CSCW 2021 | First Author
Tejaswini Joshi, Jeffrey Bardzell, Shaowen Bardzell
Background
This ethnographic research explores how everyday interactions with water infrastructure in Pune, India reveal deeper truths about citizenship, equity, and technological aspiration.
We studied how residents navigate “flaky” or unreliable water systems — infrastructures that are physically fragmented, unevenly distributed, and not yet “smart,” but aspirationally so. Rather than treating infrastructure as a static backdrop, we examined it as a dynamic sociotechnical system in which citizens are constantly improvising, negotiating, and reshaping access.
Contributions
We introduced the lens of hydraulic citizenship (after Nikhil Anand) to examine how residents’ relationships with water infrastructures are entangled with questions of legitimacy, visibility, and power.
Our key contribution was to show how smart city narratives often obscure the lived, uneven realities of urban infrastructure and how understanding those frictions can lead to more grounded, context-aware approaches to civic technology.
Methods
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Field-based ethnography
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In-situ interviews with residents and city officials
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Infrastructure and environmental systems mapping
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Interpretive thematic analysis
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Interpretive document and newspaper analysis
Why it Matters
This study challenges dominant narratives of “smartness” in urban development. Instead of top-down innovation, it advocates for design grounded in the lived experience of infrastructural failure, repair, and adaptation.
It also deepened my perspective on:
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The emotional labor and ingenuity of everyday users
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How infrastructure both reflects and shapes social relations
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Why design must reckon with structural inequality, not just technological gaps
Business Impact and Translation
This work shaped how I approach design strategy in complex systems:
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Informs civic and public interest design by highlighting how users adapt when systems fail
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Supports inclusive research by elevating voices often marginalized in data-driven planning
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Reveals hidden user behaviors and workarounds, leading to more resilient and realistic product design
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Helps teams design for real-world messiness, not just ideal workflows or static personas
In short: I help teams understand not just how systems should work, but how people actually live with them — a critical distinction for ethical, scalable, and humane innovation.