About

In 2020, when most of the world population has experienced limitations to free mobility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, socialisation and outdoor life started to be strongly desired and dreamed.

Technologies such as smartphones, cameras, sports trackers, electronic tourist guides, head-mounted displays have the potential to enable, enhance or disrupt users' experience of and interaction with the outdoors and nature. Thus, the use of technology outdoors offers a wide range of interesting aspects and challenges such as individual wellbeing, knowledge generation, sustainability, and social issues.

In this workshop, we would like to bring together researchers exploring the role of technology in shaping the outdoor experience broadly intended as an open-air setting that includes cities, peripheries, rural areas, wild natural environments, etc.

Resonating with the CHItaly theme "Frontiers of HCI", this workshop will explore the frontiers of i) using technology outdoors, in terms of scope, opportunities, and limitations; ii) spaces that are not completely natural nor artificial but hybrid and offer opportunities for remote and asynchronous outdoor experiences; iii) interaction design in accounting for human interests over a variety of non-human ecologies.

Themes we would like to address in our workshop


  • How to design technology that does not detract from the outdoor experience

  • Using technology to encourage people to engage more with the outdoors

  • The role of HCI before, during, and after an outdoor activity

  • Social impacts of HCI outdoors

  • Post-humanism and new conceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural world

  • Sustainability

  • Multi-species ecologies and the Anthropocenic perspective