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Dealing with digital service closure

Gould, Sandy J. J. and Wiseman, Sarah 2022. Dealing with digital service closure. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6 (CSCW2) , 504. 10.1145/3555617

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Abstract

People integrate digital services into their day-to-day lives, often with the assumption that they will always be available. What happens when these services close down? The introduction of services might be carefully planned, but their closure may not benefit from the same degree of consideration. A more developed understanding of the effects of closures might make it possible to minimize negative consequences for users. This paper builds on sustainability, digital memories, and collaborative-work research through an empirical investigation of service closure. Fifty-five participants completed a questionnaire that solicited experiences of service closure and attitudes toward prospective closure. Through a qualitative analysis of participant responses, we synthesized six themes that reflected the practical and emotional effects of service closure on people: disempowerment, disconnection, loss of capability, trust, time and effort, and notice periods. We make suggestions for ways that service features related to these themes might be managed during closure, but also identify less tractable challenges: as part of this investigation, we introduce and develop the concept of service patinas to describe the important but entirely service-bound data that contextualize digital artefacts.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
ISSN: 2573-0142
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 10 August 2022
Last Modified: 07 Nov 2023 21:24
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/151879

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