Zoom Obscura: Counterfunctional Design for Video-Conferencing

Elsden, C.; Chatting, D.; Duggan, M.; Dwyer, A.; Thornton, P.

Abstract

This paper reports on Zoom Obscura – an artist-based design research project, responding to the ubiquity of video-conferencing as a technical and cultural phenomenon throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. As enterprise software, such as Zoom, rapidly came to mediate even the most personal and intimate interactions, we supported and collaborated with seven independent artists to explore technical and creative interventions in video-conferencing. Our call for participation sought critical interventions that would help users counter, and regain agency in regard to the various ways in which personal data is captured, transmitted and processed in video-conferencing tools. In this design study, we analyse posthoc how each of the seven projects employed aspects of counterfunctional design to achieve these aims. Each project reveals different avenues and strategies for counterfunctionality in videoconferencing software, as well as opportunities to design critically towards interactions and experiences that challenge existing norms and expectations around these platforms.

Citation

Elsden, C., Chatting, D., Duggan, M., Dwyer, A., & Thornton, P. (2022, April). Zoom Obscura: Counterfunctional Design for Video-Conferencing

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Start Date: Apr 28, 2022
• Acceptance Date: Nov 18, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Apr 28, 2022
• Publication Date: Apr 28, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jan 13, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 13, 2022
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Volume: Article No. 143
• Pages: 1-17
• Book Title: CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501973
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1217231