Harvesting Technology Stories

[ UUID ] e7ea7eff-e28a-4821-916d-819dfc3dedfc

[ Session Name ] Harvesting Technology Stories [ Primary Space ] Web Literacy [ Secondary Space ] Digital Inclusion

[ Submitter's Name ] Belen Barros Pena [ Submitter's Affiliated Organisation ] School of Design, Northumbria University [ Submitter's GitHub ] @belenbarrospena

[ Other Facilitator 1's Name ] Bernard Tyers

What will happen in your session?

This space will collect people’s stories of technology use and non-use. Attendees will be invited to select a technological item that has meaning for them. Images and other artefacts representing 20th and 21st century technologies will be available for inspiration, but attendees can also bring their own. They will then be invited to tell the artefact’s story and its meaning.

Stories will be audio recorded, transcribed, and then published on a Technology Stories website, together with images of the relevant artefact.

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

This session aims to uncover the complex meanings that technology acquires when it becomes embedded in our lives, the ways we bend intended and expected use, how we appropriate technologies and make them ours. Personal stories also reveal the motivations, hopes, concerns and frustrations that accompany technology adoption and use.

By providing rich descriptions of our relationships with technological artifacts, we hope the Technology Stories website will help complement the shallow research that often underpins product development in the software industry. We would like these stories to become a resource for designers and technologists of all kinds to better understand the most important component of all tech: the humans who use it.

If your session requires additional materials or electronic equipment, please outline your needs.

We would need space in a busy transit area to attract participants. There we will explain the activity, gather consent for recording and publishing, and show the artefacts (such as images) that will act as prompts to surface people’s stories.

Once participants have selected an artefact and the story they would like to tell us, we would need to bring them to a quieter space for recording.

Time needed

All weekend, as an installation, exhibit or drop-in session