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Learning from the Veg Box: Designing Unpredictability in Agency Delegation

Published: 21 April 2018 Publication History
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    The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to enable applications that foster a more efficient, sustainable, and healthy way of life. If end-users are to take full advantage of these developments we foresee the need for future IoT systems and services to include an element of autonomy and support the delegation of agency to software processes and connected devices. To inform the design of such future technology, we report on a breaching experiment designed to investigate how people integrate an unpredictable service, through the veg box scheme, in everyday life. Findings from our semi-structured interviews and a two-week diary study with 11 households reveal that agency delegation must be warranted, that it must be possible to incorporate delegated decisions into everyday activities, and that delegation is subject to constraint. We further discuss design implications on the need to support people's diverse values, and their coordinative and creative practices.

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    1. Learning from the Veg Box: Designing Unpredictability in Agency Delegation

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      April 2018
      8489 pages
      ISBN:9781450356206
      DOI:10.1145/3173574
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      Published: 21 April 2018

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      Author Tags

      1. agency delegation
      2. autonomous internet of things (aiot)
      3. breaching experiment
      4. qualitative study
      5. veg box

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      • (2023)Investigating How Users Design Everyday Intelligent Systems in UseProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596039(702-711)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
      • (2023)AI Knowledge: Improving AI Delegation through Human EnablementProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580794(1-17)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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