioned in the introduction, scholars have examined design as a universal activity, a
kind of creative problem solving that we all employ in everyday settings [113, 123]. However,
certain kinds of design have been commodified and professionalized [113]. This leads to the main
question we wish to answer with this work. In the words of designer and educator Sara Ilstedt
Hjelm, “But if everything is design and everyone designs what is then the particular competence
of the practising professional in graphic, industrial or interior design?” [200]. In this section, we
aimtoexplorewhatitmeanstobeadesignerinthisprofessional,commodified,sense,particularly
in the area of urban design and planning. First we explore some general conceptions about what
it means to think like a “designer”.
The term “Design Thinking” has come to be synonymous with the framework developed by
Tom and David Kelly (founders of the global design firm IDEO [213]). The framework consists of
five steps that run from deeply understanding a problem to testing a solution [115]. Its founders
position it as a means of democratizing design:
“It also allows those who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a
vast range of challenges. The process starts with taking action and understanding the
right questions. It’s about embracing simple mindset shifts and tackling problems from
a new direction” [213].
61
The framework has since been adopted by many institutions as part of training designers in a
wide variety of fields including software design [121], education [89, 99, 461], healthcare [438], and
even coaching sports [94]. However, the framework has been criticized mainly because of the way
it simplifies design into a an overly shallow, even empty process. Designer Jon Kolko writes, “It
takes a thoughtful, complex, iterative, and often messy process and dramatically oversimplifies
it in order to make it easily understandable” [251]. Kolko and others also criticize the way
that “Design Thinking” has become a commercialized process, more about selling things than
producing significant social change [251]. While we believe the IDEO design thinking model
can be a useful tool, particularly in situations where there is room for rapid prototyping and
trial and error (see for example [290]), we also acknowledge that it can be a limiting framework.
In particular, it can be used by outsiders to abstract away the complex lived experiences of
communities [113].
In general, in this project, we take a broader view of design thinking, defining it as the
knowledge and processes learned during formal (or informal) education in design fields, including,
butnotlimitedtofashiondesign,gamedesign,graphicdesign,productdevelopment,architecture,
and urban planning. Although the IDEO design thinking framework is taught in many of these
fields, it is just one of many skills and frameworks, and is certainly not sufficient for becoming an
“expert”designer. AsKolkonotes,“Studentsgraduatedesign-thinking-centricacademicprograms
with the ability to think about design but without the ability to design things, and as we’ve seen
above, design has its roots in the creation of things. Students of design thinking often don’t have
craft skills” [251]. We believe that this is an important distinction. In particular, it is likely most
people unconsciously “think about design” everyday as they identify various problems inherent
in their environments and navigate life around them. However, it is the ability to act on these
problems, shifting the status quo in some meaningful way, that is important.
Numerous scholars have tried to define design, particularly in contrast to other fields like
science [200]. Design scholar Stolterman contrasts the two: “very simplified, there are two ways
62
to deal with reality. One method ‘puts apart’ reality to understand how it works, that’s science.
The other one ‘puts together’ things to create changed reality, that’s design”, while AI pioneer
Herbert Simon, “argued that design is about how things ought to be as opposed to science which
studies how things are” [200]. Some of the traits attributed to professional designers are, “the
ability to critically judge quality is based in aesthetical training and continuously developed by
designers”[200]andafocusonmakingthings“asafoundationforengagingwiththeworld”[251].
The HCI and CSCW communities have been engaged in researching design education across
fields for over two decades [67, 79, 294, 384, 476, 505, 510]. In certain public-facing design fields
like urban planning, one of the key things that designers must learn is how to elicit feedback from
users or publics in activities that are called “Participatory design” (PD [37, 192, 420]. Scholars
and practitioners have developed numerous strategies for eliciting feedback from participants
[100, 278, 337, 420]. Some popular methods of engaging with users are games and play to create a
comfortableenvironmentandencouragecreativity[80,172,279]; designcardstopromptreflection
on specific issues [406, 458], and storytelling to explore possibilities for the future [52, 325].
I briefly dive deeper into the use of storytelling as it will become important in later sections
of this chapter. Storytelling as a participatory method has recently begun to receive a great deal
of attention by the PD community [52, 161, 479]. This method is sometimes also referred to as
speculative fiction or design fiction [43, 289, 325]. In urban planning, telling a story or giving a
personal reflection about a place is often easier for people than articulating specific changes or
improvements to make [169, 287].
Storytelling comes in a variety of forms. The most traditional method is speculative fiction,
where participants come up with a story—usually written—about the future in some capacity
[97, 169]. This form has become particularly popular in dealing with grand and often somewhat
intangible issues like climate change [169, 267, 287]. Participants in these activities are often
askedtoimagine“alternative”futureswheredominantandpervasivestructuresthatcontributeto
climatechangearegoneorfundamentallyalteredinsomeway,oftenthroughtheuseoftechnology
63
[194]. One major criticism of this method is that it is often simply speculative, not going beyond
speculation to the creation of real change [428].
Written fictions are not the only form of participatory storytelling. For example, in [471],
participants engage in skits around the topic of bullying in schools. Another popular media for
storytelling is photos [337, 372, 391]. This method is also referred to as a “photovoice” study
[372]. We return to this method in Section 4.3.
Another, slightly different form of storytelling in participatory design is the use of serious
games, which are games used for some purpose other than entertaining [449]. In this method,
the participants are not necessarily telling the story, rather the narrative of the game is used to
prompt discussion or reflection. A prime example of this, introduced in Section 2.5, is Gordon
and Schirra’s Participatory Chinatown, which was used to encourage public meeting participants
to think about and empathize with the varying socio-economic situations of people living in their
neighborhood [173]. The goal was to help participants think beyond themselves when suggesting
changes for the neighborhood redevelopment plan.
These storytelling activities, and in general participatory design activities, are typically part
of a public meeting or series of workshops, and are facilitated by a designer. In the urban
planning context, the design team then takes the information elicited through the activities and
must interpret it to create a final design or plan [420]. We return to this idea in the speculative
technology section.
4.3 CommYOUnity Data Site
The CommYOUnity Data Site project is a photo elicitation study [188] that was run during the
Summer of 2020. Participants were asked to provide a photo and associated caption to show off
theplacesintheircommunitiesandtotalkabouthowtheseplacescouldbeimproved. Thephotos
and captions were collected via the CommYOUnity Data website, shown in Figure 4.2. The site
64
Figure 4.2: The homepage for the CommYOUnity Data Site Project.
was built using HTML with a Bootstrap template. It was optimized for use on mobile phones to
makeiteasyforparticipantstouploadphotoswhileoutandaboutintheircommunities. Clicking
on the upload button took the users to a form where they were prompted to upload a photo or
video and answer the following prompt:
“Please give a short description of elements of the image you’d like to see improved and / or what
you love about the space.”
The language of the prompt was intentionally vague in an attempt to capture a very general sense
of how people think about their physical environments. Aside from the few rules for preserv-
ing anonymity given on the homepage no additional direction was given allowing us to capture
unfiltered thoughts from our participants. We wanted to know how people think about their
communities in the day-to-day, not just when there is a specific project or focus area at hand.
Submissions were solicited using convenience sampling. The author posted the site to various
social media accounts and sent it to several mailing lists. Submissions were collected over the
65
Minimum 2
1st Quartile 20
Median 38
3rd Quartile 56
Maximum 162*
Mean 42**
Table 4.1: Caption Word Length. The five number summary and mean for the number of
words in the submitted captions.
*This was an outlier; the second largest caption is 90 words.
**Without the outlying maximum, the mean is 38 words.
course of approximately one month from late July to late August 2020. The result was a total of
40submissions—38photos, 1video, and1corruptfilewewereunabletoopen.
2
Submissionswere
collected completely anonymously, and no information about participants was collected. As men-
tioned, the instructions helped to ensure the photos were also as anonymous as possible by asking
participants to focus on public spaces and avoid including identifiable people. Table 4.1 provides
the five number summary and mean for the caption submissions. The caption of maximum length
(162) was an outlier; the second largest caption was 90 words. The majority of submissions were
between 20 and 56 words, which we felt was sufficient for analysis.
As part of this phase of the project, we also conducted two short interviews with people
working in the urban design field with whom the authors are acquainted—Christopher Tallman,
who was introduced in Chapter 3, and Samantha Pearson
3
. The interviewees were asked about
what they think it means to think like a designer and how this differs from how people without
formal design training think.
4.3.1 Evaluation
The captions were evaluated using textual analysis [266, 486]. The author conducted the primary
analysis,withthesecondresearcheravailabletodiscussfindingsthatemerged. Giventherelatively
2
The dataset is available on request.
3
The interviewees were acquaintances of the authors who had expressed interest in the work and were willing
to chat with the authors
66
Theme # Instances
1. Description vs. Prescription 18
2. Personal Story 12
3. Community Pride 11
4. Beauty of Nature 10
5. Problem with No Solution 4
6. Meta Problem 4
Table 4.2: The six themes that emerged from an analysis of the images and captions submitted to
the CommYOUnity Data Site. The third column indicates the number of submissions displaying
each theme—note a submission can display multiple themes.
small sample size, the coding was done by hand without the use of analysis software. The focus
was primarily on the text of the captions, but each caption was of course viewed in context with
its associated photo. The captions were iteratively coded in random order. Then, the codes were
collected and categorized to find broader themes. From this categorization, six patterns emerged
in relation to how people talked about their local spaces. These themes are: Description vs.
Prescription, Personal Story, Community Pride, Beauty of Nature, Problem with No Solution,
and Meta-Problem. Table 4.2 lists each theme and the number of instances occurring within the
dataset. (Note that a submission can have more than one theme present.) In the next section,
we explore each theme in depth. Each theme is illustrated via an example submission, and we
explore its implications for building technological tools to aid in urban revitalization and repair
projects.
4.3.2 Discussion
In this section, we discuss each of the themes in Table 4.2 in more detail and provide example
submissions to illustrate each one.
4.3.2.1 Description vs. Prescription
This was by far the most common theme, evident in about half of the submissions. In short, these
participants provided only a simple description of the environment instead of assessing where
67
Figure 4.3: Theme: Description vs. Prescription
Caption: Crowded beach on a weekend with the ocean waves crashing. Some people are swimming
or playing in the waves while others sit or stand on the sand. Lots of colorful umbrellas catch
the eye along with some orange flags. Beach houses follow the shore all the way to the visible
peninsula in the background with a hint of clouds on top of it. The beautiful blue sky completes
the view.
improvements could be made in their environments (prescribing changes). Figure 4.3 illustrates
this theme.
As noted in [113], design is “a mode of knowledge production that is...abductive and specu-
lative.” This means that designers must, “[p]ut things together and bring new things into being,
dealing in the process with many variables and constraints,” as well as envision a future that does
notyetexist. However, afteranalyzingthesubmittedcaptionsitbecameclearthatmostordinary
people were not thinking in an abductive or speculative manner.
For submissions showing this theme, captions ranged in length and descriptiveness. For in-
stance, while the caption for Figure 4.3 is quite descriptive, another submission, showing a palm
tree-lined stretch along the ocean, was simply captioned, ”God’s Beauty.” However, none of the
submissions under this theme mention improvements to the environments they depict despite the
68
prompt asking them to do so. As previously noted, the prompt was: “Please give a short descrip-
tion of elements of the image you’d like to see improved and / or what you love about the space.”
It is quite possible that participants did not read the prompt fully, taking in only the part asking
for a “short description” glossing over the rest.
As mentioned, we spoke with a few experts about what it means to be trained in design
thinking, andthisdistinctionbetweendescriptionandprescriptioncameupintheseconversations
as well. Samantha Pearson, a designer with a background in architecture and planning, noted:
“People without design training tend to stop at a fairly superficial level in looking at,
say, a barn or a sidewalk, having categorized it using those words and needing to make
room in their brains for other things. A designer is more likely to compare both or
either to other examples they have on file, both magnificent and abject, to make note
of materials, condition, siting, craftsmanship, and extrapolating further from those to
ideas about local culture, history, and economics” [356].
Thus, when designing technological tools to help people without formal training think about
improving their environments, it will be important to build in some guidance to help users who
are not used to thinking in this way go beyond the superficial characteristics and engage them in
thinking in a more abductive and speculative manner.
Giventhatthisthemewasevidentinabouthalfofthesubmission,wedecidedtofollow-upwith
a secondary study to explore it in greater detail. We explain the follow-up, the CommYOUnity
Survey Study, and our findings in greater depth in Section 4.4.
4.3.2.2 Personal Story
As mentioned in Section 4.2, there is a large body of research studying the use of storytelling
in public participation, because it is considered a more natural way for people to express their
opinions. We saw multiple instances of storytelling and personal reflection in our submissions,
69
Figure 4.4: Theme: Personal Story
Caption: I love that this nearby restaurant has a lovely outdoor pavilion where we have been able
to dine during this pandemic. They have been cautious about observing all the recommended safety
protocols and we usually go mid-afternoon so it feels very safe. It has been a much appreciated
treat to be able to go there, sit in the shade, enjoy a cool breeze and order anything from a simple
to an elaborate meal during a time of so many restrictions.
confirming this research. Even when stories were not explicitly asked for, more than a quarter
of participants responded in this way. For example, in Figure 4.4, the submitter reflects on the
pandemic and the local activities they were able to enjoy during this challenging time.
This was an indication that technological tools could also draw on this strategy, guiding folks
through the storytelling process and helping them to make sense of their stories in the context
of some proposed revitalization effort. We return to this idea in both the next section and in
Section 4.5.
4.3.2.3 Community Pride
One theme that surprised us was the amount of community pride exhibited by participants. More
than a quarter of participants expressed some form of pride in their communities. Although we
did ask about what they loved about their environments, we had anticipated the responses would
70
focus more on the physical aspects of the scene depicted in the photos. Instead, what we found
was that participants often used their submissions as a means of expressing a broader pride in
their hometowns or communities. This was particularly true in cases where residents had come
together to repair or revitalize some community space, as shown by Figure 4.5. In other cases,
participants expressed their community pride by naming the place they had photographed even
though submissions were collected anonymously. For example one caption simply named the
street and town where the photograph was taken. Naming a specific street or the town in which
they lived seemed to signify from participants a certain pride in being from that place.
Figure 4.5: Theme: Community Pride
Caption: This is the playground at the [TOWN NAME] Village Green. The park started to fall
into disrepair a few years ago but a new Village Green association of locals have organized to keep
things up. This just got fresh mulch.
Despite our surprise at encountering this outpouring of community pride, we found that it
tracks with the literature on place and place attachments, which shows that people often have
strong emotional ties to the places they come from or choose to live in [296]. This is particularly
true in the rural context, which many of our submissions reflect [500].
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In designing technology to help people improve their environments, we might first prime them
byremindingthemoftheircommunityprideandattachmentsbeforeelicitingideasaboutproblems
and improvements. As design expert Christopher Tallman noted in one of our interviews, “asset
mapping” within a community can be just as important as mapping or identifying areas for
improvement [450]. We also discuss this theme further in the next section.
4.3.2.4 Beauty of Nature
Figure 4.6: Theme: Beauty of Nature
Caption: Here is the park on an overcast morning. It would be nice to see more people using this
beautiful space.
Aroundaquarterofparticipantsalsoreferencedthebeautyofnature. Thiswascommunicated
through words like “beauty,” “peace,” and “calm.” Figure 4.6 shows and example of this theme.
In retrospect, this pattern is not surprising, as the positive benefits of access to nature and
greenspace have been widely studied [308]. Greenspace access has been shown to have an effect
on mental health [432] and violent crime [193, 323] in communities. It has shown to be especially
important to mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic, with many cities working to increase
opportunities for outdoor recreation for residents [430, 448]. Increasing the presence of green
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space through the cleanup of abandoned lots [364] or tree planting efforts [44] are also some of
the simplest urban revitalization projects to implement.
Itisinstructivetoknowthatpeopleseemtoinstinctivelyunderstandthebenefitsofnature. In
a technological tool, we might use this understanding as an “ice breaker” of sorts, a first category
of suggestion that can be used to help get users to trust a system and its subsequent suggestions.
4.3.2.5 Problem with No Solution
Figure 4.7: Theme: Problem with No Solution
Caption: For people riding their bikes down from our student center, the new rock field looks like
a disaster waiting to happen!
Related to the first theme of describing rather than prescribing, even when participants did
identify problems they sometimes did not suggest solutions. Our expert Samantha Pearson noted
that this is also a common issue in public planning workshops:
“Even when people show up for a community charrette or design workshop, a place
where the entire point is envisioning a new world, it’s like pulling teeth to get them
to draw anything... The really strange part is that even people who have decided they
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want major change often have a hard time making proposing anything concrete at all”
[356].
Thus we imagine that technological aids may be needed not only to help people to identify
problems, but also to suggest solutions as well. For example, in Figure 4.7, we might imagine a
tool suggesting options to get rid of the rocks such as paving over this area or landscaping it.
4.3.2.6 Meta-Problem
Figure 4.8: Theme: Meta-Problems
Caption: I live in a rural area. There are very few businesses around me, but I’m okay with that
because I enjoy the wide open space and the benefits of living in the quiet countryside. Transporta-
tion can be problematic where I live if you don’t own a car. I like that it’s spacious, safe, clean,
and picturesque. The sunsets are beautiful, and the stars can be easily seen at night. It is a nice
place to live, and there are not many improvements I would recommend making.
Finally,afewofthesubmissionsdiscussedwhatwecallmeta-problems,problemsbeyondwhat
is directly pictured in the submitted image. For instance, Figure 4.8 discusses the issue of rural
transportation where public transportation is essentially nonexistent, making cars a necessity.
However, associologistEricKlinenbergpointsoutinhisbook Palaces for the People, thephysical
aspects of a place can have a profound effect on the well-being and resilience of the community
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it serves [246]. A good designer can help people see these connections and suggest physical
improvements based on these meta-problems. For instance, they can connect the health benefits
of access to greenspace [199, 493] with the desire to create more pockets of space that preserve
nature, or understand how the complexities of racial injustice are connected to a history of racist
zoning codes and building decisions and make an effort to ensure the suggested improvements do
not perpetuate these harms [388]. This kind of meta-reasoning is important, but we imagine will
provechallengingtoimplementinatechnologicalagentasmeta-reasoningisstillanopenproblem
in artificial intelligence [358].
4.4 CommYOUnity Data Survey
As mentioned, the CommYOUnity Data Survey was a follow-up to the CommYOUnity Data Site
study, specifically to the common theme of participants describing their environments without
prescribing any changes. We took six of the submitted images and created a survey to tease apart
this distinction between describing and prescribing changes. Table 4.3 shows the six images used
in the survey.
The survey consisted to two questions for each image:
1. Describe what you see in the scene above.
2. What changes would you make to improve the space shown in the above image?
Each participant was randomly assigned two of the six images in random order.
We targeted both laypeople and people with educational training or work experience in urban
design or architecture fields. It is possible the laypeople had training in another type of design,
butwedonotknowasthisdatawascollectedcompletelyanonymously. However,wefeelthatthis
isnotproblematic,becauseotherkindsofdesignlackthesamekindofphysical-spatialaspectthat
architecture-like fields require. The lay responses were collected via convenience sampling from
the author’s social media network. We received 325 lay responses. The expert responses came
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Image 1 Image 2 Image 3
Image 4 Image 5 Image 6
Table 4.3: Six images submitted to the CommYOUnity Site Project that were included in the
Survey Project.
from students and professors in the schools of architecture and public policy at a large private
university. We collected 24 expert responses. Table 4.4 shows the breakdown of the number of
responses collected per image from both experts and novices.
Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4 Image 5 Image 6
Novice 111 117 118 101 90 109
Expert 8 6 9 8 10 7
Table 4.4: The number of survey responses per image broken down by Novice and Expert respon-
dents.
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4.4.1 Evaluation
We coded the responses in a similar manner to the way we coded the captions from the CommY-
OUnity Data Site. The author did the primary coding and thematic analysis, while the second
researcher was available for discussion of themes. The expert responses were evaluated first. We
coded the answers keeping in mind the context of the associated image. We paid particular at-
tention to things that might signify design or urban planning expertise. Due to the small sample
size, the responses were hand coded using a spreadsheet.
Wethencodedthenoviceresponses. Again, theauthordidthecodingandanalysiswithinput
onthemesfromthesecondresearcher. Wepaidattentiontothethemesfromtheexpertresponses
as well as looked for new codes and themes. We also looked at the responses in the context of
the themes from the Community Data Site. Given the volume of novice responses, we used the
Atlas.tisoftwareforcoding
4
. Theresultwas74uniquecodes. (Codesfromallpartsoftheproject
can be made available upon request.) In the next section, we discuss in depth the insights gained
from this analysis.
4.4.2 Discussion
We start by discussing the similarities between the expert and novice responses. We then discuss
some of the major differences. Then we look at the themes from the first study that re-emerged
in this study, and finally summarize a few additional themes that emerged solely in this study.
4.4.2.1 Expert vs. Novice
Commonalities There was a subset of suggestions for improvement that were common to both
experts and novices. These include suggestions to add different kinds of landscaping to some of
the scenes. In fact, mentions of improving the landscape in various forms was the most common
code for novice responses. Both novice and expert respondents also suggested burying the utility
4
http://atlasti.com/
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lines, particularly in Images 2 and 3 (see Table 4.3). Both groups also suggested fixing cracks
in the road visible in several of the images. In general, these common suggestions dealt with
somewhat obvious cosmetic fixes, or surface level changes. These were things that are fairly easy
to notice and do not require a specialized vocabulary to discuss.
Differences However, theexpertsuggestionsalsoincludedwhatwecall“urbanismtrends.”For
instance, multiple expert respondents mentioned “porous surfaces” when discussing fixing roads
and sidewalks. This is a trend that has been growing in popularity, particularly in areas where
water scarcity and retention are problems [131, 377, 512]. Another respondent wrote about trying
innovative solutions for road repair, noting they would like to, “try some solutions that are being
used in other parts of the world. I would like to try out a road made from waste plastic or rubber
if feasible.” Thus while the novices suggested a variety of good improvements, there are certain
industry trends which may not be well-known to people on the outside. In some instances, it may
be helpful to have technological tools that are “aware” of these trends and best practices and
that can help present them to laypeople in a way that is accessible while helping to stretch their
imaginations regarding what is possible.
Another major difference that appeared was the need for context. Many of the experts asked
implicitly or explicitly about the context for the changes to be made. For instance, one expert
implicitly referred to the design context when making the following list of suggestions for Image
1 by noting that the various suggestions depended on the use case (italics added for emphasis):
• variety of plants / materials in stone area (assuming use is water retention)
• narrower and more permeable sidewalk
• benches or gathering space (if heavy pedestrian area)
• Additional shading (depending on climate)
• More engagement between facade of building and sidewalk (if main entrance to building)
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When presented with Image 6, another expert responded, “I don’t understand this question.
Because without a clear purpose there won’t be a so-called design. For example, if I want to change
the experience of walking-by, I probably would add shading trees to the spaces, but if I want to
make this walkway more public-friendly, I would instead adding some branches.” In contrast only
6 of the 325 novices noted the context. For two of the six, it was through reference to the
“homeowners” or “those who live there”, perhaps mirroring their own concerns as citizens, as
opposed to designers.
The key takeaway for us here is that community members are embedded in the day-to-day
trappings of a neighborhood or environment, and we want to think about how to capture this
knowledge outside of any one particular project. As Samantha Pearson noted, when residents are
presented with a specific proposal it is often difficult to get them to articulate their thoughts or
ideas [356]. However, we know that they have valuable insights from their lived experiences. The
question is how to capture these insights when a specific “designerly” context is at hand. This is
an issue we hope to help solve with technological tools like those suggested in Section 4.5.
4.4.2.2 Reemerging Themes
We also found that several of the themes from the CommYOUnity Data Site study (Section 4.3)
appearedinthesurveyresponses. Inparticular,thesurveywasintendedtoteaseapartdescription
of a scene and prescription of changes.
Reflectingboththefirsttheme—Descriptionvs. Prescription—andtheme5—ProblemwithNo
Solution—a number of the respondents did not offer any changes when responding to the second
survey question. The question was mandatory, but responses included things like “nothing”
or “none”. While some of these respondents offered justification for this response (i.e., P147
“Nothing. It’s clean. Nice, wide sidewalks.”) most did not. It was also not necessarily true that
this was a default response. Only 4 of the 35 respondents who offered no suggestion did so for
both images they saw. The other 31 offered suggestions for one of the images, just not the other.
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This finding confirmed for us the need for a technological system to offer guidance to help extract
suggestions from non-designers.
Two other common themes that emerged were community pride and storytelling or personal
reflection. Although participants were not speaking about their own communities in this part of
the study, they nonetheless exhibited their sense of community pride through references to the
imaginedcommunitiesinthevariousimages. Forexample, inprescribingchangesforImage3P80
noted,“Theroadsurfaceneedsrepairedtogivetheneighborhoodafreshlookandforthecommunity
to feel valued.” In another example, P149 described Image 2 stating, “Small town community.
This is a road where neighbors help neighbors.” This again gives a sense that participants are
thinking as community members and not as objective designers.
Communitymembersalsotoldstories,positioningthemselveswithinthescenes,althoughthey
were not describing their own communities. For example, describing Image 3, P42 imagined them
self in the scene, writing “A peaceful summer day while taking my dog for midday walk.” Of
the same image, P153 wrote similarly, “I see a nice friendly neighborhood in which I would be
taking an evening walk.” Given that these themes reappeared across both studies, we found them
particularly instructive in creating the speculative technology scenarios.
4.4.2.3 New Themes
There were several other themes that emerged from our analysis of the novice responses that
we felt were worth pointing out. First, we note that although our respondents were not trained
urban designers, they had a varied level of expertise in various aspects of urban planning and
design. While most made generic suggestions for surface level improvements, some showed more
familiarity with the process. For instance, when suggesting improvements for Image 2, P40 said:
Traffic study, unless one has recently been done. Trim trees, if recommended by power
company. Maybe some CDBG funds for housing improvement projects.
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TheacronymCDBGreferstotheCommunityDevelopmentBlockGrantProgramfromtheUS
Department of Housing and Urban Development. Clearly this participant has some knowledge of
engineering (traffic studies) and this particular grant program, evidenced by the casual use of the
acronym. Another example is reference to “ADA” guidelines by two participants (P50 and P63)
when discussing accessibility in Images 2 and 3, respectively. P265 used the term “zero scape”,
which refers to landscaping made up of dirt or gravel without plants, when talking about Image
6. These examples indicate that we should consider the various levels of experience users of a
technological solution might bring with them and design accordingly. This tracks with previous
work that shows different users prefer different levels of guidance when using co-creative tools
[335].
Similarly, the level of detail offered by participants also varied. Even when participants were
not using the jargon of urban planning, some still offered quite detailed improvement plans. For
example, describing improvements for Image 1, P27 wrote:
I would completely uproot the sidewalk and get rid of all of the chunky rocks. Change
the stairs into a ramp (so it’s wheelchair friendly) and keep one railing bar (on the
right side) and freshly paint it. I’d then create one fresh path of sidewalk from the
ramp to the entrance of the building and plant grass everywhere else. People can walk
on the grass...it’s meant to be walked on. Sidewalk is overrated.
In contrast, speaking of the same image P82 suggested, Add colorful plants. Overall, responses
toallimagesvariedindetailbetweenthesetwoextremes,withmostfallingtowardthelessdetailed
end of the spectrum.
Another interesting finding was that there were certain regional language differences among
participants. In particular, the traffic structure shown in Image 5 was referred to as a “round-
about”, “round about”, “turn around”, “rotary”, and “traffic circle”. (Incidentally, the first
author defaults to roundabout while the second researcher uses traffic circle.) Thus we need to be
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aware both of our own regional language biases as designers of technology, but also of our target
user population. We may need to ensure there are visual cues to ensure a shared understanding
or allow users to build their own local vocabularies into a system.
In the next section, we combine this analysis with theanalysis ofthe Site project tooffer three
ideas for technologies based on our findings.
4.5 Discussion
In this section, we use the insights derived from the two studies to offer three examples of tech-
nologiesthatmightbebuilttohelpordinarypeoplethinkabouttheirenvironmentsinthecontext
of neighborhood repair and revitalization.
4.5.1 Neighborhood Asset Mapping
As we saw in both parts of the study, people seem to take great pride in the places they come
from. While the underlying motivation of our work is to help people think about problem areas
and solutions, we feel it could be useful to start by generating a sense of community pride. This
can help users feel a connection to and ownership of their communities, priming them to want
to invest energy in improving them. In essence, this is the idea behind asset-based design. This
strategy encourages designers coming into a community to start by looking at what a community
has instead of what they lack—looking for assets instead of assuming deficits [113, 357].
From a technological standpoint, we can imagine co-opting a tool like Mahyar et al.’s Com-
munityCrit system, which enables citizens to voice their concerns and opinions about community
issues via crowd-sourcing technology [293]. This kind of system, designed to forward citizen
complaints about infrastructure or other local issues to city officials or to be assigned to city
maintenance crews, has been studied in a number of different iterations by various scholars in
different parts of the world [76, 321, 351, 481].
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We imagine a similar system designed to collect only community assets or stories of good in
thecommunity. Theseassetscouldthenbedisplayedinsomepublicfashiontoremindcommunity
members about their pride in their communities. Assets could include physical characteristics of
the community like like beautiful parks, clean streets, or a well stocked public library. However,
it might include more intangible elements like friendly and helpful residents or a sense of safety
and security. By drawing on community pride and existing assets, we conjecture that people will
be better primed to think about improvements for their communities when that time comes.
4.5.2 A Day in the Neighborhood Storybot
One technique that has gained ground in HCI research lately is the use of AI-backed chatbots
[220, 499], particularly in the context of mental health care [25, 233, 272, 508]. We envision
a chatbot based on storytelling, since this emerged from both our studies as a natural way for
people to speak about their environments. We can imagine asking residents to tell us a story
about a day in their neighborhood or community or about completing specific tasks, and then
using the chatbot to prompt them to think about how their lives could be made better or easier
through environmental changes. For instance, we might imagine a resident telling a story about
food shopping and the chatbot prompting them to think about food access and how they might
wish their community had a farmers market or more outdoor dining opportunities. Ideally, the
bot would be able to parse the user’s story and subsequent interactions into an actionable list of
community changes or upgrades that might be used as a starting point for taking action.
4.5.3 Co-Creative Image Editor
Afinaltoolwecanimagineisaco-creativeimageeditingagent. Co-creativeagentsareasubsetof
creativity support tools, which are digital tools geared toward supporting users as they complete
creative tasks in a variety of fields [156, 238]. Co-creative agents include an AI-based agent that
acts like a guide, helping the user by making suggestions with regard to their creative output
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[238, 408]. For example, Oh et al.’s DuetDraw system uses AI to guide the user through the
process of creating and coloring a drawing [335].
We can imagine combining photo editing with insights from our studies to create a co-creative
tool that allows a user to upload an image of their environment and then make edits based on
variouspromptsorideasfromanagent. Theagentmightbeinformedbyinsightsfromourstudies.
For example, the agent might be taught to start by prompting the user to think about access to
green-space or nature given this is known to be an effective way of improving environments that
is also relatively simple and well received. Perhaps it could even using vision algorithms to report
measures on its prevalence (see [170]). The agent might also be imbued with some of latest trends
or best practices in landscape architecture or similar “legitimized” design fields to teach the user
about things like porous surfaces or the importance of native plants. We can imagine that the
outcome of using the system is a professional or photo-realistic looking rendering of what the
space in question could look like given the user and agent’s proposed changes. We might even
consider going beyond a two-dimensional rendering to an application which allows the user to
work in three dimensions [462] or lets the user view their designs in augmented reality [240] given
recent advances in lightweight systems for creating 3D models from one or two images [306].
4.6 Conclusion
In this chapter, I introduced a project called the CommYOUnity Data Project, consisting of two
parts, a photo elicitation study called the CommYOUnity Data Site and a follow-up called the
CommYOUnity Data Survey. Through the site and survey, we examined the way that “non-
designers” talk about their environments and how this contrasts with the way trained designers
think about the environment. Through an analysis of the responses, we identified a number
of themes to guide the creation of technological tools to help ordinary residents think about
improving their communities. We then suggested three specific potential tools based on these
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insights and themes—an asset mapping system, a story-based chatbot, and a co-creative image
editor. In future work, we hope to explore each of these speculative systems in more detail by
building and testing prototype systems and working with community groups engaged in repairing
andrevitalizingtheirenvironments. ThenextChapterrepresentsastarttowardcreatingavision-
based co-creative tool.
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Chapter 5
Generative AI as a Tool for Speculative Urban Futures
As discussed in Chapter 2, there is a strong link between community resilience and sustainability
and the physical aspects of a neighborhood or community. This concept has been espoused not
only by many of the urbanist greats like William H. Whyte [488], Jane Jacobs [485], and Kevin
Lynch[291],butalsobymanymodernscholarsincluding,inparticularsociologistandauthorEric
Klinenberg [246] (introduced in Chapter 2) and public health researcher and advocate Eugenia
South[165,164]. [165,164]. WhileWhyteandhiscontemporarieslargelyperformedobservational
studies, today’s scholars, like Klinenberg and South, have shown the empirical links between the
physical elements of a place and a wide range of factors including resilience to disaster [245, 246],
violent crime [165], mental health and stress [252, 432], and even hypertension during pregnancy
[456].
To that end, this chapter introduces two ongoing projects on the use of generative computer
vision algorithms to envision changes to the urban environment. The first looks at how style
transfer techniques might be used to help people imagine what their neighborhoods might look
like if re-envisioned to be more pedestrian friendly (e.g., adding greenery, widening sidewalks,
closing roads to car traffic). The second looks at how generative algorithms can be used to
visualize new forms for urban structures that account for the needs of non-human members of
the urban community. To be clear, these projects’s major contributions are not developing or
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improving the deep learning methodology, but applying existing methodology to a novel use case
and datasets to explore the potential for future use in real-world scenarios.
In the rest of this chapter I first introduce related work in using computer vision algorithms
to study urban forms. I then introduce the first project. I introduce the Pix2Pix style transfer
algorithm before giving an overview of our dataset and the parameters of our experiments. I
presenttheresultsofinitialexperiments. Ithenintroducethesecondprojectontheuseofartificial
intelligence for re-imagining urban structures to accommodate non-human urban residents.
5.1 Related Work
There is a history of research using artificial intelligence, in particular computer vision, to study
urbanforms. Examplesinclude[517]whichlookedatenvironmentalfactorsassociatedwithurban
safety, [403] which used satellite imagery to assess urban vitality, and [403] which used machine
learning to identify good parkour spots in an urban environment.
The first study described in this chapter was inspired by [490], which used a general style
transfer algorithm (see [166]) to explore the transformation of urban scenery. Their study used
style transfer along with data from a survey on citizen well-being to explore what the urban
landscape in areas of relatively low self-reported well-being would look like when transformed
based on the ”style” of areas with self-reported higher well-being. Our work differs in several
ways. First, our goal is to create photorealistic outputs that could be used in a participatory
design process, but as can be seen in [490], the images that are produced by general style transfer
arenotveryclear. Furthermore,wewanttohavemorecontroloverwhichelementsoftheimageare
modified. As can be seen from the examples in [490] which transformed urban images into parks,
many of the large structural features (i.e. buildings and roads) are removed by the algorithm. By
using a paired approach in which the structural elements of the images are largely the same we
hope to exert slightly more control over these features.
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Anotherpaperofnoteis[211]. Atfirstglance,thispaperseemstoaccomplishwhatthischapter
is trying to achieve, even comparing their method with Pix2Pix. However, upon closer inspection
it appears that their results may be more pattern matching than actually implementing policies.
For example, in their examples of mural painting the mural produced by their algorithm is almost
an exact match of the ground truth mural. If the algorithm were learning the general concept
of mural painting we would expect it to produce some mural from the infinite set of possibilities
rather than producing the exact same mural shown in the ground truth. Furthermore, their
dataset includes less than 400 pairs across eight categories, meaning in a balanced dataset there
can be no more than 50 pairs per policy, which is quite small, even for Pix2Pix which notably
only requires a small sample.
5.2 Style Transfer for Imagining Urban Revitalization
5.2.1 Pix2Pix
Style Transfer in its original form was designed by Gatys et al. [166] as a way of imposing the
style of one image on the structure of another. In its earliest iterations, it was typically used to
impose some artistic style on a more realistic image, resulting in a stylized version of this image.
Today, there are countless iterations [227], which are used in a variety of disciplines including
geotechnical engineering [204], topology [474], and biology [354].
Unlike the original algorithm which uses a single style image, Pix2Pix uses a paired dataset
[215]. In essence, each context image has its own style. Pix2Pix is a relatively low-resource
algorithm and requires a fairly small amount of data for training, which has led to it becoming
popular with both hobbyists—see for example #edges2cats and sketch to Pokemon [215]—and in
fields such as medical imaging [319, 401] and astronomy [270, 516].
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5.2.2 Methodology
In this section, I introduce our dataset and outline the X experiments we performed.
5.2.2.1 Dataset
Our dataset constitutes of 3300 before and after images of street interventions taken from 50
countries around the globe betweentheyears2005and2015. Theimages wereoriginallycollected
and shared by Urb-i, a Brazilian design firm, on its website
1
. We attempted to contact the firm
to get the dataset, but as it is now out of business we did not hear back. Therefore, we scraped
down the images country by country and removed the watermarks of the year and Urb-i label for
training purposes. The images of each country were partitioned into a training set and a test set
with an 80:20 ratio. We then cut each image in half into a before set, A, and an after set, B. Each
image was in PNG format at a 482×306 pixels resolution. Finally, we uploaded all the images
onto Google Drive so we could use an adaptation of the Pix2Pix Google Colab notebook
2
to run
all of our experiments. We processed the images according to the requirements of Pix2Pix.
5.2.2.2 Experiment Setups
We performed several experiments using Pix2Pix as the basis. This section details the setup for
each experiment.
Pix2Pix Baselines
Experiment One. Our first experiment used the default settings for Pix2Pix, a learning rate
of 0.0002 with a total of 200 epochs, 100 pre-decay and 100 to decay the learning rate to zero.
Experiment Two. Given that we did not see a significant decline in the loss after running the
baseline and the finer details were not rendered well we doubled the number of epochs to 400, 200
1
https://www.urb-i.com/before-after
2
https://colab.research.google.com/github/junyanz/pytorch-CycleGAN-and-pix2pix/blob/master/pix2pix.ipynb
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pre-decay and 200 to decay the learning rate to zero. The learning rate was kept at the default
of 0.0002.
Foreground Segmentation As Table 5.5 shows, even with 400 epochs, the results were still
relatively distorted. In many cases, the images contained distorted buildings in the relative shape
of the ground truth images while the roadways had been smoothed over and rid of cars. However,
our goal is to create designs focused on street-level changes, while leaving the buildings largely
intact. Therefore, weborrowatechniquefromsemanticstyletransfer(seeforexample[288,518]),
which uses semantic segmentation and masking to focus the algorithm on a specific part of the
image.
We use a pre-trained scene parsing algorithm trained on the ADE20k dataset [519] to create
a semantic map of each image and then mask away the background, which we define as buildings
and sky, leaving only the foreground for training. See Figure 5.1 for an example. Results of this
experiment are discussed in the next section.
Figure 5.1: An example of a ground truth image and the segmented foreground.
5.2.3 Results
This section shows the results for each of the experiments. While it is generally possible to judge
the quality of the images produced by generative algorithms such as style transfer by eye, we also
report the Frechet Inception Distance (FID) score for each experiment in Table 5.1 [198]. This
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score measures how well the distribution of generated images matching the distribution of ground
truth images.
Algorithm FID Score
1 Pix2Pix Baseline 109
Pix2Pix 400 Epoch 94
Table 5.1: The FID Scores ([198]) for each of our experiments.
5.2.3.1 Experiment One
Overall, the default Pix2Pix setup did not yield great results. Table 5.2 shows examples of some
of the best results. As these examples show, while the results are not sharply photorealistic, the
algorithm does seem to be learning a few general patterns. Overall, the results show road surfaces
that have been smoothed over with the cars removed and an increase in greenery. These are
general trends seen in many of the after images. However, the finer details have been
Table 5.3 shows a few of the less successful examples. In general, we found that the more
successful examples were those that looked straight down a roadway, while those with alternate
angles tended to be less successful.
We also saw several examples where common structures emerged. Table?? shows examples of
generated images and ground truth from four different countries, which shows that the generated
images are highly similar despite the ground truth being relatively different. There are subtle
differences, but the overall structure of the images is the same. Note that the ground truth for
these four images also have a similar setup overall, a straight on view of the street.
5.2.3.2 Experiment 2
Table 5.5 shows a comparison of the generated images from the first experiment with 200 epochs
and the second, which used 400. The images are the same examples from Table 5.2. As the
examples show, in some cases the additional epochs did improve the generation of details. For
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Before After Generated
Table 5.2: Some of the best results achieved by the default Pix2Pix setup. Showing from left to
right the real before image, the real image after the street intervention, and finally the generated
image. Images from Belgium, Brazil, and Canada, respectively.
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Before After Generated
Table 5.3: Some of the bad results from the generic Pix2Pix Setup. Showing from left to right the
real before image, the real image after the street intervention, and finally the generated image.
Images from Australia, Belgium, Spain, and the United States, respectively.
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Ground Truth Generated
Table 5.4: Images from four countries (top to bottom: Czech Republic, France, Korea, and Italy)
which show very different ground truth, but highly similar generated images.
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instance in the top image, the details are much smoother, and the last image has less abstract
structures and clearer trees. However, as the middle image shows some of the images did not
improve. Overall, all of the images were still relatively pixelated without fine details.
5.2.3.3 Experiment 3
Table ?? shows examples of the results generated using only the foreground for both 200 and
400 epochs. Again, it shows the same images as shown in Table 5.2 for easy comparison. As is
evident, this simple form of masking did not produce better results. In fact, there were actually
fewer fine details produced using only the foreground with both 200 and 400 epochs.
5.2.4 Discussion
Overall, the images show that Pix2Pix in its default form is not sufficient to produce photore-
alisitc renderings, even when focusing only on the foreground. Future plans are include trying
to incorporate other style transfer techniques such as attention mechanisms [284, 416] or textual
cues [261, 514].
Other reasons for the poor results may be challenges with the dataset. Our dataset consists
of images separated by several years. They are non-standard in terms of the exact angle as well
as lighting and season. We are currently looking into other avenues for collecting data of street
interventions to expand the size and scope of the dataset.
95
200 Epochs 400 Epochs
Table 5.5: A comparison of the images generated by Pix2Pix with 200 epochs and 400 epochs.
Ground truth images can be found in Table 5.2
96
200 Epochs 400 Epochs
Table 5.6:
97
5.3 Generative Algorithms for Creating Multi-Use Urban
Infrastructure
This section introduces the second project on the use of artificial intelligence for re-imagining
urban structures. This project was inspired by the following quote from [426]:
This tool [a bus stop kiosk] may provide information for people riding the bus, or
for tourists who need to consult a map. But it does not stand alone with a unified
function apart from the nonhuman elements of the city. The structure may provide a
homeforbirds(ormayperhapsdisruptaprevioushomeforbirds). Thelightfromthe
screen may affect moths and other nocturnal creatures. The kiosk could be designed
to support water collection or to allow for a plant to grow on or in it to foster a more
harmonious relationship among animals, humans, and technology.
and an article I had read that was featured in the ACM’s tri-weekly TechNews newsletter
about a new algorithm that could generate an armchair that looked like an avocado—and quite
successfully if the pictures in the article were any indication [191].
Reading the quote prompted me to think more deeply about ways ordinary objects in the
urban environment might be transformed to serve our non-human counterparts. Could the posts
for street signs be redesigned to include bird houses? Could waste water from public fountains
be collected to water nearby plants or animals? How might we transform other structures like
benches or trashcans? As I began to imagine these transformations, I recalled the article and
wondered if these two things might be combined?
Could a generative algorithm be used to create realistic images of these re-imagined structures and
be used as a speculative tool for sustainable urban design?
This project explores this question.
98
Unfortunately, the algorithm generating beautiful avocados armchairs, Open AI’s Dalle [374],
is not publicly available. Therefore, in linewith myoverallgoal tocreate tools foruse byordinary
citizens I sought out some open source alternatives that could be used in a public manner, for
instance in a participatory or speculative design session. The project looks at four alternative
algorithms. For each algorithm I introduce the parameters of the experiments. I then present and
discuss the results. Finally, I conclude with a general discussion on the results of the experiments
and the implications for using generative AI as a speculative tool for urban futures.
5.3.1 Methodology
This study looks at four open-source generative algorithms for radically re-imagining urban struc-
tures to better facilitate human-nature cohabitation. For the purposes of this project, I chose
the example of a bus shelter with a garden growing on its roof, which actually exist in various
forms in cities around the world [9, 5, 11]. I chose this example because it requires fairly little
reinterpretation of the shelter’s main structure, so ostensibly it should be fairly easy to generate.
The four algorithms tested were: two versions of ruDalle (a Russian built Dalle recreation),
Text2Image
3
and Optimized Image Prompts
4
; Big Sleep
5
, a combination of OpenAI’s CLIP and
a BigGAN; and VQGAN+CLIP
6
, the algorithm behind the popular Wambo Art app
7
. All of
the algorithms were run on Google’s Colab using a Pro subscription. Additional details about
parameters for each algorithm are given in the respective sections.
Four prompt variations were used:
1. a bus shelter with a garden on top
2. a bus shelter with a garden roof
3. a bus shelter with a rooftop garden
3
https://colab.research.google.com/github/tg-bomze/collection-of-notebooks/blob/master/Text2Imagev4.ipynb
4
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1S08bgB1h-la84
V
FNfRXwpfrOQfQM9Wl
5
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1MEWKbm-driRNF8PrU7ogS5o3se-ePyPb
6
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1go6YwMFe5MX6XM9tv-cnQiSTU50N9EeT
7
https://www.wombo.art/
99
Figure 5.2: Images created by ruDalle Text2Image for the prompt a bus shelter with a garden on
top.
4. a city bus shelter with a garden on top
For the sake of clarity, this chapter presents only the best (most real looking) and/or most
instructive examples for each algorithm. All images for each of the variations of the prompts and
parameters are in Appendix A.
5.3.2 RuDalle - Text2Image
I start with RuDalle, because it purports to be a 1.3 billion parameter model, which while quite
large is still relatively small compared to the original Dalle’s 12 billion parameters [374]. In fact,
noneoftheresultswerepromising. Figure??showstheresultsfromtheprompta bus shelter with
100
a garden on top as an instructive example. Results from the rest of the prompts can be found
in the appendix. Inspection shows that this algorithm has a tendency to produce cartoon-ish
results, create an istock watermark (likely due to the training set), and to insert Russian text at
various points throughout images. As can be seen in Figure 5.3 the algorithm can produce a bus
shelterandagardenontheirown, andevendoesalrightonarooftopgarden, butthecombination
alludes it.
Figure5.3: Text2Imageimagesofgardens(left), busshelters(center), androoftopgardens(right)
5.3.3 RuDalle - Optimized Image Prompts
This setup also uses the RuDalle algorithm, but allows the user to prompt the algorithm with
an image to guide the generation. As Figure 5.4 shows, the image used to prime the algorithm
can make a huge difference, and should therefore be chosen carefully. In this case, the best
results came from the prompt: a bus shelter with a garden roof. While both images came out
somewhat successfully (strange distorted person aside), looking at the output next to the initial
images it is clear that in the bottom case the algorithm essentially morphed the tree behind
the shelter to create the wall of green climbing over it. The first case also shows only minimal
changes, whichdoesnotengenderconfidenceinthealgorithm’sabilitytocreatemorecomplicated
structures. Another drawback to this algorithm is that it requires a GPU to run, which makes it
less accessible for use in more grassroots settings.
101
Figure 5.4: Left: images produced by the optimized image prompt notebook for the prompt a bus
shelter with a garden roof. Right: The associated image used as an initialization.
5.3.4 BigSleep
Figure5.5showstheimageproducedbybigsleepforeachofthefourprompts. Asidefromprompt
4 with the word “city” (applied as a tag in the big sleep syntax), the prompts were also appended
with the tag “realistic” (see the supplement for additional details) and “without blur and zoom”
was also added in an attempt to create the most realistic results possible.
Figure 5.5: BigSleep images of Bus Shelters with garden roofs generated by each of the four
prompts.
While big sleep had moderate success overall, especially with the city prompt (# 4), a major
drawback is that it takes nearly four hours to run 20 epochs of 1000 iterations each. It is not
102
possibletorunonthefreetierofColabwithouttimingoutofresources; aproaccountisrequired.
Again this is a major drawback in terms of accessibility for general use.
5.3.5 VQGAN + CLIP
The pre-trained version of VQGAN+CLIP allows a choice of models trained on different datasets.
Of the available datasets three are relevant for creating urban scenes: Imagenet16384 [120], Coco
[280], and ade20k [517].
As with the RuDalle Optimized Image Prompt, this algorithm also allows an initial image
prompt. In order to avoid the morphing of background vegetation as in Figure 5.4, we used the
top right image of the bus shelter as our initial prompt. This algorithm also allows the use of a
targetimageinsteadofaninitialprompt, butthisdidnotimproveresultsandsoisonlypresented
in the supplement. All images were produced using a run of 1000 iterations. As can be seen in
Figure 5.7, increasing the number of iterations by a factor of 10, to 10,000 (also substantially
increasing the run-time) does not significantly impact the image quality.
Figure 5.6: VQGAN+CLIP images produced for the prompt a bus
shelter with a rooftop garden. The left image is generated from text
only. The right used an initial image prompt*.
*This image is from 850 iterations as the loss was spiking at 1000.
ade20k was the best
dataset,whichmakessense
givenitcontainsannotated
outdoor scenes. The im-
ages produced from Ima-
geNet and COCO can bee
seen in the supplement.
The prompt a bus shelter
with a rooftop garden pro-
ducedthemostrealisticre-
sults. Figure 5.6 shows
the images for this prompt
103
Figure 5.7: VQGAN+CLIP images produced using the imagenet dataset for the prompt a bus
shelter with a rooftop garden. The left image is generated with 1,000 iterations, the right with
10,000
withnoimagepromptandwithaninitialimage. Thisalgorithmwasperhapsthemostsuccessful,
but still did not produce highly realistic results.
5.3.6 Discussion
On the whole, it seems that at the open source level, generative algorithms are not good enough
at producing realistic images that re-imagine urban structures to be used as a speculative tool.
This is especially true in the case where there might be time or hardware constraints. However,
I believe it is worth revisiting the question as new and more powerful models are released. In
particular, if OpenAI’s Dalle gets an open source or public API release generating more realistic
images may be possible [374]. Other areas for future consideration are adjusting the various
parameters as well as trying additional text prompts either in the bus shelter case or for other
re-imagined structures. There may be a combination of algorithm, prompt, and parameters that
produces useful results, but it seems clear there is no standard way to find such a combination.
104
Chapter 6
Religion and Spirituality in CHI: A Review
This chapter marks the transition from discussing physical structures that enhance sustainability
and resilience to socio-cultural factors that motivate sustainable decision making, in particular
religion. As mentioned in the introduction, understanding the social and cultural factors that
underpin both the topic of interest and technology use is considered an integral part of HCI
research. For example, in mobile health, or mhealth, research socioeconomic status is often
considered an important factor [50, 394, 440, ?]. My research focuses on religion as a socio-
cultural factor underpinning both the motivation of sustainable decision making and technology
use.
This chapter serves to set up the necessary background as well as to fill a gap in the literature.
While there have been several reviews of the SCHI literature over the years (see for example
[30, 127, 187]), the only review of the religion and spirituality literature in HCI was written
almost a decade ago by Buie and Blythe [86]. This chapter is an attempt to fill this gap by
reviewing literature published at the CHI conference since Buie and Blythe’s review that engages
with spirituality and religion.
Nearly two decades ago, in an Interactions article titled “The age of auspicious computing?”
Bell called on the HCI community to consider religion as an important socio-cultural factor im-
pacting technology use. She urged the HCI community to integrate considerations of religion and
105
spiritualityintotheirwork. Twoyearslater,shewouldcointheterm“techno-spiritual”toreferto
the intersection of technology and religion [56], and another four years later she would again urge
the community to consider religion and spirituality in their work during her 2010 CHI keynote
address [57].
However, despite Bell’s continued pleas, little work concerning religion or spirituality would
be performed over the ensuing years. In 2013, nearly ten years after Bell’s initial urging Buie and
Blythe wrote an alt.chi paper titled, “Spirituality: There’s an App for That! (But Not a Lot of
Research)”, areviewofreligionandspiritualityworkpublishedinACMvenues, whichisthebasis
for this paper [86]. Buie and Blythe showed that despite the fact that there were likely upwards
of 5000 mobile applications targeting religious and spiritual practices, the HCI community had
largely failed to take up Bell’s call to integrate these factors into their work.
AsBuieandBlythenotedin2013,morethanthreequartersoftheworld’spopulationbelonged
to a religious tradition, and this is still true today [91]. However, I am particularly interested
in echoing Bell’s call and Buie and Blythe’s work, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. While
techno-spiritual applications remained prevalent from 2013 to early 2020 [145], they have become
even more important over the past two years as many religious institutions shut their doors to in
person worship and other spiritual practices, and ceremonies had to be altered significantly for
thevirtualworld[109,208]. UsingareviewprocessinspiredbyBuieandBlythe’s, Ireviewedover
1100 CHI publications to come up with a list of approximately 250 papers with ties to spirituality
and religion. Through a careful analysis of these relevant papers, this chapter makes the following
contributions:
1. I show that the HCI community has still not taken up the task of seriously considering
techno-spirituality, as very few papers focused on this topic have been published at CHI in
the past eight years.
106
2. I show that when the HCI community does consider spirituality and religion, it usually
considers general spirituality and religion as a non-specific entity, rather than focusing on a
specific tradition or denomination. Furthermore, the community often works on spiritually
adjacent topics such as mindfulness without considering or mentioning spirituality at all.
3. I show that it is more common for researchers to consider a specific religious tradition or
denomination in the HCI for Development (HCI4D) context / when working in a Global
South setting, and discuss the implications of this.
4. I show that in line with current trends in the third wave of HCI [73], HCI researchers have
begun to work on a variety of topics that are peripheral to religion, despite often leaving
religion largely out of this kind of work.
5. Finally, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the way it has changed how we practice
religion and spirituality, I echo Bell and Buie’s calls to consider religion and spirituality as
important factors in the CHI community’s future work with increased urgency.
In the rest of this chapter, I first give a brief background on religion and spirituality and
their history in HCI. I also include a statement of positionality to give context to this work. In
Section6.2, Ilayoutthemethodologyusedforsearchingandfilteringthesetofpapersconsidered
in the review. In the following section, I outline findings from an analysis of the relevant papers.
Following this, in Section 6.4, I discuss several broader themes that emerged from this analysis.
Finally, I conclude by once again echoing the calls of Bell and Buie in asking the HCI community
to consider spirituality and religion in their future research.
107
6.1 Background
In this section, I first briefly define and describe the terms religion and spirituality. I then give
a brief overview of the history of religion and spirituality in HCI. I conclude with a positionality
statement.
6.1.1 Religion vs. Spirituality
While this chapter uses both the term religion and the term spirituality, it is important to be
clear that these terms are not necessarily interchangeable. Although these terms were considered
interchangeablepriortotheriseofsecularism, andareoftenusedinterchangeablyinconversation,
today, the religious studies community considers them to be different [521]. I define religion as
being part of an organized (used somewhat loosely) institution or set of traditions and the asso-
ciated practices and symbols. This can included formally organized groups like many Christian
denominations, but also traditions loosely organized via a shared history like many indigenous
traditions. Often, this includes belief in some kind of higher being or beings and specific ideas
regarding morality and what happens post-death. Religious practice can be an element of one’s
spirituality. However, spirituality is broader than organized religion. Spirituality is a more per-
sonal phenomenon often characterized by mystical or transcendent experiences, which can occur
outside the confines of belief in any specific religious tradition. In the rest of the paper, I will
use the term “general spirituality” when referring specifically to spirituality without a religious
context. For a more in depth discussion of this distinction see [425].
6.1.2 A Brief History of Religon and Spirituality in HCI
Asmentioned, roughlytwodecadesago, inher Interactions articleentitled“Theageofauspicious
computing?”, Bell called on the HCI community to consider religion and spirituality as important
108
socio-cultural factors intersecting with technology use [55]. She noted that this topic had largely
been absent from past work by the HCI community.
Whileitistruethattherewasverylittleworkinthiscontextpre-Bell,thereareafewexamples.
For instance, at CHI 2000, Muller et al. organized a SIG meeting on the topic, “Can we have
spiritualexperienceson-line?”[326]. AtCHI2002, Hlubinkaetal. presentedaninteractiveposter
on AltarNation, a platform to allow users to virtually join others in a community of meditation
[201]. However, it is interesting to note that neither of these papers deal specifically with a
religious tradition. While Hlubinka et al. do note that their system can be used to augment a
user’s existing religious practice, Muller et al. do not use the word religion at all in their SIG
description. As we will see in later sections, this avoidance of a particular religious context for
non-specific mentions or for general spirituality continues to this day. In 2006, two years after
her Auspicious Computing article, in an UbiComp paper, Bell coined the term “Techno-spiritual
Practices” to refer to how technology is used as part of religious and spiritual practices [56].
However, as I will show in Section 6.4, this term has not gained much ground in the past 15 years,
and is still largely unused. Finally, four years later, in 2010, at her CHI Keynote, Bell gave her
final plea to the HCI community to consider religion (along with other under-explored areas such
as sport and politics) as an important factor in their future work.
Three years later, reflecting on Bell’s keynote, Buie and Blythe put together a review of ACM
papers on religion and spirituality [86]. What they found is that very little research on this topic
had been performed since Bell’s initial article (and ever for that matter). they found that what
work had been done was largely out of one group—see [501, 503, 502]—and had confirmed with
the author of those papers that her group had since moved on to other topics. There were a few
other notable standalone pieces such as Woodruff et al’s. ethnographic study on the use of home
automation on the Sabbath by Orthodox Jews [495].
However, despite the lack of research, Buie and Blythe found that there was an abundance
of mobile applications targeting religious and spiritual practices, not to mention other uses of
109
ICTs by religious institutions in the form of websites, email newsletters, and social media. In the
time since Buie and Blythe’s review, the use of technology in religious practice has only grown
in scope [145, 178, 258]. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process
as religious institutions were ordered to shut their doors and scrambled to move their offerings
online and people were required to move their spiritual and religious practices into the virtual
world [92, 414, 302].
This chapter builds on Buie and Blythe’s work to answer the question of whether the research
community has caught up to the real world, focusing on techno-spiritual practices. As we will see
inwhatfollows, althoughtherehasbeensomeprogressinrecentyears, theanswerislargely“No,”
with HCI researchers still avoiding the topics of religion and spirituality. Buie and Blythe offer
some suggestions as to why this may be the case [86]. I agree with their speculation, however,
this chapter is not about determining why people are not researching this topics. Rather, it is
about understanding how these topics are currently being handled and, in light of the findings,
calling on the community to do more.
6.1.3 Positionality Statement
Giventhesubjectmatter,andthefactthatthisisasingleauthorstudy,wheredecisionsweremade
about the relevance of papers to the topic, I have included a positionality statement regarding my
ties to spirituality and organized religion:
The author (a white female) was raised in the United States in the Roman Catholic faith.
Although her primary and secondary schooling was secular, she attended Sunday School through-
out her youth until she was confirmed in the Church in her early teens. She continued to attend
weekly mass with her family throughout high school. Her undergraduate institution was a Jesuit
institution. The Jesuits are an order of Catholic Priests with a particular focus on social justice.
110
There she continued to practice the Catholic faith on a semi-regular basis. She currently consid-
ers herself a (sometimes) practicing Catholic, attending mass on occasion and engaging in other
Church-based activities such as community service and bible study.
6.2 Methodology
For the purpose of this study, I reviewed papers about spirituality and religion published at the
CHI Conference between 2013 (the publication of Buie and Blythe’s review [86]) and present
(CHI 2021). The choice to search only CHI differs from [86], but was done to limit the papers to
a manageable scope. I searched both the regular CHI proceedings and the Extended Abstracts
(which contain things like the alt.chi proceedings, late breaking work, workshop proposals, etc.).
I conducted the search using the ACM Digital Library (DL). For consistency, I used the same
six keywords used by Buie and Blythe [86]—spiritual, spirituality, religion, faith, numinous, and
transcendent. The search scope was set to anywhere—meaning it would pick up on words any-
where in the paper, not just in the text. This was done to ensure that I did not miss any papers
that briefly mention spirituality or religion in the abstract, but do not necessarily mention it in
the body of the text. Due to the nature of the DL, this search also picked up on related terms
such as “spirit” and “religious”. A single search was conducted using the OR operator on all six
search terms on the ACM Full Text Collection
1
. This search returned 1115 results, which were
filtered to discard those papers that were not actually relevant. Exclusion criteria included:
• Wrong Context: use of words in a non-spiritual context. Examples include phrases like
“team spirit”, the use of transcendence as overcoming barriers, and the name Faith.
• Barely Mentioned: the briefest mention of one of the keywords without follow-up on the
context. For example, in [380] the authors mention that in the UK religious voices are
represented on community radio, in contrast to the elderly, their target population. Other
1
ThesearchURLis: https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?fillQuickSearch=falsetarget=advancedexpand=dlfield1=AllFieldtext1=religion+spiritual+spirituality+faith+numinous+transcendentstartPage=SpecifiedLevelConceptID=119596AfterYear=2013BeforeYear=2021queryID=22/3588864313.
111
examples include mentions of religion as a demographic collected by researchers, but not
included as part of any analysis (see for example [64, 222]), and mentions of other studies
only in related work where the context of the paper does not go on to address religion or
spirituality (see for example [492]).
After filtering the 1115 papers, 254 relevant papers were left.
2
For each relevant paper, I
recorded the title, first author’s name, year of publication, and whether it was published in the
main conference or as part of a special session like alt.chi. Figure 6.1 shows the total number of
papers per year. I then categorized the papers along several different dimensions
3
. In particular,
I used the six criteria developed by Buie and Blythe in their review, again for consistency with
their findings [86]. They are:
1. Focused: Directly and primarily focused on techno-spirituality (“t-s”)
2. Covering: Addressing t-s as a partial focus (e.g., as one component of several)
3. Finding: Producing relevant findings although not focused on t-s per se (e.g., a finding of
spirituality as a concern of elderly people in using technology for physical therapy)
4. Peripheral: Addressing a different but potentially relevant topic (e.g., papers about HCI
and death that do not explicitly mention the spiritual aspect but would be fertile ground
for it)
5. Design: Describingdigital/technicaldesignsthatfosterspiritualortranscendentexperiences
6. Meta: Encouraging the HCI community to address more research to techno-spirituality, or
discussing/mentioning the state of such research
2
I recognize that relevance here is subjective, based on the author’s own prior experience with and attitudes
toward spirituality and religion. See the positionality statement in the previous section for more context.
3
The complete list of relevant papers and meta-data can be made available upon request.
112
Year Focused Covering Finding Peripheral
2021 3 9 11 18
2020 6 6 3 22
2019 3 1 4 16
2018 1 1 12 15
2017 4 2 3 20
2016 2 3 8 15
2015 0 2 7 10
2014 1 3 5 6
2013 1 6 2 11
Table 6.1: The number of papers in each of Buie’s first four categories [86], published at CHI per
year from 2013 - 2021.
Figure6.1: Thenumberofpapersperyearwhich
were included in the 254 relevant papers.
As I will discuss in the next section, I focus
primarilyonthefirstfourcategories. Table6.1
shows the number of papers across each of the
first four categories per year. Some papers de-
fiedBuieandBlythes’scategorization,thusthe
total number of papers in Table 6.1 is only 242
instead of 254; this will be discussed in more
detailinthenextsection. Figure6.2showsthe
totalpercentageofthepapersineachcategory
out of the 242 categorized papers.
I also recorded whether the paper was part of the HCI for Development (HCI4D) literature
and/or set in the Global South. As will be discussed later, this was found to have an impact on
the religious content. Additionally, I recorded the religious denomination discussed in the paper,
if specified, or whether the paper was referring to general spirituality. Finally, I categorized
the papers according to several themes that emerged during the filtering process, which will be
discussed further in the next section. In the next section, I discuss findings from the analysis of
the 254 relevant papers.
113
6.3 Findings
Figure 6.2: The percentage of papers (out of 242) in each of the four
categories—focused, covering, finding, and peripheral.
This section discusses find-
ings from the analysis
of the relevant papers.
The findings are orga-
nized by Buie and Blythe’s
categories, specifically Fo-
cused, Covering, Finding,
and Peripheral. I discuss
findings from each cate-
gory in turn. The de-
sign and meta categories
are omitted as all the pa-
persinthesetwocategories
were also classified as one of the other four and these two categories had very few papers.
6.3.1 Focused Papers
Asmentionedintheintroduction,despitethecontinued,evenincreasing,prevalenceoftechnology
useinspiritualandreligiouspractices, veryfewpapersonthetopichavebeenpublishedatCHIin
the past eight years. Of the 254 relevant papers, only 21 (less than 10%) were completely focused
on religion or spirituality, including Buie and Blythe’s review on which this paper is based. In
fact, Buie was the sole author or a co-author on four of the 21 papers, and published the only
focused papers in 2013 and 2014. Of these 21 papers, 11 were focused on general spirituality,
with the rest falling into the following denominations: 3 Buddhism, 3 Islam, 2 Witchcraft (in
the context of rural Bangladesh), 1 Hinduism, 1 Shintoism, 1 Judaism, and 1 covering multiple
114
denominations. It is interesting that Christianity is not represented at all despite its prevalence
as the most common religion in the world [91] and its hegemony in Western structures [182]. This
will be discussed further in the next section.
It is also notable that of these 21 papers, 8 were also categorized as meta, calling on the
communitytoconsiderreligionorspiritualityinsomeway(forexample,[182,324,447]). However,
it seems that these calls have largely gone unanswered. There does seems to be a slight upward
trend in recent years, with 9 of the papers published in the last two years, 6 in 2020 and 3 in
2021, respectively, and 17 published in the last five years (since 2017) (see Table 6.1).
Finally, itisnotablethat13ofthe21papers(almost
2
3
)havebeenpublishedinaspecialvenue
at CHI rather than as main conference papers. The most popular venue, perhaps unsurprisingly,
isalt.chi,with7publications. OthervenuesincludetheStudentResearchCompetition,Workshop
and SIG proposals, and a single doctoral consortium and late breaking work contribution both
from Buie.
6.3.2 Covering Papers
In the ”covering” category we have 34 of the 254 papers, just 13.3%. Of the 34 papers in this
category, 11 are related to general spirituality. The other denominations represented include:
7 papers on Christianity (with one specifically focusing on Catholicism), 6 on Islam, 6 covering
multipledenominations,and1eachonAboriginalspiritualpractices,Chinesetraditionalpractices
(Taoism and Confucianism), Japanese folklore, and the occult.
Within this category I also included all of the papers on mindfulness and meditation practices
even if they only tangentially mention religion or spirituality as I consider it a spiritual-adjacent
practice. This accounts for 10 of the papers. Performing a DL search for papers with the term
mindful that do not contain the six original search terms results in an additional 372 papers
published between 2013 and 2021, which mention mindful or mindfulness, without any reference
to religion or spirituality. It is important to note that not all of these papers are necessarily
115
focused on mindfulness as a practice, as mindful can have other connotations, but many are (see
forexample[35,98,104,116,137,149]). ThisindicatesthatwhileI(andprobablyothers)consider
mindfulness a spiritually adjacent practice, CHI authors are largely writing about it outside of
this context.
This category includes an additional four papers that I was unable to categorize otherwise,
but believed fit best but not fully into the covering category. For example, [160] is focused on
traditional Buddhist murals, but the main context of the paper is about the VR technology
and interactions. The focus on these religious artifacts was too big to put the paper into the
finding category, but the paper does not address techno-spirituality per se. Another example is
[330], which is focused on ethical decision making. Although the authors do not cast their paper
explicitly in terms of spirituality or religion (although they are mentioned), the topic is a big part
of most major world religions.
6.3.3 Finding Papers
Fifty-five of the papers, or about 22%, fall into this category. In this category, we start to see the
prevalence of papers which mention religion, but do not specify a denomination. There are 28
papersthatdonotspecifydenomination,andanotherfivewheredenominationisnotspecifiedbut
can be inferred in context. For instance, in [147] we can infer from the setting—Saudi Arabia—
that the religious values discussed are most likely from the Islamic tradition.
We also begin to see more papers focused on HCI4D in this category. There are four papers
focusing in both the Global North and South, and 14 focused on just the Global South. This
is a trend that will be discussed in the next section. The findings papers also tend to be core
CHI papers, with only one published at alt.chi. The largest special category for finding papers is
Late-Breaking-Work or Work in Progress, which does not have the same connotation that exists
with alt.chi papers. As these are by definition papers that include religious findings as part of
larger topics, we also start to see these topics emerge. Three of the most popular topics are:
116
• Online life and Privacy: This includes a variety of subtopics, in particular combatting
harassment, hate speech, and the spread of misinformation. (See: [446, 214, 269, 480])
• Health: This includes a wide range of applications and studies regarding the role of tech-
nology plays in managing health. (See: [82, 305, 413])
• The Elderly: This includes studies on how technology is used by the Elderly to increase
their quality of life, typically by facilitating connections to others. (See: [203, 328])
These topics contain 16, 9, and 4 papers, respectively.
Althoughwecanseeinthesepapersthatreligionandspiritualityplayaroleinareasofpeople’s
livesthataffecttheirtechnologyuse, religionandspiritualityaretypicallyhighlightedonlybriefly
in studies of these topics. As I will discuss in the next section, there is room to explore the role
of spirituality and religion more deeply as part of these tangential topics.
6.3.4 Peripheral Papers
The majority of papers—133 or approximately 52%—fall into this category. This is also the case
in Buie and Blythe’s paper [86], which again tells us that although we are working on topics that
intersect with people’s spiritual lives, we are largely only giving this brief consideration. Indeed,
85 of these papers mention religion or spirituality in a non-specific way without mentioning a
particular practice or denomination. Another eight papers do not mention denomination directly,
although it can be inferred from context. A further nine papers cover multiple denominations,
and several of these are also non-specific using phrases like, “The region has wide varieties of
geographical, political, socio-cultural, religious, economic, and linguistic difference...” [221].
As with the finding category, Online life and privacy concerns (14 papers - example include
[24, 186, 470]), health (24 papers - examples include [60, 206, 140, 506]), and the elderly (5 papers
- examples include [81, 292]) are popular topics. Additional popular topics in the peripheral
category include:
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• Family: This includes papers about how parents use social media and other technologies
to support their needs, as well as papers about how families stay connected over distances,
across cultures, and between generations. (See: [65, 150])
• Death: Thisincludesmostlypapersrelatedtovariousmourningritualsaswellashowpeople
deal with data after death. (See: [96, 477])
with 6 and 5 papers, respectively.
It may seem slightly surprising that death falls into the peripheral category, as mourning
rituals are often very spiritual. However, the papers on death in this category typically mention
spirituality briefly before going on to treat mourning as a secular activity, or deal with topics like
data management, which is not inherently spiritual. As with mindfulness, there are also authors
treating this topic completely separate from a religious or spiritual context. Searching the DL for
dying and death excluding the six spirituality-related search terms yields 624 papers published at
CHI between 2013 and 2021. As with mindfulness, death could be used in contexts other than
the end of human life, but some of the papers are treating this topic in a non-spiritual fashion,
for example [478, 397, 83].
In the next section, I discuss these finding further as well as limitations and areas for future
work.
6.4 Discussion
Inthissection, Ireviewthemesthatemergedfromtheanalysisoftherelevantpapers. Thesection
concludes with a discussion of limitations and areas for future work.
“Spirituality: There’s an App for That! (But STILL Not a Lot of Research)”. As
was shown in Section 6.3.1, there have been very few papers published at CHI in the last eight
yearsfocusedontechno-spirituality. Lessthan10%oftherelevantpaperswerefocusedonreligion
118
or spirituality. When considering the entirety of papers published at CHI in the past this is an
even smaller fraction. (According to the DL there were almost 4,000 papers published in just
the main CHI proceedings between 2013 and 2019, not including those published in the extended
abstracts. [6].)
Further evidence of this can be seen in a DL search of Bell’s term: techno-spirituality. (Note
both the variations techno-spiritual and technospiritual are included as these spellings are used
interchangeably.) In the 15 years since Bell introduced this term, there are only 24 papers in
the entire digital library in which this term appears, and this includes the paper in which Bell
initially coined the term [56] and Buie and Blythe’s review [86]. However, one of these papers
onlymentionstechnospiritualitytonotethattheirintentionwasmoretocreateaculturalheritage
experience than a techno-spiritual one [101]. Thus I consider the total number of papers to truly
be 23.
As Buie and Blythe found with the focused papers in [86], these paper are from a small subset
of authors. There is Wyche, who Buie and Blythe identified in [86], with four papers on a variety
of techno-spiritual topics [501, 503, 502, 504]; Uriu working on death and mourning rituals with 3
papers [467, 468, 465]; Buie herself, often with Blythe, with 4 papers [72, 86, 87, 85]; and O’Leary
and Stowell with 2 papers on the intersections of race, religion, and technology [337, 441]. The
remaining 10 papers stand alone
4
.
However, as was mentioned in the previous section, there does seem to be some growth in
consideration of religion and spirituality over the past five or so years, particularly in the last
three years (see Table 6.1). I hope to see this trend continue in coming CHIs, particularly given
the impact of Covid-19, as will be discussed below.
GeneralSpiritualityandNon-SpecificReligiousReferences. Whenthecommunitydoes
focus on techno-spirituality, it tends to be most often in the context of general spirituality rather
4
The remaining papers can be identified through the following searches
https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?AllField=%22techno-spiritual%22andhttps://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?AllField=%22technospiritual%22.
119
than organized religion. As mentioned in Section 6.3, more than half of the papers that were in
the focused category related to general spirituality, and the majority of papers in the peripheral
category contained non-specific references to religion. There is also a tendency to work on spiritu-
ally adjacent topics such as mindfulness and death without including any mention of spirituality
or religion.
It is also notable that none of the focused papers centered on Christianity, despite it’s status
astheworld’smostpracticedorganizedreligion[91]. Thismaybeduetoitsoftenalmostinvisible
influence. As Hammer points out in her paper “Envisioning Jewish HCI”, Christian structures
are so deeply embedded in life in many nations in the Global North that they are often rendered
invisible [182]. For instance, she points out that even our sense of time and calendar have a
religious history and religious implications, despite the fact that we rarely consider them this
way [182]. It reminds us of the water parable—we are the fish swimming in Christianity without
recognizing its presence all around us [254]. However, it seems that when we look outside our
own cultures, we tend to recognize the way religious structures influence other areas more easily.
I will discuss this further next.
OrganizedReligionintheHCI4DContext. Whileingeneralthepapersthatwerereviewed
tended to focus on general spirituality or non-specific religious references, there were some papers
that focused on a specific religious denomination or tradition. Through further analysis of this
subset of papers, I found that it was more common to address a specific religious tradition in the
HCI4D / Global South context than in the context of the Global North. There were 55 HCI4D
/ Global South papers in the set of 254. Of these papers, 25—almost half—mentioned a specific
religious tradition. These included 14 on Islam, 3 different varieties of indigenous traditional
spirituality, 2 on Witchcraft (both set in Bangladesh), 2 on Ancient Chinese spirituality (both
Taoism and Confucianism), and 1 each of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and an African
Spiritual tradition. Another 6 of the 55 papers did not directly specify a religious tradition, but it
120
couldbeinferredfromcontext. ThesesixpapersconsistedofthreeeachonChristianityandIslam.
Ten of the HCI4D papers mentioned multiple faiths or religious traditions. This leaves only 14
papers in the HCI4D context where the religious tradition was not specified or able to be inferred
from context. There were an additional eight papers set in both the Global North and South.
Of these eight papers, one mentioned multiple traditions, while four were specific (two Islam, two
varied Indigenous traditions), leaving only three unspecified. None of the HCI4D papers were
focused on general spirituality. In contrast, of the 189 non-HCI4D papers, only 28 mentioned a
specificreligioustradition—onlyaround15%—almostthesamenumberasintheHCI4Dcategory
despite there being almost 3.5 times as many papers. There were an additional 7 papers in which
thetraditioncouldbeinferred,and16thatmentionedmultiplereligions(althoughpertheprevious
section this could also be rather non-specific). Forty of the 189 papers were focused on general
spirituality—just over 20%.
As mentioned in the previous section, in many Western countries Christianity is a pervasive,
but largely invisible cultural force. It seems that it is easier for us to recognize the pervasiveness
of religion in the the Global South setting. It is true that in some of these countries religion plays
an out-sized role in public life. For instance, Islamic tradition plays a key role in life in both
Bangladesh and Pakistan as Rifat et al. [382] and Ibtasam [212] point out, respectively. It is also
notable that from positionality statements and author affiliations we can see that many authors
working in the HCI4D context are coming from the outside. Some authors, like Ibtasam have
grownupinthecontextwhichtheynowstudy[212],whileothergroupsincludelocalauthors[382],
but it is often the case that these authors are either working out of Global North institutions, like
Ibtasam, or the team includes an abundance of authors from such institutions (see for example
[383]). Thus, in the spirit of Bagalkot and Kumar’s critique of [324], and Hammer’s 2020 paper
[182], I call on the HCI community to look more closely at how and when they are considering
religious structures in their work and how this relates to their own positionality.
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I believe it is a major shortcoming in the community that specific religious denominations are
notconsideredmoreoftenintheGlobalNorthcontext. Whilereligionmayseemmorepervasivein
public life in certain countries in the Global South, a large number of people in the Global North
identify as religious [317, 91, 16, 434]. These traditions are many and varied, and glossing over
these specifics for peripheral, unspecific mentions of religion as a general entity does a disservice
to the people whose lives we seek to improve with our work. We work on a wide range of topics
that are influenced by people’s religious beliefs—health, online privacy and information sharing,
death, the elderly, and family to name a few—and not paying proper attention to this influence
does an injustice to our subjects.
Iconductedanadditionalsearchtoseeifthecommunityisindeedresearchingspecificreligious
traditions without mentioning the general terms “spiritual” or “religion”. I searched CHI publi-
cations from 2013-2021 for mentions of the four most popular world religions, Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, andBuddhism, excludingBuieandBlythe’ssixsearchterms
5
[91]. (Notethatper[91],
the second most popular “religion” is actually unaffiliated spirituality, but this is covered by both
Buie’s terms and previous discussion in this paper on topics such as mindfulness.) The findings
are summarized in Table 6.2. Note that these numbers do not paint a complete picture, as these
papers were not filtered for relevance. For instance, the Christianity category is almost certainly
highly inflated due to the DL picking up the name Christian as well as mentions of schools or
universities with Christian in the name. The search was confined to the full text of the papers to
eliminate some of this conflation, but it does not do so fully. The results show that unlike other
topics, major world religions are not being discussed outside of the spiritual context, with the
exception of Islam. However, as mentioned this may be due to the conflation of government and
religious tradition in countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and others.
5
Forexample: https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?fillQuickSearch=falsetarget=advancedSpecifiedLevelConceptID=119596expand=dlAfterYear=2013BeforeYear=2021AllField=Fulltext%3A%28-
religion+-spiritual+-spirituality+-faith+-numinous+-transcendent+islam+muslim%29
122
Religion Search Terms # of Papers
Christianity Christianity* 220
Islam Islam, Muslim 51
Hindiusm Hinduism 1
Buddhism Buddhism 1
Table 6.2: The number of CHI papers from 2013-2021 containing each of the four major world
religions—Christianity, Ilsam, Hinduism, and Buddhism—excluding the six search terms: spiri-
tual, spirituality, religion, faith, numinous, andtranscendent. *SearchresultsforChristianityalso
contain instances of the name Christian and schools names containing the word Christian. These
results have not been filtered for relevance.
PeopleUseTechnologyinSpiritualandReligiousPractices. Aswehavementionedpre-
viously, techno-spiritualpracticesareonlyincreasing[2,258,178]—evenFacebookisgettinginon
the trend [302]. As Buie and Blythe showed, in 2013 there were numerous mobile applications de-
signed to help people practice spirituality and religion, and this is still the case. Examples include
applications like Gaia and Insight Timer [12], which are designed around general spirituality, as
well as applications like Hallow [17], the Daily Torah Study App [4], and Zabihah [513], which
are designed for specific religious traditions. In the last 24 months, we have also seen a growth in
technology being appropriated for various aspects of worship as the COVID-19 pandemic caused
restrictions to be placed on in person gatherings. Outside of worship, technology has also per-
meated other occasions that are often religious or spiritual such as weddings [208] and mourning
rituals [109]. While many people have indicated that they plan to return to in-person religious
activities when restrictions are lifted [92], it is likely that the pandemic will leave lasting changes
tothewayweusetechnologytopracticereligionandspirituality. Thus, Ifeelthatitisimperative
to echo the calls of Bell and Buie to urge the HCI community to delve into this important topic
in future research.
Limitations and Future Work. I would like to acknowledge several limitations of this study.
First and foremost, this study was focused only on works published at CHI in the last eight
years. While I chose to restrict the review to CHI papers to limit the scope of the study, there
has been some work on techno-spirituality published elsewhere in recent years, for example [383,
123
466]. A larger review encompassing publications across the venues of SIGCHI might unearth
additional results or trends. For instance, there is some work in the Human Robot Interaction
(HRI)communityrelatingtotherelationshipbetweenthedivineandrobots[405,460]. Onemight
also consider SIGCHI adjacent venues like COMPASS
6
where socio-cultural factors are also an
important part of the relevant topics. Finally, while I chose Buie and Blyhte’s search terms to
offer some consistency and comparison with their work, there is room to explore what other terms
might be relevant. We have already seen that “mindfulness” and “death” may prove fruitful in
exploring spiritually adjacent practices, but there may be others. Some examples include “ritual”
and “prayer”. Overall, while I feel that this study offers a strong start, there is room to do
additional exploration of publications in the realm of techno-spirituality.
A second limitation of the study is that with a topic like religion and spirituality, which is not
explicitly defined, the inclusion and categorization of papers is almost certainly influenced by my
positionality as the author. I do include a positionality statement in the hopes of making this
somewhat more transparent, but I cannot justify every decision made in filtering and categorizing
the papers in this publication. A repeat of this study by authors coming from different spiri-
tual or religious traditions or different cultural backgrounds might also yield interesting results,
particularly as a comparison with my own judgements.
Although I have mentioned some popular areas that were peripherally related to religion and
spirituality, there are undoubtedly others that can and should be explored. One area which has
been gaining some traction recently and which I am will explore further in the coming chapters, is
the relationship between spirituality and religion and sustainability [383, 157, 475]. Other areas
might include entertainment, particularly gaming, and education.
Building on the legacy of Bell [55, 56, 57] and the work of Buie and Blythe [86], this study
reviewedpublicationsrelatedtoreligionandspiritualityatCHIfrom2013-2021. Findingsindicate
that this topic is still not being given much consideration by the HCI community despite Bell’s
6
https://compass.acm.org/
124
multiple pleas. It is also interesting to note that while HCI4D pracitioners often discuss specific
religious traditions, those working outside of HCI4D often use only general spirituality or vague
references to religion,despite working on topics like health, death, and family that are influenced
by people’s religious and spiritual beliefs. Echoing Hammer [182], I call on the HCI community to
consider more specifically how hegemonic religious structures may be impacting their work and
how they can address this in more detail. Furthermore, given the (likely lasting) impact of the
Covid-19 pandemic on our spiritual and religious lives, I reiterate Bell and Buie’s calls to consider
techno-spirituality as an important topic for the HCI community with increased insistence.
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Chapter 7
Alternative Pathways to Caring for Limits:
The Case of Ecospirituality
“Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another;
the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea
of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers
and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the
earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.”
—Pope Francis
It may be a surprise to see that the introductory quote was written by Pope Francis. Despite
being a religious source, Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si [152] undeniably captures the spirit of
Computing Within Limits (LIMITS).
The LIMITS community is an off-shoot of the sustainable computing community, including
members of the SHCI community, concerned with changing paradigms surrounding the role of
ecological limits in computing. In the community’s own words,
“The LIMITS workshop concerns the role of computing in human societies affected
by real-world limits. As an interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners, and
scholars, we seek to reshape the computing research agenda, grounded by an awareness
126
that contemporary computing research is intertwined with ecological limits in general
and climate- and climate justice-related limits in particular” [1]
Since the first LIMITS workshop in 2015, the community has made multiple calls to consider
the various sociocultural and psychological factors prompting people to care for ecological limits
[93, 196, 249]. Knowles and Eriksson [249] argued that “without confronting the underlying
psychology that perpetuates our current state of un-sustainability, there is little computing can
hopetoachieve.” SimilarargumentshavebeenmadeinthebroaderSustainableHuman-Computer
Interaction (SHCI) community over the years [84, 419]. This chapter looks at religion as an
alternative motivation for caring for limits and thereby promoting sustainable living.
Religion is uniquely positioned in comparison to other frameworks in that there is not nec-
essarily an underlying need to present data as a catalyst for change [383]. Pope Francis writes
in Laudato Si, his encyclical on care for the environment, “The creation accounts in the book
of Genesis... suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined
relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself” [152]. While data can
help underscore the seriousness of various climate-related issues, such as pollution, waste man-
agement issues, and rising temperatures, substantial motivation is a moral imperative. Taking
a cue from Rifat et al. [383], we investigate religion as an alternative and not-necessarily-data-
driven approach to sustainable behavior, investigating the role religion might play in promoting
a limits-aware perspective.
Our study focuses particularly on Catholicism, a branch of Christianity practiced globally by
more than one billion people, assessing how Catholic ecospirituality is inherently aligned with
the values of the LIMITS community and how it provides a motivation that goes beyond the
current ecological crisis. Ecospirituality connects the science of ecology to spirituality [281, 7].
Lincoln [281] defined ecospirituality as “a manifestation of the spiritual connection between hu-
man beings and the environment.” The concept sprung from a reaction to the West’s focus on
127
materialism, regarding the environment as a material resource with intrinsic value [119]. Specifi-
cally, our study asks the following three questions:
RQ1: HowmighttheCatholicmotivationtocareforlimits—Catholicecospirituality—differfrom
motivations grounded in the scientific understanding of ecological limits?
RQ2: How might Catholic ecospirituality manifest in practice?
RQ3: What role might computing technologies play in supporting Catholic ecospirituality?
We interviewed 14 U.S.-based Catholic organizations and individuals on ways they worked to
promote environmental sustainability. We investigate limits perspectives embedded in the faith
of our interviewees which plays out practically in their everyday work and decision making. We
examine the conceptualization of ecological limits from a Catholic ecospirituality perspective,
noting that this perspective goes beyond the current environmental crisis and is fully aligned with
the scientific reality of climate change. We analyze that the conceptualization motivates action
from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Finally, we assess that technology is seen as
both a help and a hindrance when operationalizing Catholic ecospirituality.
Our study makes two major contributions. 1) It explores a motivation for caring for limits
and sustainability, beyond the rational and scientific reasoning, that has been not substantially
explored by the LIMITS community. 2) We suggest design considerations for designing for pro-
moting sustainable living work in LIMITS and SHCI informed by Catholic ecospirituality.
Thestructureofthischapterisasfollows. IfirstprovideanoverviewofCatholicecospirituality.
I then briefly discuss related work from the LIMITS and SHCI communities. I describe the
methods we followed, including our study context, data collection process, and data analysis. I
present our findings, followed by discussing the themes that emerged from our analysis.
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7.1 Catholicism & Ecospirituality
For context, I briefly discuss the history of Catholic ecospirituality. This information may be
unfamiliar to many readers and will help them interpret our findings. For readers not familiar
with the terms used in Catholicism, we suggest referring to Table 7.1 where we have provided
definitions for such religious words.
The Catholic Church is a global organization presided over by the Pope. The Pope’s role
is to balance the needs and operating autonomy of local churches with the universal teachings
of Catholicism. The Pope is responsible for preaching on a variety of topics to over 1.2 billion
Catholicsworldwideandinterpretingchurchteachinginlightofdebate. Inthepast,thispreaching
hasincludedteachingontheenvironmentandthemoralobligationforCatholicstolivesustainably
[152].
While people might be most familiar with the teachings of Pope Francis (the current Pope),
many popes and bishops before him have supported sustainability [152]. For example, in 1970,
PopePaulVI[353]discussedthe“ecologicalcatastropheundertheeffectiveexplosionofindustrial
civilization” with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He argued for
changing the way we live, emphasizing that “the most extraordinary scientific advances, the most
amazing technical abilities, the most astonishing economic growth, unless they are accompanied
by authentic social and moral progress, will definitively turn against man” [353]. In 1979, Saint
JohnPaulII[352]inhisencyclicalRedemptor Hominis,stressedthat“[humanbeings]seenoother
meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption.” He
suggested bringing fundamental changes in our lifestyles, power structures that govern our soci-
eties, and our models of production and consumption [352]. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI [58]
proposed “eliminating the structural causes of the dysfunctions of the world economy and cor-
recting models of growth which have proven incapable of ensuring respect for the environment.”
129
In 2015, Pope Francis, in the encyclical Laudato Si [152] offered a comprehensive overview
of sustainability as part of Catholic morality. The encyclical is a 200-page ‘letter’ that includes
six chapters. Chapter one starts by laying out the various ways the Earth is being degraded
by modern human practice. The chapter discusses ways in which environmental degradation
has an outsize impact on the poor and marginalized. Chapter two makes a case for people of
the Christian faith to care about the environment—creation as it is called—using evidence from
the bible and other Catholic teachings. Chapter three explicitly lays out the ways in which
human activities have caused the degradation. Chapters four to six spell out a new way forward
grounded in what Francis calls an “integral ecology,” i.e., “we are not faced with two separate
crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social
and environmental” [152].
In 2020, the Vatican released “Journeying Towards Care for Our Common Home,” a five-year
update to Laudato Si to suggest more actionable updates [14]. In fall 2021, the Catholic church
released the global, web-based Laudato Si Action Platform [18]. This website invites Catholics
from various religious congregations and Catholic institutions across the world to participate in a
seven-yearjourneyofreflectionandactiononenvironmentalissues. Theplatformasksparticipants
to look at their impact in seven focus areas: response to the cry of the earth, response to the cry
of the poor, ecological economics, adoptions of sustainable lifestyles, ecological education, ecological
spirituality,andcommunity resilience and empowerment. Theplatformproposesthatparticipants
assess, reflect, andplanaseven-yearactionplan. Theplanincludesyearlycheck-insandreflection
on progress as well as (re)commitment to continued progress in the coming year.
In many ways, the increasing focus on sustainability laid the foundation for ecospirituality
to become more integral to Catholicism. In the West, the ideas became popular through the
theological idea that God created the world freely, and thereby it has an intrinsic value and is
worthy of our respect and care [119]. Now ecospiritual thinking has become integral to Chris-
tianity and its subdivisions. For example, Thomas Berry [61], a cultural historian, noted that
130
Meaning of Catholic terms
Religious word Meaning
Church
A building used for public Christian worship;
the Christian religious community as a whole;
a body or organization of Christian believers
Congregation
A body of Catholics, usually the members of a parish,
assembled together in a church for Divine worship.
Conversion
One who turns or changes from a state of sin to repentance,
from a lax to a more earnest and serious way of life, from unbelief to faith,
from heresy to the true faith
Diocese The territory or the churches under a bishop’s jurisdiction
Encyclical
A circular letter; now almost exclusively a papal document;
treating of matters affecting the general welfare of the Church
Eucharist
The sacrament and sacrifice of the New Law...
received under the species of bread and wine
Genesis
The first Book of the Bible, containing an account of the origin of the world,
of the human race and of the chosen people
Laity
The ordinary members of the Catholic Church who are neither clergy
nor recipients of Holy Orders or vowed to life in a religious order or congregation
Parish
A definite territorial division of the diocese
to which has been assigned its own church
Pope The bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church.
Table 7.1: Meaning of Catholic terms used in the paper (see: [345])
Christians recognize a need for an Earth Ethic, as is evident from the formation of an association
called “Sisters of Earth.” The association consists of nuns and laywomen from diverse religious
communities sharing concern for the ecological crises and working toward healing and restoring
Earth [36].
Ecospiritual values have always been part of the eastern, Indigenous, and native cultures.
Indigenous Tongva scholar Charles Sepulveda [410] speaks to these values being present within
groupsIndigenoustoSouthernCalifornia: “Thepeoplefromthesetribalnations,althoughforever
changed due to colonialism, continue to understand that their lands and waters are special gifts
provided by the power of nature giving them spiritual strength, sustenance, purpose, and life.”
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7.2 Related Work
I first discuss how sustainability has been conceptualized by the LIMITS and the broader SHCI
communities. I then briefly describe how these communities have engaged with religion and
spirituality.
7.2.1 Sustainable HCI & Computing Within Limits
As has been mentioned throughout this dissertation, SHCI research has largely been centered
around the use of data-driven, persuasive technologies that take an individualistic, rational,
and consumer-centric view of the user while aiming to change behavior such as reducing re-
source consumption [84, 189]. For example, SHCI studies have focused on using eco-feedback
systems [159, 443], computer games [264, 378], or visualizing resource consumption [74, 112] to
persuade[331,27], motivate[256], encourage[334], educate[242], promote[237], orinfluence[273]
individual persons to adopt sustainable behaviors. These studies, as Brynjarsd´ ottir et al. [84]
noted, are largely driven by a modernist focus on data-driven persuasion techniques aimed at
influencing individuals to live sustainably, for example, by reducing their energy use. Hasselqvist
and Eriksson [189] reported that despite earlier calls for a broader, less consumer-centric perspec-
tive, SHCI research still largely focuses on data and individuals. There have been some attempts
togobeyondthisindividual,consumer-centeredperspectivebyintroducingotherframeworkssuch
as ecofeminism [236], desiderata types [223], and practice theory [136]. However, as Remy et al.
[379] argued, often a gap between these theoretical frameworks and empirical work exists; the
theories are not always practical to implement and integrate into people’s lives.
LIMITS has pushed against the individual, consumer-centric view [231, 442] by introducing,
for example, alternative paradigms such as a permaculture worldview [132] and teachings from
Indigenous knowledge [520]. These alternative paradigms also have their challenges related to
bridging the gap between theoretical frameworks and practical application [379]. While LIMITS
132
scholarshavediscussedvariousmotivationslikealtruismorfeelingsofresponsibilitytowardsone’s
community as catalysts for sustainable lifestyles [177, 333, 459, 484], they have not substantially
analyzed why some people may feel inclined toward such pro-social or pro-environmental behavior.
In our attempts to answer this question, we investigate religious beliefs as an intrinsic motivation
for such behavior.
7.2.2 Religion and Sustainability in HCI
For an in-depth look at the treatment of religion and spirituality see Chapter 6. This section
focuses on where scholarship by the HCI community has looked at the intersections of spirituality
andreligionandsustainability. ExamplesincludeH˚ akanssonandSengers[179]studyingreligionas
a motivation for simple living, Vyas [475] investigating sustainable household practices of middle-
class people in India being influenced by their Hindu religious beliefs, Akama et al. [26] reflecting
on the role of nature from both Shinto and Atheist-Spirituality perspectives, and Rifat et al. [383]
looking at the way the values of Islam as practiced in Bangladesh might connect to sustainability.
Within LIMITS, studies have not focused on the role religion or spiritual values might play in
orienting an individual towards a limits-aware perspective. Penzenstadler’s[359] work touched
ideas around spirituality, but the work does not make substantial connections. Extending work
on religion within HCI and contributing to work on religion and sustainability [383], we analyze
how religious and spiritual values can drive a change towards a more sustainable living, focusing
particularly on people practicing Catholicism.
7.3 Method
In this section, I describe the study context, data collection, and analysis process.
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7.3.1 Study Context
Taking a cue from Rifat et al. [383], the goal of our study was to seek out Catholic organizations
in the United States working on addressing environmental problems. We aimed to extend work at
theintersectionofreligionandsustainabilityinHCI.However, unlikethepreviousstudy[383], we
planned to look at a more secular context where religion might be less homogeneous and, in many
cases, less explicitly part of everyday life. However, as mentioned in Chapter 6, we agree with
Hammer [182] that a lot of Christian structures are embedded in the Western contexts, impacting
the situated knowledges of people and thereby making it hard to disengage their knowledges and
perspectives from religious values. While we situated our work in the United States, we focused
ontheorganizationspartoftheLaudatoSiMovement
1
,aglobalorganizationthatoffersresources
and events for Catholics working toward climate justice from a faith lens. The organization was
familiar to the interviewing author from following various Catholic media outlets on social media.
7.3.2 Data collection
We contacted organizations and people that were part of the Laudato Si Movement. We found
a list of organizations and their delegates online, with information to contact them virtually. We
reached out to over 100 groups through emails to participate in our study. Many organizations
responded to our call. As we started conducting interviews, we used snowball sampling [228] to
recruit more participants. From October 2021 to November 2021, we conducted 14 interviews
after approval from our university’s Human Subjects Review Board. We stopped conducting
more interviews when we started noticing repeating sentiments—as we reached theoretical sat-
uration [108]. We investigated how a limits-aware perspective is embedded in the faith of our
interviewees and how it played out in their everyday work toward sustainability.
All the interviews were held virtually via a cloud-based video-conferencing application, which
was used in video mode for all interviews. These technology-mediated interviews allowed us to
1
https://laudatosimovement.org/
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reachgeographicallydistancedparticipantswhilemanagingCOVID-19imposedtravelrestrictions
and safety concerns. We video and audio recorded the interviews with the participants’s consent.
All the interviews were conducted in English and ranged in time from 23 minutes to 56 minutes,
with an average of 35 minutes. Eight of our participants were members of vowed religious life,
such as priests and religious sisters, while the remaining six were members of the laity. Eight
interviewees identified as female and six as male. Six participants were based on the East Coast,
three in the Midwest, two on the West Coast, and one in the Deep South. The remaining two
participants belonged to national organizations serving the entire U.S.. See Table 7.2 for more
information about interviewees’ demographics.
7.3.3 Data Analysis
The author and second researcher followed the inductive, interpretive coding approach that Mer-
riam [309] proposed for data analysis. The approach includes first familiarizing ourselves with
the data, reading through the data, and taking initial notes. We then coded the data; we went
througheachtranscriptandhighlightedeverythingrelatedtoparticipants’experiences, attitudes,
interpretations,andtheactionstheyhavetakentopromotesustainability. Forexample,thecodes
included “interconnection with nature” where participants discussed how they view themselves
as connected with the environment, “a shift to sustainability” where participants reported how
there was an active effort in the religious community to move towards more sustainable ways of
living, and “learning from traditional wisdom” where participants suggested integrating concepts
of sustainable living from the indigenous knowledges and ways of living. After we generated
the codes, we discussed them with all the researchers. The author and second researcher induc-
tively analyzed the codes to identify themes, including organizing, reorganizing, and combining
the codes. Finally, the research team returned to the data to check that the themes accurately
represented the data and adjusted them accordingly. We formed three high-level themes. We
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Religious? Gender Role Location
P1 Lay F
Runs a parish Care for Creation group;
involved with Archodiocesean
Care for Creation group
Midwest USA
P2 Lay M
Part of a national organization calling on
Catholic universities
to divest from fossil fuel
USA
P3 Lay F
Works for a national organization
devoted to promoting
Ignatian spirituality
USA
P4 Lay M
Runs a diocese office of Life, Justice,
and Peace, which includes
work on ecology
West Coast USA
P5 Lay M
”Retired” Lawyer; runs a parish
Laudato Si circle
West Coast USA
P6 Religious F
Sister who runs much of the ecological
work in, particularly with regard to use
East Coast USA
P7 Religious F
Sister who is a social worker in
a clinic in the deep South, USA
Deep South, USA
P8 Religious M
Priest at who is very involved in sustainability
initiatives within his parish
East Coast, USA
P9 Religious M
Priest who runs the Peace, Justice, and
Ecological Integrity Office for
a congregation of religious Sisters
East Coast, USA
P10 Lay M
Theology professor who is part of his university’s
sustainability committee
Midwest USA
P11 Religious F
A sister who is part of the sustainability
efforts for her congregation
East Coast, USA
P12 Religious F
A sister who is part of the social justice office
for her congregation
East Coast, USA
P13 Religious F
A sister who is heavily involved in ecological
education in her own congregation
and with the public
Midwest USA
P14 Religious F
A sister who works on ecological issues
and is also her congregation’s
representative to the UN
East Coast, USA
Table 7.2: A summary of interviewee details.
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present those themes in the paper, describing what each theme meant and how it represented the
data we gathered.
7.3.4 Positionality Statement
Given the sensitive nature of the subject matter and in the spirit of full transparency, we include
our positionality, especially describing how we relate to and practice our religions and faiths. All
the researchers are situated in the United States. A statement on the Author’s positionality with
regard to religion can be found in Chapter 6, Section 6.1.3. The author views sustainability as
very much intertwined with creating a just global society that allows all beings, human or not, to
thrive. The second researcher was born and raised in India. They grew up in a family practicing
Hinduism; they do not identify with any religious group. They view sustainability as the need to
drastically reduce our economic activities to live within the ecological limits. The third researcher
was born and raised in the United States to agnostic parents. They practice green witchcraft
and paganism to decolonize themselves, heal ancestral trauma, and deepen their connection with
Mother Earth. They view sustainability as establishing a regenerative spiritual connection with
ourselvesasstewardsoftheland. ThefourthresearcherwasbornandraisedinIndia. Theirfamily
practices Hinduism; however, they do not hold any particular religious belief. The fifth researcher
was born and raised in the United States in a family that practices Hinduism. They do not have
a personal religious or spiritual practice. The fourth and fifth researchers view sustainability as a
practical and ethical imperative for a global society.
7.3.5 Acknowledgment of Harms
We focus primarily on the positive examples of work being done by Catholic organizations. How-
ever, weacknowledgetheharmsperpetratedbytheChurchthroughouthistory[148,62,507,313].
Our participants also reported this darker side of the institution. For example, P4 said, “There’s
also a side of that story which has been connected with colonization or connected with other forms
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of domination, and where the Church has not always either maintained that prophetic voice or that
voice with care of creation, or has it slipped from view sometimes, or has not been as centered.”
We recognize the complicated history of the Church with colonialism, conversions, misconduct,
and atrocities committed against indigenous populations worldwide. Some of the researcher have
(in)directly faced the consequences.
7.4 Findings
Inthissection,wediscusstherelatedthemesweuncoveredtoanswerourresearchquestions. First
we discuss how ecological limits are conceptualized from a Catholic ecospirituality perspective,
noting how this perspective goes beyond the current ecological crisis, but is also fully aligned with
the scientific reality of climate change. Second, we look at how this conceptualization motivates
action from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Finally, we examine how technology is
seen as both a help and a hindrance when it comes to operationalizing Catholic ecospirituality.
7.4.1 Conceptualizing limits
We examined three themes related to how Catholics perceive ecological limits as part of their
faith. These themes are limits as transcending the current moment; the perception of nature as
intrinsically good; and the compatibility of faith and science.
7.4.1.1 Limits as transcending the current moment
For our participants, concern for the environment, or “care for creation” as it is often referred
to in Catholic circles, was an integral part of their faith. Participants reported that they view
ecological limits and thus the need to turn towards a more sustainable behavior as a mandatory
value prescribed by their religious scriptures and traditions. For example, P11 said, “It [living
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within ecological limits] is a part of a Gospel mandate. It is not just something that you know we
are kind of casually interested in. This is essential to who we are.”
Participants emphasized that their concern towards caring for creation is not just tied to the
current ecological crisis that the world faces but something that they have always known about.
For example, P4 told us:
“We want to think first as Catholics, and this [ecological limits] should not be really a
newissue. Imean, it[sustainability]isanewcrisismomentthatwearein, butImean,
our faith has taught us from the very beginning to be good stewards and caretakers and
lovers of this earth. I mean, we come from a tradition of nomads and migrants and
gardeners, and you know monastic communities, and you know any number of ways
that the Catholic tradition has always nurtured a deep love for creation and a part with
that spirituality that goes with that.”.
However, eventhoughcarefortheenvironmenthasbeenintegraltotheCatholiccommunities,
participantsreportedthatthecaretowardstheenvironmentwasnotaconcernforeveryoneinthe
larger community. P9 said, despite the “Gospel mandate” to care for creation, it has not always
been made a priority. They added, “ I would say one [development], that has certainly been a
very distinct development in the past 20 years or so in religious life, that people are much more
conscious [of sustainability]”. P9 further mentioned that the larger community started becoming
more environmentally consciouswhen thereligiousleaders startedstressingliving sustainably. P9
said:
As Pope Francis puts it in Laudato Si, care of creation is not a secondary or non-
essential element of the Christian life, so if it is not secondary or non-essential, it is
primary and obligatory. So I think, increasingly in recent years, people have become
much more conscious that this is not just a matter of adding green and stir. It is a
matter of a whole new way of looking at how we relate to God through creation.”
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We further discuss that the idea of caring for creation is a faith mandate comes directly from the
fact that as part of God’s creation, nature must be intrinsically good.
7.4.1.2 Nature as intrinsically good
Our participants were motivated to respect and care for nature. Their motivation was based
on their religious belief that nature was created by God, and thereby it has an intrinsic value.
According to them, the value of nature cannot be—and must not be—measured by its utility
to humans. While discussing the creation story as told in Genesis, P10 stated, “The thing is,
nowhere in that whole creation story, nowhere does it say that these things were created for us
and simply for our good. They are good in themselves.” This perspective towards creation being
created by God as an entity in itself, but not to serve humankind, was reported by many of our
participants.
However,overtime,thisnotionofcreationhavingitsownintrinsicvaluewaslost,thescriptures
were misinterpreted, and some people of faith started believing otherwise. P9 said, “So I do not
think you know anybody ever specifically told us that the world, the world exists to serve your
purposes... [however] for a variety of complex reasons it did play out in that way,” indicatingthat
the intrinsic good of nature has not always been recognized in the way that the faith demands.
P13 emphasized the misinterpretations ofreligioustexts thathave happened, specifically pointing
to an incorrect translation over the course of time, saying:
“I say, for the early Hebrews dominion means blessing, being a blessing. We are called
to be a blessing for the rest of creation. It does not mean that we are to dominate
and have mastery over, which is how we’ve interpreted it, and there are so many other
places in that story of Genesis where you take words that we’ve interpreted and then
assumed it meant something and that wasn’t in the original. Like even the word to till
the soil. Till for us, that was the word that we interpreted, but the Hebrew word that
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we interpreted as to till could also be interpreted as to serve, or to preserve, or to hold
sacred, you know.”
P9 explained how the belief of nature having an intrinsic value also fits with modern scientific
beliefs. They said, “We also have a different idea of God’s relationship with the creation with the
acceptance of evolutionary thought that the created universe existed for more than 13 billion years
before humans appeared. So, God must have had some purpose for it all before we showed up to
be dominant, to have dominion over it.” This statement from P9 highlights the third theme we
discovered with regards to how our participants conceptualize environmental limits—their faith
beliefs regarding nature are entirely compatible with the modern science surrounding the current
environmental crisis.
7.4.1.3 Faith and Science
We noticed that our participants perceived faith and science as not distinct but two faces of the
same coin, related to each other. They saw no “immediate tension [with their faith and] with
science or the discoveries in science” (P10). Instead, they asserted that ”the intersection of
Theology and environment, there really isn’t an intersection, it really is one context, and so I do
spend a lot of my time trying to get people to understand that we’re not talking about two separate
issues here” (P13). P4 added, “I think that’s just the role that we play as a church and helping
to remind people why we engage on these issues, and then trying to turn to trusted voices on the
science and the advocacy and the other work.”
Peoplehavelargelymisinterpretedfaithasbeingtheoppositeofscience. Participantsreported
that the reason behind this misinterpretation was taking the stories described in the religious text
literally instead of understanding the teaching they convey metaphorically. For example, P11
said, “Years and years ago there was a big separation between the two, it couldn’t possibly be
compatible.” However, with time, people have started to recognize the connections between faith
and science. P11 told us:
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“All of us have evolved to understand that science and scientific discovery is very
much part of our growing and evolving as humans. And for us, that means that in
our spirituality that helps us move the whole enterprise of Jesus that much further
in bringing about a kindom
2
that is more just, more loving, more nourishing towards
everyone.”
P3 added, “Catholic theology doesn’t believe that Genesis [the biblical creation story] literally hap-
pened. It couldn’t have.” ForCatholics, Genesisisastorywith “spiritual truth” butnothistorical
or factual truth. Our participants’ understanding of their faith was linked to their understand-
ing of science. For P13, this means, “When our cosmology, our understanding of the universe,
changes so must our understanding of the divine.” We now turn to how this understanding of
environmental limits gets put into practice for our participants.
7.4.2 Operationalizing Limits
When talking about taking action on sustainability, P5 paraphrased the Second Book of James,
“Faith without works is dead.” Thus for our participants it is important to put their values with
regardtosustainabilityintopractice. However, ourparticipantsexpressedaninterestingdilemma
about how sustainability initiatives have been operationalized by Catholic organizations. The
Catholic church has historically been extremely hierarchical [202, 376]. (Although, some of our
participants reported changes in the nature of hierarchy. For example, P14 told us about the
changes in her congregation, saying “Many years ago we voted to change the word “Superior”
to “Coordinator.”
3
) We noticed that while sustainable living is practiced in a top-down manner
consistentwiththishierarchicalorganization, manyofourgroupswerealsoengagedinbottom-up
practices of sustainability. In the next two sections, we detail how each of these strategies play
out in practice.
2
Note that some congregations are using kindom instead of kingdom to promote a less hierarchical worldview.
3
In congregations of religious women, the leader has traditionally been referred to as the superior, or as Mother
Superior.
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7.4.2.1 Top-Down Operationalization
At the time of the interviews, the Vatican was rolling out the Laudato Si Action Platform
4
.
Given that it came directly from the Vatican, it demonstrates the ultimate top-down approach
to sustainability. Many participants mentioned that their groups were preparing to participate in
the action platform.
We also observed the top-down approach in the way institutional resources were used by
the participants. The Catholic Church controls a great deal of resources and assets, including
universities, land, and other financial and congregational investments. Many of these intuitions
were working towards using their resources in ways that promote sustainability. For example,
P2 ran an organization dedicated to encouraging Catholic universities to divest from fossil fuels.
Manyofthecongregationsofreligioussistershadsignificantinvestments, whichtheyusedtofund
their daily necessities and mission work. P6 said that the congregation she belongs to is working
toward divestment from companies with unsustainable practices. P11 and P14 told us that their
congregations were also engaged in trying to make their investment portfolios more sustainable.
P14 noted, “We also try to look at our investments. That our investments for example are not
promoting fossil fuels, so we try to have responsible investments.” P11 talked about how they
monitor the companies in their portfolio,
“Our investment portfolio is very focused on that, so we have a lot of our effort goes
into monitoring some of the companies, corporations, that we invest in, and if they
are not in compliance. Let’s say for example Exxon Mobil. We did a lot of work with
Exxon Mobil. They weren’t compliant so we took them out of the portfolio.”
P6’scongregationhadalsocreatedalandeasement,akindoflegalbanonfuturedevelopment,
to protect the land they own, particularly considering that their aging population of sisters might
no longer be able to maintain the property.
4
https://laudatosiactionplatform.org/
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Other participants invested in various green technologies, such as solar panels (P6, P7, P8,
P10, P13). For example, P8 reported that their congregation ”went through this whole project of
geothermal heating and cooling of the conference center and the chapel” at a retreat center they
owned. P9 told us that adding solar panels to their church building gave them hope during the
COVID-19 pandemic. They said:
”The building itself, independent of us, is now doing good. And that was a really
important theme during COVID when everybody feels passive, that you can literally
say, well, my church building at least is doing good. And, think about this, you’re 85
years old, and you love your Parish, and you feel helpless, as you get older that I can’t
do anything, ah, but I was helping to put into place something that will do good, even
though I personally can’t do it. It’s setting up the system, if you will, of sustainability,
from the building itself. That the building becomes then the instrument of good.”
7.4.2.2 Bottom-Up Operationalization
While many of the congregations we talked to were highly engaged in sustainability initiatives,
this was not the case with the leadership in other parishes. For example, P1 told us about her
local clergy, “the priests and the clergy just have a really difficult time understanding or coming
on board. Even though they sort of say they are, but they’re not...The priests are not there, the
clergy is not there, and that is really difficult.” While P6’s religious congregation was engaged in
sustainability efforts, they noted a similar difficulty in their local parish
5
. They said, “We do not
have active involvement from our parishes and from our priests and our pastors; we’re building
up this grassroots movement.”
In such cases, parishioners, for example, P1 and P6, have worked toward starting their own
local care for creation groups in order to spread awareness and take action. P1’s group had held
5
In some cases sister live spread out in communities in small groups of two or three.
144
various educational events such as showing videos on sustainability and taking actions such as
composting waste from church events. P6 added:
”Finally the Parish that I belong to, finally we got permission after all these years.
On this rainy, rainy Monday evening, and it was a small number, but the pastor gave
us permission to do something for the season of creation.”
Other congregations and parishes partnered with other grassroots organizations because they
acknowledged promoting sustainability as a part of their mission. For P12’s congregation, this is
embedded in their call to ”tend to the dear neighbor.” P12 said, ”We were founded with the idea
that we would be seeking a relationship with God and our dear neighbor to bring our neighbor,
and with neighbor, to minister without distinction among those that we were serving.” Therefore,
they made it a point to work with local organizations in the communities they serve.
For P8, this conception of neighbor goes beyond just the local community. They mentioned
reflectingonthequestion, ”Who is my neighbor?” AskingthisquestionledP8tomakeintentional
choices about the programs their parish supported at different levels, ranging from the national
to international level. P8 added:
”my criteria for what program we’re going to do is, one, they have to have a track
record, but two, they have to have accountability and involvement of the local, grass-
roots people...I don’t go through big top-down organizations, I always go through the
grassroots up, because that’s where we are, and that’s what I want to support.”
Perhaps one of the most interesting cases of grassroots involvement was of P5, a retired lawyer
who used his legal skills to bring suit against the large oil and gas companies for spreading
misinformation. He told us about his conversation with the companies:
”I had to at that point say you know who am I, so at that point, I represented no party
except for the Laudato Si Circle at our parish, so I told him that. And there was a
bit of a pause, and so he said you’re doing this through altruism, and I paused...I just
145
said, well, you know I’m not being paid for my call to you today in dollars and cents,
but you know he was interested, maybe shocked that I was contacting them on behalf
of, you know, this kind of Franciscan group.”
By working from a grassroots perspective, he was able to make more impact than he might have
made if he had taken a top-down approach, P5 reported.
7.4.3 Technologizing Limits
Outside of the participants representing national organizations who were well versed in using
technology to reach their geographically disparate members (P2 and P3), computing was not
seen as an essential part of our participants’ sustainability initiatives before the pandemic. The
pandemic changed this by giving many congregations, in P9’s words, “Just an awareness of the
danger of plane travel.” She went on to say, “that’s been one of the side blessings of Covid
and Zoom...a lot of Community meetings...take place virtually. But we wouldn’t have made the
ecological connection before, but now we certainly do.” However, participants recognized that
there were additional benefits to technology as well. One major theme that emerged from the use
of technology was the ability to create global connections and put a human face on the climate
crisis. Wetalkaboutthisnext. Thenwediscussthedownsidestotechnologythatourparticipants
highlighted.
7.4.3.1 Nurturing Connections Globally
Many participants told us about how technology allowed them to connect with the global com-
munity. They were able to witness the challenges that people impacted by climate change face,
especially as they do not face substantial repercussions of climate change themselves. Technology
helped them to connect with and understand the concerns that were not immediately visible to
them. For example, P3 said:
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“I think for the vast majority of people like really being able to concretely see these
[sustainability] issues with water [crisis] are really impacting people’s lives or like me
getting like my electricity from this coal plant is having a disproportionate effect on
this community of people... I think the more we can use technology to kind of make
those connections and show those stories that are really complex... I think that that
could be like an impactful kind of path towards conversion.”
Participants also shared their perspectives on how they feltmore connected to theglobal Catholic
community via technology. For example, P4 also reported how technology allows them to feel
more of a connection to the global Church:
“You know that Catholic means universal and global essentially, but when you’re ac-
tually you know, in a live call with people around the world who are Catholics working
on this stuff [sustainability] it’s really cool you know, and it really gives you a different
appreciation for communion in that way, and as a communion, and so so that’s really
invaluable.”
7.4.3.2 Limits to Technology
While our participants appreciated how technology allowed them to access global connections,
several of them reported that they found it hard to not let technology replace the in-person
connections they have established over the years. Participants emphasized the limitations of
technologies they used for their work practices. For example, P4 described this tension, saying,
“Interconnectedness [to earth] and technology is a sort of a wild card in that right. In
some ways it [technology] really helps us to see our interconnectedness, and in other
ways it can sort of remove us from our concrete locality, and like, earthiness of that
place and puts us out into this virtual world.”
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Theymentionedthatthetechnologylimitedthemtoconnectwithotherstoperformtheirspiritual
practices. For example, P13 found it difficult to sustain engagement with others over technology.
She told us,
I am finding that one of the things that’s hard...looking at a screen and the kind of en-
ergy that it takes to do a program or to do a retreat...when you’re with a group of people
you’re getting their energy back...after a day of doing that [running a Zoom retreat] I
find myself absolutely exhausted. When I’m with people doing that I’m energized.”
Thus overall, while our participants appreciated technology, they were wary of it taking over.
Ourparticipantssharedthattoliveahealthyspirituallifein-personconnectionsarevital. This
sentiment was evident in P7 who said, ‘it’s those relationship. You know, we live in Community,
so being engaged with other Sisters is an important part of my life, my work, and my spiritual
life.” P8 made the connection between faith and personal connection saying, “Because the heart
of our faith in terms of Catholics, as Christians, is the incarnation. The word of God becomes
flesh and Jesus. The touchable.” For Catholics, physically receiving the Eucharistic host is an
integral part of the faith and how they worship. This is not something that can be replaced or
done virtually. P8 went on to say, ”that’s my biggest problem with technology, how people are
using it, because they’re so pragmatic and they want to maximize return. Well maximizing return
diminishes human in a lot of ways.”
7.5 Discussion
Inthissection,wediscussfourinsightsfromouranalysisthatcanbeusedbyLIMITSandSHCIto
help better engage with the motivations and needs of faith communities practicing sustainability.
Weaskhowwecancontinuetousetechnologytofosterconnectednessacrossboundarieswhile
still prioritizing groundedness in the real world. Our participants were wary of technology replac-
ing tangible connections with other humans, the earth, and the rest of creation. As technologists,
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we may be tempted to see the promises of distributed communication technologies, such as Zoom,
for drastically cutting the carbon emissions associated with in-person worship; a person might
drive to Church for worship. There has been a recent turn towards practicing spirituality in
metaverse “churches” [195]. However, for Catholics, this becomes unappealing from a theological
perspective. As we noticed, for Catholics, the tangible reception of the Eucharist is paramount
to practicing the faith. Any technological solutions designed to help parishes or congregations
practicetheirfaithmoresustainablymustkeepinmindthatthephysicalbuildingsandgatherings
cannot be replaced.
We might think to P8’s comment that after installing solar panels on the church roof, “the
building becomes then the instrument of good,” to consider other ways to use computing to help
parishes and congregations manage their buildings in the most sustainable manner possible. One
example is the use of devices like IoT thermostats to help regulate heating and cooling in line
withbothbuildinguseandsustainability. Anotherexampleistothinkabouthowparishionersare
coming to worship. For instance, technology might be used to encourage folks to use alternative
forms of transportation to get to mass or to carpool with other worshipers. These actions have
been looked at by various HCI scholars from a purely pragmatic standpoint [190, 224, 243, 265],
butwecanimagineintegratingafaith-basedcomponentintosuchtechnology. Thiscangobeyond
just presenting alternative transportation as a means of “caring for creation,” but also presenting
it as an opportunity for building community with other parishioners or for serving folks in the
community like the elderly that may not be able to drive themselves to mass or other church
events. We could respect the bounds of sociocultural factors and work within them to find ways
to promote sustainable living instead of putting such factors at odds.
Usually, for religious people, faith is a matter of lifestyle beyond just attending services or
participating in prayer. We quoted P5 paraphrasing the Second Book of James, and P7 seconded
this idea by sharing a favorite quote attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel
always and everywhere. If necessary, use words.” Rifat et al. [383] noted that Muslims were
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similarly inclined toward taking action in the pursuit of their faith. We could think about what it
would mean to build technology that supports religious action. We can design technologies that
helpcoordinatealternatetransportationforchurchactivities. Wecanalsodesignplatformstohelp
church members find local volunteer opportunities, foster connectedness through, for example, a
virtual music-making tool, or build systems to help parishioners participate in political advocacy
efforts.
While faith and action go hand in hand, it would not go amiss to focus on leveraging and
building the underlying values. As P12 told us, “I see it as a cycle. Advocacy, systemic change
has to be in a cycle of prayer, contemplative prayer, and then your education and action and
your advocacy so that it’s one.” While the media often portrays religion and sustainability as at
odds, our participants have shown us that this is not always the case. Knowles et al. [249] argue
that we need to understand the psychology of what drives people to do sustainable works and
then promote those values. By fostering faith values and tying the faith to pro-social values and
ecological issues, we might help promote the paradigm shifts needed for people to take action and
keep these issues front of mind.
There already exist many Catholic prayer and meditation apps. For instance, the app Hallow
hasraisedover$50millionininvestmentsandbeendownloadedmorethanonemilliontimes[285].
At the same time, there has also been exploration into the the role of reflection [205, 239] and
pro-social values [247, 249] in promoting sustainable behavior. We could design applications to
promote religious reflection or prayer with a focus on sustainability. This might come in the form
of reflection on statements from Laudato Si, or prayers from Saints like St. Kateri Tekakwitha,
patron saint of the environment and St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and ecology
6
.
Going beyond reflection, there are already a plethora of applications designed to help people
reducetheircarbonfootprintstypicallybypresentingsomekindofdataaboutthecarbonfootprint
of activities like eating meat, driving, and using electricity [84]. We can imagine designing such
6
Catholics in particular pray to the saints for intercession with God.
150
applications that combine aspects of the faith like meditative prayer with suggestions for climate
action. Using faith as a motivator for sustainable change could be more effective than a purely
data-driven approach.
HCI scholars have reported that sustainability requires a cultural shift [84, 130, 277]. For
example, ina recentInteractionsarticle, scholarAnnLight[277]argues, “What we face in pursuit
of material progress can only be unmade if our goals globally turn to Regeneration and care. We
need to design the interactions to carry that change forward.” Regeneration and care underpin
ecospiritual ethos. It is important that the technologies we design support interactions that
reflecttheseprinciples. However,theLIMITScommunityhasnotsubstantiallyfocusedonreligion
despitehowprominentapartitplaysinlivesandculturesworldwide. WerequestLIMITSscholars
toconsidersocio-religiouscontextswhendesigningtechnologies, andnotjustincontextslike[383]
where religion is fairly homogeneous and integrated into governance structures.
151
Chapter 8
Conclusion and ongoing work
Thisdissertationwasmotivatedbythegoalofusingcomputingtofind local solutions to global sus-
tainability challenges while increasing community resilience and individual well-being. To achieve
this, I turned to research methods from human-computer interaction (HCI), in particular from
the Sustainable HCI (SHCI) community. Leaning on Practice Theory, a new paradigm that looks
at structures that interact with sustainable decision making, I look at two structures, physical
infrastructure and socio-cultural factors [136].
Overall, the dissertation sets up the theoretical underpinnings for additional prototyping and
community testing of the insights found in the various studies.
8.0.1 Physical Structures
In the realm of physical structures, I focus on using technology to facilitate the design of new
“social infrastrcuture”—a term coined by sociologist Eric Klinenberg to describe elements of
the physical environment that contribute to building social connections in a community [246].
I started by building PatternPainter, a software for creating 3D visualizations of designs for
revitalizingvacanturbanlots(Chapter3). Then, turningtoqualitativeHCImethodsIconducted
the CommYOUnity Data Project (Chapter 4) to add context by studying how people without
formal design training see and describe their environments and how this compares to people with
152
formal training. Finally, I showed results from two studies on using generative algorithms to
autonomously re-imagine the urban environment to be more pedestrian friendly (Chapter 5) and
to create new visions for urban structures that cater to non-human residents (Chapter ??).
Ongoing work in this area includes exploring additional techniques to create a model for fast
and easy rendering of photorealistic images (Chapter 5). This can then be combined with the
insights from the CommYOUnity Data Project (Chapter 4) to create an open-source, co-creative
tool for urban revitalization.
It will also be imperative to test these new tools with community partners, which will un-
doubtedly raise new concerns and uncover new research questions.
8.0.2 Socio-cultural Factors
While the physical environment is important, it is equally important to look at the cultural and
social factors that might impede or motivate sustainable decisions, which may have implications
for the design of future HCI systems. Inspired by Rifat et al., my work focuses on religious values
as a motivation for sustainable decision making [383]. In particular, I conducted an interview
study with 14 Catholics involved in groups working toward sustainability from a faith-based lens.
Analysis of the interviews revealed several instructive themes for building future technologies to
help people make sustainable decisions from a faith based lens.
Similar to the work in physical structures, future work in this area includes operationalizing
theinsightsgainedintheinterviewstudytobuildtechnologicaltoolstohelppeopleusetheirfaith
to motivate decisions to be more sustainable. Another area for future work includes expanding to
other faith and religions as well as looking at inter-faith groups. Finally, looking at cultural moti-
vationsforcaringaboutsustainabilityoutsideofreligionorspiritualityandhowthesemotivations
might intersect with technology may be another promising avenue for research.
153
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Appendix A
Supplemental Images
A.1 RuDalle - Text2Image
This section shows the images generated by the RuDalle Text2Image notebook
1
for each of the
text prompts.
1
https://colab.research.google.com/github/tg-bomze/collection-of-notebooks/blob/master/Text2Imagev4.ipynb
190
Figure A.1: Text2Image images of Bus Shelters with garden roofs generated by each of the four
prompts: a bus shelter with a garden on top (top left); a bus shelter with a garden roof (top
right); a bus shelter with a rooftop garden (bottom left); and a city bus shelter with a garden on
top (bottom right).
191
A.2 RuDalle - Optimized Image Prompt
This section shows the images produced for each prompt using the Optimized Image Prompt
notebook
2
in Figure A.3. All images were prompted using the image in Figure A.2.
Figure A.2: The image of a Bus Shelter used to initialize the Optimized Image Prompt generator.
2
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1S08bgB1h-la84
V
FNfRXwpfrOQfQM9Wl
192
FigureA.3: OptimizedImagePromptimagesofBusShelterswithgardenroofsgeneratedbyeach
of the four prompts: a bus shelter with a garden on top (top left); a bus shelter with a garden roof
(top right); a bus shelter with a rooftop garden (bottom left); and a city bus shelter with a garden
on top (bottom right).
193
A.3 BigSleep
Figure5.5inthebodyofthetextshowstheimagesgeneratedforeachofthefourpromptsrunning
for 20 epochs of 1000 iterations apiece, using 4 as a seed. As mentioned, the tag “realistic”
(“—realistic” in the code) was used for the first three prompts. All images were generated using
the exclusion tags “zoom” and “blur”. In this section, Figure A.4 shows the difference when the
tag “realistic” is not used.
Figure A.4: Big Sleep images generated using the prompt a bus shelter with a garden on top. The
left image was generated without the tag “realistic” in comparison to the right image where this
tag was added.
194
A.4 VQGAN + CLIP
This section shows the complete set of images generated for each of the three datasets: ImageNet,
COCO, and ade20k. For each dataset, for each of the four prompts, three images were generated:
one with text only, one with an image prompt, and one with an image target. Table A.4 shows
the images for ImageNet, Table A.4 the images for COCO, and Table A.4 the images for ade20k.
Figure 5.7 shows that increasing the number of iterations substantially does not substantially
change the output. The images in Figure 5.7 were produced with 1,000 and 10,000 iterations,
respectively, butasidefromaslightsharpeningofthedetails, thetenfoldincreaseiniterationsdid
not significantly change the image or make it more realistic. It also came with a tenfold increase
in run time (from 15 minutes to 150 minutes).
ImageNet
Prompt Text Only Prompt Image Target Image
a bus shelter with a garden on top
a bus shelter with a garden roof
a bus shelter with a rooftop garden
a city bus shelter with a garden on top
195
COCO
Prompt Text Only Prompt Image Target Image
a bus shelter with a garden on top
a bus shelter with a garden roof
a bus shelter with a rooftop garden
a city bus shelter with a garden on top
196
ade20k
Prompt Text Only Prompt Image Target Image
a bus shelter with a garden on top
a bus shelter with a garden roof
a bus shelter with a rooftop garden
a city bus shelter with a garden on top
197

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Today more than ever we are faced with urgent, global-scale sustainability challenges. Scientists are urging everyone to contribute, and this includes the computing community. The Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI) community has been working on these kinds of sustainability problems for almost two decades now. My research builds on the work of this community, in particular the use of Practice Theory to examine the external structures that act on individuals, often hampering their ability to make sustainable decisions. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods from human-computer interaction, my research aim is to find local solutions to global sustainability challenges while increasing community resilience and individual well-being.
First, I look at physical infrastructure through the lens of ``social infrastructure''. I build a prototype software, PatternPainter, to enable ordinary individuals to create 3D visualizations for designs of new social spaces on abandoned land in their communities. Evaluation shows this prototype allows individuals without design training to successfully create designs in 3D. I then turn to qualitative methods from HCI, specifically photo elicitation and surveys, to add context by examining how trained designers and untrained citizens view their physical environments differently in the CommYOUnity Data Study. The observations from this study can be used to inform building future technologies in the social infrastructure space. Finally, I turn to automation. I create a pipeline using the Pix2Pix style transfer algorithm and semantic segmentation to automate the process of revitalizing city streets for pedestrian use.
In parallel, I also examine religion as a socio-cultural factor impacting sustainable decision making. This builds on previous work in SHCI, which suggests that it is important to understand the social, cultural, and psychological motivations behind sustainable decision making, so that more effective technological solutions to facilitate these decisions can be built. To that end, I conducted an interview study with 14 individuals from Catholic organizations who are involved in sustainability work from a faith-based lens. I show how the insights from this study might be used to build future technology in this space.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Cooney, Sarah Elizabeth (author)

Core Title Toward sustainable and resilient communities with HCI: physical structures and socio-cultural factors

School Viterbi School of Engineering

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Computer Science

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/28/2022

Defense Date 05/04/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag hci,human-computer interaction,OAI-PMH Harvest,SHCI,sustainability,sustainable HCI

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Raghavan, Barath (committee chair), Culbertson, Heather (committee member), Dilkina, Bistra (committee member), Govindan, Ramesh (committee member), Yazdiha, Hajar (committee member)

Creator Email cooneys@usc.edu,sarahecooney@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111375195

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