Ambivalences in Digital Contraception: Designing for Mixed Feelings and Oscillating RelationsShow others and affiliations
2023 (English)In: Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’23), ACM Digital Library, 2023Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
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.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
ACM Digital Library, 2023.
National Category
Other Engineering and Technologies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-334904DOI: 10.1145/3563657.3596062ISI: 001090855700027OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-334904DiVA, id: diva2:1792373
Conference
Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’23), July 10–14, 2023, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Note
Part of ISBN 9781450398930
QC 20230830
2023-08-292023-08-292025-02-18Bibliographically approved