“This Seems to Work”: Designing Technological Systems with The Algorithmic Imaginations of Those Who Labor

Cameron, Lindsey; Christin, Angèle; DeVito, Michael A.; Dillahunt, Tawanna R.; Elish, Madeleine Clare; Gray, Mary L.; Qadri, Rida; Raval, Noopur; Valentine, Melissa; Watkins, Elizabeth Anne

doi:10.1145/3411763.3441331

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…A concern for trust shifted from the fnancial services to communities around them. Like prior work on ride sharing [14,58], participants found additional forms of gatekeeping in their interactions with Cash App customer service personnel. This observation refects a concept of "community-cultural wealth" [46,74] that speaks to shared communal and cultural attributes.…”

Section: Beyond Legacies Of Distrust: From Trustworthy Features Tomentioning

confidence: 83%

The Cost of Culture

Cunningham

Nguyen²,

Kientz

et al. 2022

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

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Mobile banking applications have become a primary mode of sharing and managing fnancial resources. However, prior work has questioned its role in serving Black communities amid legacies of structural racial inequity. To investigate this critical topic, we conducted a 30-day diary study with 21 participants and an interview study with 15 participants, all Black American users of the mobile payment platform Cash App. We observed that addressing hurdles to fnancial inclusion requires the navigation of institutional distrust, banking barriers, and fnancial literacy disparities. Our fndings suggest that Black Americans persist and navigate contemporary fnancial systems through legacies of social and cultural capacities. We ofer grounded-truth considerations for the continued design of fn-tech that could have equitable impact among historically marginalized communities. Refecting on the tenor of fnancial services to lack empathy, we urge designers and scholars of fnancial technology to refect on their power to promote racial justice and fnancial inclusion. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing; Interaction design.

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Section: Beyond Legacies Of Distrust: From Trustworthy Features Tomentioning

confidence: 83%

The Cost of Culture

Cunningham

Nguyen²,

Kientz

et al. 2022

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

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“…Platforms both operate in and inculcate a brutal economy of attention, where only the “top” few options are usually ever seen by viewers. These “top” options are usually decided algorithmically, according to rankings along a variety of metrics (Stark and Pais, 2021), metrics which are often invisible to the people contributing to the platform (Burrell, 2016; Cameron et al, 2021). Algorithmic competition introduces another layer of labor into platform work: not just the labor assigned by the platform, but the work of being on the platform.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A spectrum of organizational control has emerged in the literature on algorithmic managements: as organizations use digital structures to wield increasing surveillance and control over gig workers (Mateescu and Nguyen, 2019; Rosenblat, 2018; Rosenblat et al, 2014; Ticona et al, 2018), workers also enact resistance and reclaim their own autonomy (Cameron, 2020; Jarrahi and Sutherland, 2019; Kellogg et al, 2020). However, little is known about the interstitial tissue in between the micro-meso levels: the behaviors, workers’ navigations of this spectrum of control: the peer-to-peer communications underpinning workers’ own strategies for understanding and negotiating algorithmic systems and their constituent parts, Workers in gig or alternative arrangements must constantly contend with opaque algorithmic systems (Bishop, 2019; Burrell, 2016; Cameron et al, 2021). Yet, unlike workers in traditional employee arrangements, there are no physically close co-workers of whom to ask questions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Have you learned your lesson?” Communities of practice under algorithmic competition

Watkins

2022

New Media & Society

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Gig workers are typically thought of as individuals toiling in digitized isolation, not as communities of shared learning. While it’s accurate to say they don’t have the same information-sharing norms as people in traditional employment arrangements, some do gather, in part in digital communities. Online forums, in this space, have become popular sites for gathering, sharing information, and comparing practices. These behaviors provide an opportunity to examine gig workers as emergent communities of practice, and to analyze how work, identity, skills, and workspaces co-constitute each other as sociotechnical environments of work change. In this research, I examine workers’ interactions in an online forum, and focus on how they talk about scams. Analysis reveals that talking about scams is a way for workers to enact belonging in their community of practice. Victims are belittled by other workers, who frame vulnerability, and lack of foresight due to unfamiliarity with the forum itself, as a lack of authenticity. Repudiations are denunciations through which workers assert their belonging. These findings illuminate the practices of what I call “para-organizational” work, with implications for knowledge management in structures of algorithmic competition.

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“…Conspiracy theories have long been with us, but the rise of large audiences via social media [43] for phenomena such as QAnon, anti-5G activism, anti-mask and anti-vax beliefs during the COVID pandemic, and revelations of behavioral advertising driven by political actors such as Cambridge Analytica, is coincident with an increase in everyday experiences of hard-to-explain algorithmic or AI-driven decisions. From job allocation in the gig economy [21] to interactions with voice assistants in the home [14], even the grading of school exams [16], the technologies of everyday life become an "echo chamber of conspiracism" [85] amidst perceived breakdowns in explainability-and the intersections with the wider field of efforts in explainable AI (XAI) have largely not yet been explored in design and HCI research.…”

Section: Breakdowns In Explainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Spooky Technology

Byrne

Lockton

et al. 2022

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

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Our everyday technologies could have appeared terrifying to our ancestors: instantaneous disembodied communication, access to knowledge, objects with 'intelligence' that talk to us (and each other). Black boxes and intangible entities are omnipresent in our homes and lives without our necessarily understanding the hidden flows of data, unknown agendas, imaginary clouds, and mysterious rules that govern them. Have humanity's ways of relating to the unknown throughout history gone away, or have they perhaps transmuted into new forms?In an ongoing project, we have inventoried examples, encounters and reflections on contemporary technology, framed through the perspective of the haunted, spectral and otherworldly. In this paper, we excerpt this collection to illustrate the value and opportunity of an unfamiliar, disquieting perspective in helping to frame the frictions, beliefs and myths that are emerging around interactions with everyday technologies. We posit and demonstrate 'spooky technology' as an accessible framework to reflect and respond to our increasingly entangled relationships with technology.

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“This Seems to Work”: Designing Technological Systems with The Algorithmic Imaginations of Those Who Labor

Cited by 9 publications

References 12 publications

The Cost of Culture

The Cost of Culture

“Have you learned your lesson?” Communities of practice under algorithmic competition

Spooky Technology

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