New Value Transactions: Understanding and Designing for Distributed Autonomous Organisations

New digital technologies such as Blockchain and smart contracting are rapidly changing the face of value exchange, and present exciting new opportunities for designers. This one-day workshop will explore the implications of emerging and future technologies using the lens of Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs). DAOs introduce the principle that products and services may soon be owned and managed collectively and not by one person or authority, thus challenging traditional concepts of user communities, ownership and power. The HCI community has recently explored issues related to finance, money and collaborative practice; however, the implications of these emerging but rapidly ascending distributed organisations has not been examined. This one-day participatory workshop will combine presentations, case studies and group work sessions to understand, develop and critique these new forms of distributed power and ownership, and to practically explore how to design interactive products and services which enable, challenge or disrupt these emerging models.