Three Environmental Discourses
in Human-Computer Interaction
Elizabeth Goodman
UC Berkeley School of Information
www.confectious.net

Energy
A definitional
Plants + use
animals
problem
Air
• What is “nature”?
quality
“The environment?”
• Which phenomena
Artificial
concern us?
lighting
• How does that effect
Housing
our design decisions?
policy
City
Car
ecology
culture

Discourse analysis
A discourse: a shared approach to
Sources Numbers
understanding the world, produced
Peer-reviewed Journal articles
through rhetoric. 52
publications
Conference papers
NSF grant abstracts 5
Assembling a collection Project Project websites 19
documentation
Magazine articles 2
Workshop Calls for proposals 6
Reading for proceedings
Position papers 36
Naming and metaphors
Assumptions and gaps
Citations and debates

A growing research agenda?
50
45
40
35
Numbers of documents
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
workshop proposal conference paper grant proposal journal paper magazine article project website workshop position paper

Three discourses
Sustainable Re-visioning
Citizen sensing
interaction design consumption
Members of
Peopleas Consumers Civic actors
collectives
Environment as Footprint Landscape Exposure
Action as Free choice Practice Participation
Goals as Behavior change Reflection Public action

1 5 8
6
2 3 9
10
7
4
Sustainable interaction design Re-visioning consumption Citizen sensing
Persuasive applications Representing dialogues Maps of sensor data
Nathan, L.P. Ecovillages, values, and interactive⑧
① Miyaki, T. and Rekimoto, J.Sensonomy: Envisioning
Chen et al. Live Sustainability: A System for Persuading Users
⑤
folksonomic urban sensing.
toward Environmental Sustainability. technology: balancing sustainability with daily life
⑨
in 21st century America Steed,A., et al. e-Science in the Streets: Urban Pollution
② Bang, M., Gustafsson, A. and Katzeff, C. Promoting New
Monitoring.
Patterns in Household Energy Consumption with Pervasive⑥ Bidwell, N.J. and Browning, D. Making there:
methods to uncover egocentric experience in a⑩
Learning Games Paulos, E. , Smith, I., and Honicky , R.J.Participatory Ubanism.
dialogic of natural places.
③ Aleahmad, A. et al. Fishing for sustainability: the effects of
indirect and direct persuasion. ⑦ Nugent L. et al., How Do You Say Nature?:
Opening the Design Space with a Knowledge
④ Dillahunt, T. et al. Motivating Environmentally Sustainable
Environment.
Behavior Changes with a Virtual Polar Bear.

Opportunities
Participatory design
Approaching “the environment” as an
unsettled, local question
Negotiating the ethics of intervention
Beyond human-centered computing
Understanding infrastructure
Grappling with institutions and regulatory regimes
Forming new partnerships with new demands

To protect the nature that is all around us,
we must think long and hard about the
nature we carry around inside our heads.
William Cronon
Uncommon Ground
Thanks