With finance digitising at speed, the study of the nature of money is breaking loose from its traditional disciplinary boundaries. New answers to the question “what is money?” are being proposed outside of economics and sociology, for instance by anthropologists and media scholars. But since money is becoming digital, shouldn’t Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) have a say on the matter? This talk proposes an HCI perspective on the nature of money inspired not by big technological breakthroughs, but by the mundane things people do with and through financial technologies: our everyday financial hacks.

Bio

Belén Barros Pena started life as an interaction designer and user researcher in the software industry. After 15 years of that she got a little bored and decided to do a PhD with Prof. John Vines. After getting her doctorate in 2021, she is now a reluctant academic at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City St. George’s, University of London. Her research has focused on the design of financial technologies and participatory design practices, but she also has a soft spot for usable security, privacy-enhancing technologies, and free / open source software. More about her at https://www.city.ac.uk/about/people/academics/belen-barros-pena

Running Order

16.00 – Welcome by John Vines and Talk by Belén Barros Pena
16.40 – Q&A
17.00 – End

In-person: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Online: Zoom

Please note limited seats are available at Inspace for in-person audiences, so please book tickets in advance. For those joining online please visit the online event page for the Zoom joining link and password.

For inquiries about accessibility, please contact the DI team at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk or visit the Access webpage for more information about the venue: https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/venue-access/