culturally embedded computing group

Cornell University Faculty of Information Science and Department of Science & Technology Studies

We analyze, design, build, and evaluate computing devices as they relate to their cultural context. We analyze the ways in which technologies reflect and perpetuate unconscious cultural assumptions, and design, build, and test new computing devices that reflect alternative possibilities for technology. We have a focus on reflective design, or design practices that help both users and designers reflect on their experiences and the role technology plays in those experiences.

Our primary focus is the environment; we are exploring the role IT could play to reconfigure our cultural relationship to the environment. We have worked extensively on affective computing, to develop approaches in which the full complexity of human emotions and relationships as experienced by users in central to design (rather than the extent to which computers can understand and process those emotions).

We draw from, contribute to, and mutually inform the technical fields of human computer interaction and artificial intelligence and the humanist/sociological fields of cultural and science & technology studies.