Career Writing is a narrative approach to qualitative career assessment whereby client (or student) groups use creative, reflective, and expressive forms of writing to foster an internal dialogue about career. It is intended to help individuals construct a career identity by uncovering life themes, assessing drives and wishes, and rewriting stories (i.e., narrative truths) that no longer serve. The starting point for this learning process is usually a crisis, which could be a situation, event, attitude or choice dilemma surrounding work. Research shows that career writing holds promise for university students in the process of career formation and orientation and can help adults facing job loss.
Abundant HCI research exists on the many assistive technologies that provide help with everyday physical and cognitive tasks. However, while a purely assistive approach often casts aging people in passive roles, recent studies suggest that adults may be ‘flourishing’ way into advanced age, even though implicit ageist prejudices are difficult to eradicate. Negative age-related stereotypes are the hidden and yet urgent issue we address in this study. There is a clear opportunity for an anti-ageist perspective in HCI, an approach that we propose as complementary to assistive technologies: in addition to providing solutions for the aging population, we urgently call for designs about aging, to spark a conversation on age, raise awareness and ultimately contrast ageist stereotypes. We point at empathy as a key element to reconceptualize, at least in part, HCI’s contribution to research on aging. We present a design critique of two interactive pieces that, although not without flaws, suggest how future empathy-raising artifacts might be. Our analysis combines pragmatist aesthetics, interaction criticism and ludology, and yields four design tactics (recurring configurations of significant elements) that are generative in bringing about broader design implications towards a different, empathy-based concept of aging in HCI.
The potential of a ‘data-driven life’, together with the realization of Weiser’s vision of ‘the disappearing computer’ have been embraced by many. However, the increasing invisibility, virtuality and complexity of data systems also come with a variety of concerns, such as issues of sensemaking, ownership, representation and control. Although data and technology is all around us, its virtual and invisible nature, thereby its lack of material and tangible forms has implications on the way data systems are (mis) used, understood, experienced and perceived. This paper presents craft-based approaches for physical sense making –widely ranging from physical artefacts to show and hide from monitoring, to crafting data physicalizations for critical thinking, communication and creativity. In doing so, this paper discusses how crafting physical forms can be used as a way to grasp and understand ‘invisible’ data systems.
