I teach in the Design & Information Society course that is offered as a parft of the Masters program on Designing Creative and Immersive Technologies.

I also supervise Bachelor and Masters theses, primarily in the domains of Human–Computer Interaction and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and especially projects that are empirically oriented and apply qualitative research methods.

My research interests include interpersonal and economic aspects of networked platforms and algorithmic systems. I have published extensively in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Currently, I am PI of the Swedish Research Council (VR) project Shared Uses of Intimate Technology and co-PI of the WASP-HS project Ethics as Enacted through Movement – Shaping and Being Shaped by Autonomous Systems. I am also part of the Digital Futures faculty.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Bodywork at Work: Attending to Bodily Needs in Gig, Shift, and Knowledge Work

  2024. Deepika Yadav (et al.). CHI '24

  Conference

  The concept of ‘bodywork´ refers to the work individuals undertake on their own bodies and the bodies of others. One aspect is attending to bodily needs, which is often overlooked in the workplace and HCI/CSCW research on work practices. Yet, this labour can be a significant barrier to work, consequential to work, and prone to spill over into other aspects of life. We present three empirical cases of bodywork: gig-based food delivery, shift work in hospitals and bars, and office-based knowledge work. We describe what attending to bodily needs at work entails and illustrate tactics employed so that work can be carried on, even when the body (or technology optimising it) breaks down. Arguing that all systems are bodily systems, we conclude with a call to acknowledge the centrality of bodies in all work and the roles technologies can play in supporting or constraining bodywork differently for different workers.

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• Fleeting Alliances and Frugal Collaboration in Piecework: A Video-Analysis of Food Delivery Work in India

  2024. Riyaj Isamiya Shaikh (et al.). Computer Supported Cooperative Work

  Article

  Food delivery platforms are designed to match on-demand workers with jobs and then manage, monitor, and assess their performance. These platforms provide workers with a digital representation of delivery work. Once a worker accepts a delivery job they need to deal with the complexities of an unsettled urban landscape with varied infrastructures, traffic, and regulations. In particular, the Global South presents a demanding context for this type of work, given less clearly mapped addresses alongside other socio-cultural intricacies. In order to understand how food delivery workers bridge gaps and mismatches between the demands of the app and the realities encountered in situ, for this paper we shadowed six delivery workers over the course of their working day delivering food in Pune, India. The six workers included a complete novice and more experienced riders. We used helmet mounted cameras to record the delivery work, and how our participants managed the extra demands of food delivery work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our moment-by-moment analysis of the video data is informed by the methodological traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. While the food delivery platform imposes a detailed workflow expected to be performed alone by the worker, our detailed video analysis reveals the collaborative nature of delivery work. We highlight how workers draw upon their ability to participate in ‘fleeting alliances’ and produce ‘frugal collaboration’ with co-located others, such as other delivery workers or security guards. This allows them to resolve everyday troubles, often learning or imparting ‘the tricks of the trade’ in the process. While gig platforms have commonly been presented as disruptive technologies for coordinating, regulating, and assessing gig workers individually and independently, our findings highlight collaboration as a critically important aspect of food delivery work.

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• Nordic Perspectives on Algorithmic Systems Card Box

  2024. Pedro Ferreira (et al.). interactions 31 (6), 8-11

  Article

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• Not Just A Dot on The Map: Food Delivery Workers as Infrastructure

  2024. Riyaj Isamiya Shaikh (et al.). CHI '24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  Conference

  Food delivery platforms are location-based services that rely on minimal, quantifiable data points, such as GPS location, to represent and manage labor. Drawing upon an ethnographic study of food delivery work in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, we illustrate the challenges gig workers face when working with a platform that uses their (phone’s) GPS location to monitor and control their movement. Further, we describe how these, along with the platform’s opaque, location-based logics, shape the delivery workflow. We also document how the platform selectively represented workers’ bodies during the pandemic to portray them as safe and sterile, describing workers’ tactics in responding to issues arising from asymmetric platform policies. In discussion, we consider what we can learn from understanding gig workers as ‘infrastructure’, commonly overlooked but visible upon breakdown. We conclude by reflecting on how we might center gig workers’ well-being and bodily needs in design.

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• Who Should Act? Distancing and Vulnerability in Technology Practitioners' Accounts of Ethical Responsibility

  2024. Kristina Popova (et al.). Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI) 8 (CSCW1)

  Article

  Attending to emotion can shed light on why recognizing an ethical issue and taking responsibility for it can be so demanding. To examine emotions related to taking or not taking responsibility for ethical action, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with 23 individuals working in interaction design and developing AI systems in Scandinavian countries. Through a thematic analysis of how participants attribute ethical responsibility, we identify three ethical stances, that is, discursive approaches to answering the question 'who should act': an individualized I-stance ("the responsibility is mine"), a collective we-stance ("the responsibility is ours"), and a distanced they-stance ("the responsibility is someone else's"). Further, we introduce the concepts of distancing and vulnerability to analyze the emotion work that these three ethical stances place on technology practitioners in situations of low- and high-scale technology development, where they have more or less control over the outcomes of their work. We show how the we- and they-stances let technology practitioners distance themselves from the results of their activity, while the I-stance makes them more vulnerable to emotional and material risks. By illustrating the emotional dimensions involved in recognizing ethical issues and embracing responsibility, our study contributes to the field of Ethics in Practice. We argue that emotions play a pivotal role in technology practitioners' decision-making process, influencing their choices to either take action or refrain from doing so.

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• Ambivalences in Digital Contraception: Designing for Mixed Feelings and Oscillating Relations

  2023. Joo Young Park (et al.). DIS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 416-430

  Conference

  The ‘intimate horizons’ of algorithmic, self-tracking technologies have become increasingly important. These applications are no longer perceived as distant, instrumental entities, but offer a more affective and intimate experience. In this paper, we address the long-term experience of living with a digital contraception technology that utilizes self-tracking. We draw upon four design workshops with a total of 14 users of the app Natural Cycles to illustrate moments of ambivalent affects and oscillating relations. Based on our analysis, we concretize four dimensions of ambivalence in different scales and temporalities. We propose three strategies of designing with these unavoidable disruptions, conflicting feelings, and shifting relations to acknowledge users’ agentic engagements, nuanced dynamics of intimate self-tracking experiences, and users as embodied and affective beings. We contend that by attending to these existential ambivalences, digital contraceptive can become better configured to plural modes of life and long-term intimate relations that they engender.

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• Felt Ethics: Cultivating Ethical Sensibility in Design Practice

  2023. Rachael Garrett (et al.). CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  Conference

  We theoretically develop the ethical positions implicit in somaesthetic interaction design and, using the case study of a water faucet, illustrate our conceptual understanding of ethical sensibilities in design. We apply four lenses – the felt self, intercorporeal self, socio-cultural and political self, and entangled self – to show how our selves and ethical sensibilities are fundamentally constituted by a socially, materially, and technologically entwined world. Further, we show how ethical sensibilities are cultivated in the practice of somaesthetic interaction design. We contribute felt ethics as an approach to cultivating ethical sensibilities in design practice. The felt ethics approach is comprised of (i) a processual cultivation of ethical sensibility through analytical, pragmatic, and practical engagement, (ii) an ongoing critical attentiveness to the limits of our own bodies and lived experiences, and (iii) the rendering visible of our ethical practices as a matter of care.

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• Invisibility or Visibility in Intimate Care at the Workplace? Examining the Use of Breast Pumps

  2023. Deepika Yadav, Madeline Balaam, Airi Lampinen. CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

  Conference

  Advances in intimate care technologies and on-body wearables are disrupting how and where we think about and care for our bodies. The boundaries between private and public are increasingly porous. This offers new sites for studying intimate care as technology-use-in-practice. We present a qualitative study on the use of breast pumps in the workplace, based on semi-structured interviews with 19 individuals. Through this, we contribute an illustration of the complexities in carrying out intimate care work at the workplace and what it means to be pumping at the workplace. Our analysis unpacks (in)visibility as a crucial tension in the use of breast pumps in the workplace. We discuss how (in)visibility of personal medical devices plays a mediating role in how individuals exercise bodily rights, and the norms of who fits into professional settings.

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• The Work to Make Piecework Work: An Ethnographic Study of Food Delivery Work in India During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  2023. Riyaj Isamiya Shaikh, Airi Lampinen, Barry Brown. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI) 7 (CSCW2)

  Article

  This paper considers food delivery work as a form of piecework that is conducted via a particular workflow system -- the food delivery platform and its delivery app. We offer an ethnographic account of food delivery labor during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian city of Pune. Our inquiry is focused on (1) the workflow that structures food delivery work and (2) how economic considerations shape how workers work with and around the workflow. Our findings depict both the workflow that structures the delivery work and the efforts workers make beyond it to deal with contingencies and unexpected requirements they encounter on the ground. We recognize the workers' efforts as essential to make the workflow work but also to make the piecework arrangement work for them. We highlight how, in this setting, money is not just the motivation for engaging in gig work; rather, economic considerations infuse every aspect of the work process. Acknowledging the distinct shape gig work takes in a Global South context, our study highlights the value of in-depth,in situ understandings of how gig workers' economic considerations are entangled with their interactions with the technology that structures their work. Our key contribution lies in mapping outthe workflow of piecework andthe work to make piecework work, specifically in a Global South setting, by drawing upon classic CSCW themes around workflows and piecework to strengthen the contemporary scholarly discussion concerning gig work.

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• Vulnerability as an ethical stance in soma design processes

  2022. Kristina Popova (et al.). CHI '22, 1-13

  Conference

  We articulate vulnerability as an ethical stance in soma design processes and discuss the conditions of its emergence. We argue that purposeful vulnerability - an act of taking risk, exposing oneself, and resigning part of one's autonomy - is a necessary although often neglected part of design, and specifically soma design, which builds on felt experience and stimulates designers to engage with the non-habitual by challenging norms, habitual movements, and social interactions. With the help of ethnography, video analysis, and micro-phenomenological interviews, we document an early design exploration around drones, describing how vulnerability is accomplished in collaboration between members of the design team and the design materials. We (1) define vulnerability as an active ethical stance; (2) make vulnerability visible as a necessary but often neglected part of an exploratory design process; and (3) discuss the conditions of its emergence, demonstrating the importance of deliberating ethics within the design process. 

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• Personalised Services in Social Situations: Principal-Agent Relationships in Account Sharing

  2021. Jesse Haapoja, Airi Lampinen, Kari Mikko Vesala. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI) 4 (CSCW 3)

  Article

  We present a qualitative study of how personal accounts on online services, such as Tinder, Netflix and Spotify, may be shared in particular social situations. We draw from agency theory's focus on principal-agent relationships and Goffman's work on frames in analysing situations where others are allowed to use personal accounts, either for a shared purpose or on behalf of the account owner. We deploy Goffman's concepts of regrounding to understand how interests behind activities are transformed and brackets to draw attention to the boundaries of different frames, and how these are incurred or broken in situations that exceed personal account use. Based on a set of 43 written descriptions of account sharing, we depict how employing others to act as agents to use one's personal accounts may lead to playful or serious use. Additionally, we discuss consequentiality of sharing personalised services, considering both what services might reveal about the account owner and how sharing takes place in the context of relationships. We contribute by illustrating how users' relationships with personalised services are complicated by the different interests that are served when accounts are shared.

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• Efficiency and Care in Community-led Initiatives

  2021. Chiara Rossitto (et al.). Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI) 5 (CSCW1), 1-27

  Article

  This paper illustrates the multifaceted aspects of caring practices, and the ways they are entangled with the organizing of community-driven initiatives. Highlighting the situated inter-dependencies between concerns for care and efficiency, and considering caring practices as essential to the practical work that makes communities work, we reflect on how caring and efficiency rationalities frame the use, and scope the design of digital technologies. Drawing on two cases, the analysis shows the ways in which digital technologies oftentimes overshadow communities' key concerns for care, and how attempts to design for community settings can result in anti-designs, that is sociotechnical configurations that can disrupt caring practices. The contribution of the paper is twofold: first, an analysis of the different configurations of caring and efficiency and, second, a focus on care in the design and appropriation of technologies into this space.

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• The Trouble With Sharing: Interpersonal Challenges in Peer-to-Peer Exchange

  2021. Airi Lampinen.

  Book

  Peer-to-peer exchange is a type of sharing that involves the transfer of valued resources, such as goods and services, among members of a local community and/or between parties who have not met before the exchange encounter. It involves online systems that allow strangers to exchange in ways that were previously confined to the realm of kinship and friendship. Through the examples in this book, we encounter attempts to foster the sharing of goods and services in local communities and consider the intricacies of sharing homes temporarily with strangers (also referred to as hospitality exchange or network hospitality). Some of the exchange arrangements discussed involve money while others explicitly ban participants from using it. All rely on digital technologies, but the trickiest challenges have more to do with social interaction than technical features. This book explores what makes peer-to-peer exchange challenging, with an emphasis on reciprocity, closeness, and participation: How should we reciprocate? How might we manage interactions with those we encounter to attain some closeness but not too much? What keeps people from getting involved or draws them into exchange activities that they would rather avoid?

  This book adds to the growing body of research on exchange platforms and the sharing economy. It provides empirical examples and conceptual grounding for thinking about interpersonal challenges in peer-to-peer exchange and the efforts that are required for exchange arrangements to flourish. It offers inspiration for how we might think and design differently to better understand and support the efforts of those involved in peer-to-peer exchange. While the issues cannot be simply “solved” by technology, it matters which digital tools an exchange arrangement relies on, and even seemingly small design decisions can have a significant impact on what it is like to participate in exchange processes. The technologies that support exchange arrangements—often platforms of some sort—can be driven by differing sets of values and commitments. This book invites students and scholars in the Human–Computer Interaction community, and beyond, to envision and design alternative exchange arrangements and future economies.

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• Bureaucracy as a Lens for Analyzing and Designing Algorithmic Systems

  2020. Juho Pääkkönen (et al.). CHI '20, 1-14

  Conference

  Scholarship on algorithms has drawn on the analogy between algorithmic systems and bureaucracies to diagnose shortcomings in algorithmic decision-making. We extend the analogy further by drawing on Michel Crozier's theory of bureaucratic organizations to analyze the relationship between algorithmic and human decision-making power. We present algorithms as analogous to impartial bureaucratic rules for controlling action, and argue that discretionary decision-making power in algorithmic systems accumulates at locations where uncertainty about the operation of algorithms persists. This key point of our essay connects with Alkhatib and Bernstein's theory of 'street-level algorithms', and highlights that the role of human discretion in algorithmic systems is to accommodate uncertain situations which inflexible algorithms cannot handle. We conclude by discussing how the analysis and design of algorithmic systems could seek to identify and cultivate important sources of uncertainty, to enable the human discretionary work that enhances systemic resilience in the face of algorithmic errors.

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• Co-Creating the Workplace: Participatory Efforts to Enable Individual Work at the Hoffice

  2018. Chiara Rossitto, Airi Lampinen. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 27 (3-6), 947-982

  Article

  This paper analyzes the self-organizing network Hoffice – a merger between the words home and office – that brings together people who wish to co-create temporary workplaces. The Hoffice concept entails a co-working methodology, and a set of practices inherent in opening up one’s home as a temporary, shared workplace, with the help of existing social media platforms, particularly Facebook. We discuss both the practices of co-creating temporary workplaces, particularly for workers who lack a stable office and orchestrate flexible work arrangements, and the values and rhetoric enshrined in Hoffice. We collected our research materials through interviews, participant observation, and workshops. Our findings draw attention to i) the practical arrangement of Hoffice events, ii) the participatory efforts to get individual work done, and 3) the co-creation of an alternative social model that encourages trust, self-actualization, and openness. To conclude, we discuss how Hoffice is already making change for its members, and how this is indicative of a politics of care. We contribute to research on computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) by highlighting grassroots efforts to create alternative ways of organizing nomadic work and navigating non-traditional employment arrangements.

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• Processes of Proliferation: Impact Beyond Scaling in Sharing and Collaborative Economies

  2022. Airi Lampinen (et al.). Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6 (GROUP), 1-22

  Article

  While scalability and growth are key concerns for mainstream, venture-backed digital platforms, local and location-oriented collaborative economies are diverse in their approaches to evolving and achieving social change. Their aims and tactics differ when it comes to broadening their activities across contexts, spreading their concept, or seeking to make a bigger impact by promoting co-operation. This paper draws on three pairs of European, community-centred initiatives which reveal alternative views on scale, growth, and impact. We argue thatproliferation - a concept that emphasises how something gets started and then travels in perhaps unexpected ways - offers an alternative toscaling, which we understand as the use of digital networks in a monocultural way to capture an ever-growing number of participants. Considering proliferation is, thus, a way to reorient and enrich discussions on impact, ambitions, modes of organising, and the use of collaborative technologies. In illustrating how these aspects relate inprocesses of proliferation, we offer CSCW an alternative vision of technology use and development that can help us make sense of the impact of sharing and collaborative economies, and design socio-technical infrastructures to support their flourishing.

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Show all publications by Airi Lampinen at Stockholm University