Configuring Money as an Interface
A CHI 2026 workshopThis workshop will tackle the challenge of designing and configuring money as an interface, exploring and developing an HCI-centred perspective on the nature of money. Money as an interface involves moving beyond classical economic ideas, to focus instead on money as a social technology, on its relational qualities, and on how these could be expressed in design, and configured in context. The workshop will bring together HCI researchers, designers and practitioners, who will submit design contexts in which more configurable, flexible and collaborative forms of money would be desirable or socially meaningful. These contexts will become the design provocations to be addressed together during the workshop. The outcome will be a catalogue of design proposals inspiring future directions for more flexible, configurable, collaborative and relational financial technologies
Submission deadline: 12th February 2026
Acceptance notifications: 26th February 2026
Organised by
Chris Elsden
Chris is a Chancellor’s Fellow in Service Design, in the Institute for Design Informatics, at the University of Edinburgh. He primarily employs design research and speculative methods, to explore the evolving social meanings of digital monies.
Belén Barros Pena
Belén is a lecturer in HCI at City St George’s, University of London. Her work has examined the design of financial technologies and the implication of digitising our financial lives, in close collaboration with excluded and underserved citizens.
Helena Lyhme
Helena is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City St George’s, University of London. Her research, which she presented at the CHI 2025 doctoral consortium, explores the intersection of financial technology and neurodiversity.
John Vines
John is Chair in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, and co-director of the Institute for Design Informatics. His research explores the social implications of digital technologies, and is underpinned by participatory methods and Research through Design. He has conducted research at the intersections of HCI, design and financial services for the last 15 years.
Jeff Brozena
Jeff is a PhD candidate in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. His research investigates how financial technologies can support the unique financial challenges faced by those living with bipolar disorder and their care partners.
Daniel Mwesigwa
Daniel is a PhD candidate in Information Science (with a minor in sociocultural anthropology) at Cornell. He studies the design and governance of sociotechnical systems, as well as their societal benefits and costs. He has studied how AI-driven credit infrastructures and mobile money platforms have longer histories in informal practices of value exchange and risk sharing,
Jofish Kaye
Jofish is Principal Research Scientist and Executive Director at Wells Fargo in Strategic Design and Innovation. His research explores the social and cultural effects of technology, as well as how behaviors, needs, and customs can inform the development and improvement of those technologies.
Chris Speed
Chris is Professor of Design for Regenerative Futures and Director of the Regenerative Futures Institute at RMIT, Melbourne. His research explores money as a design material, examining how digital currencies, blockchain technologies, and transactional data can empower citizens and reshape creative economies.