skip to main content
article

Data Work: How Energy Advisors and Clients Make IoT Data Accountable

Published: 01 December 2017 Publication History
  • Get Citation Alerts
  • Abstract

    We present fieldwork findings from the deployment of an interactive sensing system that supports the work of energy advisors who give face-to-face advice to low-income households in the UK. We focus on how the system and the data it produced are articulated in the interactions between professional energy advisors and their clients, and how they collaboratively anticipate, rehearse, and perform data work. In addition to documenting how the system was appropriated in advisory work, we elaborate the `overhead cost' of building collaborative action into connected devices and sensing systems, and the commensurate need to support discrete workflows and accountability systems to enable the methodical incorporation of the IoT into collaborative action. We contribute an elaboration of the social, collaborative methods of data work relevant to those who seek to design and study collaborative IoT systems.

    References

    [1]
    Bannon, Liam; John Bowers; Peter Carstensen; John A. Hughes; Kari Kuutii; James Pycock; Tom Rodden; Kjeld Schmidt; Dan Shapiro; Wes Sharrock; and Stephen Viller (1993). Informing CSCW System Requirements, COMIC Deliverable 2.1. Lancaster University, United Kingdom: Computing Department.
    [2]
    Bedwell, Ben D.; Enrico Costanza; and Michael Jewell (2016). Understanding Energy Consumption at Work: Learning from Arrow Hill. In CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, San Francisco, USA, February 27-March 2, 2016. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1335-1346.
    [3]
    Bowers, John (1994). The work to make a network work: studying CSCW in action. In CSCW '94: Proceedings of the 1994 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, October 22 - 26, 1994. New York: ACM Press, pp. 287-298.
    [4]
    Bowers, John; Graham Button; and Wes Sharrock (1995). Workflow from within and without: technology and cooperative work on the print industry shopfloor. In H. Marmolin; Y. Sundblad; and K. Schmidt (eds): ECSCW '95: Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Stockholm, Sweden, 11 - 15 September, 1995. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 51-66.
    [5]
    Button, Graham; and Richard Harper (1995). The Relevance of "Work-practice" for Design. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 263-280.
    [6]
    Button, Graham; Andy Crabtree; Mark Rouncefield; and Peter Tolmie (2015). Deconstructing Ethnography. London: Springer.
    [7]
    Chaudhry, Amir; Jon Crowcroft; Heidi Howard; Anil Madhavapeddy; Richard Mortier; Hamed Haddadi, and Derek McAuley (2015). Personal data: thinking inside the box. In AA '15: Proceedings of The Fifth Decennial Aarhus Conference on Critical Alternatives, Aarhus, Denmark, August 17 - 21, 2015, New York: ACM Press, pp. 29-32.
    [8]
    Chetty, Marshini; Richard Banks; Richard Harper; Tim Regan; Abigail Sellen; Christos Gkantsidis; Thomas Karagiannis; and Peter Key (2010). Who's hogging the bandwidth: the consequences of revealing the invisible in the home. In CHI '10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010. New York: ACM Press, pp. 659-668.
    [9]
    Costanza, Enrico; Sarvapali D. Ramchurn; and Nicholas R. Jennings (2012). Understanding domestic energy consumption through interactive visualisation. In UbiComp '12: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 05 - 08, 2012. New York: ACM Press, pp. 216-225.
    [10]
    Crabtree, Andy; Tom Lodge; James Colley; Chris Greenhalgh; Richard Mortier; and Hamed Haddadi (2016). Enabling the new economic actor: data protection, the digital economy, and the Databox. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, vol. 20, no. 6, November 2016, pp. 947-957.
    [11]
    Crabtree, Andy; and Richard Mortier (2015). Human Data Interaction: Historical Lessons from Social Studies and CSCW. In N. Boulus-Rødje; G. Ellingsen, T. Bratteteig; M. Aanestad; and P. Bjorn (eds.): ECSCW '15: Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Oslo, Norway, 19-23 September 2015. Cham: Springer, pp. 3-21.
    [12]
    Crabtree, Andrew; Tom Rodden; Peter Tolmie; and Graham Button (2009). Ethnography Considered Harmful. In CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Boston, MA, USA, April 04 - 09, 2009. New York: ACM Press, pp. 879-888.
    [13]
    Crabtree, Andrew; Mark Rouncefield; and Peter Tolmie (2012). Doing Design Ethnography. London, UK: Springer.
    [14]
    DECC (2016) Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics Report, 2016. Department of Energy and Climate Change.
    [15]
    Dillahunt, Tawanna R.; and Jennifer Mankoff (2014). Understanding factors of successful engagement around energy consumption between and among households. In CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, February 15 - 19, 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1246-1257.
    [16]
    Dillahunt, Tawanna; Jennifer Mankoff; and Eric Paulos (2010). Understanding conflict between landlords and tenants. In Ubicomp '10: Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing, Copenhagen, Denmark, September 26 - 29, 2010. New York: ACM Press, pp. 149-158.
    [17]
    Dillahunt, Tawanna; Jennifer Mankoff; Eric Paulos; and Susan Fussell (2009). It's not all about "Green": energy use in low-income communities. In Ubicomp '09: Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, Orlando, Florida, USA, September 30 - October 03, 2009. New York: ACM Press, pp. 255-264.
    [18]
    DiSalvo, Carl; Phoebe Sengers; and Hrönn Brynjarsdóttir (2010). Mapping the landscape of sustainable HCI. In CHI '10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1975-1984.
    [19]
    Dix, Alan (2007). Designing for Appropriation. In Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: HCI...But Not As We Know It - Volume 2, University of Lancaster, United Kingdom, September 03 - 07, 2007. British Computer Society, pp. 27-30.
    [20]
    Dong, Tao; Mark W. Newman; Mark S. Ackerman; and Sarita Schoenebeck (2015). Supporting reflection through play: field testing the home trivia system. In UbiComp '15: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Osaka, Japan -- September 07 - 11, 2015. New York: ACM Press, pp. 251-262.
    [21]
    Dourish, Paul (2001). Process Descriptions As Organisational Accounting Devices: The Dual Use of Workflow Technologies. In GROUP '01: Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, Boulder, Colorado, USA, September 30 - October 03, 2001. New York: ACM Press, pp. 52-60.
    [22]
    Dutton, William H.; and Grant Blank (2013). Cultures of the Internet: the Internet in Britain. InterMedia, vol. 42, no. 4/5, Winter 2014/15, pp. 55-57.
    [23]
    Fischer, Joel E.; Enrico Costanza; Sarvapali D. Ramchurn; James Colley; and Tom Rodden (2014). Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel poverty. In UbiComp '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Seattle, Washington, September 13 - 17, 2014. New York: ACM Press, pp. 447-458.
    [24]
    Fischer, Joel E.; Andy Crabtree; Tom Rodden; James A. Colley; Enrico Costanza; Michael O. Jewell; and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn (2016). "Just whack it on until it gets hot": Working with IoT Data in the Home. In CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Santa Clara, California, USA, May 07 - 12, 2016. New York: ACMPress, pp. 5933-5944.
    [25]
    FTC staff (2015). Internet of Things: Privacy and Security in a Connected World. Technical Report. Federal Trade Commission.
    [26]
    Garfinkel, Harold (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
    [27]
    Garfinkel, Harold (1991). Respecification: Evidence for locally produced, naturally accountable phenomena of order, logic, reason, meaning, method, etc. in and as of the essential haecceity of immortal ordinary society (I)--an announcement of studies. In G. Button (ed.): Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 10-19.
    [28]
    Gerson, Elihu M.; and Susan Leigh Star (1986). Analyzing due process in the workplace. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 257-270.
    [29]
    Goecks, Jeremy; Amy Voida; Stephen Voida; and Elizabeth D. Mynatt (2008). Charitable technologies. In CSCW '08: Proceedings of the ACM 2008 conference on Computer supported cooperative work, San Diego, CA, USA, November 08 - 12, 2008. New York: ACM Press, pp. 689-698.
    [30]
    Grinter, Rebecca E.; W. Keith Edwards; Mark W. Newman; and Nicolas Ducheneaut (2005). The work to make a home network work. In H. Gellersen; K. Schmidt; M. Beaudouin-Lafon; and W. Mackay (eds.): ECSCW '05: Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 18-22 September 2005, Paris, France. Netherlands: Springer, pp. 469-488.
    [31]
    Jacobs, Rachel; Steve Benford; Mark Selby; Michael Golembewski; Dominic Price; and Gabriella Giannachi (2013). A conversation between trees: what data feels like in the forest. In CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Paris, France, April 27 - May 02, 2013. New York: ACM Press, pp. 129-128.
    [32]
    Jiang, Yifei; Li Shang; Kun Li; Lei Tian; Ricardo Piedrahita; Xiang Yun; Omkar Mansata; Qin L; Robert P. Dick; and Michael Hannigan (2011). MAQS: a personalized mobile sensing system for indoor air quality monitoring. In UbiComp '11: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, Beijing, China, September 17 - 21, 2011. New York: ACM Press, pp. 271-280.
    [33]
    Kim, Sunyoung; and Eric Paulos (2010). InAir: sharing indoor air quality measurements and visualizations. In CHI '10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Orlando, Florida, USA, September 30 - October 03, 2009. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1861-1870.
    [34]
    Luger, Ewa; and Tom Rodden (2013). An informed view on consent for UbiComp. In UbiComp '13: Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and ubiquitous computing, Zurich, Switzerland, September 08 - 12, 2013. New York: ACM Press, pp. 529-538.
    [35]
    Merkel, Cecelia; Umer Farooq; Lu Xiao; Craig Ganoe; Mary Beth Rosson; and John M. Carroll (2007). Managing technology use and learning in nonprofit community organizations. In CHIMIT '07: Proceedings of the 2007 symposium on Computer human interaction for the management of information technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 30 - 31, 2007. New York: ACM Press, no. 8.
    [36]
    Merkel, Cecelia B.; Lu Xiao; Umer Farooq; Craig H. Ganoe; Roderick Lee; John M. Carroll; and Mary Beth Rosson (2004). Participatory design in community computing contexts. In PDC '04: Proceedings of the eighth conference on Participatory design Artful integration: interweaving media, materials and practices, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 27 - 31, 2004. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1-10.
    [37]
    Pierce, James; and Eric Paulos (2012). Beyond energy monitors: interaction, energy, and emerging energy systems. In CHI '12: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, Texas, USA, May 05 - 10, 2012. New York: ACM Press, pp. 665-674.
    [38]
    Pousman, Zachary; Mario Romero; Adam Smith; and Michael Mateas (2008). Living with tableau machine: a longitudinal investigation of a curious domestic intelligence. In UbiComp '08: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, Seoul, Korea, September 21 - 24, 2008. New York: ACM Press, pp. 370-379.
    [39]
    Robertson, Toni; and Ina Wagner (2015). CSCW and the Internet of Things. ECSCW 2015: In N. Boulus-Rødje; G. Ellingsen, T. Bratteteig; M. Aanestad; and P. Bjorn (eds.): ECSCW '15: Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Oslo, Norway, 19-23 September 2015. Springer, Berlin, pp. 285-294.
    [40]
    Schmidt, Kjeld; and Liam Bannon (1992). Taking CSCW seriously: supporting articulation work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), vol. 1, nos. 1-2, pp. 7-40.
    [41]
    Scott, James; A.J. Bernheim Brush; John Krumm; Brian Meyers; Michael Hazas; Stephen Hodges; and Nicolas Villar (2011). PreHeat: controlling home heating using occupancy prediction. In UbiComp '11: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, Beijing, China, September 17 - 21, 2011. New York: ACM Press, pp. 281-290.
    [42]
    Stoll, Jennifer; W. Keith Edwards; and Elizabeth D. Mynatt (2010). Informal interactions in nonprofit networks. In CHI '10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Orlando, Florida, USA, September 30 - October 03, 2009. New York: ACM Press, pp. 533-536.
    [43]
    Strauss, Anselm (1985). Work and the division of labor. Sociological Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 1-19.
    [44]
    Strengers, Yolande A.A. (2011). Designing eco-feedback systems for everyday life. In CHI '11: Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems, Vancouver, BC, Canada, May 07 - 12, 2011. New York: ACM Press, 2135-2144.
    [45]
    Tolmie, Peter; and Andy Crabtree (2008). Deploying research technology in the home. In CSCW '08: Proceedings of the ACM 2008 conference on Computer supported cooperative work, San Diego, CA, USA, November 08 - 12, 2008. New York: ACM Press, pp. 639-648.
    [46]
    Tolmie, Peter; Andy Crabtree; Tom Rodden; James A Colley; and Ewa A Luger (2016). "This has to be the cats" - Personal Data Legibility in Networked Sensing Systems. In CSCW '16: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, San Francisco, USA, February 27-March 2, 2016. New York: ACM Press, pp. 490-501.
    [47]
    Voida, Amy; Ellie Harmon; and Ban Al-Ani (2012). Bridging between organizations and the public: volunteer coordinators' uneasy relationship with social computing. In CHI '12: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Austin, Texas, USA, May 05 - 10, 2012. New York: ACM Press, pp. 1967-1976.
    [48]
    Walport, Mark (2014). The Internet of Things: making the most of the second digital revolution. London: UK Government Office for Science.
    [49]
    Zimmerman, Don; and Melvin Pollner (1970). The everyday world as a phenomenon. In H.B. Pepinsky (ed.): People and Information. New York: Pergamon Press, pp. 33-66.

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Data Probes: Reflecting on Connected Devices with Technology-Mediated ProbesProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633380(1-13)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
    • (2023)Leafy: Enhancing Home Energy Efficiency through Gamified Experience with a Conversational Smart MirrorProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good10.1145/3582515.3609526(128-134)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
    • (2022)CANDY: a framework to design Conversational AgeNts for Domestic sustainabilitYProceedings of the 4th Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3543829.3544515(1-8)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2022
    • Show More Cited By

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image Computer Supported Cooperative Work
    Computer Supported Cooperative Work  Volume 26, Issue 4-6
    December 2017
    611 pages

    Publisher

    Kluwer Academic Publishers

    United States

    Publication History

    Published: 01 December 2017

    Author Tags

    1. CSCW
    2. Collaborative work
    3. Ethnomethodology
    4. Internet of things

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Data Probes: Reflecting on Connected Devices with Technology-Mediated ProbesProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633380(1-13)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
    • (2023)Leafy: Enhancing Home Energy Efficiency through Gamified Experience with a Conversational Smart MirrorProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good10.1145/3582515.3609526(128-134)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
    • (2022)CANDY: a framework to design Conversational AgeNts for Domestic sustainabilitYProceedings of the 4th Conference on Conversational User Interfaces10.1145/3543829.3544515(1-8)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2022
    • (2022)A Case Study Investigating a User-Centred and Expert Informed 'Companion Guide' for a Complex Sensor-based PlatformProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/35346256:2(1-23)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
    • (2022)Does Social Presence Increase Perceived Competence?Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34928456:GROUP(1-22)Online publication date: 14-Jan-2022
    • (2021)An Interview Method for Engaging Personal DataProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/34949645:4(1-28)Online publication date: 30-Dec-2021
    • (2021)Bringing Human-Centredness to Technologies for BuildingsProceedings of the 14th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter10.1145/3464385.3464711(1-8)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2021
    • (2021)Speculative Data Work & DashboardsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34341734:CSCW3(1-31)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2021
    • (2021)Articulating Soma Experiences using TrajectoriesProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445482(1-16)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
    • (2021)What do Teens Make of Personal Informatics?Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445239(1-10)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    View options

    Get Access

    Login options

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media

    -