The Life and Afterlife of Digital Devices

#ewaste #sustainability #sustainableHCI #interviews #casestudy

About

As researchers and academics, this project investigate bad habitus—our everyday practices around technologies for research that reinforce dynamics of extraction, consumption, and waste—in relation to the lifecycle of technology in academic research. Through qualitative interviews, observation, and visual documentation, this case study explores the consideration of sustainability in purchasing decisions, use, maintenance, and disposal processes of digital devices used in a North American university as well the institution’s related policies and procedures and faculty members’ practices.

Role

I was the lead researcher and photographer for this project. I designed the research, recruited participants, conducted 23 interviews, photographed e-waste practices, led the data analysis with a second coder, authored the conference paper communicating the results and recommendations, and presented the research study at the 2024 Designing Interactive Systems Conference in Copenhagen.

Results

Through this research I detail the tensions that complicate sustainability in the university research context, and I develop a rich description of the complexities of creating sustainable practices, policies, and procedures in a university setting as a step towards becoming more sustainable in our work and in our institutions. I offer a set of recommendations for my academic institution and systems that both advance and thwart efforts to create sustainable practices:

1) Share Information, Processes, and Best Practices with Staff and Faculty Members,

2) Support a Wider Range of Reuse Opportunities and End of Life Options, and

3) Create Opportunities to Consider and Enact Sustainability in the Workplace.

Read More

Reese Muntean, Kate Hennessy, Chelsea Mills, and Alissa N. Antle. 2024. Untangling Cables: A Case Study of the Life & Afterlife of Digital Devices in Academic Research. In Proc. of Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 653–67. Copenhagen, Denmark: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661540.

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