Four manifestos from ‘HCI for Blockchain’: A 2018 CHI workshop

At the CHI 2018 conference in Montreal, a community of HCI researchers came together to address the emergence of blockchain, and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). These technologies present exciting, and interdisciplinary, challenges and opportunities for developing new ways for networks of people and things to transact, collaborate, organize and identify themselves. However, even now, much research and discussion remains technical or theoretical, rather than considering our interactions with applications of these technologies within our everyday lives.

During this workshop, participants shared early-stage projects and then worked together to produce brief ‘manifestos’ for how the human-centred Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community should address blockchain technologies. Each manifesto addresses a theme relevant to the projects that participants shared during the workshop, and were produced rapidly and collaboratively in an afternoon session, before being shared and reflected upon after the workshop. We reproduce these manifestos here to as a starting point for discussion, and an indication of the broad areas of interest and expertise regarding DLTs within the HCI community.