Life-Affirming Biosensing in Public: Sounding Heartbeats on a Red Bench
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CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK Life-Afirming Biosensing in Public: Sounding Heartbeats on a Red Bench Noura Howell Greg Niemeyer Kimiko Ryokai University of California, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, U.S. Berkeley, U.S. Berkeley, U.S. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT “Smart city” narratives promise IoT data-driven innovations leveraging biosensing technologies. We argue this overlooks a potential beneft of city living: afrmation. We designed the Heart Sounds Bench, which amplifes the heart sounds of those sitting on it, as well as recording and playing back the heart sounds of previous sitters. We outline our design intent to invite rest, refection, and recognition of others’ lives in public space. We share results from a study with 19 participants. Participants expressed feeling connected to a shared life energy including others and the environment, and described heart sounds as feeling intimate yet anony- mous. Finally, we elaborate the concept of life-afrmation in terms of recognition of others’ lives, feeling connection, Figure 1: The Heart Sounds Bench amplifes the heart and respecting untranslatable diferences with opacity, as a sounds of bench-sitters, inviting a moment of calm yet vi- way of helping “smart city” designs embrace a multiplicity brant life-afrmation. of desires. CCS CONCEPTS 1 INTRODUCTION • Human-centered computing → Human computer in- Smart city narratives “aim to evoke positive change and teraction (HCI); innovation–at least as the proponents see it–via digital ICT; essentially, building an IoT at the city-scale by installing net- KEYWORDS worked objects throughout the urban environment (and even Biosensing, afrmation, smart city, heart sounds, heartrate, human bodies) for a wide range of diferent purposes” [142]. public space, bench These narratives promise improved efciency, safety, ftness, sustainability, and civic participation, often relying on data ACM Reference Format: [3, 17, 20, 49, 53, 54, 56, 101, 113, 142, 148, 167]. Biosensing Noura Howell, Greg Niemeyer, and Kimiko Ryokai. 2019. Life- technologies–sensors measuring humans and the accom- Afrming Biosensing in Public: Sounding Heartbeats on a Red Bench. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sys- pany data, models, predictions, and insights–undergird many tems Proceedings (CHI 2019), May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK. smart city IoT applications. For example, video surveillance ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605. can detect heartrate [131], correlated with future involve- 3300910 ment in violent crime [107] or percentages of joy, contempt, and anger [1]. Wearable trackers promote individual work- Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for place efciency [9], physical ftness [6], emotional wellness personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are [5, 14], and self-improvement through algorithmically sug- not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies gested behavioral micro-nudges [150]. Sidewalk Labs plans bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third- to revamp citing living with smart city sensing and tech- party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact nology [12, 13, 67, 80, 111]. Knightscope robots patrol park- the owner/author(s). ing lots, and sometimes public space, using sensors to de- CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). tect and report ‘anomalies’ as security risks that often con- ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05. fate the existence of homeless people with criminal activity https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300910 [8, 32, 72, 154, 172]. Paper 680 Page 1 CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK Critiquing this, Nissenbaum argues that such pervasive refection, or slowness [62, 76, 123, 128, 152]. Our work in- surveillance is unjust and tyrannical [124]. Regarding Side- vestigates how smart city sensing technologies may shape walk Labs, Crawford cautions against such in-depth inter- the afective experiences of city living while at the same vention by a single company into civic infrastructure [35]. time challenging the data-driven categorization prevalent in Sadowski and Pasquale critique the smart city ideal, tracing afective computing, by fostering a slow emotional experi- free market ideology that seeks to “spread market logics to ence with biosensory data that does not rely on data-driven all dimensions of human life” while “focusing on the narrow categorization. goals of promoting transparency and efciency” [142]. Our Being in public space can fulfll emotional desires not work critiques and explores alternatives to these problematic directly related to prevalent smart city narratives. Sometimes smart city narratives through design research by engaging people want to get out and about, to see and be seen. As city the heart sounds bench as a probe [24]. planners and architects are well aware, the design of urban De Lange and de Waal outline a key tension in smart cities: space infuences the kinds of social interactions therein [171]. “The challenge therefore in our view is to balance these sto- Contrasting the normative categorization of many urban ries of personalization and efciency on the one hand and sensing technologies, we focus on the particular afective of building collectives based on diferences and mutualism experience of afrmation in public space. on the other hand” [41]. Urban sensing can be used for per- sonalization and efciency, smoothing over diference for 2 AFFIRMATION sameness, but an alternative role for urban sensing could be more like visionary urban scholar Jacobs’ call for cities to Afrmation, defned as “emotional support or encourage- celebrate “a great and exuberant richness of diferences and ment” [2], has emerged as a design goal [90, 157, 173]. We possibilities, many of these diferences unique and unpre- outline how afrmation is lacking in prevalent smart city dictable and all the more valuable because they are” [97, p. narratives, and contribute the Heart Sounds Bench as a de- 220-1]. Shifting from ‘smart cities’ to ‘social cities’ [41], we sign exploration of afrmation. Listening to one’s own heart contribute a design probing afective experiences of afrma- sounds, and those of another co-present bench-sitter, invites tion and connection while respectfully engaging diference. a quiet moment of listening, bodily awareness, and engage- Widespread biosensing in daily life makes data- and algo- ment with other(s). Analyzing the results of our study with rithmic judgments about people’s physical un/ftness, men- 19 participants, we further contribute an elaboration of a tal un/wellness, and criminal/terrorist risk [90]. These cat- concept we name life-afrmation in terms of recognition, con- egories are far from neutral: one side is ‘normal’ and one nection, and opacity. Recognizing and feeling connected to side is ‘other’. The ‘other’ category is usually seen as sub- the life and experience of others contributes to afrmation, optimal, in need of improvement, control, or discipline, or as while accepting the opacity of what we cannot know about something to be feared. This can contribute to otherization, others helps further recognize and afrm diference. We call a process whereby people come to be viewed as intrinsi- for designers to continue exploring afective experiences of cally diferent and alien [11, 143] (e.g., racism, Islamophobia). urban public space while embracing a multiplicity of desires. While data-driven approaches including biosensing often Though perhaps not discussed in these terms, afrma- claim to escape social prejudice with objective insights, they tion can occur in public space: The bus driver who stops can instead reify pre-existing stereotypes and bolster struc- because he sees someone running. The stranger on the bus tural inequality with a false sheen of scientifc authority who moves their bag to make room on the seat, or the one [3, 15, 16, 27, 29, 30, 52, 125]. Our work engages biosensing who provides directions. The shopkeeper who greets those in ways that challenge the need for data-driven categoriza- entering, before a purchase has been made. Even walking tion by presenting heart sounds without fltering or analysis. on a crowded sidewalk requires sharing space, acknowledg- Our work sits at the intersection of smart city narratives ing one another’s needs for passage. Of course, these daily and afective computing, seeking to reconfgure both. Af- afrmations of one’s existence and needs are experienced fective Computing seeks to automatically ‘detect’ human unequally depending on privilege. As designers, we draw emotions in terms of discrete data-driven categories [31]. inspiration from mundane moments of afrmation, while re- This risks fattening diference by claiming that such cate- maining refexive about our social position and social norms. gories are universally generalized [24], and furthering oth- Smart city narratives often miss this notion of afrma- erization around emotional un/wellness [90]. At the same tion. The emphasis on economic exchange constructs its time, HCI is undergoing an afective turn whereby research subjects in terms of their ability of to produce economic seeks not only to support functional tasks, but also afective value by leveraging efciency and ftness, afrming capital experiences, construed more broadly than Afective Com- not people. Additionally, biosensing technologies’ potential puting’s discrete categories of emotion, such as playfulness, for otherization, especially regarding criminal risk, is not Paper 680 Page 2 CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK afrmative. The Heart Sounds Bench responds to what we a bench with a stranger due to fear of harassment or violence. feel is a lack of afrmation in prevalent smart city narratives. So, additionally, the Heart Sounds Bench records and later The built environment can also feel afrmative.