HCI and environmental sustainability

This paper examines the way that traditional HCI discourse obscures political and cultural contexts of environmental practice that must be part of an effective solution, and proposes that questions of scale might provide a useful new entry point for design practice.

Abstract

Many HCI researchers have recently begun to examine the opportunities to use ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and ecological consciousness on the part of technology users. This paper examines the way that traditional HCI discourse obscures political and cultural contexts of environmental practice that must be part of an effective solution. Research on ecological politics and the political economy of environmentalism highlight some missing elements in contemporary HCI analysis, and suggest some new directions for the relationship between sustainability and HCI. In particular, I propose that questions of scale -- the scales of action and the scales of effects -- might provide a useful new entry point for design practice.