Austin Toombs | Indiana University (original) (raw)

Papers by Austin Toombs

Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human partic... more Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human participants necessarily includes care, both from researchers and participants. These caring relationships are frequently left unaddressed in research reporting, disguising the fact that researchers are also cared for in their interactions with participants. In this paper, we demonstrate how a care ethics perspective helps to bring clarity to the care entanglements that pervade the relationships that develop between researchers and participants. This perspective not only leads to a more complete ability to disclose the position of the researcher in their data, but also provides insights into how we describe the empathic character of these relationships. We analyze the researcher–participant relationships we developed during two separate long-term research engagements—a 19-month ethnography and a 6-month design deployment—using a care ethics perspective. We discuss how researchers and participants navigate a complex set of roles and reflexively engage with interpersonal vulnerabilities and needs for care. We argue that researchers, particularly those who participate in long-term qualitative studies, have to engage authentically with the multiple subject positions they themselves occupy, as well as the multiple subject positions in which their research participants become entangled. This importantly includes researchers’ positions as individuals with human and social needs who participate in reciprocal, caring relationships with their participants. We argue that HCI research can benefit from incorporating a care ethics perspective, particularly in adopting the goals of developing empathic relationships with participants, acknowledging the reflexivity of research and engaging in researcher self-disclosure.

Research participants and researchers perform care for each other throughout the research process.

This is demonstrated through two long-term research engagements and a care ethics analysis of the relationships that developed between researchers and participants within them.

This care ethics perspective enables a more complete form of researcher self-disclosure, and is helpful when attempting to develop an understanding of empathic relationships with participants.

Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW'15 Companion, 2015

Interacting with Computers, 2016

Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human partic... more Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human participants necessarily includes care, both from researchers and participants. These caring relationships are frequently left unaddressed in research reporting, disguising the fact that researchers are also cared for in their interactions with participants. In this paper, we demonstrate how a care ethics perspective helps to bring clarity to the care entanglements that pervade the relationships that develop between researchers and participants. This perspective not only leads to a more complete ability to disclose the position of the researcher in their data, but also provides insights into how we describe the empathic character of these relationships. We analyze the researcherparticipant relationships we developed during two separate long-term research engagements-a 19-month ethnography and a 6-month design deployment-using a care ethics perspective. We discuss how researchers and participants navigate a complex set of roles and reflexively engage with interpersonal vulnerabilities and needs for care. We argue that researchers, particularly those who participate in long-term qualitative studies, have to engage authentically with the multiple subject positions they themselves occupy, as well as the multiple subject positions in which their research participants become entangled. This importantly includes researchers' positions as individuals with human and social needs who participate in reciprocal, caring relationships with their participants. We argue that HCI research can benefit from incorporating a care ethics perspective, particularly in adopting the goals of developing empathic relationships with participants, acknowledging the reflexivity of research and engaging in researcher self-disclosure.

Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '11, 2011

Communities contain a rich diversity of backgrounds, personal experiences, and viewpoints. Fortun... more Communities contain a rich diversity of backgrounds, personal experiences, and viewpoints. Fortunately, online social networks can make it even easier for people within a community to meet each other. This leads to an opportunity space for exposing people to the differences of their neighbors through mutual interaction. Our study presents Foodmunity, a social networking site that facilitates the organization of food-related events by members of a community. Meeting over a meal provides a more comfortable environment for experiencing new ideas, new people, and new viewpoints. Foodmunity utilizes themed events based on personal experiences its users have with food. This serves as both a cultural representation of those individuals and as a method of bonding between neighbors. By encouraging its users to reflect on the experiences they want to share and the experiences they have attending others' events, our system facilitates the growth of communities and a deeper understanding of the differences within.

Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '14, 2014

ABSTRACT Cultures of making - that is, social practices of hacking, DIY, tinkering, repair, and c... more ABSTRACT Cultures of making - that is, social practices of hacking, DIY, tinkering, repair, and craft - continue to rise in prominence, and design researchers have taken note, because of their implications for sustainability, democratization, and alternative models of innovation, design, participation, and education. We contribute to this agenda by exploring our findings on self-made tools, which we encountered in a 9-month ethnographic study of a hackerspace. Self-made tools embody issues raised in two discourses that are of interest in design research on making: tools and adhocism. In this paper, we explore ways that tools and adhocism interface with each other, using our findings as a material to think with. We find that this juxtaposition of concepts helps explain a highly generative creative practice - tool-making - within the hackerspace we studied.

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '13, 2013

ABSTRACT In this paper, we look at the prominent World of Warcraft machinima community as an expe... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we look at the prominent World of Warcraft machinima community as an expert amateur online com-munity and present a multi-part study of a canon of the most successful works (i.e., machinima videos) produced by this community. By focusing our study on its roughly 300 most successful examples, the determination of which we explain in the paper, we are able to highlight the evolv-ing visual practices, tools, and aesthetic sensibilities of the community. Chiefly, our study identifies how creativity support tools and visual practices are inextricably linked and mutually support the in-kind development of the other. For WoW machinima and its producers, the affordance of creativity tools and the cultivation of visual skill synced at key moments and in powerful ways to support the rapid growth, experimentation, and refinement of amateur exper-tise at the individual and community levels.

Communities of making have been at the center of attention in popular, business, political, and a... more Communities of making have been at the center of attention
in popular, business, political, and academic research circles
in recent years. In HCI, they seem to carry the promise
of new forms of computer use, education, innovation, and
even ways of life. In the West in particular, the maker manifestos
of these communities have shown strong elements of
a neoliberal ethos, one that prizes self-determination, techsavvy,
independence, freedom from government, suspicion
of authority, and so forth. Yet such communities, to function
as communities, also require values of collaboration,
cooperation, interpersonal support—in a word, care. In this
ethnographic study, we studied and participated as members
of a hackerspace for 19 months, focusing in particular not
on their technical achievements, innovations, or for glimmers
of a more sustainable future, but rather to make visible
and to analyze the community maintenance labor that helps
the hackerspace support the practices that its members, society,
and HCI research are so interested in. We found that
the maker ethic entails a complex negotiation of both a neoliberal
libertarian ethos and a care ethos.

UX and design culture are beginning to dominate corporate priorities, but despite the current hyp... more UX and design culture are beginning to dominate corporate priorities, but despite the current hype there is often a disconnect between the organizational efficiencies desired by executives and the knowledge of how UX can or should address these issues. This exploratory study addresses this space by reframing the concept of competence in UX to include the flow of competence between individual designers and the companies in which they work. Our reframing resulted in a preliminary schema based on interviews conducted with six design practitioners, which allows this flow to be traced in a performative way on the part of individuals and groups over time. We then trace this flow of individual and organizational competence through three case studies of UX adoption. Opportunities for use of this preliminary schema as a generative, rhetorical tool for HCI researchers to further interrogate UX adoption are considered, including accounting for factors that affect adoption.

This paper explores factors that lead to individuals’ adoption of the maker identity reproduced b... more This paper explores factors that lead to individuals’ adoption of the maker identity reproduced by a small-town hackerspace. This paper presents the findings of a 15-month ethnography of the hackerspace and a series of targeted interviews focused on the self-made tools of that hackerspace. These findings indicate that the formation of our subjects’ maker identities are shaped heavily by the individual’s ability to: use and extend tools; adopt an adhocist attitude toward projects and materials; and engage with the broader maker community. We also consider how a maker identity manifests itself in both making processes and visual stylizations of projects. We present and explore the formative roles of materials, the significances of imprecise tactics such as “futzing,” and the role of the hackerspace as a special place where “normal” attitudes and practices are suspended in favor of an alternative set.

vis.pku.edu.cn

We have developed several techniques to support interactive visualization of university curricula... more We have developed several techniques to support interactive visualization of university curricula. These are designed especially to help students make decisions about academic curricula, including selection of majors and minors and sequencing of courses based on prerequisites. Our approach integrates node-link diagrams, automatic graph drawing, bar graphs, and hyperlinks within a unified information browser. In addition to student record integration, we include hypothetical mode, which allows students to visualize the impact of future decisions. Formal evaluation has shown that this approach improves students' accuracy and confidence in selecting courses and academic programs.

Proceedings of the 25th …, 2011

HCI is increasingly recognizing its accountability to stakeholders beyond individual end users. T... more HCI is increasingly recognizing its accountability to stakeholders beyond individual end users. The field now acknowledges that interaction designs participate in social formations, exerting political force whether or not designers intend them to. Inspired by the commitment to social issues common to the arts, architecture, and the humanities, we present the Significant Screwdriver, a research through design pro-ject that explicitly seeks to transgress social norms regarding the gendered division of labour in the do-mestic sphere in hopes of yielding insights or orientations toward improving the quality of domestic life.

Working with course catalogs, the DAPR system, the course shopping cart, and the course request s... more Working with course catalogs, the DAPR system, the course shopping cart, and the course request system is confusing for most students. With these resources it is difficult for students to make good decisions about which courses to enroll in, the order in which to take a ...

PART 2-----------Proceedings of …, 2011

Journal of Computing …, 2009

Books by Austin Toombs

A selection of articles from the Journal of Peer Production produced for the FSCONS conference, G... more A selection of articles from the Journal of Peer Production produced for the FSCONS conference, Goteborg, October 2014.

Conference Papers by Austin Toombs

A critical tradition has taken hold in HCI, yet research methods needed to meaningfully engage wi... more A critical tradition has taken hold in HCI, yet research methods needed to meaningfully engage with critical questions in the qualitative tradition are nascent. In this paper, we explore one critical qualitative research approach that allows researchers to probe deeply into the relationships between communicative acts and social structures. Meaning reconstruction methods are described and illustrated using examples from HCI research, demonstrating how social norms can be traced as they are claimed and reproduced. We conclude with implications for strengthening rigorous critical inquiry in HCI research, including the use of extant critical research methods to document transparency and thick description.

Thesis Chapters by Austin Toombs

Recent scholarship in Human-Computer Interaction, science and technology studies, and design rese... more Recent scholarship in Human-Computer Interaction, science and technology studies, and design research has focused on hacker communities as sites of innovation and entrepreneurship, novel forms of education, and the democratization of technological production. However, hacking practices are more than new technical practices; they are also political, value-laden, and ideological practices. The significances of these underlying commitments is less understood not only in
academic research, but also within the communities themselves, which tend to profess a libertarian ethos often articulated as apolitical. In this dissertation, I investigate how the process of developing a hacker identity within a hacker community is influenced not only by technical skill, but also by care and community maintenance practices. By studying their projects, community interactions, and social policies, I explore how the broader hackerspace movement unintentionally but systematically excludes broader participation. I leverage several qualitative methods to create a well-rounded account of the hacker identity development process, including: an interview study of hackers’ projects; a 19-month ethnography in a hackerspace; and an analysis of the most-discussed issues on the international hackerspaces.org Discuss listserv. I analyzed these data through a lens informed by
care ethics, foregrounding the interdependent, nurturing relationships hackers develop, and explicating the duties to care that are felt and acted on—but rarely discussed—in these spaces. I present results suggesting that developing a hacker identity can be a vulnerable process, and is both supported and made difficult by the social environment in these communities. While critical to a hackerspace’s success, care and maintenance practices are often overshadowed by rhetoric of self-empowerment and independence. As a result, it becomes difficult for women and minorities to join and fit in, despite members’ best intentions. These results have implications for research on hackerspaces, for hackerspaces themselves, and for analyses of care in such communities.

Research participants and researchers perform care for each other throughout the research process.

This is demonstrated through two long-term research engagements and a care ethics analysis of the relationships that developed between researchers and participants within them.

This care ethics perspective enables a more complete form of researcher self-disclosure, and is helpful when attempting to develop an understanding of empathic relationships with participants.

Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW'15 Companion, 2015

Interacting with Computers, 2016

Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human partic... more Care pervades all interactions between people. Therefore, research that engages with human participants necessarily includes care, both from researchers and participants. These caring relationships are frequently left unaddressed in research reporting, disguising the fact that researchers are also cared for in their interactions with participants. In this paper, we demonstrate how a care ethics perspective helps to bring clarity to the care entanglements that pervade the relationships that develop between researchers and participants. This perspective not only leads to a more complete ability to disclose the position of the researcher in their data, but also provides insights into how we describe the empathic character of these relationships. We analyze the researcherparticipant relationships we developed during two separate long-term research engagements-a 19-month ethnography and a 6-month design deployment-using a care ethics perspective. We discuss how researchers and participants navigate a complex set of roles and reflexively engage with interpersonal vulnerabilities and needs for care. We argue that researchers, particularly those who participate in long-term qualitative studies, have to engage authentically with the multiple subject positions they themselves occupy, as well as the multiple subject positions in which their research participants become entangled. This importantly includes researchers' positions as individuals with human and social needs who participate in reciprocal, caring relationships with their participants. We argue that HCI research can benefit from incorporating a care ethics perspective, particularly in adopting the goals of developing empathic relationships with participants, acknowledging the reflexivity of research and engaging in researcher self-disclosure.

Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '11, 2011

Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '14, 2014

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '13, 2013

vis.pku.edu.cn

Proceedings of the 25th …, 2011

PART 2-----------Proceedings of …, 2011

Journal of Computing …, 2009