Machine Agency
Bibliography
In Machine Agency, we draw extensively from prior research! Sometimes to
learn about other methods, application areas, or ways of evaluating
contributions. This bibliography includes some papers we think are
important, loosely organized into categories.
HCI Contributions and Evaluation
What is an HCI research contribution? These papers discuss types of
contributions and evaluation strategies for them.
- Wobbrock, Jacob O., and Julie A. Kientz. "Research contributions in human-computer interaction." interactions 23, no. 3 (2016): 38-44.
- Ledo, David, Steven Houben, Jo Vermeulen, Nicolai Marquardt, Lora Oehlberg, and Saul Greenberg. "Evaluation strategies for HCI toolkit research." In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-17. 2018.
- Greenberg, Saul, and Bill Buxton. "Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time)." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 111-120. 2008.
- Olsen, Dan R. 2007. "Evaluating user interface systems research." In Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST ’07), 251–258. https://doi.org/10.1145/1294211.1294256
Ubicomp & Tangible Computing
The field of HCI has shifted several times, including a shift in the 90s
towards tangible and ubiquitous computing. These shifts were often
demarcated by opinion pieces such as these!
- Weiser, Mark. "The Computer for the 21st Century." Scientific American 265, no. 3 (1991): 94-105.
- Ishii, Hiroshi, and Brygg Ullmer. "Tangible bits: towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms." In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 234-241. 1997.
- Kay, Alan, and Adele Goldberg. "Personal dynamic media." Computer 10, no. 3 (1977): 31-41.
On Doing Research
What is research anyway? Some perspectives on what it is and what it
could be.
- Latour, Bruno. "Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world." Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science (1983): 141-170.
- Dourish, Paul. "User Experience as Legitimacy Trap." Interactions XXVI.6 (November–December 2019). https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/november-december-2019/user-experience-as-legitimacy-trap
- Dourish, Paul. "Implications for design." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 541-550. 2006.
- Agre, Phil. "Internet research: For and against." Internet Research Annual 1 (2004): 25-36.
- Agre, Phil. “Critical Technical Practice.” In Bridging the Great Divide: Social Science, Technical Systems, and Cooperative Work. Erlbaum, 1997. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/critical.html
- Shneiderman, Ben. "Creativity support tools: accelerating discovery and innovation." Communications of the ACM 50.12 (2007): 20-32.
- Biggs, Heidi, Cayla Key, Audrey Desjardins, and Afroditi Psarra. 2021. "Moving Design Research: GIFs as Research Tools." In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1927–1940. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462144
- Perner-Wilson, Hannah, and Irene Posch. 2022. "How Tangible is TEI? Exploring Swatches as a New Academic Publication Format." In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 55, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3490149.3503668
Understanding people who do digital fabrication (and things like that)
- Yildirim, Nur, James McCann, and John Zimmerman. 2020. "Digital Fabrication Tools at Work: Probing Professionals' Current Needs and Desired Futures." In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376621
- Hudson, Nathaniel, Celena Alcock, and Parmit K. Chilana. 2016. "Understanding Newcomers to 3D Printing: Motivations, Workflows, and Barriers of Casual Makers." In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 384–396. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858266
- Hirsch, Mare, Gabrielle Benabdallah, Jennifer Jacobs, and Nadya Peek. 2023. "Nothing Like Compilation: How Professional Digital Fabrication Workflows Go Beyond Extruding, Milling, and Machines." ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 31, 1, Article 13 (February 2024), 45 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3609328
- Kuznetsov, Stacey, and Eric Paulos. 2010. "Rise of the Expert Amateur: DIY Projects, Communities, and Cultures." In Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries (NordiCHI '10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 295–304. https://doi.org/10.1145/1868914.1868950
- Buechley, Leah, and Benjamin Mako Hill. 2010. "LilyPad in the Wild: How Hardware's Long Tail Is Supporting New Engineering and Design Communities." In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.
- Qi, Jie, Leah Buechley, Andrew “bunnie” Huang, Patricia Ng, Sean Cross, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2018. "Chibitronics in the Wild: Engaging New Communities in Creating Technology with Paper Electronics." In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/
- Borgos-Rodriguez, K., M. Das, and A. M. Piper. 2021. "Melodie: A Design Inquiry into Accessible Crafting Through Audio-Enhanced Weaving." ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), 14(1), 1–30.
- Li, Jingyi, Eric Rawn, Jacob Ritchie, Jasper Tran O'Leary, and Sean Follmer. 2023. "Beyond the Artifact: Power as a Lens for Creativity Support Tools." In Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 47, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3586183.3606831
Digital fabrication machines
- Peek, Nadya, James Coleman, Ilan Moyer, and Neil Gershenfeld. 2017. "Cardboard Machine Kit: Modules for the Rapid Prototyping of Rapid Prototyping Machines." In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 3657–3668.
- Tian, Rundong, Sarah Sterman, Ethan Chiou, Jeremy Warner, and Eric Paulos. 2018. "MatchSticks: Woodworking Through Improvisational Digital Fabrication." In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, p. 149.
- Zoran, Amit, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2013. "FreeD: A Freehand Digital Sculpting Tool." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2613–2616.
- Devendorf, Laura, and Kimiko Ryokai. 2015. "Being the Machine: Reconfiguring Agency and Control in Hybrid Fabrication." In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2477–2486.
- Andersen, Kristina, et al. 2019. "Digital Crafts-Machine-Ship: Creative Collaborations with Machines." Interactions 27.1: 30–35.
- Kim, Jeeeun, Haruki Takahashi, Homei Miyashita, Michelle Annett, and Tom Yeh. 2017. "Machines as Co-Designers: A Fiction on the Future of Human-Fabrication Machine Interaction." In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 790–805.
- Tian, Rundong, Vedant Saran, Mareike Kritzler, Florian Michahelles, and Eric Paulos. 2019. "Turn-by-Wire: Computationally Mediated Physical Fabrication." In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 713–725. https://doi.org/10.1145/3332165.3347918
- Rivers, Alec, Ilan E. Moyer, and Frédo Durand. 2012. "Position-Correcting Tools for 2D Digital Fabrication." ACM Transactions on Graphics 31, 4, Article 88 (July 2012), 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2185520.2185584
- Wang, Guanyun, Lining Yao, Wen Wang, Jifei Ou, Chin-Yi Cheng, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2016. "xPrint: A Modularized Liquid Printer for Smart Materials Deposition." In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 5743–5752.
- Albaugh, L., McCann, J., Yao, L., and Hudson, S. E. 2021. "Enabling Personal Computational Handweaving with a Low-Cost Jacquard Loom." In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445750
- Prévost, R., Whiting, E., Lefebvre, S., and Sorkine-Hornung, O. 2013. "Make It Stand: Balancing Shapes for 3D Fabrication." ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG) 32(4), 1–10.
Software systems for creativity support/digital fabrication
- Frich, Jonas, Lindsay MacDonald Vermeulen, Christian Remy, Michael Mose Biskjaer, and Peter Dalsgaard. 2019. "Mapping the Landscape of Creativity Support Tools in HCI." In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 389, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300619
- Schmidt, Ryan, and Matt Ratto. 2013. "Design-to-Fabricate: Maker Hardware Requires Maker Software." IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 33.6: 26–34.
- Li, Jingyi, Sonia Hashim, and Jennifer Jacobs. 2021. "What We Can Learn From Visual Artists About Software Development." In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 314, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445682
- Jacobs, Jennifer, Joel Brandt, Radomír Mech, and Mitchel Resnick. 2018. "Extending Manual Drawing Practices with Artist-Centric Programming Tools." In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 590, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174164
- O'Leary, Jasper Tran, Gabrielle Benabdallah, and Nadya Peek. 2023. "Imprimer: Computational Notebooks for CNC Milling." In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 207, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581334
- O'Leary, Jasper Tran, Thrisha Ramesh, Octi Zhang, and Nadya Peek. 2024. "Tandem: Reproducible Digital Fabrication Workflows as Multimodal Programs." In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 334, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642751
Textiles
- Kapllani, L., Amanatides, C., Dion, G., Shapiro, V., and Breen, D. E. (2021). "TopoKnit: A Process-Oriented Representation for Modeling the Topology of Yarns in Weft-Knitted Textiles." Graphical Models, 118, 101114.
- Twigg-Smith, H., Whiting, E., and Peek, N. (2024, May). "Knitscape: Computational Design and Yarn-Level Simulation of Slip and Tuck Colorwork Knitting Patterns." In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–20.
- Twigg-Smith, Hannah, Yuecheng Peng, Emily Whiting, and Nadya Peek. 2024. "What's in a Cable? Abstracting Knitting Design Elements with Blended Raster/Vector Primitives." In Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 1–20.
- Peng, Yuecheng, Danchang Yan, Haotian Chen, Yue Yang, Ye Tao, Weitao Song, Lingyun Sun, and Guanyun Wang. 2024. "IntelliTex: Fabricating Low-Cost and Washable Functional Textiles Using a Double-Coating Process." In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1–18.
- Sandry, E. W., Gabriel, L. M., Lazaro Vasquez, E. S., and Devendorf, L. (2025, July). "Towards Yarnier Interactive Textiles: Mapping a Design Journey Through Hand Spun Conductive Yarns." In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, pp. 2503–2517.
- Perner-Wilson, Hannah, Leah Buechley, and Mika Satomi. 2010. "Handcrafting Textile Interfaces from a Kit-of-No-Parts." In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, pp. 61–68.
- Marciniak, Z., Lertjaturaphat, P., and Bianchi, A. (2025). "StitchFlow: Enabling In-Situ Creative Explorations of Crochet Patterns with Stitch Tracking and Process Sharing." In Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3746059.3747715
Food and food culture
- Roosth, Sophia. "Of foams and formalisms: Scientific expertise and craft practice in molecular gastronomy." American Anthropologist 115, no. 1 (2013): 4–16.
- Grimes, Andrea, and Richard Harper. "Celebratory technology: new directions for food research in HCI." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’08), pp. 467–476. 2008. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357130
- Bell, Genevieve, and Joseph Kaye. "Designing technology for domestic spaces: A Kitchen Manifesto." Gastronomica 2, no. 2 (2002): 46–62.
- This, Herve. "Modelling dishes and exploring culinary ‘precisions’: the two issues of molecular gastronomy." British Journal of Nutrition 93, S1 (2005): S139–S146.
For and mostly against techno-optimism
- Ames, Morgan G. "Hackers, Computers, and Cooperation: A Critical History of Logo and Constructionist Learning." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2, CSCW (November 2018): Article 18, 19 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274287
- Lindtner, Silvia, Shaowen Bardzell, and Jeffrey Bardzell. "Reconstituting the Utopian Vision of Making: HCI After Technosolutionism." In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16), pp. 1390–1402. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858506
- Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. 1973.
- Victor, Brett. "A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design."
STS, History of Science, and Philosophy of Technology
- Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." In Women, Science, and Technology, Routledge, 2013, pp. 455–472.
- De Laet, Marianne, and Annemarie Mol. "The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology." Social Studies of Science 30, no. 2 (2000): 225–263.
- Dourish, Paul. Where the Action Is. MIT Press, 2001.
- Noble, David. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. Routledge, 2017.
- Noble, David. "Present-Tense Technology." Democracy Journal Archive, 1983. Link.
- Simondon, Gilbert. "Technical Mentality." Parrhesia 7, no. 1 (2009): 17–27.
- Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, 2013.
- Suchman, Lucy. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press, 1966.
- McCullough, Malcolm. Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand. MIT Press, 1998.
- Roosth, Sophia. "Biobricks and Crocheted Coral: Dispatches from the Life Sciences in the Age of Fabrication." Science in Context 26 (2013): 153–171. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889712000324
- Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. Zone Books, 2010.
Joyful things
- Hunkin, Tim. “The Secret Life of Components.” Tim Hunkin, www.timhunkin.com/a241_component-videos.htm. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.