Mobility is the Message: Experiments with Mobile Media Sharing

This thesis explores new mobile media sharing applications by building, deploying, and studying their use. While we share media in many different ways both on the web and on mobile phones, there are few ways of sharing media with people physically near us. Studied were three designed and built systems: Push!Music, Columbus, and Portrait Catalog, as well as a fourth commercially available system – Foursquare. This thesis offers four contributions: First, it explores the design space of co-present media sharing of four test systems. Second, through user studies of these systems it reports on how these come to be used. Third, it explores new ways of conducting trials as the technical mobile landscape has changed. Last, we look at how the technical solutions demonstrate different lines of thinking from how similar solutions might look today. Through a Human-Computer Interaction methodology of design, build, and study, we look at systems through the eyes of embodied interaction and examine how the systems come to be in use. Using Goffman’s understanding of social order, we see how these mobile media sharing systems allow people to actively present themselves through these media. In turn, using McLuhan’s way of understanding media, we reflect on how these new systems enable a new type of medium distinct from the web centric media, and how this relates directly to mobility. While media sharing is something that takes place everywhere in western society, it is still tied to the way media is shared through computers. Although often mobile, they do not consider the mobile settings. The systems in this thesis treat mobility as an opportunity for design. It is still left to see how this mobile media sharing will come to present itself in people’s everyday life, and when it does, how we will come to understand it and how it will transform society as a medium distinct from those before. This thesis gives a glimpse at what this future will look like

Implementing Ethics for a Mobile App Deployment

This paper discusses the ethical dimensions of a research project in which we deployed a personal tracking app on the Apple App Store and collected data from users with whom we had little or no direct contact. We describe the in-app functionality we created for supporting consent and withdrawal, our approach to privacy, our navigation of a formal ethical review, and navigation of the Apple approval process. We highlight two key issues for deployment-based research. Firstly, that it involves addressing multiple, sometimes conflicting ethical principles and guidelines. Secondly, that research ethics are not readily separable from design, but the two are enmeshed. As such, we argue that in-action and situational perspectives on research ethics are relevant to deployment-based research, even where the technology is relatively mundane. We also argue that it is desirable to produce and share relevant design knowledge and embed in-action and situational approaches in design activities

Complex multiple risk intervention topromote healthy behaviours in peoplebetween 45 to 75 years attended inprimary health care (EIRA study): study protocol for a hybrid trial

Background:Health promotion is a key process of current health systems. Primary Health Care (PHC) is the idealsetting for health promotion but multifaceted barriers make its integration difficult in the usual care. The majority ofthe adult population engages two or more risk behaviours, that is why a multiple intervention might be moreeffective and efficient. The primary objectives are to evaluate the effectiveness, the cost-effectiveness andan implementation strategy of a complex multiple risk intervention to promote healthy behaviours in peoplebetween 45 to 75 years attended in PHC.Methods:This study is a cluster randomised controlled hybrid type 2 trial with two parallel groups comparing acomplex multiple risk behaviour intervention with usual care. It will be carried out in 26 PHC centres in Spain. Thestudy focuses on people between 45 and 75 years who carry out two or more of the following unhealthybehaviours: tobacco use, low adherence to the Mediterranean dietary pattern or insufficient physical activity level.The intervention is based on the Transtheoretical Model and it will be made by physicians and nurses in theroutine care of PHC practices according to the conceptual framework of the“5A’s”. It will have a maximum durationof 12 months and it will be carried out to three different levels (individual, group and community). Incremental costper quality-adjusted life year gained measured by the tariffs of the EuroQol-5D questionnaire will be estimated. Theimplementation strategy is based on the“Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research”, a set of discreteimplementation strategies and an evaluation framework. Discussion:EIRA study will determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a complex multiple riskintervention and will provide a better understanding of implementation processes of health promotioninterventions in PHC setting. It may contribute to increase knowledge about the individual and structural barriersthat affect implementation of these interventions and to quantify the contextual factors that moderate theeffectiveness of implementation

Mass participation user trials

This thesis investigates how researchers can take advantage of the rapid adoption of mobile technology that has brought with it transformations in social and cultural practice; the expectations of what computers are, what they can do, and the role of digital objects in everyday life. In particular this thesis presents and discuses the use of new App Store style software distribution methods to reduce the cost, in terms of researcher time and hardware, of recruiting a large group of participants for a trial ‘in the wild’ while increasing the potential diversity of users is becoming an attractive option for researchers pursuing the ubicomp vision. It examines the procedures for running large scale trials with the deployment of three applications released to a combined user base of over 135,000 in such a way as to keep the qualitative detail necessary to inform design while gain- ing the diversity of users for claims of generalisability. More generally, it discusses the results that can be expected from this ‘mass participation’ approach, and the ethical responsibilities they place upon researchers. The contributions of this thesis for mobile HCI show that in large-scale trials, relatively rich qualitative data can be collected along with substantial quantitative data, and that a hybrid trial methodology combining a large- scale deployment with a local trial can be a powerful tool in addressing shortcomings of trials that are either solely local or solely global. This thesis also contributes guidelines for researchers running large-scale user trials that give consideration to the established research norms and practices, in an attempt to strike a new balance between invasiveness and utility

Combining brain-computer interfaces and assistive technologies: state-of-the-art and challenges

In recent years, new research has brought the field of EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) out of its infancy and into a phase of relative maturity through many demonstrated prototypes such as brain-controlled wheelchairs, keyboards, and computer games. With this proof-of-concept phase in the past, the time is now ripe to focus on the development of practical BCI technologies that can be brought out of the lab and into real-world applications. In particular, we focus on the prospect of improving the lives of countless disabled individuals through a combination of BCI technology with existing assistive technologies (AT). In pursuit of more practical BCIs for use outside of the lab, in this paper, we identify four application areas where disabled individuals could greatly benefit from advancements in BCI technology, namely,“Communication and Control”, “Motor Substitution”, “Entertainment”, and “Motor Recovery”. We review the current state of the art and possible future developments, while discussing the main research issues in these four areas. In particular, we expect the most progress in the development of technologies such as hybrid BCI architectures, user-machine adaptation algorithms, the exploitation of users’ mental states for BCI reliability and confidence measures, the incorporation of principles in human-computer interaction (HCI) to improve BCI usability, and the development of novel BCI technology including better EEG devices

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Towards a Reference Architecture for Female-Sensitive Drug Management

Due to various biological factors, males and females differ in their response to drug treatment. However, there is still a lack of knowledge of the effects resulting from sex-differences in the medical field, especially due to the issue of underrepresentation of females in clinical studies. Considering severe diseases that are related to the cardiovascular system, which are likely to be perilous, counteracting this lack and emphasizing the need for sex-dependent drug treatment is of high importance. Thus, this research-in-progress paper aims at strengthening the female perspective in drug management by proposing design considerations on IS regarding recommender systems in healthcare for reinforcing shared decision-making and person-centered care. The resulting artefact presented will be a reference architecture with a mobile application as the interface to patients and healthcare professionals as well as a data- driven backend to collect and process data on sex specificity in the medical treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVD)