Temporal awareness and ethical reflection: Chronopolitical considerations for HCI research

HCI increasingly engages with the concept of time, with many studies focusing on how temporal relations are produced and reconfigured through computing technologies. However, less attention is paid to the impact of temporality on researchers themselves and specifically their capacity for ethical reflection and action. This paper explores the interplay between temporal features and ethical reflection in HCI research projects. Through a reflective multi-ethnography of nine research projects, we examine how temporal features can influence ethical capacity across the lifecycle of research. The study employs infrastructural and chronopolitical analysis (after Star and Sharma) and offers a range of considerations for researchers to help activate greater temporal awareness for everyday wisdom, to acknowledge temporal power, mobilise responsibility, counter isolation in interdisciplinarity, and promote collective action and dynamic methodologies for temporal research. The study responds to calls for more ethnographic approaches to temporality that address specific HCI needs and focus on practice.