Permaculture, interactive systems, and user experience (online)

Sustainable HCI: Blending Permaculture and User-experience.

For 10 years the Sustainable Human Computer Interaction (sHCI) and Sustainable Interaction Design (SID) communities have debated the contribution that HCI can make to sustainability. However, there has been little real progress in the field with few, if any, methods arising that take the discipline further. In this paper we present an approach that involves doing. We propose to blend aspects of permaculture and user experience (UX) development to produce gardens that demonstrate sustainable practice and deliver a good UX. By blending the constructs from UX with those from permaculture and expressing the blends through the "material anchor" of gardens we create novel design interventions. These lead to user experiences that invite people to reflect on what sustainability really means and how people can make a difference.