• Overview:

    China ended its zero-COVID policies in December 2022. This policy change shifted health and wellness priorities from collective safety to individualized health responsibility.

    Chinese citizens sought out safety, in part, through acquiring medical resources, including Paxlovid, an antiviral medication developed by Pfizer.

    However, the distribution of Paxlovid in China was complicated by geopolitical tensions, corporate interests, and general supply issues.

    In this paper, I explore how Paxlovid acquisition was undertaken by Chinese citizens abroad and at home, using online ethnography and interview data.

    Anticipation Work:

    I make use of anticipation work, following Steinhardt and Jackson’s CSCW scholarship.

    Anticipation work involves individual and collective practices that leverage future expectations to guide present actions. This kind of work is, therefore, affective and speculative.

    With this in mind, Paxlovid was desired in both the present tense for the presently ill and in the future tense as an anticipatory form of safety.

    Through the study’s empirical context, I consider the affective, collaborative, and temporal dimensions of anticipation work.

    Friction:

    I also highlight friction within what can be considered the “collaborative” aspects of anticipation work.

    In particular, I unpack how individual practices can “contradict” collaboration, further complicating anticipation work and exacerbating feelings of precarity.

    To read the full paper, click here.

  • Overview:

    Independent movie theaters are vital cultural infrastructure, offering shared spaces for community engagement with cultural artifacts—both the films themselves and the spaces they are shown within.

    However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced these theaters to shut down, causing an abrupt breakdown.

    In this context, I examine the sociotechnical practices undertaken by theater employees to maintain their place within their community's cultural infrastructure.

    Cultural Infrastructure:

    I advocate for further work into cultural infrastructure—the physical, digital, and social systems that enable the production, dissemination, preservation, and engagement with cultural practices, expressions, and resources within a community or society.

    Cultural infrastructure remains relatively underexplored. I address this gap by examining the community value of independent movie theaters, emphasizing their crucial role in placemaking through their physical presence.

    To read the full paper, click here.

  • Overview:

    Historian Pierre Nora said, “memory is alive, always carried by the living.”

    Memory artifacts are personal and collective objects that evoke memories and play a crucial role in continuity of personal, familial, and community narratives.

    Managing memory artifacts and their associated memories and histories requires careful curation efforts, which include acts of selection, organization, divestment, and preservation.

    This personal curation is often undertaken by older adults.

    In this context, I explore the personal curation practices of older adults through survey, interviews, and cultural probe sessions.

    Tensions in personal curation:

    In this work, I find that personal curation practices are informed by several tensions: social tensions (as individual memory is always in relation to collective memory), temporal tensions (as health, memory, and artifacts change over time and these changes can disrupt personal curation), and material tensions (the changing of mediums, as when a digital representation of a physical photo lacks “authenticity”).

    Design implications:

    In considering these tensions and the personal curation practices of older adults, I generate some considerations for both researchers and older adults. These considerations include: raising awareness, supporting preservation and documentation, supporting recontextualization, and supporting forgetting.

    To read the full paper, click here.

  • Overview:

    In our contemporary moment, there exists a hegemonic design practice and a general social desire to retain information.

    Sociotechnical platforms have altered the boundaries of information, leading to unbounded and algorithmic retention.

    This has social, political, environmental, and technological consequences, ranging from an overabundance of autobiographical information that cannot be fully understood by the individual to the improper use and economization of such information by the state and corporation alike.

    In this context, I explore forgetting as a counter-hegemonic practice within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

    Typology of forgetting research:

    In doing this work, I consider forgetting research as falling under six categories: Pure forgetting (an immediate and total loss of information), performative forgetting (a negotiated forgetting without the full commitment to total loss), temporal forgetting (forgetting characterized by the use of time), spatial forgetting (forgetting characterized by the use of space and environment), visualized forgetting (forgetting characterized by the use of visual cues), and unintentional forgetting (forgetting not intentionally facilitated by user or system).

    Considering a counter-hegemonic practice:

    In this work, I imagine an alternative future in which forgetting takes its place as an integral and defined (not just implied) component of research and design.

    To do so, I consider the art of Chinese contemporary artist Song Dong.

    To read the full paper, click here.