Research shows that workers in online labor platforms use various means –such as social media or specialized tools –to circumvent perceived limitations imposed by platforms that negatively impact their work. We call this phenomenon digital circumvention. While digital circumvention is often presented in research as an ad hoc solution, we propose framing it as a case of self-resourcing by workers. This framing allows us to integrate digital circumvention as a platform governance activity alongside other forms of self-resourcing, as well as resourcing and securing exercised by the platform’s owner. We use an empirical case study of the food delivery platform Foodora to map design ideas from workers onto the resulting conceptual model, investigate what types of circumvention are possible to realize, and see whether other types of self-resourcing or resourcing are more effective. Our findings show that only a small subset of the design ideas can be implemented using digital circumvention. Most of the ideas require other forms of self-resourcing such as national regulations, or resourcing that involves the platform owner. Our findings show that labor platform design must balance the needs of individual workers with those of different groups of workers and other actors in the platform ecosystem, including the platform owner. Our findings imply that future design-oriented research on online labor platforms should adopt a platform ecosystem approach.
The success of online communities relies on users’ adherence to community norms, which are often ambiguous and hard to identify and follow. Supporting discussions about norms can help users learn about norms and engage in the norm-evolving process. We aim to understand the dynamics of discussions around community norms and investigate how mechanisms can be designed to scaffold norm-related discussions and regulations. In this paper, we present a mixed-methods study based on a dataset curated from Meta Stack Overflow, which consists of norm-related discussions surrounding a heavily moderated knowledge-based online community, Stack Overflow. Through thematic analyses of 187 questions, 313 answers, and 2,738 comments in the discussion threads, we unveil (1) what triggers norm-related discussions and (2) how people strategically initiate and respond to discussions around norms. Our taxonomy of “whats and hows” of norm-related discussions establishes a foundation for future work to further inspect the nuances and deliberate moderation mechanisms. We also explore the association between the narrative of discussion initiations and discussion sentiments through the lens of construal level theory. Based on our findings, we outline implications and next steps to help online communities establish a healthy and welcoming environment for norm-related discussions.
Smartphone ownership and mobile connectivity in India have expanded rapidly, alongside increasing reliance on digital platforms for welfare delivery, financial services, and civic participation. Yet among low-income blue-collar workers, everyday smartphone use remains centred on entertainment, communication, and work-mandated tasks, with limited engagement with institutional digital services. This paper presents findings from a qualitative interview study with 18 emergent smartphone users across two Indian states. We examine how smartphones are embedded in everyday practices of work, leisure, and institutional interaction, and why widespread access and familiarity do not translate into sustained engagement with welfare-oriented and administrative platforms. Our analysis shows that personal smartphones are frequently appropriated into workplace regimes of surveillance and compliance, while institutional digital services are experienced as opaque, high-risk, and difficult to act upon. Participants’ avoidance of or reliance on intermediaries reflects risk-sensitive strategies shaped by time poverty, mistrust, and limited recourse, rather than deficits in digital skill. We contribute to CSCW and HCI research by reframing institutional non-engagement as a situated response to socio-technical constraints and by highlighting how information formats and trust structures shape digital participation.
This critical research-through-design study at the Stockholm City Archives addresses the lack of research infrastructure supporting image researchers’ metadata needs. It contributes to CSCW by situating design within a broader system of technologies, norms, and institutional practices, revealing what is at stake for archivists and researchers. It shows how the digital transformation of archival practices, rather than enabled participation, has reduced the autonomy of institutions and archivists, reinforcing centralized control, framing user generated content as a risk to institutional legitimacy in an era of misinformation. The findings indicates that a more participatory metadata interface for researchers within the Swedish galleries, libraries, archives, and museums sector require a reformulation of the institutions' role, to being a facilitator and provider of the standards needed for long-term participation, where strong objectivity is developed through more transparent archival processes and decentralized practices.
This paper explores best practices for computer-mediated communication through mobile telepresence robots in educational settings. We present findings from a longitudinal ethnographic study of a hybrid class where students and professors used telepresence robots to participate. We discuss the challenges of articulation work in telepresence robots, particularly around being perceived as courteous. We discuss Murray’s theory of transformation as a goal of telepresence to ensure remote students feel fully included in the classroom. We argue with regards to telepresence that when transformation occurs, you feel fully a part of the remote environment. Our contribution is the use of Grounded Theory (GT) to argue that prior research on articulation and courtesy work can be extended to explain how users overcome challenges that impede transformation. When transformation does occur, telepresence affords deeper embodied participation than possible with traditional videoconferencing applications.
Apps like Life 360 and Apple’s Find My have made continuous map-based location-sharing common and convenient. Yet, knowledge of how location-sharing is used in day-to-day life remains limited – especially in relation to young adults. Through a combination of interviews with participants and the deployment of daily mini-questionnaires among college-aged users (i. e. 18-22, n=15 ) in the New York City area, we identify and present three salient aspects of location-sharing practices: (i) orchestration of social activities; (ii) management of social membership; and (iii) production of a “sense” of safety for oneself and others. Our findings point to new social norms emerging in relation to the proliferation of location-sharing apps among New York college students. We discuss such new norms through the lenses of self-disclosure, privacy, and trust-building. Our research scaffolds a more holistic understanding of location-sharing practices among a generation of digital natives and, in return, provides insights into future of designs of location-based technology.
This study investigates issues of (KES) in conventional manufacturing processes concerning the use of welding. In view of the shortage of skilled workers and the advancing digitalisation processes in welding, it is essentially relevant to identify how KES takes place. Based on an in-depth study, the possibilities of digital assistance systems to support KES in welding are discussed. The novelty of our contribution lies in the use of a (CSCW) perspective to understand how welding practices can be supported and shared among co-workers. Such practices, as made evidence across the contribution, have particular aspects that make them unique in comparison with other practices in the metal-working industry. Technologies that are already available offer promising possibilities to the challenges faced by KES in welding and have the potential to shape a third generation of KES. While operational activities can benefit from visual digital support, administrative and managerial tasks primarily require better access to relevant information and a better understanding of the practice. Our contribution offers valuable insights for the further development of KES in industrial manufacturing processes and show potential for the targeted use of innovative technologies in welding. It also adds to the CSCW body of literature on KES, by contributing an empirical study on a domain not well explored in the field.
While an increasing body of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) literature has been examining false information on social media through its spread, correction, or enabling affordances, less attention has been paid to how false information becomes meaningful within the mundane, situated flows of everyday life. This article presents a phenomenological study of young adults’ experiences with false information across X, Instagram, and YouTube. By examining the lifeworld dimensions of embodiment, sociality, spatiality, and temporality, we demonstrate how sense-making and credibility judgments emerge from relational encounters, habitual patterns, platform-specific expectations, and accumulated past experiences. Our findings expand the current state of CSCW research by redefining false information as a lived, relational, and evolving phenomenon shaped by everyday social and technological practices. We argue that media literacy should be viewed as an experiential and dynamic process influenced by the temporal, spatial, and social contexts of digital environments and discuss implications for the design of technology for improving both individual and collaborative sense-making in regard to false information.
In many countries, the data logistics dedicated to generating a national overview of public health were profoundly destabilised in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the case of France, this article shows that the (re)centralisation of public health data that took place during these times was far from a top-down initiative. It unfolded in a great variety of sites in the health administration where many people developed an affective relationship with the data they manipulated through daily, and sometimes very mundane, interventions. To highlight frictions, worries and care practices that multiplied in this process, the authors identify what they propose to call three “data trials”: infrastructural, representational and enunciative. These trials shed new light on what has often been described as a data-driven pandemic. Far from technically and epistemically stabilised entities, data were subjected to numerous costly and uncertain operations, carried out by a large number of workers who acknowledged and took care of their fragilities.
Civic technologies such as participatory budgeting and crowdsourced policymaking increasingly provide spaces for crowdsourced deliberation, an asynchronous, distributed, and self-selected form of deliberation. To understand the dynamics of crowdsourced deliberation, we examined deliberative quality, dis/agreement, and elaboration (rationale-sharing), and their association with idea generation in crowdsourced deliberation within a crowdsourced policymaking process led by a national government. The deliberative quality of the crowdsourced deliberation was high and positively associated with idea generation. Elaboration of perspectives was a key feature contributing to idea generation. We present considerations for the design of processes and platforms used in civic technologies to foster high deliberative quality, elaboration, and a balance of disagreement and agreement, which in turn can support idea generation in crowdsourced deliberation.
Managing private life and household affairs requires considerable work for consumer households, sometimes in cooperation with private companies or public administrations. In their role as consumers/citizens, people must perform work such as monitoring and managing supplies and contracts, comparing and purchasing offers, submitting insurance claims, or renewing passports. While some CSCW studies have examined intra-household coordination work, this study investigates the emerging role of intermediary firms that perform inter-organizational work on behalf of, and driven by, consumers in areas such as finance, insurance, utilities, healthcare, and general administration. Employing qualitative methods, we combined interviews and artifact analysis with five intermediary firms across different sectors and conducted a week-long field study with one of them. In doing so, our study sheds light on intermediaries’ largely hidden role in bridging inter-organizational cooperation in consumer markets. We show to what extent this work involves predominantly human, manual bridging efforts. All five intermediaries face (common) social-level conflicts in their newly formed work arrangements, as well as technical-level conflicts within the infrastructures of the market. We analyzed these conflicts alongside breakdowns they mitigate through coping strategies. Our findings suggest that while some conflicts—whether socially or technically caused—can be resolved by intermediaries, others must be bridged using concepts of ‘adversarial interoperability’ or ‘backward interoperability’. Hence, when designing CSCW systems of organizations interacting with consumers, we should also consider the role of intermediaries, their work practices, and the conflicts identified in this study.
Over the past decade, a range of methodological approaches, user studies, and research results focused on technology for people with dementia has led to insights into the design of innovative solutions that can be embedded in the complex daily lives of people with dementia and their care-network. This paper recounts experiences and lessons learned over the course of a three-year participatory design project with and for people with dementia and their caregivers in domestic and institutional care settings. It contributes with long-term insights and reflections on the challenges confronting researchers in these sensitive care domains and discusses the need to 'know the users' and their care-networks so as to enable a deeper understanding of their unique difficulties. In particular, it examines the relationship between empathic understanding, experience-centered design, and the social appropriation of ICT, in our case exergames, in these various healthcare settings. What this might mean not only for future technology design, but also for the conduct of human-centered research is then discussed. We emphasize that designing appropriate assistive technologies for people with dementia requires sustained, empathetic engagement with both people with dementia and their caregivers, grounded in regular, trust-building interactions. Caregivers play a vital role in the appropriation and maintenance of these systems and researchers must be prepared for the emotional demands and relational commitments that such work entails. By embedding technology development within the rhythms of care and prioritizing mutual respect, researchers can create more meaningful, responsive, and sustainable support systems.
This article examines the challenges of designing AI-enabled welfare allocation systems in public administration, with a focus on the ontological issues that arise in a co-design process. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Danish municipality, the study explores how social workers and IT designers struggled to align their respective understandings of a welfare benefit called ‘loss of earnings’. While IT designers sought to structure case work as a predictable, rule-based process suitable for symbolic AI modelling, social workers emphasised the need for discretionary freedom in terms of not only case outcomes but also work processes. This mismatch led to ontological trouble, where fundamental differences in what welfare allocation is—and ought to be—persistently shaped the co-design process. The article highlights that digital transformation in public administration is not just a technical challenge but may also be an ontological one, requiring digital design to navigate multiple, conflicting realities. Second, it demonstrates that co-design does not always lead to mutual learning but may instead expose persistent friction between stakeholders' worldviews. Third, it argues that rather than resolving ontological differences, co-design should create spaces for articulating and negotiating them, helping to safeguard values such as professional discretion and holistic decision-making in AI-enabled welfare services. The findings underscore the need for CSCW scholars and practitioners to engage with the ontological dimensions of AI design critically, ensuring that digital transformation respects the complexities of public sector work.
Members of cooperative groups can work together more effectively if they develop a shared classification schema, but distributed groups face barriers to doing so. To better understand how classifications and classification practices can emerge and support the work of distributed groups, we review the literature on folksonomies (a kind of shared classification schema) in crowdsourcing projects (one type of distributed work). The review yields three potentially productive tensions associated with the development of folksonomies in crowdsourcing projects. First, projects must establish who has the authority to decide on adopted terminology and with what consequences. Second, there can be tension if people who tag objects have different interests in tagging than those who use the tags to search for content. Finally, projects must decide when to intervene to maintain a balance between a stable vocabulary and the ability of the project to accommodate ongoing changes. We illustrate these tensions by comparing how they are handled in the photo-sharing site Flickr, the story-sharing site Archive of Our Own (AO3), the internet culture classification site Know Your Meme, and the citizen science project Gravity Spy. The comparison suggests guidelines for project managers regarding the identified tensions.
The smooth functioning of the gig economy relies on gig workers’ local execution of tasks assigned by global platforms like Uber. Within this broader workforce, gig drivers (e.g., rideshare and delivery workers) draw on their local knowledge – information and skills specific to a particular region – to navigate and optimize routes. Building on a substantial body of research on gig work, this study turns attention to how gig drivers develop and deploy knowledge practices within the gig economy infrastructure. To address this, we analyzed 25 semi-structured interviews, revealing how drivers’ knowledge practices enable them to adapt platform systems to local conditions, develop algorithmic-local knowledge by integrating insights about platform behavior and market dynamics, and strategically regulate knowledge exchange with peers. We discuss how such knowledge practices play a critical role in localizing platform work, bridging the gaps between gig platforms’ global standards and local conditions.
This study addresses an unexplored intersection of vocational education and training (VET), motor skill learning, craftsmanship and the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry as well as expertise sharing. Acquiring proficiency in craftsmanship involves not only theoretical knowledge but also a multitude of physical skills, such as chiselling, which are honed through repetition. Mastering these manual skills and combining them with knowledge of materials, such as wood, is essential for an effective executing of craftmanship. We developed an augmented reality (AR) prototype through the design case study approach to design a support for beginners, especially apprentices, in woodworking education where the connection between craftspeople and material is important for the end results. The prototype was evaluated by 28 apprentices inside and outside a woodwork shop setting. While participants praised the prototype’s 3D visualisations and interactive models, challenges in compatibility with woodwork shop environments were evident. Our findings highlight the importance of on-site evaluations in the craftsmanship context and the significance of direct interaction with real world materials. We provide a set of seven design guidelines derived from our empirical findings to inform the development of AR-based learning applications in craftsmanship. Our discussion opens up the question of the role of interactive 3D models for collaborative learning. The research extends AR’s impact in craftsmanship and AEC industry. Our study underscores the importance of expert knowledge in handling certain materials and the potential of AR to reshape work practices and visualisations, contributing to expertise sharing in this domain.
Funding policies for data infrastructure promote open data sharing to drive positive social impact. However, concerns regarding the long-term management of data within and across distributed infrastructures can hinder data sharing. We draw upon the concept of polycentric governance to demonstrate how collaborative practices of data curation, in preparing and maintaining data for (future) sharing, provide a solid foundation for understanding data governance within data infrastructures. Based on a qualitative case study of a distributed ecological network, we investigate the conditions under which data are managed as a shared resource by local actors to ensure the long-term (re)usability of data. We contribute to CSCW by conceptualising data curation as a complex form of governance practice with multiple centres of decision-making, each of which operates with some degree of autonomy in data infrastructures. A polycentric governance lens on data infrastructures advances the CSCW conception of data curation as a collective governance practice that can cultivate a data democracy culture within and across organisations, empower individuals to be accountable for their data, and foster a mindset shift toward decentralised data governance.
The huge and ever-increasing amount of publicly available data is shaping the data-driven society that citizens are encouraged to tame. It requires future generations, i.e., current learners, to acquire data literacy skills to make informed decisions. Towards this direction, we present a data literacy workshop involving more than $$\varvec{150}$$ 150 high school learners focused on co-creating Open Data via a digital environment and authoring data stories while evaluating their engagement and learning. Results show that participants are, on average, engaged during the in-person stages of the workshops, independently by gender, and they are mainly interested in collaborative activities, hands-on, and public presentations. This experiment confirm that learning is positively correlated with engagement, which aligns with the literature. However, further efforts should be invested in letting learners master data literacy skills while increasing their interest.
High-quality hospital care requires careful medication management. The infrastructure in place to avert errors in medication management involves formal work procedures, elaborate electronic systems, and, we argue, continual repair work. Repair is the work required to restore things to working order after a breakdown. In this study, we analyze the repair work performed by the healthcare professionals tasked with two electronically supported medication-management processes at hospitals in Norway: medication reconciliation and closed-loop medication management. On the basis of interviews and supplementary material, we find that the repair work involved in these two activities is collaborative, continuous, and critical. It is collaborative in that it is performed by physicians, pharmacists, and nurses and, thereby, neither assigned to a single person nor to a group of designated repairers. It is continuous because the repairs do not fix the causes of the breakdowns but merely restore the individual instance of medication management to working order. It is critical in the double sense that repair work is a requirement for quality medication management and that quality repair work is also a requirement. We discuss the implications of the repair work, including the consequences of variation in the achieved level of repairedness.
