We will focus our discussions on five key themes informed by the principles of cooperatives and the commons:
Democratic Governance
Money, Markets, and Autonomy
Data and Information Practices
Care, Solidarity, and Concern for Community
Sustainability
These themes are informed by the principles and practices of cooperatives and the commons, as well as past organizing efforts on related themes in HCI. We may update these based on submissions from participants. These themes will scaffold discussions across the research domains of attendees, including labor, housing, democratic governance, digital tools for collaborative use, sustainability, resource sharing, and strengthening community networks.
Some of the discussion prompts for participants to consider are as follows:
How do the attendees envision cooperative or commoning-based models addressing issues of equity, sustainability, or autonomy in their research field or community?
How can we counter some of the extractive capitalists' frameworks in our research and community practice, drawing upon the practices, principles, and values of cooperatives and commoning?
What are the governance considerations in technology design for the coop ecosystem?
What kinds of digital infrastructures (e.g., platforms, protocols, tools) may be suited to support cooperative governance and commons-based resource sharing?
What opportunities exist for future collaboration, funding, or publication in this space? And who can we partner with?
What are some particular theoretical and methodological approaches in HCI that are useful when working in the domains of the cooperatives and the commons?
How can designers contribute to devising socio-technical interventions for cooperativism and sharing? And what is the role of design for such interventions?
Priyanka Verma, Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat, and Samar Sabie. 2025. Management, Cooperation, and Sustainability: Unpacking the Data Practices of Housing Cooperatives. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. doi:10.1145/3706598.3713121
Aarjav Chauhan and Robert Soden. 2024. Commoning as a Strategy for HCI Research and Design in South Asia. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, Honolulu HI USA, 1–18. doi:10.1145/3613904.3642547
Anton Fedosov, Airi Lampinen, Tawanna R. Dillahunt, Ann Light, and Coye Cheshire. 2019. Cooperativism and Human-Computer Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1145/3290607.3311751
Maurizio Teli, Marcus Foth, Mariacristina Sciannamblo, Irina Anastasiu, and Peter Lyle. 2020. Tales of institutioning and commoning: Participatory design processes with a strategic and tactical perspective. Publisher: Association for Computing MachineryNew YorkNYUnited States, Manizales Colombia.
Özge Subasi, Anton Fedosov, Oliver Bates, Airi Lampinen, and Ann Light. 2020. Sharing & Cooperativism: Designing For Economies. In Proceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society. 1–3