Simulating Social Acceptability With Agent-based Modeling
This work addresses the need for better theoretical foundations in social acceptability research for HCI designers, though it appears incremental as it proposes a reframing and simulation approach without demonstrated impact.
The paper tackles the problem of understanding social acceptability in HCI by reframing social spaces as dynamic bundles of practices and using agent-based modeling for simulation studies, but it does not provide concrete numerical results.
Social acceptability is an important consideration for HCI designers who develop technologies for social contexts. However, the current theoretical foundations of social acceptability research do not account for the complex interactions among the actors in social situations and the specific role of technology. In order to improve the understanding of how context shapes and is shaped by situated technology interactions, we suggest to reframe the social space as a dynamic bundle of social practices and explore it with simulation studies using agent-based modeling. We outline possible research directions that focus on specific interactions among practices as well as regularities in emerging patterns.