Authors:
Michaelanne Thomas, David Ribes, Andrea Grover, Megh Marathe, Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, Firaz Peer, Pooja Upadhyay
In the fall of 2023, a group of researchers gathered at a CSCW workshop as part of a broader movement to systematically introduce historicist perspectives to CSCW and HCI. While historical work has always been part of the field—often present in community-engaged research, case studies, and mining past designs for contemporary insights—this project aimed to foster a methodological discussion on effectively incorporating historicist perspectives and methodologies into the field [1]. A recurrent theme emerged: how the pacing of historical methods often clashes with the rhythms of ACM publication venues. This article developed out of these concerns and our desire for the acknowledgment and facilitation of diverse pacing needed for research and scholarship. We particularly want to draw attention to the friction between our fields' publishing and production norms and the speed of life for researchers and the communities they work with. This leads not only to various challenges and difficulties in conducting research but also to results that are unable to influence speedy technology production.
Insights
→ Fast-paced academic production can be at odds with rigorous, reflective qualitative research, affecting quality and inclusivity.
→ Academic norms around publication and funding should be broadened to better support interdisciplinary work and diverse researcher needs.
As historical researchers (among other things), we recognize this conversation has occurred repeatedly. When new fields joined HCI over the years, many researchers encountered friction as they found their methods and scope of inquiry fit awkwardly within existing forms of publication, reward structures, and collaboration [2]. Due to its disciplinary range, HCI has long struggled with cohesion, as new methodological contributions rarely integrate easily into venues once designed for pressing and bounded technical, system-centered findings. HCI and CSCW archives from the 1980s include numerous complaints from experimentalists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists about the constraints of HCI production. Qualitative researchers using ethnographic and archival methods joined the discussion soon after. Presently, annual or semiannual proceedings publications dominate HCI research, multiplied by an increasing number of subdisciplinary conferences and special interest groups, each with its own proceedings.
As we developed this article following the workshop, we found commonalities between the challenges we face today and those in the past:
- Difficulty fitting our methods and collaborations within disciplinary norms initially developed for circulating fast-paced engineering innovations
- Maintaining care for ourselves
- Exercising care with and through our research.
We also articulate practical, institutional themes that may continue to restrict creative control for historically marginalized researchers and communities. In doing so, we draw together long-standing conversations about interdisciplinary collaboration, structures of scholarly production, and calls to attend to diverse identity groups. We hope this article will propel practical changes in the timing and pacing of HCI scholarship as we continue working toward producing rigorous yet sustainable scholarship.
The Pacing of the Discipline: Fast Technology, Restless Scholarship
Over 40 years, HCI has drawn on various disciplinary expertise, such as human factors, computer science, cognitive psychology, social theory, phenomenology, critical analysis, software engineering, and product development. However, our primary publication venues, such as ACM conferences and journals, were initially tuned for the quick turnaround of technical engineering research, and they remain tied to those past rhythms. Conference proceedings prioritize the dissemination of concrete, focused, and often timely technical innovations. With the widening multidisciplinary research of HCI, the scope of inquiry and contributions evolved beyond bounded technical framings. Still, the logistical constraints for assimilating these contributions remained, as though HCI research and theory needed to match that of technology production.
This mounting speed of science production comes with concerns about quality and rigor echoed across other scientific disciplines [3]. First, we see a "methodological acceleration," where swift qualitative inquiries (e.g., "flash ethnography") are used to produce and validate technical output. However, methods that exercise contextual rigor and immersion into participant communities demand longer investment arcs, even as they face the risk of being seen as less productive. Second, fast-paced scholarly production increasingly discourages critical engagement with theory, another aspect of academic work that requires time. In HCI's interdisciplinary work, we should be wary of cherry-picking—and then accelerating—methods and sensibilities from other disciplines that value moving at a slower pace, only to then apply them in ways unsuited to that tempo.
In terms of the consumption of scholarship, we find another time-related challenge: What in the academy we often call "reading" is so much more. At its finest, engaging scholarship can involve inspecting claims, evaluating evidence, deep thinking, and tracing referenced links across the literature. We routinely have little time, however, to engage in this way critically.
This discontinuity extends to spending too little time on meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration. Today's big challenges and problems demand more collaborative work, often with larger teams of contributors. Interdisciplinary teams draw on a greater variety of expertise, experience, and perspective but also require a substantial effort to develop common ground and shared vocabularies. The pace of rapid scholarly production leaves little time for the organic evolution of ideas. The discussion period during a presentation or talking in the hallways outside the seminar room has never been enough. And these days, the conversations in our hallways turn too soon to planning for the next production cycle, which is already on the horizon.
A long-standing cyclical issue since the inception of HCI has been that technological production is leading scholarship instead of scholarship setting the pace. Current events inevitably affect which technological innovations will be funded and implemented at scale. Legislation and political agendas incentivize us to rush forward, whether fully prepared or not. Even as HCI theorists forecast technological harms [4], this compact production cycle repeats across changing technological landscapes. We can choose to engage differently.
The Pacing of Life: Individual Experiences, Alternative Arrangements
The pacing of research is professional but also personal, and it is shaped by biographical trajectories well outside of work. Our vocation increasingly demands work patterns that overlook individuals whose lives and bodies are attuned to different rhythms. During the CSCW historicist workshop and afterward, we frequently reflected on how marginalized scholars—those who are disabled, neurodivergent, queer, transgender, of color, and from the Global South —all face additional pressures and constraints within these systems. When life events unfold, such as changing family composition, grieving, or dealing with a new or chronic illness, new rhythms emerge, often requiring us to slow down or navigate time differently. In these situations, we chafe against our discipline's unchanging expectations, production cycles, and evaluation norms. Eventually, the quality and outcomes of our work suffer. For instance, a team member recounted how their experience as a scholar from the Global South rubbed against Western ways of thinking and productivity cycles:
It was a cycle of many failures and restarts, without ever giving time to think through andplan. I felt forced to rush, pulled apart by ways of thinking already established by Western scholarship, hasty revise and resubmits, and risk being seen as underperforming. After pausing to reflect on my own voice as a researcher, I realized how my analytics were boxed in by disciplinary norms, and unhealthy ways of working.
Similarly, another team member reflected on the friction between life events and academic expectations, especially for new parents and those experiencing life ruptures, such as a divorce or the loss of a loved one, compounded by crises like the Covid-19 pandemic:
Throughout the pandemic, I had the joy of welcoming a new baby while also experiencing a difficult divorce. I'm trying to juggle launching my academic career while learning to be a single mother to two children. Out of necessity, I have had to slow down, seek extensions, and rely on collaborators while still being expected to produce scholarship at a steady and fast pace.
For scholars in precarious positions, pressure is compounded by processes such as annual reviews or productivity measured by published papers. Academics who are queer, transgender, chronically ill, disabled, caregivers, or otherwise reliant on academic positions for healthcare and support must work within a system that disparages and, at times, actively harms them while attending to mandatory production cycles that demand unsustainable paces and unattainable deliverables. Similarly, academics and scholars whose bodies demand different, slower, or alternative working methods are unfairly penalized within such systems.
How do academics make time and space to engage in productive scholarship when the sociotechnical infrastructures designed to support us actively threaten to erase us?
A potential path forward comes from scholarship that honors alternative timelines and rhythms. "Crip time," for example, draws from disability studies to center disabled bodies and minds, resisting contemporary progressive pacing and normative life stages [5]. Similarly, "queer time" attends to bodies and identities that "grow sideways" or experience time alternatively [6]. How can we make space for appointments and tests, adjust to medications and hormones, experience chronic illness flare-ups, or care for children and elders? How can we better ensure that voices often unheard are instead offered institutional support? When we adapt schedules and disciplinary norms to account for bodies moving through the world at different paces, we can better support diverse ways of thinking and working. In the next section, we consider how these rhythms intersect with our communities of research and practice.
The Pacing of Communities: Longitudinal Commitments, Nontraditional Outcomes
The prevailing speed and production scaling in HCI and CSCW research often clash with the slow, deliberate pace required for community-engaged research, which does not immediately translate into traditional academic outputs. We need time and space to engage with the deeper, more reflective work required to capture the lived realities and histories of those we study while also doing so in ways that respect the cultural norms and the entangled relationships that so often develop with interpretivist work. Engaged research seeks to transcend transactional relationships, embodying values of reciprocity, empowerment, and solidarity. But achieving these goals is not easy. Doing this work requires time for dialogue, support for community-led initiatives, and willingness to adapt our research agenda to evolving community needs and priorities. Rather than focusing solely on the time it takes to produce specific deliverables and outputs, community-engaged research demands consideration of the duration and quality of the process. Such a focus allows us to better accommodate the different rhythms, tempos, and work cycles in academic research.
The pace of rapid scholarly production leaves little time for the organic evolution of ideas.
If a researcher cannot engage in some aspect of the community's long-term everyday life, it is hard to build the trust, knowledge, and accountability required for community-engaged research. We must slow down and sync our work with local realities. Such scholarship emphasizes intentional, ethical engagement with communities and recognizes the importance of establishing meaningful connections, taking time for critical reflection and accountability for research actions.
As one author recalled, slowing down was critical for aligning their work to the pacing of their community:
When I began ethnographic research on burgeoning Internet access in an under-connected community as a first-year doctoral student, I was often expected to document, much like an investigative journalist, what was happening at present and, at times, predict what might happen in the future. However, I was rarely encouraged to slow down, embed myself in the community, and work on establishing trust. Ten years and two children, a global pandemic, shifting national policies, and several life disruptions later, it seems as if the world itself would not allow me to speed through this work, much less the disciplinary pacing that grated against the pacing of the culture of my community of study.
In the context of community-engaged research, we must reconsider our priorities and commitments as researchers. Building enduring relationships with collaborators and research communities requires prioritizing multiple needs and values. What are the consequences of skipping this work? What logistical working patterns in academia restrict meaningful outcomes? If we do not reflect on these questions because we uncritically accept the culture of productivity, how likely are we to pay the price?
Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here?
The challenges we face as an interdisciplinary community of researchers are embedded in different methodological traditions, temporalities of research production, and rhythms of personal care that pervade our scholarly practice. Acknowledging these aspects of our craft helps us recognize the structural factors that influence academia so we can establish frameworks that celebrate the range of meaningful scholarly work.
If research is a collective and cumulative endeavor, researchers must have protected time and space to absorb, reflect on, and engage with colleagues' work outside of conference and funding proposal deadlines. The current mode of scholarship is defensive, reactive, and limited compared with the curiosity, openness, and learning that come from critically engaged, slow scholarship.
Encouraging such scholarship may require advocating for different funding opportunities, diversifying publication venues, and increasing support for alternative formats like journals, books, and designerly artifacts. Ultimately, we call for permission to take time for reflection and engagement, to work at a sustainable and responsible pace that aligns with the demands of our bodies and communities, and to acknowledge the importance of healing and personal well-being. This permission can only be granted collectively, however, with each of us taking steps to create sustainable practices for ourselves and others to shift these norms. We invite you to join us.
References
1. Soden, R. et al. Historicism in/as CSCW method: Research, sensibilities, and design. Companion Publication of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. ACM, New York, 2023, 497-500.
2. Bødker, S. When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges. Proc. of the 4th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Changing Roles. ACM, New York, 2006, 1-8.
3. Stengers, I. "Another science is possible!" A plea for slow science. In Demo(s): Philosophy — Pedagogy — Politics, H. Letiche, G. Lightfoot, and J.-L. Moriceau, eds. Brill, Leiden, 2016, 53-70.
4. Sharma, V., Kumar, N., and Nardi, B. Post-growth human-computer interaction. A CM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 31, 1 (2024), Article 9, 1-37.
5. Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2013.
6. Freeman, E. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2010.
Authors
Michaelanne Thomas (http://michaelannethomas.com) is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School of Information, where she leads the Anthropology and Technology Lab. A sociotechnical anthropologist, Thomas uses ethnographic methods to explore how communities leverage cultural, relational, and technical strategies to address critical infrastructure gaps. [email protected]
David Ribes (http://davidribes.com) is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington. He is a sociologist of science and technology who focuses on the development and sustainability of research infrastructures. [email protected]
Andrea Grover is an associate professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska Omaha. They study the design, management, and technology configurations supporting diverse stakeholders in participatory science. Their recent work also examines evolving practices and standards for software bills of materials. [email protected]
Megh Marathe is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Information and Center for Bioethics and Social Justice at Michigan State University. Their research fosters inclusion in expert practice in medicine and other areas to foster better lives and futures for marginalized people. They specialize in questions of classification, inequality, expertise, and time. [email protected]
Alexandra Teixeira Riggs is a Ph.D. candidate in digital media at Georgia Tech, working at the intersection of queer HCI, queer theory, critical archives, and tangible embodied interaction. Their current work focuses on queering technology design through attention to historicism and affective, embodied experiences. [email protected]
Firaz Peer is an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky's School of Information Science. As an HCI researcher, he uses participatory and design-based research methods to study issues of accountability, justice, care, and equity that manifest when building, using, and maintaining information infrastructures with marginalized communities. [email protected]
Pooja Upadhyay is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park. The changing nature of HCI allowed her to learn about epistemology and methodology across disciplines, and via projects related to access. This curated training is important to her analytical perspective as a researcher identifying with the Global South. [email protected]
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