Papers by Gabrielle Benabdallah

The processes of data collection and transformation are often opaque to users. This means they re... more The processes of data collection and transformation are often opaque to users. This means they rely on their imagination to make sense of the data they produce. The images data conjure up, however, tend to be homogenous and flat: black screens, ones and zeros, big server farms in the desert. For designers and researchers who work with data as a material, this small repertoire can be stifling. For device users, it can lead to a removal of agency in how they make sense and engage with the data they produce. In this pictorial, we draw from a two-year data fictionalization project to start building an expanded repertoire of data imaginaries. We worked with seven households and seven writers to transform smart home data sets into fiction stories. Based on the interviews we conducted, we present the images participants shared with us as a step towards more expressive and varied imaginaries of data.

IBPoet
Through a digital interface and biosignal feedback, the IBPoet makes explicit the embodied and co... more Through a digital interface and biosignal feedback, the IBPoet makes explicit the embodied and cognitive processes at play in everyday language interactions. A Reader reads a pre-selected poem to a Readee in front of an Audience. The Readee, who sits comfortably and listens to the poem, is instrumented with two primary biosensors: an OpenBCI Electroencephalogram (EEG) and an electromyogram (EMG) sensor. The Reader receives direct sensory feedback from these sensors in the form of a vibration band and heat gloves. Projected behind the Reader and Readee is the text being read, with keywords replaced by empty boxes. New words will appear that are selected according to the Readee's emotional state -thanks to an algorithm that interprets her/his biosignals. With the contrast and similarities between the spoken and projected poems, the Audience senses the emotional connection between the Reader and Readee as it shifts through states of resonance and dissonance, calm and stress.
The Politics of Imaginaries: Probing Humanistic Inquiry in HCI
Designing Interactive Systems Conference, Jul 10, 2023

arXiv (Cornell University), Jan 26, 2021
Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-... more Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-19. As universities shut down in Spring 2020, instructors developed new models for digital fabrication at a distance. Through interviews with faculty and students and examination of course materials, we recount the experiences of eight remote digital fabrication courses. We found that learning with hobbyist equipment and online social networks could emulate using industrial equipment in shared workshops. Furthermore, at-home digital fabrication offered unique learning opportunities including more iteration, machine tuning, and maintenance. These opportunities depended on new forms of labor and varied based on student living situations. Our findings have implications for remote and in-person digital fabrication instruction. They indicate how access to tools was important, but not as critical as providing opportunities for iteration; they show how remote fabrication exacerbated student inequities; and they suggest strategies for evaluating trade-offs in remote fabrication models with respect to learning objectives. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Education; • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.
Figure 1: Imprimer Overview. Left: a computational notebook documents a process for setting up an... more Figure 1: Imprimer Overview. Left: a computational notebook documents a process for setting up and controlling a Shopbot CNC mill. Middle: by writing code, makers create real-time interactive visualizations and inputs to explore machine and control settings. Right: projecting augmented reality previews onto the Shopbot enables testing and refinement of existing cuts.
Explorations in narrative biosensing
Interactions, 2022

Sybil
Sybil is a divinatory technology that offers a critical and playful way of interacting with the m... more Sybil is a divinatory technology that offers a critical and playful way of interacting with the mystery generated by technical systems around us. It delivers AI-generated prophecies based on the participants' breathing patterns. By layering two modes of prediction -oracular traditions and machine learning- it invites the extramundane into daily domestic experience. Sybil's design cultivates attention, attunement and physical presence, and invites a ritualization of our interactions with digital assistants. Its aim is to explore relationships with technical objects and systems that are less based on utility and more on playfulness, interpretation, and care. This project is part of a larger project to develop a toolkit for re-enchantment, after Max Weber's description of modernity as the "disenchantment of the world."

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Apr 13, 2023
Why is the solution the end point to a problem? While many in HCI and design have examined the im... more Why is the solution the end point to a problem? While many in HCI and design have examined the impulse to solve problemsÐthe solutionist or techno-solutionist mindsetÐwe examine the logic that binds the solution and the problem together as a pair. Focusing on the timely and consequential problem of systemic racial injustice, we think through the paradoxical possibility that the pairing of the problem and solution (so often treated as the default in design and HCI) perpetuates the very conditions we seek to improve. With Calvin Warren's profound Afro-pessimism, we recognize how the tools used to solve structural inequities around Black life are constructed with inequities themselves. The problem-solution therefore is a dead end. We use this paradox as an invitation to rethink ongoing eforts to seek equity and justice more broadly, setting out a fragile but hopeful path for HCI and design. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
Understanding how professionals use digital fabrication in production workflows is critical for f... more Understanding how professionals use digital fabrication in production workflows is critical for future research in digital fabrication technologies. We interviewed thirteen professionals who use digital fabrication for the low-volume manufacturing of commercial products. From these interviews, we describe the workflows used for nine products created with a variety of materials and manufacturing methods. We show how digital fabrication professionals use software development to support physical production, how they rely on multiple partial representations in development, how they develop manufacturing processes, and how machine control is its own design space. We build from these findings to argue that future digital fabrication systems should support the exploration of material and machine behavior alongside geometry, that simulation is insufficient for understanding the design space, and that material constraints and resource management are meaningful design dimensions to support. B...
The Politics of Imaginaries: Probing Humanistic Inquiry in HCI
Designing Interactive Systems Conference
XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students
Scientists, artists, and engineers are innovating with digital fabrication machines, yet they lac... more Scientists, artists, and engineers are innovating with digital fabrication machines, yet they lack effective tools to program machines for unconventional tasks. We argue for programming language foundations to empower these practitioners to build bespoke fabrication workflows for themselves.

Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
The processes of data collection and transformation are often opaque to users. This means they re... more The processes of data collection and transformation are often opaque to users. This means they rely on their imagination to make sense of the data they produce. The images data conjure up, however, tend to be homogenous and flat: black screens, ones and zeros, big server farms in the desert. For designers and researchers who work with data as a material, this small repertoire can be stifling. For device users, it can lead to a removal of agency in how they make sense and engage with the data they produce. In this pictorial, we draw from a two-year data fictionalization project to start building an expanded repertoire of data imaginaries. We worked with seven households and seven writers to transform smart home data sets into fiction stories. Based on the interviews we conducted, we present the images participants shared with us as a step towards more expressive and varied imaginaries of data.
Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Figure 1: Imprimer Overview. Left: a computational notebook documents a process for setting up an... more Figure 1: Imprimer Overview. Left: a computational notebook documents a process for setting up and controlling a Shopbot CNC mill. Middle: by writing code, makers create real-time interactive visualizations and inputs to explore machine and control settings. Right: projecting augmented reality previews onto the Shopbot enables testing and refinement of existing cuts.

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Aug 31, 2022
Why is the solution the end point to a problem? While many in HCI and design have examined the im... more Why is the solution the end point to a problem? While many in HCI and design have examined the impulse to solve problemsÐthe solutionist or techno-solutionist mindsetÐwe examine the logic that binds the solution and the problem together as a pair. Focusing on the timely and consequential problem of systemic racial injustice, we think through the paradoxical possibility that the pairing of the problem and solution (so often treated as the default in design and HCI) perpetuates the very conditions we seek to improve. With Calvin Warren's profound Afro-pessimism, we recognize how the tools used to solve structural inequities around Black life are constructed with inequities themselves. The problem-solution therefore is a dead end. We use this paradox as an invitation to rethink ongoing eforts to seek equity and justice more broadly, setting out a fragile but hopeful path for HCI and design. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.
Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Over the past few years, AI bias has become a central concern within design and computing fields.... more Over the past few years, AI bias has become a central concern within design and computing fields. But as the concept of bias has grown in visibility, its meaning and form have become harder to grasp. To help designers realize bias, we take inspiration from textile bias (the skew of woven material) and examine the topic across its myriad forms: visual, textual, and tactile. By introducing a slanted experience of material and therefore of reality, we explore the translation of fraught machine learning algorithms into personal and probing artifacts. In this pictorial, we present nine pieces that materialize complex relationships with machine learning; ground these relationships in the present and the personal; and point to generative ways of engaging with biased systems around us.

Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-... more Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-19. As universities shut down in Spring 2020, instructors developed new models for digital fabrication at a distance. Through interviews with faculty and students and examination of course materials, we recount the experiences of eight remote digital fabrication courses. We found that learning with hobbyist equipment and online social networks could emulate using industrial equipment in shared workshops. Furthermore, at-home digital fabrication offered unique learning opportunities including more iteration, machine tuning, and maintenance. These opportunities depended on new forms of labor and varied based on student living situations. Our findings have implications for remote and in-person digital fabrication instruction. They indicate how access to tools was important, but not as critical as providing opportunities for iteration; they show how remote fabrication exacerbated student ine...
Explorations in narrative biosensing
Interactions, 2022

IBPoet: an interactive & biosensitive poetry composition device
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, 2017
Through a digital interface and biosignal feedback, the IBPoet makes explicit the embodied and co... more Through a digital interface and biosignal feedback, the IBPoet makes explicit the embodied and cognitive processes at play in everyday language interactions. A Reader reads a pre-selected poem to a Readee in front of an Audience. The Readee, who sits comfortably and listens to the poem, is instrumented with two primary biosensors: an OpenBCI Electroencephalogram (EEG) and an electromyogram (EMG) sensor. The Reader receives direct sensory feedback from these sensors in the form of a vibration band and heat gloves. Projected behind the Reader and Readee is the text being read, with keywords replaced by empty boxes. New words will appear that are selected according to the Readee's emotional state -thanks to an algorithm that interprets her/his biosignals. With the contrast and similarities between the spoken and projected poems, the Audience senses the emotional connection between the Reader and Readee as it shifts through states of resonance and dissonance, calm and stress.

Sybil: A Divinatory Home Device
Companion Publication of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 2020
Sybil is a divinatory technology that offers a critical and playful way of interacting with the m... more Sybil is a divinatory technology that offers a critical and playful way of interacting with the mystery generated by technical systems around us. It delivers AI-generated prophecies based on the participants' breathing patterns. By layering two modes of prediction -oracular traditions and machine learning- it invites the extramundane into daily domestic experience. Sybil's design cultivates attention, attunement and physical presence, and invites a ritualization of our interactions with digital assistants. Its aim is to explore relationships with technical objects and systems that are less based on utility and more on playfulness, interpretation, and care. This project is part of a larger project to develop a toolkit for re-enchantment, after Max Weber's description of modernity as the "disenchantment of the world."

Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-... more Digital fabrication courses that relied on physical makerspaces were severely disrupted by COVID-19. As universities shut down in Spring 2020, instructors developed new models for digital fabrication at a distance. Through interviews with faculty and students and examination of course materials, we recount the experiences of eight remote digital fabrication courses. We found that learning with hobbyist equipment and online social networks could emulate using industrial equipment in shared workshops. Furthermore, at-home digital fabrication ofered unique learning opportunities including more iteration, machine tuning, and maintenance. These opportunities depended on new forms of labor and varied based on student living situations. Our fndings have implications for remote and in-person digital fabrication instruction. They indicate how access to tools was important, but not as critical as providing opportunities for iteration; they show how remote fabrication exacerbated student inequities; and they suggest strategies for evaluating trade-ofs in remote fabrication models with respect to learning objectives. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Education; • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.
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Papers by Gabrielle Benabdallah