Creating Friction: Infrastructuring Civic Engagement in Everyday Life
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This paper introduces the theoretical lens of the everyday to intersect and extend the emerging bodies of research on contestational design and infrastructures of civic engagement. Our analysis of social theories of everyday life suggests a design space that distinguishes ‘privileged moments’ of civic engagement from a more holistic understanding of the everyday as ‘product-residue.’ We analyze various efforts that researchers have undertaken to design infrastructures of civic engagement along two axes: the everyday-ness of the engagement fostered (from ‘privileged moments’ to ‘product-residue’) and the underlying paradigm of political participation (from consensus to contestation). Our analysis reveals the dearth and promise of infrastructures that create friction— provoking contestation through use that is embedded in the everyday life of citizens. Ultimately, this paper is a call to action for designers to create friction.
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We extend Korn and Voida's work by focusing on disabled people, who resist exclusionary infrastructures as part of everyday practice.
“We extend Korn and Voida’s [27] work by focusing on disabled people, who resist exclusionary infrastructures as part of everyday practice.”
From Infrastructuring as Collective Resistance: How Disabled Students Negotiate Access Through Technology in Universities (2026) · cites this paper as [27]
Korn and Voida argue for the deliberate production of frictions as a strategy for designers to expose politics and provoke political discussion.
“Korn and Voida [27] examine infrastructuring in the context of civic engagement, arguing for the deliberate production of frictions as a strategy for designers to expose politics and provoke political discussion.”
From Infrastructuring as Collective Resistance: How Disabled Students Negotiate Access Through Technology in Universities (2026) · cites this paper as [27]
Disabled people are not only recipients of care but also infrastructural experts whose knowing-making practices demonstrate the political potential of friction.
“In alignment with recent HCI scholarship that draws on Critical Disability Studies [3, 23, 59, 60, 63, 64], we position disabled people not only as recipients of care but also as infrastructural experts whose knowing-making practices [20] demonstrate the political potential of friction [27, 51].”
From Infrastructuring as Collective Resistance: How Disabled Students Negotiate Access Through Technology in Universities (2026) · cites this paper as [27]
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Kim Ly, C., Cross, T., Tasman, S., Mattka, J., Doggett, O., Marathe, M., & Chandra, P. (2026) · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3772318.3791638
“We expand Korn and Voida’s work [27] framing the intentional and generative production of frictions via infrastructuring as design practice, which enable democratic discussion through contention.”
Influential
- Authors
- Korn, M., & Voida, A.
- Affiliations
- Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (US)
- Venue
- Aarhus Series on Human Centered Computing
- Published
- 2015-10-05
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 12
- ISSN
- 2445-7221 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2299787339
- Cited by
- 121
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 7
- FWCI
- 27.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Aarhus Series on Human Centered Computing (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1360035)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management of Technology and Innovation › Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Keywords
- citizen participation, infrastructuring, everyday life, political participation, consensus, contestation, friction
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