hello and welcome to blockchain and
Beyond
understanding blockchains through
prototypes and public engagement
blockchain is a complex technology but
beyond the technical they depend on
participation and aim to engage with
social Concepts such as trust they
connect to imaginaries of Hope and
disruption speaking to ways to rewrite
Society here we look to design practice
as a way to create nuanced engagement
around these ideas through deeper
understandings of what the Technologies
can and possibly should do
this paper is an annotated portfolio we
present a collection of work covering
approximately five years primarily from
multiple researchers in the design
informatics research group in the
University of Edinburgh many of these
projects have been presented at Kai and
other venues and you'll see the
references alongside the slides
blockchain systems have a checkered
history this period of time contained
the first large exploits on ethereum and
also the first bitcoin price crash of
2018 but not the recent drops from the
bubble in 2021 the public debate at this
point was largely around how can people
make money from this and what social
institutions might we replace with
blockchain rather than current issues of
environmental impacts and financial
chicanery
in this paper we present 15 projects
that use design techniques to explore
ways to communicate about and design
with blockchain Concepts to create the
annotated portfolio we have looked
across these projects to uncover common
themes that speak to HCI concerns about
working with these complex networked
architectures
we present representative projects from
each of the broad groupings
understanding blockchains public
experiences making the rules and
thinking through autonomous things we
then talk about some of the key design
and HCI implications of this work
in understanding blockchains we look at
four projects block exchange attaching
strings carry crop and pizza block that
abstract and distill key aspects or
qualities of distributed ledgers whether
simplified metaphors for how blockchains
are built or materializing concepts such
as self-sovereign identity
these projects aim to develop
understanding and stimulate and support
ideation to open out creative thinking
with blockchain technology and its
possible applications for
non-specialists
as an example block exchange starts with
the fundamentals of making peer-to-peer
transactions on the public Ledger
physicalized with a combination of Lego
blocks countdown math problems and
improvised transactional exchanges it is
involved it is intended to provoke new
thinking of value exchange and Lead
participants to consider what might
happen if money is no longer the
mainstay
from these projects we draw out themes
around the usefulness of role play and
tangibility as ways to engage with
abstract Concepts we also looked at the
interplay between focusing on particular
methods and Technologies as in Block
exchange or widening out to work with
more abstract ideas as in the workshop
on attaching strings to distributed
autonomous organizations we were
interested in what levels of technical
Fidelity supported this and what helped
participants to build your selective
positions based on the workshop
experiences
in public experiences with happily ever
after Bitcoin after money seismic seesaw
and cash cups we were interested in
experiences that can quickly reach a
large number of people and raise
awareness about how such Technologies
may impact Society in support service of
supporting a nuanced public debate
there was a move towards crystallizing
interactions around a single key concept
that can be communicated extremely
directly but which is nonetheless a seed
for more wide-ranging discussion and
reflection we look at this through four
projects after money reveals current and
potential future practices and
perceptions of value exchange it's
presented as an interactive insulation
and Associated mobile app that asks
participants to trade various things for
sweeties work personal data or a variety
of of more or less fictional currencies
the cash cup to demonstrate how design
and Technology can reconfigure the
representation and flow of value
exploring social currency and
algorithmic rules
the collection of RFID enabled coffee
cups can be used in conferences or other
settings to investigate value exchanges
around sociality networking and of
course coffee
these projects traded on playfulness and
defamiliarization to provide an access
point into conversations for
non-technical audiences discussing the
future of money banking currency
they used seamfulness to create moments
when someone has to decide what currency
to pay with
it is this moment that creates space for
thought and allows a move from everyday
practices and their structures into
speculative realms
ultimately the projects they use the
exchange of financial value as a gateway
to asking what other kinds of value
could be traded thinking into the system
through these exchanges rather than the
technology behind them
in making the rules we investigate what
happens when participants can create
their own protocols and contracts in
geocoin programmable donations and if
this then what participation and
creativity are drivers for engagement
when people start trying to Design
Systems it's a chance to Think Through
in detail how the networks would operate
prototyping a system raises questions
about how that system would interact
with the rest of one's life so frictions
and problems become more apparent
duocoin sets up an open body storming
experience that leads into the ideation
and prototyping of geolocated currencies
participants use a smartphone app to
explore smart contract architectures
connected to their own City surroundings
and design their own value exchanges
thematically geocoin was an
infrastructural experience it draws on
methods such as probes and experience
prototyping
by offering a particular infrastructure
that invited participants to intervene
in or extend the system an example of
Unfinished software as a design approach
these projects all get into ideas of
what it is like to formalize ideas in
code programmable donations asked
participants to design new ways of
contingent charitable donations such as
giving money if certain events happen
this quickly raised the question of What
kinds of limits should be placed on
donations what are acceptable rules and
conditions
in the final grouping thinking through
autonomous things we look at projects
that give objects new agencies
distributed ledgers through their coded
rules and machine friendly apis offer
the possibility for non-human things to
have their own wallets and enact
financial decisions this means that a
coffee machine can manage its own money
or a bicycle can hire itself out with no
intermediaries
bit Barista is a Bitcoin enabled coffee
machine that explores cryptocurrency
autonomous objects and Supply chains it
has its own Bitcoin wallet and it
negotiates with its users about the
supply chains of the coffee they consume
it explores interactions with the
machine and perceptions of new models of
buying coffee both in the lab and in the
wild
this highlighted the quotidian issues of
Maintenance once the technological
excitement had subsided and it also
showed how the machine disrupted
existing rituals
the micropayments offered to
participants for small tasks were
generally not enough to make up for the
disruption and they undermined their
sense of altruism and community
geopact looks at creating location aware
objects that participate in smart
contracts it offers a physical digital
infrastructure that can be used to
create many different kinds of
interaction through location-based smart
contracts
as a relatively High Fidelity system
using real ethereum contracts and the
functioning digital communication
infrastructure it was used to explore
multiple scenarios in various levels of
detail
initially it was presented in a
simplified form
contextualized to a stylized supply
chain where participants took on
different roles later the infrastructure
provided a real world context for
enactment with bike careers
the more detailed contextualizations
gave a clearer picture of how people
would relate to the technology moving
from communication communicating about
the technology to using design to map
out unexpected Technical and
socio-political implications
by bringing these works together in an
annotated portfolio a range of themes
emerges broadly this physical embodied
tangible design work captures the
limitations of Technology it highlights
the challenges of making it work for
people and fosters a sense of nuanced
engagement
redesigning the way that capital and
value are represented opens up space for
different values to be shared and
performed using frictions and
defamiliarization to support thinking
about change
making the interactions grounded and
social created a space for critiquing
social rules and Norms along with the
basis for sketching new possibilities
physicalization helps to think about
what happens when non-human things can
have wallets and hence some form of
transactional power
overall by designing a suite of
interactions for different stakeholders
we explore the multi-intentionality of
these Network Technologies as they were
presented and contextualized differently
for the different audiences thank you
very much for listening