Contributions published at People and Computing Lab (Elaine May Huang)

Intercultural communication is challenging as every culture has its own set of implicit rules and norms related to communication. Intercultural training aims at addressing this problem by supporting people in learning how to better communicate with people from other cultures. One approach for intercultural training is the training of culture-general skills. This thesis is an initial exploration of how to augment video conferencing tools to train culture-general skills for dyadic conversation. I used the Intel RealSense 3D camera to track the users’ nonverbal cues and compute nonverbal behaviour from these, in order to compare both interlocutors’ behaviours and present them live feedback. I designed interactive visualizations for a sample of three nonverbal cues (proxemics, smiling and expressiveness) and conducted a qualitative study to evaluate their comprehensibility and influence on real-time communication. From the results of the pilot study, I found that there is a trade-off between inciting users to adapt to each other and making them more aware of their own behaviour.

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Electronic waste, caused by the advancements of technology and its rapidly increasing obsolescence, represents a major threat to environmental sustainability. Research in sustainable HCI has proposed a variety of solutions to tackle this issue, but has yet to create a major impact in product design. While currently industry’s goals are opposed to research’s concepts of addressing obsolescence, a future of collapse and resource scarcity requires a revisit of those contributions: changes in society at large, such as a decrease of resource availability, different needs, requirements, and desires of the consumer, but also new directions of industry and marketing might enable researchers to bring their old concepts into practice. We take a look at a variety of obsolescence-related research in sustainable HCI and foreshadow its potential for such a future of collapse and resource scarcity.

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The impact of Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI) research on design practice is limited by the prevalent issue of successfully applying theoretical frameworks to practice, often referred to as the theory-practice gap. To address this gap, a tablet application called InspiredDesign was developed in this thesis, serving as a brainstorming companion that incorporates SHCI knowledge into design practice. To assess the potential of the tool and the impact on the brainstorming process, a qualitative evaluation with 13 designers was conducted. The results show that the tool is a valuable approach of communicating complex design theories to design practice. The study participants integrated InspiredDesign into their usual brainstorming process and enriched their design ideas by design propositions from the tool. In addition to the positive effect on the brainstorming process, limitations of the application as well as suggestions for improvement were identified. The results are discussed to draw conclusions for future design interventions to bridge the theory-practice gap.

Networked public displays are envisioned as a communication medium for the 21st century, and as such they have a great potential to address place-based communities. This area has seen an increasing numbers of investigations of networked public displays effects on communities and the way they impact interactions between community members. However, most of this research stands alone in isolation, with little work looking into synthesizing the systems, processes, research questions, and evaluation procedures and effects they produce. In this paper we look at seminal works in the area, i.e., the Wray Photo Display, the Plasma Poster Network, CoCollage, and UBI-Hotspots, and analyze the systems themselves, settings in which they were deployed and respective communities, the processes leading to building up the system, the research questions that were examined, and the effects of the networked public display systems on the community. We discuss the similarities and differences in these works and provide insights for the designers and developers of similar future systems, with a goal to present open challenges for the future work.

Electronic waste, caused by the advancements of technology and its rapidly increasing obsolescence, represents a major threat to environmental sustainability. Research in Sustainable HCI has proposed a variety of solutions to tackle this issue, but has yet to create a major impact in product design. While currently industry’s goals are opposed to research’s concepts of addressing obsolescence, a future of collapse and resource scarcity requires a revisit of those contributions: changes in society at large, such as a decrease of resource availability, different needs, requirements, and desires of the consumer, but also new directions of industry and marketing might enable researchers to bring their old concepts into practice. We take a look at a variety of obsolescence-related research in Sustainable HCI and foreshadow its potential for such a future of collapse and resource scarcity.

Digital displays are heralded as a transformative medium for communication. However, a known challenge in the domain is that of display blindness in which passersby pay little or no attention to public displays. This phenomenon has been a major motivation for much of the research on public displays. However, since the early observations, little has been done to develop our understanding of display blindness – for example, to identify determining factors or propose appropriate metrics. Hence, the degree to which developments in signage form, content, and interaction address display blindness remains unclear. In this paper we examine and categorize current approaches to studying and addressing display blindness. Based on our analysis we identify open questions in the research space, including the impact of display physicality and audience differences, relationships with other observed effects, the impact of research interventions, and selection of appropriate metrics. The goal of this paper is to start a discussion within the community on the topic, and to inform the design of future research.

Construction sites are a common part of a city landscape, e.g., website Urban Toronto reports on 650+ registered works for the city of Toronto, while New London Architecture reports on 195 in London. Up until now there has been little research looking into how public displays are used at these settings. This paper reports on an exploratory study that looked into understanding the use of public displays on construction sites. By analyzing types of displays and their purpose on 38 construction sites located on 2 continents and 4 cities, I have uncovered 10 different types of displays that serve to fulfill 9 identified objectives. Based on this I provide 5 general design implications for pervasive public displays. Overall, the contribution of this paper lies in describing the use of public displays in a new context and providing design implications for them.

Networked public displays offer new ways of connecting communities through user-generated content. For example, they allow taking situated snapshots, i.e., photos taken through a display-attached camera, and viewing them on displays in the network or potentially somewhere on the web. Little research has looked into users’ privacy concerns for this novel type of content. This paper reflects on two longitudinal studies of the Moment Machine application that was running in the UK and Switzerland for 12+ weeks, and summarizes some of the privacy concerns this type of user-generated content can raise, namely: communicating where the publicly taken situated snapshots are stored, where they appear, that no surveillance is taking place, content control for situated snapshots, where (in what place) and how interactions happening on the web will appear on a display network. Based on the two studies I make recommendations and inform the design of similar future networked public display systems.

Despite the availability of computer-based alternatives both for desktop and touch screen systems, a number of cooperative work processes still commonly rely on simple paper sticky notes. In this paper, we present the first in-depth investigation of the real-world practices of people who use paper-based affinity diagrams and similar clustering processes in their work, in order to identify challenges and requirements for technology support. Findings from retrospective and artifact-based interviews with 13 participants suggest ways in which the rich interactions and material affordances offered by paper are key to the process. Instead of seeking to replicate interactions with paper on a screen, simpler transfer of information between the physical and digital worlds has the potential to address many of the most pressing problems experienced in practice. We describe different types of technology integration and augmentation, with preliminary recommendations for different situations.

The obsolescence of consumer electronics is a major topic in the domain of sustainable HCI, which has seen a variety of theoretical frameworks emerging to address this issue. My research seeks to apply one of those established theoretical frameworks from sustainable HCI research, the Attachment Framework, to design practice. The goal of my research is to identify opportunities and challenges in bringing theoretical frameworks from sustainable HCI research to practitioners outside of our field, ultimately creating guidelines and scenarios that aid in overcoming the problem of obsolete consumer electronics.

Despite significant progress in sustainable HCI towards theoretical frameworks to guide design, there is a gap between theory and practice, so that the impact of such frameworks is limited. As an initial exploration in bridging the theory-practice gap, we conducted a study using one well-established design framework, the Attachment Framework, to evaluate its applicability in use. We conducted a comparative study with 14 designers to explore the effect of the Attachment Framework on design, and evaluated their designs with 10 design experts using a set of six design criteria. Our results indicated a positive effect on the criterion of novelty, with mixed effects on attachment, presentation, aesthetics, usefulness, and feasibility. We contribute a set of challenges in the application of design frameworks to practice and offer a critical reflection on how researchers can more effectively communicate sustainable HCI design frameworks to practitioners.

Urban screens are becoming a common element of our city landscape. As such they offer new ways of connecting people that occupy public space, e.g., by taking situated snapshots through a display-attached camera. In this paper we present a first longitudinal case study of 12 weeks of such an application – Moment Machine – deployed “in the wild” on an urban screen facing the street. We report findings from 1189 photos taken, 13 interviews, and 3 weeks of observations that show engagement stimulated by situated snapshots within a place-based community where the screen is located. We also analyze interaction log files to describe how often users interacted, what type of interactions they had and how long they lasted, and overall engagement on a weekly basis and throughout the week. Based on our experience, we provide three take-away snippets for designers of similar urban screen experiences.

This thesis investigates contrasting options as different control and feedback alternatives as methods to improve how well smart homes are understood. Smart homes are steadily increasing but barriers for adoption are still present and hinder the interaction possibilities for end users. By investigating such different control and feedback options, users can be empowered and supported towards a more "user centric'' environment, giving them the means to efficiently interact with their smart homes. In this work different paper prototype design iteration phases were conducted in order to elicit user needs and discover key issues that should be addressed while investigating different means for smart home control and feedback. Eventually an interactive prototype was improved and upgraded and subsequently a user study was conducted for an in depth assessment. Smart home intelligibility can definitely be improved with such an approach, but more aspects emerged during the study that should lay the foundations for future development and investigation.

As sensing and actuation technologies grow more widespread, smart home infrastructures will become both feasible and flexible in supporting multiple applications. The development of these “smart home technologies” have been investigated by diverse fields spanning technical, sociological, and health-oriented disciplines, attempting to meet varying users’ needs from technology savvy, “mass market”, and functionally declining older adult populations. In an effort to promote human-centred knowledge exchange and design expertise between these communities, this workshop aims to explore interaction design for intended smart home users at and transitioning between successive life stages. Ultimately, we will aim to address how smart home technologies can be designed to evolve with their users over the life course. By uniting researchers and designers from various backgrounds, we hope to stimulate both actionable insights and design artifacts that better capture the evolutionary nature of users and their home contexts, which participants can then apply in their own research and design work going forward.