ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the landscape of ecological thinking in human-computer interaction (HCI). We start with describing the origin and the working definition of the word “ecology” and the practices of ecological thinking in HCI at different scales. We also discuss its relationship with another related notion in HCI – sustainability. We then dive into four key dimensions of ecological thinking, namely “space,” “time,” and “entity.” For each dimension, we present the related concepts and theories and use case studies to demonstrate how the corresponding ecological perspective can be weaved into HCI research and design.
