Public Engagement Technology for Bioacoustic Citizen Science

Inexpensive mobile devices offer new capabilities for non-specialist use in the field for the purpose of conservation. This thesis explores the potential for such devices to be used by citizen scientists interacting with bioacoustic data such as birdsong. This thesis describes design research and field evaluation, in collaboration with conservationists and educators, and technological artefacts implemented as mobile applications for interactive educational gaming and creative composition. This thesis considers, from a participant-centric collaborative design approach, conservationists' demand for interactive artefacts to motivate engagement in citizen science through gameful and playful interactions. Drawing on theories of motivation, frequently applied to the study of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and on approaches to designing for motivational engagement, this thesis introduces a novel pair of frameworks for the analysis of technological artefacts and for assessing participant engagement with bioacoustic citizen science from both game interaction design and citizen science project participation perspectives. This thesis reviews current theories of playful and gameful interaction developed for collaborative learning, data analysis, and ground-truth development, describes a process for design and analysis of motivational mobile games and toys, and explores the affordances of various game elements and mechanics for engaging participation in bioacoustic citizen science. This thesis proposes research into progressions for scaffolding engagement with citizen science projects where participants interact with data collection and analysis artefacts. The research process includes the development of multiple designs, analyses of which explore the efficacy of game interactions to motivate engagement through interaction progressions, given proposed analysis frameworks. This thesis presents analysed results of experiments examining the usability of, and data-quality from, several prototypes and software artefacts, in both laboratory conditions and the field. This thesis culminates with an assessment of the efficacy of proposed design analysis frameworks, an analysis of designed artefacts, and a discussion of how these designs increase intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for participant engagement and affect resultant bioacoustic citizen science data quantity and quality.Non

The Emerging Nature of Participation in Multispecies Interaction Design

Interactive technology has become integral part of daily life for both humans and animals, with animals often interacting with technologized environments on behalf of humans. For some, animals' participation in the design process is essential to design technology that can adequately support their activities. For others, animals' inability to understand and control design activities inevitably stands in the way of multispecies participatory practices. Here, we consider the essential elements of participation within interspecies interactions and illustrate its emergence, in spite of contextual constraints and asymmetries. To move beyond anthropomorphic notions of participation, and consequent anthropocentric practices, we propose a broader participatory model based on indexical semiosis, volition and choice; and we highlight dimensions that could define inclusive participatory practices more resilient to the diversity of understandings and goals among part-taking agents, and better able to account for the contribution of diverse, multispecies agents in interaction design and beyond

Smart Conversational Agents for Reminiscence

In this paper we describe the requirements and early system design for a smart conversational agent that can assist older adults in the reminiscence process. The practice of reminiscence has well documented benefits for the mental, social and emotional well-being of older adults. However, the technology support, valuable in many different ways, is still limited in terms of need of co-located human presence, data collection capabilities, and ability to support sustained engagement, thus missing key opportunities to improve care practices, facilitate social interactions, and bring the reminiscence practice closer to those with less opportunities to engage in co-located sessions with a (trained) companion. We discuss conversational agents and cognitive services as the platform for building the next generation of reminiscence applications, and introduce the concept application of a smart reminiscence agent

Analysis of engaged online collaborative discourse: a methodological approach

The purpose of this chapter is to present a reflection on collaborative learning mediated by the computer, discussing some difficulties and methodological constraints that we encounter when we try to analyze the interactions that occurred in this collaboration in an online course and the level of involvement in ollaborative discourse produced by participants. For we apply the Speech Involvement Scale Collaborative Computer-mediated Conference.Projeto MEDEIAinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Systems, interactions and macrotheory

A significant proportion of early HCI research was guided by one very clear vision: that the existing theory base in psychology and cognitive science could be developed to yield engineering tools for use in the interdisciplinary context of HCI design. While interface technologies and heuristic methods for behavioral evaluation have rapidly advanced in both capability and breadth of application, progress toward deeper theory has been modest, and some now believe it to be unnecessary. A case is presented for developing new forms of theory, based around generic “systems of interactors.” An overlapping, layered structure of macro- and microtheories could then serve an explanatory role, and could also bind together contributions from the different disciplines. Novel routes to formalizing and applying such theories provide a host of interesting and tractable problems for future basic research in HCI

Animal-Computer Interaction: a Manifesto (2011) and sections from Towards an Animal-Centred Ethics for Animal-Computer Interaction (2016)

Reprint of journal article "Animal-Computer Interaction: a Manifesto" (2011) and of sections of journal article "Towards an Animal-Centred Ethics for Animal-Computer Interaction" (2016

Why we interact : on the functional role of the striatum in the subjective experience of social interaction

Acknowledgments We thank Neil Macrae and Axel Cleeremans for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Furthermore, we are grateful to Dorothé Krug and Barbara Elghahwagi for their assistance in data acquisition. This study was supported by a grant of the Köln Fortune Program of the Medical Faculty at the University of Cologne to L.S. and by a grant “Other Minds” of the German Ministry of Research and Education to K.V.Peer reviewedPreprin

Designing software to maximize learning1

This paper starts from the assumption that any evaluation of educational software should focus on whether or not, and the extent to which, it maximizes learning. It is particularly concerned with the impact of software on the quality of learning. The paper reviews key texts in the literature on learning, including some which relate directly to software development, and suggests ways in which a range of learning theories can inform the process of software design. The paper sets out to make a contribution to both the design and the evaluation of educational software