Collaborating through sounds: audio-only interaction with diagrams

PhDThe widening spectrum of interaction contexts and users’ needs continues to expose the limitations of the Graphical User Interface. But despite the benefits of sound in everyday activities and considerable progress in Auditory Display research, audio remains under-explored in Human- Computer Interaction (HCI). This thesis seeks to contribute to unveiling the potential of using audio in HCI by building on and extending current research on how we interact with and through the auditory modality. Its central premise is that audio, by itself, can effectively support collaborative interaction with diagrammatically represented information. Before exploring audio-only collaborative interaction, two preliminary questions are raised; first, how to translate a given diagram to an alternative form that can be accessed in audio; and second, how to support audio-only interaction with diagrams through the resulting form. An analysis of diagrams that emphasises their properties as external representations is used to address the first question. This analysis informs the design of a multiple perspective hierarchybased model that captures modality-independent features of a diagram when translating it into an audio accessible form. Two user studies then address the second question by examining the feasibility of the developed model to support the activities of inspecting, constructing and editing diagrams in audio. The developed model is then deployed in a collaborative lab-based context. A third study explores audio-only collaboration by examining pairs of participants who use audio as the sole means to communicate, access and edit shared diagrams. The channels through which audio is delivered to the workspace are controlled, and the effect on the dynamics of the collaborations is investigated. Results show that pairs of participants are able to collaboratively construct diagrams through sounds. Additionally, the presence or absence of audio in the workspace, and the way in which collaborators chose to work with audio were found to impact patterns of collaborative organisation, awareness of contribution to shared tasks and exchange of workspace awareness information. This work contributes to the areas of Auditory Display and HCI by providing empirically grounded evidence of how the auditory modality can be used to support individual and collaborative interaction with diagrams.Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. (MERS

Designing Sugaropolis:digital games as a medium for conveying transnational narratives

In this paper, the authors present a case study of ‘Sugaropolis’: a two-year practice-based project that involved interdisciplinary co-design and stakeholder evaluation of two digital game prototypes. Drawing on the diverse expertise of the research team (game design and development, human geography, and transnational narratives), the paper aims to contribute to debates about the use of digital games as a medium for representing the past. With an emphasis on design-as-research, we consider how digital games can be (co-)designed to communicate complex histories and geographies in which people, objects, and resources are connected through space and time

A case study in online formal/informal learning: was it collaborative or cooperative learning?

Developing skills in communication and collaboration is essential in modern design education, in order to prepare students for the realities of design practice, where projects involve multidisciplinary teams, often working remotely. This paper presents a learning activity that focusses on developing communication and collaboration skills of undergraduate design students working remotely and vocational learners based in a community makerspace. Participants were drawn from these formal and informal educational settings and engaged in a design-make project framed in the context of distributed manufacturing. They were given designer or maker roles and worked at distance from each other, communicating using asynchronous online tools. Analysis of the collected data has identified a diversity of working practice across the participants, and highlighted the difficulties that result from getting students to work collaboratively, when not collocated. This paper presents and analysis of participants’ communications, with a view to identify whether they were learning collaboratively, or cooperatively. It was found that engaging participants in joint problem solving is not enough to facilitate collaboration. Instead effective collaboration depends on symmetry within the roles of participants and willingness to share expertise through dialogue. Designing learning activities to overcome the challenges that these factors raise is a difficult task, and the research reported here provides some valuable insight

Exploring haptic interfacing with a mobile robot without visual feedback

Search and rescue scenarios are often complicated by low or no visibility conditions. The lack of visual feedback hampers orientation and causes significant stress for human rescue workers. The Guardians project [1] pioneered a group of autonomous mobile robots assisting a human rescue worker operating within close range. Trials were held with fire fighters of South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue. It became clear that the subjects by no means were prepared to give up their procedural routine and the feel of security they provide: they simply ignored instructions that contradicted their routines

Visualising product-service system business models

Copyright © 2014. Copyright in each paper in this conference’s proceedings is the property of the author(s). Permission is granted to reproduce copies of these works for purposes relevant to the above conference, provided that the author(s), source and copyright notice are included on each copy. For other uses, including extended quotation, please contact the author(s).The paper addresses the issue of how to visualise innovative business models at various stages of the design and development process. The focus is on a particular type of business model, defined Product-Service Systems (PSSs), characterised by an integrated product-service offering, but can be generalised to other business model innovations. The paper presents a visualisation system based on a formalised business model ontology and a set of visualisation tools, and discusses how it can be used to enhance internal and external communication and improve dialogue and co-design activities inside the company and with external stakeholders

Supporting Worth Mapping with Sentence Completion

Expectations for design and evaluation approaches are set by the development practices within which they are used. Worth Centred Development (WCD) seeks to both shape and fit such practices. We report a study that combined two WCD approaches. Sentence completion gathered credible quantitative data on user values, which were used to identify relevant values and aversions of two player groups for an online gambling site. These values provided human value elements for a complementary WCD approach of worth mapping. Initial worth maps were extended in three workshops, which focused on outcomes and user experiences that could be better addressed in the current product and associated marketing materials. We describe how worth maps were prepared for, and presented in, workshops, and how product owners and associated business roles evaluated the combination of WCD approaches. Based on our experiences, we offer practical advice on this combinination

Inspirational Bits - Towards a Shared Understanding of the Digital Material

In any design process, a medium’s properties need to be considered. This is nothing new in design. Still we find that in HCI and interactive systems design the properties of a technology are often glossed over. That is, technologies are black-boxed without much thought given to how their distinctive properties open up design possibilities. In this paper we describe what we call inspirational bits as a way to become more familiar with the design material in HCI, the digital material. We describe inspirational bits as quick and dirty but fully working systems in both hardware and software built with the aim of exposing one or several of the dynamic properties of a digital material. We also show how they provide a means of sharing design knowledge across the members of a multi-disciplined design team

Capturing tacit knowledge: Documenting and understanding recent methodological innovation used in Design Doctorates in order to inform Postgraduate training provision

This paper presents a preliminary review of recent Design PhDs that identify and analyse the methodological innovation that is occurring in the field, in order to inform future provision of research training for Design PhDs. Six recently completed Design PhDs are used to highlight possible philosophical and practical models that can be adopted by future PhD design students. Four characteristics were found in Design PhD methodology; thesis-structural innovation, a ‘pick and mix’ research design approach, situating practice in the enquiry and the validation of visual analysis. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on how research training can be improved for Design PhD candidates. By being aware of recent methodological innovations in the field, design educators will be better informed when developing resources for future design doctoral candidates, and assisting supervision teams in developing a more informed and flexible approach to practice-led research

Design as communication in micro-strategy — strategic sensemaking and sensegiving mediated through designed artefacts.

This paper relates key concepts of strategic cognition in microstrategy to design practice. It considers the potential roles of designers' output in strategic sensemaking and sensegiving. Designed artifacts play well-known roles as communication media; sketches, renderings, models, and prototypes are created to explore and test possibilities and to communicate these options within and outside the design team. This article draws on design and strategy literature to propose that designed artifacts can and do play a role as symbolic communication resources in sensemaking and sensegiving activities that impact strategic decision making and change. Extracts from interviews with three designers serve as illustrative examples. This article is a call for further empirical exploration of such a complex subject

Next steps in implementing Kaput's research programme

We explore some key constructs and research themes initiated by Jim Kaput, and attempt to illuminate them further with reference to our own research. These 'design principles' focus on the evolution of digital representations since the early nineties, and we attempt to take forward our collective understanding of the cognitive and cultural affordances they offer. There are two main organising ideas for the paper. The first centres around Kaput's notion of outsourcing of processing power, and explores the implications of this for mathematical learning. We argue that a key component for design is to create visible, transparent views of outsourcing, a transparency without which there may be as many pitfalls as opportunities for mathematical learning. The second organising idea is that of communication, a key notion for Kaput, and the importance of designing for communication in ways that recognise the mutual influence of tools for communication and for mathematical expression