User-Centred Repair: From Current Practices to Future Design

Kilic, Damla; Sailaja, Neelima

Abstract

From the kitchen to the bathroom, homes are now equipped with various technological devices like smart vacuums, intelligent mirrors, digital thermostats, wearables, and voice-controlled assistants such as Amazon Alexa. This surge in ubiquitous technologies contributes to the growing concern of electronic waste, or e-waste, globally. Research focuses on developing strategies for e-waste reduction, and is considering a range of approaches on governmental, industrial and societal levels. To gain a comprehensive understanding of smart device repair, our research was structured into several distinct tasks, each supported by semi-structured interviews, each tailored to explore different facets of repair behaviours and decision-making. A total of fifteen one-on-one study sessions were conducted as part of this research. The study’s findings will be presented in three primary sections, each shedding light on distinct aspects of repair practices and decision-making. Along with the aforementioned results around current repair practices, repair decision making drivers and future expectations, our paper offers two significant contributions to human-computer interaction (HCI) research and practice. First, we place our findings in a broader context, anchoring them within the existing body of literature on HCI, repair practices, and the IoT. Second, we leverage our findings along with wider literature to conclude our paper with a set of design recommendations that align with current actual user practice around IoT repair; is inclusive of user expectations around every day reparability in future IoT; and enables user decision making around IoT repair thereby making IoT reparability an accessible and equitable process.

Citation

Kilic, D., & Sailaja, N. (2024, June). User-Centred Repair: From Current Practices to Future Design. Presented at International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII 2024), Washington D.C., U.S.A

• Presentation Conference Type: Edited Proceedings
• Conference Name: International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII 2024)
• Start Date: Jun 29, 2024
• End Date: Jul 4, 2024
• Acceptance Date: Jan 10, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jun 1, 2024
• Publication Date: Jul 29, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jul 19, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 24, 2025
• Print ISSN: 0302-9743
• Electronic ISSN: 1611-3349
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 52-71
• Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Series Number: 14718
• Series ISSN: 0302-9743
• Book Title: Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions: 12th International Conference, DAPI 2024, Held as Part of the 26th HCI International Conference, HCII 2024, Washington, DC, USA, June 29 – July 4, 2024, Proceedings, Part I
• ISBN: 9783031599873
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59988-0_4
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/37317199
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-59988-0_4
• Additional Information: First Online: 1 June 2024; Conference Acronym: HCII; Conference Name: International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction; Conference City: Washington DC; Conference Country: USA; Conference Year: 2024; Conference Start Date: 29 June 2024; Conference End Date: 4 July 2024; Conference Number: 26; Conference ID: hcii2024; Conference URL: https://2024.hci.international/