How can the general public be introduced to topics such as the importance of data collection or digital literacy in a playful and engaging way? The new paper "The Internet of Bananas" (IOB), which VRVis researcher Marina Lima Medeiros collaborated in, provides an answer to this question and was presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the leading international conference on human-computer interaction, at the end of April.
The design-led study combined critical design and humor to engage people from around the world in citizen sensing using creatively designed bananas equipped with special sensor kits. An international "Internet of Bananas" network was created between multiple participants who shared their "banana data" to monitor the color, surface temperature, and humidity of the banana network for one week. The main goal of the Internet of Bananas was to critically examine social justice in the context of data generation and collection, while raising awareness among professionals and interested parties.
During the presentation of the publication "The Internet of Bananas" on April 26th, during the session "altCHI: Questioning the unquestionable", the authors of the paper, Ferran Altarriba, Marina Lima Medeiros and Mattia Thibault, demonstrated how engaging a humorous and creative research approach to topics such as data collection, Internet of Things or privacy can be - and thus motivated a number of conference participants to become part of the IoB network.
Another exciting aspect of this year's CHI conference in Hamburg was the strong focus on Extended Reality, proving that this research topic will become even more important in the field of human computer interaction in the coming years.
Vienna, April 26, 2023