Describe project descriptions here.
Descriptive title: The Social-Cost Price-Tracker: an art work for mobile devices that will provide a tool for grass-roots consumer activism and an interface to an evolving, participatory media documentary on the social costs of consumer culture.
The Social-Cost Price-Tracker will allow consumers to trace and compare the “social cost” of commercial products using their own cell phones. The phrase “social cost” here refers to both the human capital exploited and the natural resources expended in the production of consumer goods. The Price-Tracker will be unique among cell phone applications and art works for mobile device interfaces in its focus on the social cost of consumerism and its solicitation of community participation.
The research is part software development, part new media documentary and part invention in media form – an effort to develop both a tool (or means to an end) and an end in itself (an evolving participatory-media “documentary”). The Price-Tracker’s media-rich database of images, audio and video recordings documenting the conditions of employment across industries should enhance consumer awareness of the role of often exploited and marginalized laborers in the consumer “food chain” and, hopefully, contribute in some small way to the creation of more ethical government labor and wage policies. The Price-Tracker ‘s collaborative and open framework should increase public participation in the creation and distribution of both information and capital and thus facilitate the evolution of a more just and sustainable society.
The Social-Cost Price-Tracker will allow consumers to trace and compare the “social cost” of commercial products using their own cell phones. The phrase “social cost” here refers to both the human capital exploited (undocumented labor, prison labor, outsourcing, etc.) and the natural resources expended (carbon footprint, chemical waste, etc.) in the production of consumer goods.
This free application will enable a user to read the barcode on a consumer product with their phone’s built-in camera and then retrieve both objective and subjective data about the “social cost” involved in its production. The “subjective” data downloaded will include direct evidence and testimony regarding the labor conditions and economic and social circumstances of workers involved in the production and distribution of a given item in the form of photographs, audio and video taped interviews. These interviews will be accessible to the user when they read the barcode of a particular item along with statistical data regarding the material, economic and ecological impact of the design, production, distribution and eventual disposal of the item.
The Social Cost Price Tracker will not rely on a fixed data set or one group of content providers. It will be a participatory information gathering and dissemination tool that will allow its user/participant community to add products, collect and distribute their own data and contribute interviews and personal reflections about the community context, labor conditions and ecological impact of the marketing and production of consumer goods directly through a cell phone interface at point of purchase.
This is a non-commercial, free-software, open-source, arts-research project that will be developed in collaboration with graduate students in the Digital Art and New Media MFA program and the School of Engineering. Development will begin in the context of a collaborative research project group in Spring 2009. Graduate Student research assistants in this project group will create the barcode recognition software, barcode database, server, interface and multi-media database architecture, then seed the system with data on the social cost of consumer goods, which are produced by undocumented, migrant and prison laborers in California’s Central Valley.
In the spring of 2009 the project team will start development of a system that will enable mobile devices to recognize product barcodes, a GPS-based product locater for social cost comparison with similar products in the area, and a database infrastructure for storing multi-media information relevant to products and companies. We will subsequently seed the database with data on the “social cost” of a small set of consumer goods, which are produced by undocumented, migrant and prison laborers. This will include ethnographic as well as statistical research. We will partner with local consumer advocacy and labor organizations and their constituencies – making use of their existing databases and community contacts. In 2011 we will complete a prototype user interface.
The application will then be made freely available to individual users, community groups and open-source developers online along with a curriculum for workshops in community centers and schools that will promote new models of participatory research and political advocacy.
The Social-Cost Price-Tracker will allow consumers to trace and compare the “social cost” of commercial products using their own cell phones. Individuals will be able to download a free application that will enable their cell phone camera to read the barcode on a consumer product and download economic, ecological and ethnographic data about the “social cost” involved in its production through their phone’s web browser. The phrase “social cost” here refers to:
The development team will create the barcode recognition software, barcode database, server, interface and multi-media database architecture, then seed the system with data on the social cost of consumer goods, which are produced by undocumented, migrant and prison laborers in California’s Central Valley. This will include gathering ethnographic data regarding the labor conditions and economic and social circumstances of these workers in video and/or audio taped interviews.
These interviews will be accessible to the user when they read the barcode of a particular item along with information regarding the material, economic and ecological impact of the design, production, distribution and eventual disposal of the item. But the Social Cost Price Tracker will not rely on a fixed data set or one group of content providers. It will be a participatory information gathering and dissemination tool that will allow its user community to add products and collect and distribute their own data related to trade, labor, and ecology in their own city or town directly through the cell phone interface.
The Social-Cost Price-Tracker application framework will be useful in a variety of geographic locations. Our prototype implementation will be developed with a focus on California’s central valley, a key site of both migrant and prison labor. The Social-Cost Price-Tracker curriculum will engage students in agri-business and prison industry communities in analyzing and gathering news and information around the issues of local and international trade and labor that affect their daily lives. Social networking tools will allow local consumers to document how the data they access impacts their consumer decision-making. By sharing this information with other users in their community they will be able to affect and comment on their local economy.
The Price-Tracker is unique among cell phone applications in its focus on the social cost of consumerism and its solicitation of community participation. It exploits pervasive wireless technology to engage consumers at point-of-sale and transform them into concerned citizens. The innovative open system allows users to contribute interviews and personal reflections about the community context, labor conditions and ecological impact of products that are produced and/or marketed in their local community. The project pioneers the use of cell phones as a tool for consumer activism with a curriculum for workshops in community centers and schools that will promote new models of participatory research, news-gathering and political advocacy.
The Social-Cost Price-Tracker will be developed by Sharon Daniel, Professor and Chair of Digital Arts New Media MFA program and James Davis, Associate Professor, Computer Science, School of Engineering, at UCSC in collaboration with graduate students in Digital Media Art and Engineering. Both Daniel and Davis have successful records of research in the development of technology to target social issues.
Professor Daniel’s research involves collaborations with communities that focus on the use and development of information and communications technologies for social inclusion. This involves designing and building online archives and interfaces that make the stories of technologically disenfranchised communities available across social, cultural and economic boundaries like the webby award winning “Public Secrets” 
http://publicsecret.net and the participatory media project “Palabras” http://palabras.ucsc.edu which has been used and exhibited internationally.
Professor Davis’ proven record of research includes innovation in computational photography, computer vision, and methods for acquiring digital representations of the real world. Davis developed early panoramic stitching methods, which are now commonplace in consumer cameras. He has begun initial development on the barcode reader application and barcode database for the Social-Cost Price-Tracker with graduate students in the School of Engineering at UCSC. During the spring of 2008 they developed a working prototype of the price-tracker bar code recognition software and product bar code database for Nokia cell phones.
Consumers are eager to change their patterns of consumption in relation to social as well as economic concerns, but they need access to information on the social cost of products at the point of purchase -- where they potentially have the power to change the labor and environmental practices of corporate producers and retailers. Advertising and retailing create a one-way vector of information that flows from producer to consumer. To establish a fair, just and sustainable economy consumers need a freely accessible tool that will empower them as Citizens to make informed consumer decisions and to participate in an ongoing exchange of information about the social cost of consumerism that will affect ethical choices made in their own community.
In the spring of 2009 the project team will start development of a system that will enable mobile devices to recognize product barcodes and make “social cost” comparisons with similar products in local stores and online. In the spring and summer of 2009 we will complete the barcode recognition system, a GPS-based product locater for social cost comparison with similar products in the area, and a database infrastructure for storing multi-media information relevant to products and companies. During fall 2009 - spring 2010 we will seed the database with data on the “social cost” of a small set of consumer goods, which are produced by undocumented, migrant and prison laborers.
This will include ethnographic as well as statistical research. We will partner with consumer advocacy and labor organizations and their constituencies – making use of their existing databases and community contacts to help populate our database with audio and video-taped interviews providing first-hand testimony about the labor conditions and social circumstances of laborers involved in the production and retailing of the items included. By the end of summer 2010 we will complete a prototype user interface that will make the database available to mobile device users. We will then undertake a series of user-tests and employ a comparative analysis to determine the impact of the price-tracker on buying behavior.
The system will be designed to track its own effectiveness by allowing users to record their reactions and choices in the database. User response data will be mapped on the project website and made available through the mobile device interface. By the end of 2010 we will open the interface for public contributions. This will require the design and implementation of quality control mechanisms (like those of Wikipedia) for filtering submitted data and the creation of a curriculum for participant groups. By winter 2011 users will be able to add products and multi-media data to the database.
The Social-Cost Price-Tracker will provide a collaborative and open framework for mobile devices that will increase public participation in the creation and distribution of both information and capital and thus facilitate the evolution of a more just, democratic, and sustainable society.
Widespread use of the Social-Cost Price-Tracker among consumers will change patterns of consumption and, eventually, impact the incentive structure for the production and marketing of consumer goods. In our current marketplace, if a manufacturer or retailer can save $0.10 on the shelf price of a product by exploiting their workforce, polluting the environment or depleting natural resources they effectively increase their market share. But when consumers have point-of-purchase access to information regarding unfair labor practices and/or negative environmental impact associated with specific products (and therefore the ability to make “social-cost,” as well as price comparisons) they are likely to choose products and retailers whose social-cost profile is in line with their own ethical standards – even if the actual price is higher.
In this way, consumers will hold corporations accountable for their impact on the environment and social justice. Over time this will alter the market incentive for companies --- making it more profitable for them to charge consumers $0.10 more so they can change their labor or environmental practices. In addition, the Price-Tracker’s media-rich database of images, audio and video recordings that document conditions of employment across industries will enhance consumer awareness of the role of often exploited and marginalized laborers in the consumer “food chain” and, hopefully, contribute to the creation of more ethical government labor and wage policies.
The Social-Cost Price Tracker is a participatory design project that will actively involve its user community (consumers, laborers and environmentalists) in the design process to ensure that the system meets their needs and standards. We will partner with NGOs and community groups for user testing during each phase of development and will measure our progress based on their feedback. The ultimate success of the project can only be evaluated in terms of the impact it might have on patterns of consumption and, subsequently, on the labor and environmental practices of producers and retailers. The system will allow users to indicate whether and how data presented about a product has impacted their purchasing decision. This response data will be made accessible to other users considering the purchase of the same item.
Thus, the evaluation of the effectiveness of the system will be built-in to the system itself -- allowing it to track and display its own impact on patterns of consumption. This tracking data will also be mapped and visualized on the project website which will provide social networking tools that will facilitate the participatory design process and, later, the development of new participant communities. In addition, we will partner with retailers like Wal-Mart that track sales for statistical analysis and have offices of “corporate social responsibility”. We will also run before-and-after control studies to analyze purchasing by participant groups in order to understand how the system influences their buying behavior and track the volume and frequency of use.
While we are confident that we can develop the technological framework and user interface for the Social-Cost Price-Tracker prototype system there are some potential risks related to the future widespread adoption of the system. For example:
1) There may be difficulty, if sufficient foundation support is not available, in finding a non-profit revenue model that will allow us to maintain and scale the service after the development of the prototype and adapt it for use on a variety of mobile devices. However, while there are currently several price-only comparison tools on the market for specific mobile devices we believe that an open-source project focused on social-cost comparison will attract financial support and collaborators.
2) The task of populating the database with enough social-cost related product information to have impact on consumer practices is vast and will require the participation of many individuals and community groups. It may prove difficult to promote and sustain an adequate level of participation in the research necessary to provide up-to-date and comprehensive data about a large array of products over time. We plan to rely in part on the interest and participation of the user community and the ongoing research of consumer and labor advocacy organizations but we will also automate data collection using “screen scraping” scripts and web crawlers to dynamically mine date from a variety of websites.
3) Research shows that consumers are interested in price comparison tools but it is possible that consumers are not as socially conscious as we hope and expect, and as a result “social cost” information may not influence patterns of consumption on a scale that could have impact in the marketplace. We believe it is worth a try.
The initial popularity of ShopSavvy on the google phone (1 Million barcode scans in the first 3 weeks) indicates that consumers are willing to scan bar codes for price comparison information at the point of purchase. We believe that consumers concerned with social and environmental justice will eagerly adopt and use the Social-Cost Price-Tracker. We will market and distribute the system using the same approach taken for its development --- public participation. This will begin in the context of our participatory design process in partnership with consumer and labor advocacy organizations and their constituencies.
We believe use will spread virally beyond these initial participant communities via word-of-mouth, social networking and information sharing websites. On the project website we will distribute workshop curriculum for schools and community groups that will facilitate use of the system and participation in the collection of both ethnographic and statistical data for the database. The workshop curriculum will also be distributed through our partner NGOs. Finally, we will attempt experimental partnerships with corporate retailers (like Wal-Mart and Target) who claim a commitment to “Corporate Social Responsibility.”
While these claims are often hotly contested, some corporate retailers may wish to enhance their social-responsibility profile and increase their market share by identifying as socially conscious places to shop. However, corporate partners who wish to participate in the marketing and distribution of the system will have to agree to share their product databases, accept the inclusion of participant generated critiques of their own labor and environmental practices, and honor the not-for-profit, open-source status of the Social-Cost Price-Tracker.
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