Standards and/as Innovation

Abstract

Standards and protocols play important but under-theorized roles in HCI research and design efforts, including those dedicated to the development of new collaborative infrastructures in the sciences. Building on several years of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines standardization efforts attached to new forms of design and computational development in American ecology. We explore the role that standards play in large-scale research networks; how standards are enacted and enforced in complex interactive systems like science; how standards struggle and fail (and what happens when they do); and how actors work across the gaps that standards leave to produce more effective forms of practice and design. We also argue for the potentially creative role of standards, including contexts in which they function as fulcrums for change and innovation. We conclude with reflections on how HCI researchers might rethink the nature and possibilities of standards and standardization in their own work.