Cocreation In Context: An Evaluation of Participatory Technology Design for Enhancing Community Engagement with Public Spaces

The integration of interactive public displays into urban regeneration is a dynamic research area, extending beyond traditional screens to offer accessible, alternative interactions in outdoor settings. These displays not only provide users with a wealth of information but also provide in depth emotionally charged interactions, evoking nostalgia and re-engaging people with a space.In the ever-evolving urban landscape, this thesis addresses the challenges posed by adapting spaces and the effect this can have on the way people engage with these spaces, highlighting a need for innovative interventions to help communities to remain engaged with their local spaces. This work centres on integrating interactive public displays into urban environments, with a primary focus on evoking nostalgia (an affectionate feeling for the past [54]) and topophilia (emotional connections to a space [271]). This thesis embarks on a journey, engaging a diverse range of users, including designers, children, regeneration experts, and community members. It commences with a nine-month deployment of a tangible embedded interface into a dynamic urban context, receiving over 10,000 session interactions. This real-world experience shows the importance of incorporating aspects of cultural heritage and immersive content into informative designs. Subsequently, the journey explores uncharted territories, navigating the landscape of cocreation methods and collaborative efforts, culminating in the development of a multisensory installation, that integrates olfactory, auditory, and visual elements. This exploration delves into the intricacies of community engagement, technology integration, nostalgia, and the dynamics of urban regeneration. As these chapters unfold, valuablelessons are drawn from field experiences, guiding a reflective journey through the design process with an aim to advance interactive public display creation by addressing gaps in design tools and methodologies. Resulting in feature requirements for an overarching master design suite, this contribution advances the field of HCI within urban regeneration. It brings together valuable lessons learned and recommendations for integrating novel multimodal installations of the future, while also addressing the need for adaptable tools to facilitate their design. This holistic approach underscores the transformative potential of technology in shaping urban environments and community engagement

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

Use, Non-Use, and Appropriation of Large Non-Interactive Public Displays in Higher Education Contexts

Large Display Technologies (LDTs) are becoming common in public spaces, changing the way we engage and share media content. The end use of LDTs can range from broadcasting information feeds (e.g., news programming) to supporting users in manipulating on-screen content (e.g., an interactive building map). One use residing as a mid-point of this range are non-interactive LDTs with content and interaction driven by users’ own personal devices. LDTs of this type are associated with supportive furniture, connection ports, and the presence of network protocols. Potentially, users can carve out personalized activity spaces in public, allowing them to engage their digital content just as they would at home or at the office. We identify this specific use of LDTs as Publicly Appropriable LDTs (PALs). Stakeholders of PALs might understand what users need in regards to technology support and furniture, but may lack the means of evaluating the outcomes of said installation. Existing literature on LDTs do not provide frameworks on how PALs can support users’ activities. To solve these issues, we need to better understand how PALs are situated in context with respect to users and its surrounding environment. In this study, we conducted an evaluative study of a PAL installation at the College of Architecture (CoA) at Texas A&M University. The CoA’s installation of PALs consists of a set of 8 individual units dispersed across the three floors of its main academic building. Users varying from students to faculty members were interviewed and observed as they utilized these PALs in their daily practice. From this study we found three categories of findings. First, we saw how users appropriated PALs specifically to their activities. Our second finding centered on how the PALs’ displays transition in and out of active use during occupation and what this signifies as its role during use. Finally, we found that the surroundings of a PAL had space and place-based attributes that impacted users’ experience of PALs

Aspectos motivacionais no design de tecnologia para mudanças sociais

Orientador: Maria Cecília Calani BaranauskasTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Conectando pessoas e presente em todos os aspectos da vida, quando projetadas para este fim, as tecnologias têm potencial de influenciar a forma com que pessoas em um grupo social percebem e se relacionam com as coisas no ambiente. Este estudo de doutorado em Interação Humano-Computador (IHC) investiga como elementos motivacionais da Psicologia podem ser aplicados para informar o design, explo- rando esse potencial da tecnologia em promover mudanças sociais. O estudo é instanciado no domínio de consumo de energia elétrica, lidando com o desafio contemporâneo de cons- cientizar a sociedade dos limites naturais do planeta no que diz respeito ao uso de recursos naturais. Informar o design com aspectos motivacionais é uma abordagem recente em IHC. Quando encontrada na literatura, comumente tem foco em aspectos individuais e intrín- secos da motivação. Contudo, como argumentado nessa pesquisa, o contexto sociocultural evidencia a importância de considerar também os fatores externos que motivam as pessoas a se engajarem com uma tecnologia e com uma determinada questão social. Por considerar tanto fontes intrínsecas quanto extrínsecas de motivação, a Teoria da Autodeterminação é então considerada o principal referencial teórico da Psicologia nessa investigação, e a Semiótica Organizacional é a base metodológica para analisar os elemen- tos socioculturais que influenciam a motivação extrínseca. A análise situada dos dados socioculturais por uma perspectiva motivacional levou ao design da Tecnologia Socialmente Informada para Eco-Feedback de Energia (sigla SEET, em inglês), uma arquitetura que tem por objetivo estabelecer um novo padrão de com- portamento, ou uma nova maneira de perceber o consumo de energia coletivamente. O SEET é composto por um sistema interativo que promove colaboração, e pela Árvore da Energia, um dispositivo de feedback tangível para locais onde há encontro de pessoas. O SEET é avaliado em dois cenários complementares: uma Escola de Ensino Funda- mental no Brasil, onde os dados socioculturais foram coletados, analisados e aplicados para informar o design; e no contexto de um departamento de uma universidade no Reino Unido. Aspectos motivacionais da arquitetura do SEET são então analisadas, assim como o impacto dessa tecnologia ao desencadear as esperadas mudanças sociaisAbstract: By connecting people and being present in almost all aspects of life, when properly de- signed for that, technology can potentially influence the way people in a social group perceive and relate with things in their environment. This PhD study in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field investigates how motivational elements from Psychology can be applied to inform the design aiming at exploring this potential of technology for promoting a social change. The study is in- stantiated in the energy consumption domain, coping with the contemporary challenge of raising awareness among the society of the planet¿s natural resources usage and limits. Informing the design with motivational aspects is a recent approach in HCI. When found in literature, it is mostly focused on individual and intrinsic aspects of motivation. However, as argued in this research, the sociocultural context evidences the importance of considering also the external factors that motivate people to be engaged with technology and the social issue. By taking into account both intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation, the Self- Determination Theory is then considered the main theoretical background from Psychol- ogy in this investigation, and the Organisational Semiotics the methodological basis to analyse sociocultural elements that influence extrinsic motivation. The situated analysis of sociocultural data with motivational lenses has led to the de- sign of a Socially-informed Energy Eco-feedback Technology (SEET), an architecture that aims at establishing a "new pattern of behaviour", or a new way of perceiving collective energy consumption. The SEET is composed by an interactive system that promotes collaboration and The Energy Tree, a tangible and public feedback device for gathering places. The SEET is evaluated in two complementary scenarios: an elementary school in Brazil, where the sociocultural data was collected, analysed and applied to inform design; and in the context of an university department in the United Kingdom. Motivational as- pects of the SEET architecture are then analysed, as well as the impact of this technology to trigger the desired social changeDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutora em Ciência da Computaçã

Let's Walk Up and Play! Design and Evaluation of Collaborative Interactive Musical Experiences for Public Settings

This thesis focuses on the design and evaluation of interactive music systems that enable non-experts to experience collaborative music-making in public set- tings, such as museums, galleries and festivals. Although there has been previous research into music systems for non-experts, there is very limited research on how participants engage with collaborative music environments in public set- tings. Informed by a detailed assessment of related research, an interactive, multi-person music system is developed, which serves as a vehicle to conduct practice-based research in real-world settings. A central focus of the design is supporting each player's individual sense of control, in order to examine how this relates to their overall playing experience. Drawing on approaches from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and interac- tive art research, a series of user studies is conducted in public settings such as art exhibitions and festivals. Taking into account that the user experience and social dynamics around such new forms of interaction are considerably in u- enced by the context of use, this systematic assessment in real-world contexts contributes to a richer understanding of how people interact and behave in such new creative spaces. This research makes a number of contributions to the elds of HCI, interactive art and New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). It provides a set of de- sign implications to aid designers of future collaborative music systems. These are based on a number of empirical ndings that describe and explain aspects of audience behaviour, engagement and mutual interaction around public, in- teractive multi-person systems. It provides empirical evidence that there is a correlation between participants' perceived level of control and their sense of cre- ative participation and enjoyment. This thesis also develops and demonstrates the application of a mixed-method approach for studying technology-mediated collaborative creativity with live audiences.This research was funded by a Doctoral Studentship from Queen Mary University of London. The studies of this thesis were kindly supported by the Centre for Digital Music EPSRC Platform Grant (EP/E045235/1; EP/K009559/1), and by Hunan University, Changsha, China (Study II). The attendance at ACM Creativity & Cognition 2013 was kindly supported by the EPSRC funded DePIC project (EP/J017205/1)

Moving sounds and sonic moves : exploring interaction quality of embodied music mediation technologies through a user-centered perspective

This research project deals with the user-experience related to embodied music mediation technologies. More specifically, adoption and policy problems surrounding new media (art) are considered, which arise from the usability issues that to date pervade new interfaces for musical expression. Since the emergence of new wireless mediators and control devices for musical expression, there is an explicit aspiration of the creative industries and various research centers to embed such technologies into different areas of the cultural industries. The number of applications and their uses have exponentially increased over the last decade. Conversely, many of the applications to date still suffer from severe usability problems, which not only hinder the adoption by the cultural sector, but also make culture participants take a rather cautious, hesitant, or even downright negative stance towards these technologies. Therefore, this thesis takes a vantage point that is in part sociological in nature, yet has a link to cultural studies as well. It combines this with a musicological frame of reference to which it introduces empirical user-oriented approaches, predominantly taken from the field of human-computer-interaction studies. This interdisciplinary strategy is adopted to cope with the complex nature of digital embodied music controlling technologies. Within the Flanders cultural (and creative) industries, opportunities of systems affiliated with embodied interaction are created and examined. This constitutes an epistemological jigsaw that looks into 1) “which stakeholders require what various levels of involvement, what interactive means and what artistic possibilities?”, 2) “the way in which artistic aspirations, cultural prerequisites and operational necessities of (prospective) users can be defined?”, 3) “how functional, artistic and aesthetic requirements can be accommodated?”, and 4) “how quality of use and quality of experience can be achieved, quantified, evaluated and, eventually, improved?”. Within this multi-facetted problem, the eventual aim is to assess the applicability of the foresaid technology, both from a theoretically and empirically sound basis, and to facilitate widening and enhancing the adoption of said technologies. Methodologically, this is achieved by 1) applied experimentation, 2) interview techniques, 3) self-reporting and survey research, 4) usability evaluation of existing devices, and 5) human-computer interaction methods applied – and attuned – to the specific case of embodied music mediation technologies. Within that scope, concepts related to usability, flow, presence, goal assessment and game enjoyment are scrutinized and applied, and both task- and experience-oriented heuristics and metrics are developed and tested. In the first part, covering three chapters, the general context of the thesis is given. In the first chapter, an introduction to the topic is offered and the current problems are enumerated. In the second chapter, a broader theoretical background is presented of the concepts that underpin the project, namely 1) the paradigm of embodiment and its connection to musicology, 2) a state of the arts concerning new interfaces for musical expression, 3) an introduction into HCI-usability and its application domain in systematic musicology, 4) an insight into user-centered digital design procedures, and 5) the challenges brought about by e-culture and digitization for the cultural-creative industries. In the third chapter, the state of the arts concerning the available methodologies related to the thesis’ endeavor is discussed, a set of literature-based design guidelines are enumerated and from this a conceptual model is deduced which is gradually presented throughout the thesis, and fully deployed in the “SoundField”-project (as described in Chapter 9). The following chapters, contained in the second part of the thesis, give a quasi-chronological overview of how methodological concepts have been applied throughout the empirical case studies, aimed specifically at the exploration of the various aspects of the complex status quaestionis. In the fourth chapter, a series of application-based tests, predominantly revolving around interface evaluation, illustrate the complex relation between gestural interfaces and meaningful musical expression, advocating a more user-centered development approach to be adopted. In the fifth chapter, a multi-purpose questionnaire dubbed “What Moves You” is discussed, which aimed at creating a survey of the (prospective) end-users of embodied music mediation technologies. Therefore, it primarily focused on cultural background, musical profile and preferences, views on embodied interaction, literacy of and attitudes towards new technology and participation in digital culture. In the sixth chapter, the ethnographical studies that accompanied the exhibition of two interactive art pieces, entitled "Heart as an Ocean" & "Lament", are discussed. In these studies, the use of interview and questionnaire methodologies together with the presentation and reception of interactive art pieces, are probed. In the seventh chapter, the development of the collaboratively controlled music-game “Sync-In-Team” is presented, in which interface evaluation, presence, game enjoyment and goal assessment are the pivotal topics. In the eighth chapter, two usability studies are considered, that were conducted on prototype systems/interfaces, namely a heuristic evaluation of the “Virtual String” and a usability metrics evaluation on the “Multi-Level Sonification Tool”. The findings of these two studies in conjunction with the exploratory studies performed in association with the interactive art pieces, finally gave rise to the “SoundField”-project, which is recounted in full throughout the ninth chapter. The integrated participatory design and evaluation method, presented in the conceptual model is fully applied over the course of the “SoundField”-project, in which technological opportunities and ecological validity and applicability are investigated through user-informed development of numerous use cases. The third and last part of the thesis renders the final conclusions of this research project. The tenth chapter sets out with an epilogue in which a brief overview is given on how the state of the arts has evolved since the end of the project (as the research ended in 2012, but the research field has obviously moved on), and attempts to consolidate the implications of the research studies with some of the realities of the Flemish cultural-creative industries. Chapter eleven continues by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the conceptual model throughout the various stages of the project. Also, it comprises the evaluation of the hypotheses, how the assumptions that were made held up, and how the research questions eventually could be assessed. Finally, the twelfth and last chapter concludes with the most important findings of the project. Also, it discusses some of the implications on cultural production, artistic research policy and offers an outlook on future research beyond the scope of the “SoundField” project

Guiding the design and implementation of interactive public displays in educational settings

Interactive Public Displays (IPD) enable new ways of interaction as well as communication channels, extending online communities into physical places and supporting a culture of participation. While educational environments have seen how new digital technologies can enhance learning activities beyond the traditional classroom context, the use of IPDs is still an area insufficiently explored. This paper proposes a set of design goals for the implementation and deployment of engaging interactive public display applications in educational settings. Based on findings from a series of design workshops and two deployment studies in authentic settings, seven design goals were identified and defined. The design goals provide clear guidelines for the design of IPDs for schools by making design teams and stakeholders focus on factors fostering user adoption, social interactions and collaboration. The design goals also opened up paths for further explorations regarding display awareness, level of commitment in interactions, the displays’ integration into structured activities, and display management at the educational institutions