News | Christopher A. Le Dantec

Participation and Publics:  Supporting Community Engagement

C. A. Le Dantec. Participation and Publics:  Supporting Community Engagement. To appear in CHI ’12.
 Acceptance rate 23%

Spring 2012
LCC 6650: Project Studio: Designing Community Technologies

Office: TSRB 316A
Office Hours: Thursday 10:00–11:00AM
Email: christopher.ledantec@lcc.gatech.edu

Class Meetings: Thursday, 1:00–3:00PM
Location: TSRB 323

Course Description

How do existing technologies support community organizations and civic action? What would new technologies, systems, and infrastructures that support social and civic action look like? This design studio will actively work with local communities to create new collaborations that explore civic engagement through the development of interactive prototypes, digital media artifacts, and social media platforms. Design and community-focused activities will be buttressed by a review of relevant literature in ubiquitous computing, urban and community informatics, and social theory of the public sphere.

Course Objectives

This project studio will explore the opportunities for designing and deploying mobile and social technologies to foster and support civic engagement and public participation. We will plan and run a short series of workshops within a local community in order to generate conceptual designs and digital artifacts that document different aspects of the community. All of this work will be used as the foundation for continuing work to support community activities and activism, eventually leading to deployed technologies.

Grading

The total grade for the class will be based upon the following factors and weights:

Participation: 30%
Writing Assignments: 30%
Design Prototypes: 20%
Final Presentations: 20%

Participation & Attendance

Studio attendance and participation is mandatory. Participation in class discussion is imperative because it allows you to explore the readings and themes collaboratively, and in the process, discover meanings and issues that you probably would not discover on your own. Participation in class also challenges you to continuously question, refine and articulate your own ideas and interpretations.

This project studio will have a heavy focus on developing and conducting workshops and participatory activities with people outside of class. I will do my best to accomodate everyone’s schedule for fieldwork and trips to different off-campus sites, but in the end, this studio is about community engagement and participatory design and it will be your responsibility to show up for the activities as they develop over the course of the semester.

Missing more than 2 classes will result in a loss of 1 letter grade. Missing more than 3 field visits will also result in the loss of 1 letter grade.

Readings & Texts

There are two required texts for this course:

Callon, M., Lascoumes, P. and Barthe, Y. 2009. Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy. MIT Press.

Dourish, P. and Bell, G. 2011. Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. The MIT Press.

All other readings will either be accessible via T-Square or online.

Writing Assignments

You will turn in three critical essays over the course of the semester. Each essay should be between 1000 and 1500 words and engage in a meaningful way with the ideas presented in the readings. These essays should connect the readings to the activities we are working on with the community and/or with other texts or topics you may be familiar with—these are not to be simple summaries of the reading assignments, but critical reflections on the readings to motivate new questions and to inform our engagement with our community participants.

Design Prototypes

As the studio develops, we will be developing a number of different design prototypes. The focus of these prototypes is to develop ideas iteratively and critically with each other and with members of the community in which we will be working.

Final Presentations

The last two classes will be dedicated to final presentations where each of you will present the work done during the semester.

Course Schedule

What follows is an outline for the course. As the course progresses, we will likely adjust dates and materials; however, unless specifically stated in studio, you should assume this schedule is current and accurate.

Week 1	January 12	First day of class. Introductions and administrivia.
Week 2	January 19	Reading: Bayea, W., Geith, C. and McKeown, C. 2009. Place Making Through Participatory Planning. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 55–67. Klaebe, H., Adkins, B., Foth, M. and Hearn, G. 2009. Embedding an Ecology Notion in the Social Production of Urban Space. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 179–194. Veith, M., Schubert, K. and Wolf, V. 2009. Fostering Communities in Urban Multi-Cultural Neighbourhoods: Some Methodological Reflections. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 115–130. Willis, K.S. and Geelhaar, J. 2009. Information Places: Navigating Interfaces between Physical and Digital Space. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 206–218.
Week 3	January 26	Reading: Dourish, P. and Bell, G. 2011. Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. The MIT Press. Chapters: 1–4.
Week 4	February 2	Reading: Dourish, P. and Bell, G. 2011. Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing. The MIT Press. Chapters: 5–9. Essay #1 due.
Week 5	February 9	Fieldwork Workshop.
Week 6	February 16	Reading: Callon, M., Lascoumes, P. and Barthe, Y. 2009. Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy. MIT Press. Chapters: 1, 5, & 7.
Week 7	February 23	Reading: Evans-Cowley, J. 2010. Planning in the Real-Time City: The Future of Mobile Technology. Journal of Planning Literature. 25, 2 (Nov. 2010), 136–149. Larsen, L., Harlan, S.L., Bolin, B., Hackett, E.J., Hope, D., Kirby, A., Nelson, A., Rex, T.R. and Wolf, S. 2012. Bonding and Bridging: Understanding the Relationship between Social Capital and Civic Action. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 24, 1 (Sep. 2012), 64–77. Mandarano, L., Meenar, M. and Steins, C. 2010. Building Social Capital in the Digital Age of Civic Engagement. Journal of Planning Literature. 25, 2 (Nov. 2010), 123–135. Quick, K.S. and Feldman, M.S. 2011. Distinguishing Participation and Inclusion. Journal of Planning Education and Research. 31, 3 (Sep. 2011), 271–290.
Week 8	March 1	Workshop planning. Essay #2 due.
Week 9	March 8	Reading: De Cindio, F., Di Loreto, I. and Peraboni, C. 2009. Moments and Modes for Triggering Civic Participation at the Urban Level. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 97–113. Paulos, E., Honicky, R. and Ben Hooker 2009. Citizen Science: Enabling Participatory Urbanism. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 414–436. Satchell, C. 2009. From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen: The Evolution of Mobile Phone Practice. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 353–365. Williams, A., Robles, E. and Dourish, P. 2009. Urbane-ing the City: Examinig and Refining the Assumptions Behind Urban Informatics. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 1–20.
Week 10	March 15	Reading: Calabrese, F., Kloeckl, K. and Ratti, C. 2009. WikiCity: Real-Time Location-Sensitive Tools for the City. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 390–413. Carroll, J.M. and Ganoe, C.H. 2009. Supporting Community with Location-Sensitive Mobile Applications. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 339–352. Evans-Cowley, J. 2010. Planning in the age of Facebook: the role of social networking in planning processes. GeoJournal. 75, (2010), 407–420. Lelieveldt, H. 2004. Helping Citizens Help Themselves Neighborhood Improvement Programs and the Impact of Social Networks, Trust, and Norms on Neighborhood-Oriented Forms of Participation. Urban Affairs Review. 39, 5 (May. 2004), 531–551.
Week 11	March 22	No class: Spring Break!
Week 12	March 29	Workshop. Essay #3 due.
Week 13	April 5	No class.
Week 14	April 12	Workshop.
Week 15	April 19	Final presentations.
Week 16	April 26	Final presentations.
Week 17	May 3	Finals week. No class.

Optional Readings

Some of these may already be available via the T-Square site as a result of me shifting readings around and changing my mind about things; others should be available through the Library. These should be treated as potentially useful resources to consult as the fieldwork and participatory workshops develop.

Ananny, M. and Strohecker, C. 2009. TexTales: Creating Interactive Forums with Urban Publics. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 68–86.

Beebeejaun, Yasminah, The participation trap: The limitations of participation for ethnic and racial groups, International Planning Studies, 11, 1 (2006), 3-18.

Bråten, S. 1973. Model Monopoly and Communication: Systems Theoretical Notes on Democratization. Acta Sociologica. 16, 2 (1973), 98–107.

Brody, Sam, David Godschalk, and Ray Burby, Mandating Citizen Participation in Plan-Making: Six Strategic Planning Choices, Journal of the American Planning Association, 69, 3 (Summer, 2003), 245-264.

Callahan, Richard, Governance: The Collision of Politics and Cooperation, Public Administration Review, 67, 2 (2007), 290-301.

Chin, John J., The Limits and Potential of Nonprofit Organizations in Participatory Planning: A Case Study of the New York HIV Planning Council, Journal of Urban Affairs, 31, 4 (2009), 431-460.

Cooke, Bill, and Uma Kothari, editors, Participation: The New Tyranny?, Zed Books, 2001.

Evans-Cowley, J. and Griffin, G. Micro-Participation: The Role of Microblogging in Planning. Unpublished Manuscript.

Gonzales, V.M., Kraemer, K.L. and Castro, L.A. 2009. Beyond Safety Concerns: ON the Practical Applications of Urban Neighbourhood Video Cameras. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 131–143.

Gordon, E., Schirra, S. and Hollander, J. 2011. Immersive planning: a conceptual model for designing public participation with new technologies. Environment and Planning B, Planning and Design. 38, 3 (2011), 505–519.

Hollander, Justin B., Intelligent participation: Engaging citizens through a framework of multiple intelligences, Community Development, in press.

Hollander, Justin B., Approaching an ideal: Using technology to apply collaborative rationality to urban planning processes, Planning Practice and Research, in press.

Hollander, Justin B., Keeping control: The paradox of scholarly community-based research in community development, Community Development Journal, 46, 2 (2011), 265-272.

Innes, Judy, and David E. Booher, Reframing Public Participation: Strategies for the 21st Century, Planning Theory and Practice, 5, 4 (2005), 419-436.

Morgan, C. and Polson, D. 2009. The Figmentum Project: Appropriating Information and Communication Technologies to Animate Our Urban Fabric. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 144–157.

Sorensen, A., and L. Sagaris, From Participation to the Right to the City: Democratic place management at the neighbourhood scale in comparative perspective, Planning Practice and Research, 5, 3 (2010), 297-316.

Tamada, D. and Nakanishi, H. 2009. QyoroView: Creating a Large-Scale Street View as User-Generated Content. Handbook of Research on Urban Informatics. M. Foth, ed. Information Science Reference. 244–256.

Weir, Margaret, Jane Rongerude, and Chrisopher Ansell, Collaboration Is Not Enough, Urban Affairs Review, 44, 4 (2009), 455-489.

Finding a New Normal: The Role of Technology in Life Disruptions

M. Massimi, J. P. Dimond, and C. A. Le Dantec. Finding a New Normal: The Role of Technology in Life Disruptions. To appear in CSCW ’12.
 Acceptance rate 25%

Fall 2011
LCC 6314: Design of Networked Media

Office: TSRB 316A
Office Hours: Tuesday 10-11AM; Thursday 3:30-4:30PM
Email: christopher.ledantec@lcc.gatech.edu

Class Meetings: Tuesday/Thursday, 1:30-3:00PM
Location: Skiles 349

Course Description

Mobile technologies—from mobile phones to tablet computers, to netbooks and laptops—are changing where and how people interact with digital media and with each other. This graduate seminar will focus on the cultural and social impact of mobile technologies, taking a global view of where and how these technologies are being adopted and adapted to solve local problems. Through a combination of reading, design assignments, and a semester-long project, we will examine the broad field of mobile computing and probe issues of access, adoption, identity, privacy, and participation in different cultural and social contexts. The readings will draw on a diverse body of literature, including perspectives from anthropology, sociology, design studies, human-computer interaction, as well as accounts of mobile technology from news and other popular media. The design assignments will be structured around exploring the limits and opportunities for mobile interactions and will challenge you to consider different modes and different cultural (global) settings of mobile technology use.

Course Objectives

After taking this course you should:

Have a more comprehensive understanding of the technologies and interaction techniques available and appropriate for mobile application design.
Be able to use the theories and works presented in this course to frame and support  discussion and critique of mobile technologies.

This class is intended to provide both hands-on experience designing different aspects of mobile interaction along with theoretical and critical perspectives that will help you reflect on the kinds of trade-offs that may be confronted during design. This should include issues of participation, privacy, and identity, among others. The design assignments and semester project are indented to expose different parts of the mobile infrastructure so that each may be interrogated as sites for design and critique.

Grading

The total grade for the class will be based upon the following factors and weights:

Participation: 10%
Design Assignments: 40% (10% each)
Semester Project: 50% (10% for each milestone + 10% overall)

Participation & Attendance

Class attendance and participation is mandatory. Participation in class discussion is imperative because it allows you to explore the readings and themes collaboratively, and in the process, discover meanings and issues that you probably would not discover on your own. Participation in class also challenges you to continuously question, refine and articulate your own ideas and interpretations.

In addition, much of this class is based in discussion of the readings and constructive critique of the design assignments and class project, all of which require full participation and cannot be replicated outside of class.

Missing more than 2 classes will result in a loss of 1 letter grade.

Readings & Texts

There is one required text for this course: Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. All other readings will either be accessible via T-Square or online.

Design Assignments

Each design assignment will follow the same general pattern. The first deliverable will include 5-7 prototype sketches. These will be presented in-class for critique and discussion and handed in. The second (revision) part of each assignment will have you focus your attention on one or two of your prototypes where you will more fully develop the ideas, taking into account feedback from the critique.

In the first part of each assignment I will be looking for breadth: you will need to present several different ideas that approach the theme from different angles, that play off different constraints, and that challenge and interrogate our notions of mobility with respect to the theme.

In the second part of each assignment, I will be looking for depth: you will need to thoroughly expanded the initial ideas, developing a plausible scenario more thoroughly, providing more depth to the experience and to what the system or application or device would look like.

These are meant to be prototypes, not working systems, so the kinds of deliverables I expect are sketches of application screens, system diagrams, or storyboards. As you select the one or two ideas to further develop, the fidelity should go up—more detail in the mockups, more complete narrative arcs in storyboards, etc.

Each assignment will be centered around a particular theme that should be used as a launching point for the prototypes:

Location: Place/space, environment, boundaries, context.
Participation: Who uses/does not use the technology, consequences of use.
Global Issues: ‘Development’, cultural boarders, local consumption/use v. global production.
Identity: Notions of self, privacy, safety.

Semester Project

You will need to form small groups of two to three to complete the semester project. This project is open ended and will give you an opportunity to examine the convergence of mobility and technology in more depth.

The semester long project will have four primary milestones:

Project proposal: Each group will present their proposal to the class for discussion and critique. They will also turn-in a 2-5 page proposal document describing the project.

Your group will need to propose a domain in which to explore mobile technology—e.g., mobile games, health and wellness, social computing, ICTD, community action, etc. You may propose a mobile service, an application, or a new kind of device. Your proposal will also need to include details about how you plan to research your potential users and context—providing a plan for how will you document your process and gain the insight needed to appropriately articulate your system/application/artifact design through the subsequent project milestones.
Milestone 1: Each group will present more detail on their project context and 2-3 prototypes of their system/application for critique and discussion.

For the first milestone you will deliver documents demonstrating how you investigated your target users and context. This may include photos and video from observation, field notes, or other ethnographic materials; if you are working with a context or problem space that is not immediately accessible, you will need to include a literature review. You will also develop prototypes of your service/application/device. Each prototype should demonstrate a key usage scenario and include enough detail to communicate how the people will experience your technology and should be clearly motivated by the fieldwork/literature review.
Milestone 2: Each group will present/demo their system/application prototype for additional critique and discussion.

This milestone will have your group focus on one of your prototypes, developing it further and more completely. You should add detail to both the design of the technology as well as to the social setting in which the technology will be used. While still a prototype, I expect to see more fidelity in the execution and depth of scenarios/cases covered.
Final presentation and process book: Each group will give a 20 minute presentation on their project (time may be adjusted according to class size and scheduling). I expect each group to have addressed any feedback provided at milestone 2 and to have taken their design further; the prototypes should be ‘demoable’.

You will also hand in a final process book for the project that should provide clear and thoughtful documentation and reflection on how the design progressed through each of the milestones: what constraints informed early prototypes; what were the key choices that occurred as designs were developed or discarded; descriptions and documentation of how the context was investigated; a description of the key use scenarios (there will be more than one).

This project is designed to give you an opportunity to develop your practical and theoretical understanding of mobile media. I do not expect every project to center around mobile phones or tablet computing—in fact, I encourage you to think about new forms of technology or to interrogate mobile technologies that exist outside the canon of mainstream use.

For those of you interested, there are a number of opportunities to turn your projects into papers and/or posters at academic conferences. I would encourage you to look at the calls for demos and student design competitions for project ideas and ways to parlay course work into something more:

Mobile HCI Design Competition (deadline jan/feb 2012)
(2011 design competition description)
CHI 2012 Student Design and Research Competitions (deadline Jan 9 2012)
Pervasive and Ubicomp (no design competitions as such but poster and demo sessions)
DIS 2012 Papers and Demos (deadlines Jan – April 2012)

Class Resources

This class is meant to help you explore different aspects of mobile systems (applications, architectures, services, interactions, etc.). As such, there is no strict technical requirement for how you develop and implement your semester project. To that end, there are a number of resources you might find useful depending on your technical background and interest:

Prototyping Tools:

Templates for static mobile UI layout and paper prototyping
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/27/free-wireframing-kits-ui-design-kits-pdfs-and-resources/
For Prototyping (different degrees of knowledge required)
http://prototypesapp.com/
Adobe Fireworks has mobile plug-ins, below is an example
http://unitid.nl/2009/04/prototyping-for-the-iphone-using-fireworks-cs3/
HTML 5 platform for mobile application development
http://www.phonegap.com/
Cross-platform development tool (iOS and Android)
http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/
Wireframing Tools (various platforms)
https://gomockingbird.com/
https://pidoco.com/en
http://blog.justinmind.com/wireframe-interactive-iphone-apps-iphone-library/
Flowella (Nokia platform)
http://www.tardigrada.hr/blog/2010/07/flowella-rapid-prototyping-tool-for-mobile-designers/
iOS Dev center
http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action
Android App Inventor
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
Android prototyping Tools
http://speckyboy.com/2010/05/10/android-app-developers-gui-kits-icons-fonts-and-tools/

Course Schedule

What follows is an outline for the course. As the course progresses, we may adjust dates and materials; however, unless specifically stated in class, you should assume this schedule is current and accurate.

August 23	First day of class. Design Assignment 1 (Location) out.
August 25	Reading: L. Barkhuus and M. Chalmers. Picking pockets on the lawn: The development of tactics and strategies in a mobile game, 2005. M. Chalmers, A. Dieberger, K. Höök, and Å. Rudström. Social navigation and seamful design. Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society, 11(3):171–181, 2004.
August 30	Reading: S. Harrison, and P. Dourish. Re-place-ing space: the roles of place and space in collaborative systems. In Proceedings of the 1996 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. pages 67–76, New York, NY, USA, 1996. ACM Press. E. Paulos and E. Goodman. The familiar stranger: Anxiety, comfort, and play in public places. In CHI ’04: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 223–230, New York, NY, USA, 2004. ACM Press. E. Paulos and T. Jenkins. Urban probes: Encountering our emerging urban atmospheres. In CHI ’05: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 341–350, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM Press.
September 1	Design Assignment 1 (Location) due. In-class critique.
September 6	Reading: J. Brewer and P. Dourish. Storied spaces: Cultural accounts of mobility, technology, and environmental knowing. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud., 66(12):963–976, 2008. I. Shklovski, J. Vertesi, E. Troshynski, and P. Dourish. The commodification of location: dynamics of power in location-based systems. In Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, Ubicomp ’09, pages 11–20, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM. E. Troshynski, C. Lee, and P. Dourish. Accountabilities of presence: Reframing location-based systems. In CHI ’08: Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 487–496, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.
September 8	Design Assignment 1 (Location) part 2 due. In-class critique. Design Assignment 2 (Participation) out.
September 13	Reading: J. Carroll. Completing design in use: Closing the appropriation cycle. In Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2004), Turku, Finland, 2004. N. Selwyn. Apart from technology: Understanding people’s non-use of information and communication technologies in everyday life. Technology in Society, 25(1):99–116, 2003.
September 15	Semester Project proposal presentations.
September 20	Reading: M. Augé. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso Books, 1995.
September 22	Design Assignment 2 (Participation) due. In-class critique.
September 27	Reading: E. Björgvinsson, P. Ehn, and P.-A. Hillgren. Participatory design and “democratizing innovation”. In Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference, PDC ’10, pages 41–50, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM. B. Friedman and P. H. Kahn, Jr. Human values, ethics, and design. In The human-computer interaction handbook: fundamentals, evolving technologies and emerging applications, pages 1177–1201. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, USA, 2003. P. Sengers, K. Boehner, S. David, and J. J. Kaye. Reflective design. In CC ’05: Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing, pages 49–58, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM.
September 29	Design Assignment 2 (Participation) revision due. In-class critique. Design Assignment 3 (Global Issues) out.
October 4	Reading: G. Marsden, A. Maunder, and M. Parker. People are people, but technology is not technology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 366:3795–3804, July 2008. K. Toyama. Technology as amplifier in international development. In Proceedings of the 2011 iConference, iConference ’11, pages 75–82, New York, NY, USA, 2011. ACM.
October 6	Semester Project milestone 1 presentations.
October 11	Reading: K. R. Cohen. Who we talk about when we talk about users. In EPIC ’05: Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, pages 9–30. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2005. L. Irani, J. Vertesi, P. Dourish, K. Philip, and R. E. Grinter. Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development. In Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, CHI ’10, pages 1311–1320, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM. A. S. Taylor. Out there. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, CHI ’11, pages 685–694, New York, NY, USA, 2011. ACM.
October 13	Design Assignment 3 (Global Issues) due. In-class critique.
October 18	Fall recess, no class.
October 20	Design Assignment 3 (Global Issues) revision due. In-class critique. Design Assignment 4 (Identity) out.
October 25	Reading: R. E. Grinter, L. Palen, and M. Eldridge. Chatting with teenagers: Considering the place of chat technologies in teen life. ACM Transactions of Computer-Human Interaction, 13(4):423–447, 2006. L. Srivastava. Mobile phones and the evolution of social behaviour. Behaviour & Information Technology, 24(2):111—129, 2005.
October 27	Semester Project milestone 2 presentations.
November 1	Reading: M. Bylund, K. Höök, and A. Pommeranz. Pieces of identity. In Proceedings of the 5th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: building bridges, NordiCHI ’08, pages 427–430, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM. L. Palen and P. Dourish. Unpacking “privacy” for a networked world. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, CHI ’03, pages 129–136, New York, NY, USA, 2003. ACM.
November 3	No class (Travel to 4S)
November 8	Reading: B. Latour. Technology is society made durable. In A Sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination, pages 103–131. Routledge, 1991. S. L. Star. Power, technologies and the phenomenology of conventions: On being allergic to onions. In J. Law, editor, A Sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination, number 0, pages 26–55. Routledge, 1991.
November 10	Design Assignment 4 (Identity) due. In-class critique.
November 15	Design assignment 4 (Identity) revision due. In-class critique.
November 17	Future Media Fest, no class
November 22	Project work time.
November 24	Thanksgiving, no class.
November 29	Final presentations.
December 1	Final presentations.
December 6	No class.
December 8	No class.

Urban Computing/Urban Homeless

Technology is all around us, and while we consider new and novel uses for mobile and ubiquitous computing it is also important to consider how these kinds of technologies affect members of our society who do not have access to them. The aim of this work is to develop technological innovations to be deployed to support the urban homeless and to the institutions that support them.

This project stems directly from my dissertation work and will be expanding to work with new communities and imagine different interactions and artifacts to explore social and urban computing in this marginalized context.

Values in Design

Values play an integral role in design: they inform the kinds of trade-offs the make when considering different solutions; they create a basis for assessing a particular artifact or system may fit into their lives; and they are an important part of negotiating common understanding in collaborative design settings.

Work in this project area focuses on the various ways values become expressed through the design of artifacts and systems.

Publics in Practice: Ubiquitous Computing at a Shelter for Homeless Mothers

C. A. Le Dantec, R. G. Farrell, J. E. Christensen, M. Bailey, J. B. Ellis, W. A. Kellogg, and W. K. Edwards. Publics in Practice: Ubiquitous Computing at a Shelter for Homeless Mothers. In CHI ’11: Proceeding of the twenty-nineth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 1687–1696, New York, NY, USA, 2011. ACM.
 Acceptance rate 26%

Fall 2010
CS 4460/6456: Intro and Principles of User Interface Software

Instructor: Keith Edwards
keith (at) cc (dot) gatech (dot) edu
Office: TSRB 344; hours TBA (currently by appointment)

Co-instructor: Christopher Le Dantec
ledantec (at) cc (dot) gatech (dot) edu
Office: Just outside TSRB 344; hours TBA (currently by appointment)

TA: Matt Bonner
matt.bonner (at) gatech (dot) edu
Office: TBA; hours TBA (currently by appointment)

Class Meetings: Tuesday/Thursday, 9:30-11:00
Location: CCB 101

Course Description

This is a cross-listed upper-division undergraduate and graduate course focused on understanding the fundamentals of user interface software architectures. Course lectures will cover the history of the graphic user interface, including the evolution of display and input technologies, and will layout the fundamental concepts of modern interface architectures by covering in great detail the Java Swing API. In addition to exams that cover fundamental concepts, undergraduate students will work on a semester-long group project and graduate students will develop projects of their own.

Please see the course syllabus for more details.

A Tale of Two Publics: Democratizing Design at the Margins

C. A. Le Dantec, J. E. Christensen, M. Bailey, R. G. Farrell, J. B. Ellis, C. M. Danis, W. A. Kellogg, and W. K. Edwards. A Tale of Two Publics: Democratizing Design at the Margins. In DIS ’10: Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems, pages 11–20, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.
Acceptance rate 15%

What Technology Says

C. A. Le Dantec. What Technology Says. Ambidextrous, Spring 2010.

Across Boundaries of Influence and Accountability: The Multiple Scales of Public Sector Information Systems

C. A. Le Dantec and W. K. Edwards. Across Boundaries of Influence and Accountability: The Multiple Scales of Public Sector Information Systems. In CHI’10: Proceeding of the twenty-eighth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 113–122, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.
(Nominated for Best Paper)
Acceptance rate 22%

Space Matters: Physical-Digital and Physical-Virtual Co-Design in the InSpace Project

D. Reilly, S. Voida, M. McKeon, C. A. Le Dantec, P. Verma, C. Forslund, W. K. Edwards, E. D. Mynatt, and A. Mazalek. Space matters: Physical-Digital and Physical-Virtual Co-Design in inSpace. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 9:54–63, 2010.

Interacting With eHealth: Towards Grand Challenges for HCI

m.c. schraefel, P. André, R. White, D. Tan, T. Berners-Lee, S. Consolvo, R. Jacobs, I. Kohane, C. A. Le Dantec, L. Mamykina, G. Marsden, B. Shneiderman, P. Szolovits, and D. Weitzner. Interacting With eHealth: Towards Grand Challenges for HCI. In CHI EA ’09: Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, pages 3309–3312, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM.

Values as Lived Experience: Evolving Value Sensitive Design in Support of Value Discovery

C. A. Le Dantec, E. S. Poole, and S. P. Wyche. Values as Lived Experience: Evolving Value Sensitive Design in Support of Value Discovery. In CHI ’09: Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 1141–1150, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM.
Acceptance rate 25%

C. A. Le Dantec and W. K. Edwards. The View From the Trenches: Organization, Power, and Technology at Two Nonprofit Homeless Outreach Centers. In CSCW ’08: Proceedings of the ACM 2008 conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pages 589–598, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.
Acceptance rate 23%

inSpace: Co-Designing the Physical and Digital Environment to Support Workplace Collaboration

S. Voida, M. McKeon, C. A. Le Dantec, C. Forslund, P. Verma, B. McMillan, J. Bunde-Pedersen, W. K. Edwards, E. D. Mynatt, A. Mazalek. inSpace: Co-Designing the Physical and Digital Environment to Support Workplace Collaboration. GVU Technical Report; GIT-GVU-08-03. Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008.

The Value of Pictures: Photo Elicitation Techniques for Engaging Users

C. A. Le Dantec and E. S. Poole. The Value of Pictures: Photo Elicitation Techniques for Engaging Users. Position Paper: CHI Workshop: Values, Value and Worth. April 2008.

Designs on Dignity: Perceptions of Technology Among the Homeless

C. A. Le Dantec and W. K. Edwards. Designs on Dignity: Perceptions of Technology Among the Homeless. In CHI ’08: Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages 627–636, New York, NY, USA, 2008. ACM.
(Awarded Best Paper)
Acceptance rate 22%

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