Refining and Advancing a Theory of Slow Technology: On the Making of Three ‘Slow’ Music Players

Abstract:
The convergence of social, cloud and mobile computing has created a world in which people generate, access, manipulate, and share personal digital data at unprecedented scales and rates. From digital photo albums to online music streaming services, these new technologies have enabled people to create vast archives of digital data that document their life experiences. These technological trends raise complex questions for the design community as we critically look to the future. As archives expand, how will people live with their personal data in ways that support their evolving practices and shifting understandings of self? What qualities should
designers consider in crafting enduring roles for computational things in everyday life? Early research has begun to show that intentionally slow down interactions with digital artifacts can make them more valuable parts of everyday life. Yet, the concept of ‘slowness’ as a design orientation remains under theorized and exemplars of how it can be translated into design strategies are limited. Research through Design (RtD), a well-established method in HCI, offers a way to explore such theoretical concepts through design. The design artifacts produced through RtD serve as concrete instantiations that help articulate, challenge, and refine theoretical ideas. In this way, RtD enables the generation of new knowledge around complex issues such as information overload, self-development, and social connection in the digital age. My research investigates how the slow technology design philosophy can serve as a critical lens for exploring these questions—and how slow technology itself might be further developed as a theoretical and practical approach. In this talk, I will present three 'slow' music players designed and studied over nearly a decade: Olly, Olo Radio, and Queue Player. This trajectory of work illustrates a piecemeal, reflexive, and long-term effort to advance design theory through sustained practice.

Bio:
William Odom is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is the founder and director of the Homeware Lab which explores a range of projects that include longer-term human-data interaction, slow interaction design, human-nature relations, and methods for developing the practice of Research-through-Design. He was previously a Fulbright Scholar in Australia, a Banting Fellow in Canada, and a Design United Research Fellow in the Netherlands.