With escalating concerns about technology’s impact on the environment, understanding the concept of sustainability in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is becoming increasingly important. Many definitions of sustainability exist, but perhaps researchers Kristin Hanks, et al. put it most succinctly by defining sustainability as the viability of our collective future. Once only discussed in smaller panels or sessions, entire conferences and publications in HCI are now devoted to the topic. For example, in 2009, User Experience Magazine published a special issue titled, “Designing a Sustainable world” and in 2011, the International Professional Communication Conference will explore the theme of “Communicating Sustainability.”  It’s becoming clear that the next generation of HCI practitioners must be knowledgeable about sustainability and its implications to the field.

Our reading list hopes to impart some knowledge on the topic. To guide our choice of readings, we first identified three different perspectives that would be important for practitioners to consider:

• Present and future users
• Supporting sustainable behaviors
• Environmental and global repercussions of technology

Empirical research in the fields mentioned can be difficult to locate, as the overall topic of sustainable design is still in its infancy.  However, these articles we selected each exemplify one of these perspectives and, taken together, serve to form a coherent glimpse of what sorts of HCI-related empirical studies are being conducted in sustainability.

This is our two-minute elevator pitch ’madness style’ presentation to help introduce our paper.

View the complete report, Designing a Viable Future: Sustainability in HCI (.pdf).
Co-written with Robert Racadio.