Temporally-connected personal blogs contain voluminous textual content, presenting challenges in re-visiting and reflecting on experiences. Other data repositories have benefited from natural ...language processing (NLP) and interactive visualizations (VIS) to support exploration, but little is known about how these techniques could be used with blogs to present experiences and support multimodal interaction with blogs, particularly for authors. This paper presents the effect of reorganization—reorganizing the large blog set with NLP and presenting abstract topics with VIS—to support novel re-visitation experiences to blogs. The BlogCloud tool, a blog re-visitation tool that reorganizes blog paragraphs around user-searched keywords, implements reorganization and similarity-based content grouping. Through a public use session with bloggers who wrote about extended hikes, we observed the effect of NLP-based reorganization in delivering novel re-visitation experiences. Findings suggest that the re-presented topics provide new reflection materials and re-visitation paths, enabling interaction with symbolic items in memory.
Multiple-display environments (MDEs) have promise in helping co-located sensemaking tasks by supporting searching, organizing, and discussion tasks. Co-located sensemaking occurs when two or more ...sensemakers forage for useful information within a dataset, creating and leveraging knowledge structures individually and together. Group territories in MDEs support communicating and assembling findings, but questions remain regarding how to best represent individual sensemaking efforts in the group territory to support the sensemaking collaboration. This paper empirically examines exploration of a large Twitter dataset using three group territory paradigms: parallel, connected, and merged. Results reveal that merging group work increases task complexity while separating individuals' sections in the group territory supports monitoring, and more interactions are performed when individual work is not connected in the group territory.
The struggle to thrive as a productive student researcher, an attentive parent, and a caring partner can be difficult, particularly for international student parents who are far from home and also ...possibly burdened with complex cultural expectations, interpersonal dynamics, and institutional biases. Using uses and gratifications theory as a framing mechanism, we describe interviews with twelve international student mothers in the United States who are primary caregivers of children between six months to five years old, focusing on the context of their use of screen media content and devices, the gratifications they seek from their children's use of screen media devices, and the differences in their perceptions about the use of screen media as an educated, non-US parent. Our findings give an initial account of the role of screen based technology in their domestic life with young children, and the limitations of their technological experience. We present four opportunities for designing for this population including technologies for positive distraction, interactive language aids, playful acquaintance tools, and anonymous peer networks for parent support. We conclude by formulating future promising avenues of research in this design space.
A months-long hike of the Appalachian Trail often involve long-term preparation and life-altering decisions. Would-be hikers leverage institutional knowledge from literature and online forums to ...physically and mentally prepare for such an arduous hike. Their use of social platforms provide useful insights on motivations for undertaking the thru-hike, how they deal with unexpected conditions on the trail and understand choices made in conditions of scarcity. By analyzing over 100,000 Reddit posts and comments in r/AppalachianTrail and applying a Sense of Community theory, we sought to understand hikers' identity as community members, how their emotional and practical needs are met, and how they evolve. We found that the role and language of thru-hikers change as they progress from pre-hike, on-hike, and post-hike stages, from a questioner early on, to an expert post-hike. We conclude with design recommendations to support offline communities online.
Willing Buyer, Willing Seller Kotut, Lindah; Stelter, Timothy L.; Horning, Michael ...
Companion Proceedings of the 2020 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work,
01/2020
Conference Proceeding
There is an increased sensitivity by people about how companies collect information about them, and how this information is packaged, used and sold. This perceived lack of control is highlighted by ...the helplessness of users of various platforms in managing or halting what data is collected from/about them. In a future where users have wrested control of their data and have the autonomy to decide what information is collected, how it is used and most importantly, how much it is worth, a new market emerges. This design fiction considers possible steps prescient companies would take to meet these demands, such as providing third-party subscription platforms offering personal data trade as a service. These services would provide a means for transparent transactions that preserve an owner's control over their data; allowing them to individually make decisions about what data they avail for sale, and the amount of compensation they would accept in trade.
Emerging research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has considered the use of technology to preserve Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) while wrestling with the dilemma of local participation in ...the face of post-colonialism. There remains a need to understand how ICH is portrayed by museums and texts, how communities regard these representations, and how technology would affect preservation. We conducted a study in the North Rift region of Kenya to understand how ICH is preserved and disseminated by the museum in comparison with the community. The findings describe a respectful technology space where community needs and museum needs can co-exist. We also articulate social challenges that should be considered by designers when recommending or designing technological solutions. This paper concludes by recommending ways for researchers to smoothly integrate technology with ICH through community participation and an awareness of the respectful space.
The Interactive Show Bhatti, Neelma; Stelter, Timothy L.; McCrickard, D. Scott
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction,
11/2020
Conference Proceeding
Advances in the fields of natural language processing, machine learning and speech recognition have led to the increasing adoption of conversational agents in a variety of domains. However, the use ...of conversational agents as a childcare assistant for parents of young children has not been realized. We propose the use of conversational agents into children's programs to produce an interactive show, which can be employed as conversational companion for children, and a childcare assistant for parents of young children who have limited access to childcare options. Key features of the interactive show include understanding, responsiveness and maintaining an uninterrupted conversation flow. We argue that having a truly interactive show can engage children for a longer period of time without being distracted, which can give parents some time to attend to their needs in the absence of help.
Social media captures examples of people's behaviors, actions, beliefs, and sentiments. As a result, it can be a valuable source of information and inspiration for HCI research and design. Social ...media technologies can improve, inform, and strengthen insights to better understand and represent user populations. To understand the position of social media research and analysis in the design process, this paper seeks to highlight shortcomings of using traditional research methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups) that ignore or don't adequately reflect relevant social media, and this paper speculates about the importance and benefits of leveraging social media for establishing context in supplement with these methods. We present examples that guide our thinking and introduce discussion around concerns related to using social media data.