1. Title and short overview of your PhD thesis. Human Scale Technology: Micro-computations in the Application Paradigm. Applications are mostly mass-produced interactive systems meant for global consumption by an 'average' user. They come with a pre-defined set of features that operate on a specific data type and rarely allow for meaningful reprogrammability to fit local needs. As such, they contain a specific power relationship between producer and consumer: users have to adapt their practices to the assumptions made by the developers; governments have to rely on a (foreign) company to maintain the technological foundation on which their bureaucracy is built (e.g., Windows XP and the UK government [1]); countries in the Global South need to adopt 'western' structures or risk being considered an unsupported 'edge case' (e.g., Nairobi's semi-formal transort system and Google Maps [2]).

Klokmose et al. introduced Webstrates [3], a software prototype that embodies their alternative vision of software as inherently malleable, shareable, and distributable. It challenges the standard application model by blurring the distinction between an application and a document and allowing for reprogrammability at run-time. Software built on top of Webstrates support a completely different type of human-computer interaction. If applications are one-size-fits-all, static, durable, and polished; Webstrate-based applications are personal, fluid, disposable, and messy. My thesis builds on Webstrates to investigate how it can facilitate human scale technology with an inherently more democratic power relationship between producers and consumers of interactive systems.

2. The nature of your ‘non-written work'. Software.

3. In what way does your ‘non-written work' relate to your PhD thesis? See 4.

4. How you integrate or consider integrating your ‘non-written work' into your PhD thesis. The produced software can function either as deployable probes to answer specific research questions, as outcomes of studies based on participatory design sessions, or as (commercially viable) alternatives to current applications. If allowed, my thesis document will be implemented in Webstrates and incorporate all the interactive systems I produce over the course of the PhD.

5. Which scholarly traditions do you base your methodology on? There are no formal research methodologies in HCI detailing how to produce software as a knowledge artefact. Software production follows industry methodologies adapted at the discretion of the people involved in the project. My qualitative research (interviews, field studies, and participatory design) follows a post-phenomological theoretical perspective.

6. Which difficulties have you encountered regarding your ‘non-written work’?  Even at venues specifically created for system design research (e.g., UIST), reviewers are confused about how to evaluate the scientific contribution of software. The peer review process of our recently accepted paper [4] was complicated because reviewers felt it needed a user study to justify how implementing a literate computing [5] approach to software development could be considered 'scientific knowledge'. Papers do not include interactive examples of code and scientific databases do not index interactive systems together with the written work that describes it. Dissertations remain static documents even if the content of the research is inherently interactive, 'live', or multi-media based. These standards seem outdated but also thoroughly fossilised and hard to challenge.

7. What do you wish to gain from the workshop? The workshop is more design focused; I am curious to see how the discussion of non-written work as scientific knowledge has evolved in areas outside of system research. At the very least, I hope the workshop would help challenge the dissertation deliverable policy at Aarhus University so the software I produce will be given appropriate credit within the evaluation process and can actually be formally integrated with the written work.

References:

[1] http://nordic.businessinsider.com/why-the-uk-government-stopped-paying-for-windows-xp-2017-5

[2] Williams, S., White, A., Waiganjo, P., Orwa, D., & Klopp, J. (2015). The digital matatu project: Using cell phones to create an open source data for Nairobi's semi-formal bus system. Journal of Transport Geography, 49, 39-51.

[3] Klokmose, C. N., Eagan, J. R., Baader, S., Mackay, W., & Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (2015, November). Webstrates: shareable dynamic media. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology (pp. 280-290). ACM.

[4] http://codestrates.org/

[5] Jarrod K. Millman and Fernando Pérez. 2014.Developing open-source scientific practice. Implementing Reproducible Research 149 (2014).