M.M. Mehrvarz
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4 records found
1
Seeing Each Other at Work
Speculative Artifacts and Exegesis for Algorithmic Visibility
Algorithmic systems embedded in everyday collaboration platforms increasingly shape the way workers form impressions about each other. As they infer, evaluate, and act upon workers' traces, professional visibility becomes entangled with surveillance, recognition, and new forms of agency and reappropriation. This pictorial examines how such entanglements are materialized and negotiated when algorithmic systems and AI agents enter workplace visibility practices. We present a set of speculative artifacts situated within a shared regime of algorithmic workplace visibility, including organizational performance dashboards, predictive interfaces, Agentic AI, third-party optimization tools, and critical reactions around such socio-technical constellations. The pictorial pairs these artifacts with marginal annotations that operate as exegesis - critical, analytical, or elaborative commentary - positioning and interpreting the situated material work of design in relation to critical HCI scholarship. Our contribution lies in the insights about algorithmic visibility made possible through the indexical ties between speculative artifacts and exegetic annotation.
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Algorithmic systems embedded in everyday collaboration platforms increasingly shape the way workers form impressions about each other. As they infer, evaluate, and act upon workers' traces, professional visibility becomes entangled with surveillance, recognition, and new forms of agency and reappropriation. This pictorial examines how such entanglements are materialized and negotiated when algorithmic systems and AI agents enter workplace visibility practices. We present a set of speculative artifacts situated within a shared regime of algorithmic workplace visibility, including organizational performance dashboards, predictive interfaces, Agentic AI, third-party optimization tools, and critical reactions around such socio-technical constellations. The pictorial pairs these artifacts with marginal annotations that operate as exegesis - critical, analytical, or elaborative commentary - positioning and interpreting the situated material work of design in relation to critical HCI scholarship. Our contribution lies in the insights about algorithmic visibility made possible through the indexical ties between speculative artifacts and exegetic annotation.
Framing the (in)visible
Insights into Visibility Practices of Remote Knowledge Workers
Remote collaboration technologies shape how workers are perceived by colleagues and managers, influencing career progression, trust, and workplace dynamics. This study examines visibility practices—also known as self-presentation or impression management—by exploring interactions through which remote workers establish and maintain visibility. Through 16 semi-structured interviews with remote knowledge workers across various roles and regions, we identify key visibility practices: participating in meetings, leaving traceable links to quality work outputs, and reappropriating miscellaneous features to become visible for others. However, these practices are deeply intertwined with negative psycho-social externalities such as internal pressures, fears, mistrust, and privacy concerns that endanger workers’ overall well-being. Our contributions include (1) empirical insights into workplace visibility and its entangled psycho-social complexities, (2) visibility ecosystem as a socio-material frame, capturing human-technology interactions in when visibility is at stake, and (3) design implications for collaboration technologies that support visibility practices while mitigating associated psycho-social externalities.
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Remote collaboration technologies shape how workers are perceived by colleagues and managers, influencing career progression, trust, and workplace dynamics. This study examines visibility practices—also known as self-presentation or impression management—by exploring interactions through which remote workers establish and maintain visibility. Through 16 semi-structured interviews with remote knowledge workers across various roles and regions, we identify key visibility practices: participating in meetings, leaving traceable links to quality work outputs, and reappropriating miscellaneous features to become visible for others. However, these practices are deeply intertwined with negative psycho-social externalities such as internal pressures, fears, mistrust, and privacy concerns that endanger workers’ overall well-being. Our contributions include (1) empirical insights into workplace visibility and its entangled psycho-social complexities, (2) visibility ecosystem as a socio-material frame, capturing human-technology interactions in when visibility is at stake, and (3) design implications for collaboration technologies that support visibility practices while mitigating associated psycho-social externalities.
Prompting Realities
Exploring the Potentials of Prompting for Tangible Artifacts
Designing meaningful tangible and embodied interactions remains challenging due to their situated nature, complex user needs, and the limited programming skills of many users as well as designers. We developed an interaction model where users and LLMs co-perform tangible actions through prompt engineering beyond deterministic logic of commercial smart systems. In this model AI systems interpret natural language descriptions of environmental context, internalize technical functionalities and spatial cues, and translate these into tangible actions. We encapsulated the interaction model within a LLM-enabled tangible artifact as a HCI provotype and conducted an initial exploratory study around it. Our preliminary findings point to opportunities in refinement and reappropriation of such systems over the use period as well as challenges in adapting deictic spatial references.
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Designing meaningful tangible and embodied interactions remains challenging due to their situated nature, complex user needs, and the limited programming skills of many users as well as designers. We developed an interaction model where users and LLMs co-perform tangible actions through prompt engineering beyond deterministic logic of commercial smart systems. In this model AI systems interpret natural language descriptions of environmental context, internalize technical functionalities and spatial cues, and translate these into tangible actions. We encapsulated the interaction model within a LLM-enabled tangible artifact as a HCI provotype and conducted an initial exploratory study around it. Our preliminary findings point to opportunities in refinement and reappropriation of such systems over the use period as well as challenges in adapting deictic spatial references.
Prompting Realities
Reappropriating Tangible Artifacts Through Conversation
The rapid development of generative AI, particularly since the advent of products such as ChatGPT, has underscored the importance of prompting. Large language models have transformed our interactions with computers through text, but their potential to control physical objects remains largely unexplored. This led me to ask: What if we could use conversational AI to interact with physical objects? The Prompting Realities project envisions bridging this gap by connecting conversational AI to tangible, interactive artifacts. [...]
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The rapid development of generative AI, particularly since the advent of products such as ChatGPT, has underscored the importance of prompting. Large language models have transformed our interactions with computers through text, but their potential to control physical objects remains largely unexplored. This led me to ask: What if we could use conversational AI to interact with physical objects? The Prompting Realities project envisions bridging this gap by connecting conversational AI to tangible, interactive artifacts. [...]