Hello. Welcome to 'Enacting the last mile: Experiences of smart contracts in courier deliveries'.
Design around complex emerging infrastructures is a challenge.
How can we get a good read on what the effects of something novel might be?
This is particularly challenging with complex infrastructures: the networked systems that disappear into the background when they're working correctly.
Here we are interested in the user experience associated with emerging infrastructures.
How do we understand the values and practices surrounding new technology from the point of view of the people on the ground, rather than the system designers?
This study looks at two related infrastructures: smart contracts and app-based delivery;
and we want to understand the potential relations to those sending, receiving and transporting packages.
There are an increasing number of infrastructures where movement of objects and people through
geographic space is mediated by data and smartphone apps.
However, there's a shift in agencies between being a bike courier and working for Deliveroo.
Smart contracts are a way to make programmatic agreements using blockchain technology.
We are interested in location-based smart contracts that use geospatial data.
What kinds of new interactions can we design when we know where objects and people are?
To understand end-user experiences with this kind of technology we worked with an innovative local courier company and receptionists at the university
to develop a set of enactments that suggested near-future daily practices based around smart contracts.
We asked the participants to act as if our technological prototypes were part of their usual routine
so that we could get a window into how this related to their existing values and practices.
The study is built around a smart lock-box that is controlled by location-based smart contracts
it chooses when to lock or unlock and can display instructions to whoever's carrying it.
This means it can unlock when it is in the right place at the right time with the right person.
As well as the lockbox, there is an app that shows participants where everyone involved is
and the dashboard that can be used to see the state of each contract.
The couriers work through a range of delivery and pickup scenarios
that explore the relationships between them, the receptionists, and the technical artefacts.
In this pictogram, the courier owns the smart box and uses it to hold a package for delivery.
They pass it to a receiver to open, load up and lock the box.
It unlocks once it's in possession of the recipient.
In this contract, the courier does not have access to the package in transit.
Other scenarios involved the couriers picking up and dropping off sealed boxes, either from senders or from a pickup location.
In the last scenario, the courier worked entirely with autonomous delivery hubs without ever dealing with a person.
After the deliveries were made, we interviewed the couriers and the receptionists.
This produced some interesting findings.
The smart contracts we used meant that activities were highly coordinated and this was valued both by couriers and receptionists.
The couriers were very sensitive to when they were and were not responsible for a package
and they valued scenarios where they could not open the box in transit,
as they felt less responsible for the contents.
At the same time, leaving things at unmanned drop-offs was a little worrying,
it's a very different experience to deliver to a human-being, verifying that the exchange has happened and then leave, as in the picture above,
compared to attaching a lock box to a secure delivery hub and hoping that it is there when the receiver picks it up, as in the picture below.
These benefits come at a cost. Working with such a system could reduce time around social interactions
and the interpersonal trust from these is an important part of making the job run smoothly.
Couriers saw creating efficient routes as a key part of their job and their identity as couriers, and these kinds of agencies could easily be lost.
Generally, imposing top-down rigid structuring of events
limited both couriers and receptionists in applying their expert skills to situations.
So bringing them into the design of contracts will allow them to bring their expertise to this process.
Finally, in terms of enactment, while participants understood that this prototype system wasn't a proposed design solution,
it was real enough for them to consider the practicalities of running such a system in real life.
This meant they could quickly see both the immediate issues or promises
and develop a sense of how it might affect their work lives.
This included questions about who would build the infrastructure,
how to use bottom-up approaches, and how to create the right kinds of flexibility within the system.
Overall, through enactment, the participants were able to bring their life expertise into the possibilities of new technology.
For more details please see our paper. Thank you for listening.