Download Full CfP: ECSCW2015_CfP_2

TOPIC
Whether in private or professional life, people frequently adapt, adopt, and shape the technology around them based on their everyday practices to ease interaction when accomplishing certain tasks. The major goal of this one-day workshop is to discuss how this form of technology appropriation is used to satisfy people’s communication needs. In particular we focus on technology that was not initially intended to foster communication, but which led to appropriation, driven by people’s communication needs.

Our aim is to identify ‘unexpected’ communication needs, to better account for them when designing interactive systems. We focus on different contexts, ranging from private settings (e.g., home) or semi-public spaces (e.g., art galleries) to strictly regulated environments (e.g., production lines or health- and emergency contexts) in which appropriation can be considered as a ‘critical’ matter. Thereby, we will discuss (but are not limited to) four aspects of appropriation: unanticipated usage, unanticipated users, unanticipated circumstances, and designing for the unanticipated.

Thereby, our workshop aims at identifying and reflecting upon experiences concerning actual technology appropriation. We are looking for successful stories of technology appropriation to satisfy particular user’s needs as well as unsuccessful stories around technology disappropriation giving examples of how technology did not meet particular user’s needs. By the end of the workshop, we aim to have a collection of experiences from organizers and participants with regard to diverse aspects related to appropriation.

PARTICIPATION
We invite scholars and practitioners with a variety of backgrounds, who share an interest in understanding technology appropriation and would like to reflect upon their experiences in this context, to submit a position paper on one or more of the following topics (or related to them):

• Examples of successful/unsuccessful technology appropriation for communication needs in different contexts;
• Examples of technology appropriation by unanticipated users (addressing either expected/unexpected communication needs) in everyday or emergent practices;
• Methodological approaches to explore technology appropriation for communication;
• Theoretical accounts to technology appropriation for communication;
• Design of collaborative systems that address expected/unexpected communication needs as a reaction to technology appropriation;
• Design of collaborative systems that enable users to share their adaptations to technology that could be useful for others in the same situation;
• Critical reflections on the design, implementation, and use in relation to technology appropriation practices.

SUBMISSION
Please submit a position paper (up to 6 pages in the ECSCW Springer format – see Template) until July 23^rd, 2015 to
Alina.Krischkowsky@sbg.ac.at.

The submissions will be reviewed by the organizers with support of other researchers forming a dedicated program committee and selected according to their potential to contribute to the workshop topic and to foster discussion. The organizers will consider the publication of revised versions of accepted papers as part of a special issue in a CSCW related journal.

All accepted contributions (notifications will be sent out on July 31^st) will be made available on the website to allow participants to prepare for the workshop.