Exploring Citizen Psych-Science and the Motivations of Errordiary Volunteers

Although virtual citizen science projects have the potential to engage large networks of people in science research, seeding and maintaining such networks can be difficult. A feature of successful projects is that they have well-motivated volunteers. What makes volunteers motivated rather than apathetic? In this paper we focus on projects that contribute to psychology research, which we term ‘citizen psych-science’. This differs from typical citizen science because volunteers are asked to contribute themselves as data. We describe research studies that we conducted with Errordiary — a citizen psych-science project where volunteers tweet about their everyday experiences of human error. These studies were: (1) an interview study, to explore the motivations of eight Errordiary volunteers; and (2) three focus groups, to explore the potential of attracting new communities to Errordiary. We found that the personal nature of the data can influence participation in positive and negative ways. We suggest several factors that scientists need to consider when encouraging citizen psych-science volunteers to contribute their personal experiences towards research

Exploring Citizen Psych-Science and the Motivations of Errordiary Volunteers

Although virtual citizen science projects have the potential to engage large networks of people in science research, seeding and maintaining such networks can be difficult. A feature of successful projects is that they have well-motivated volunteers. What makes volunteers motivated rather than apathetic? In this paper we focus on projects that contribute to psychology research, which we term ‘citizen psych-science’. This differs from typical citizen science because volunteers are asked to contribute themselves as data. We describe research studies that we conducted with Errordiary – a citizen psych-science project where volunteers tweet about their everyday experiences of human error. These studies were: (1) an interview study, to explore the motivations of eight Errordiary volunteers; and (2) three focus groups, to explore the potential of attracting new communities to Errordiary. We found that the personal nature of the data can influence participation in positive and negative ways. We suggest several factors that scientists need to consider when encouraging citizen psych-science volunteers to contribute their personal experiences towards research

Reflecting on Users’ Strategies for Resilient Interactions

One crucial contributor to the resilience and reliability of interactions with technical and sociotechnical systems is the resilience of users themselves. While the study of human factors has traditionally focused on the negative aspects or frailties of human performance, attention is increasingly turning to also consider the proactive and positive contributions human performance can make across a range of tasks and settings. In this position paper, we introduce the notion of Resilience Strategies, summarise some of our current work in this area and discuss examples of resilience strategies we have encountered during the course of this work. We also discuss how work into resilience strategies is situated in terms of broader work into the high-level resilience of sociotechnical systems, and interactions with technical systems

Exploring the nature of cognitive resilience strategies

Where improving the safety or performance of a system, there is a tendency to focus on negative aspects surrounding human performance or interaction: errors, threats, past incidents or identified issues and flaws. This does not, however, tell the whole story. Users frequently deploy a variety of resilient interventions, devising and implementing strategies to improve performance and mitigate threats such as errorparticularly during complex or challenging circumstances. In so doing, users can and do make an active, positive contribution to the wider resilience of a system. To date, the subject of how individual actors within a system leverage such resilience strategies to improve the functioning of said system is a topic that has received only limited direct investigation. An initial study was undertaken as a probing investigation to test the notion of user-configured cues as a means to facilitate individual resilience. The insights from this study challenged an existing foundational categorisation scheme, which we then sought to expand and refine in collaboration with its original authors, to better represent and articulate 10 different types of resilience strategy. As a means to broaden our real-world pool of strategy accounts, a diary study was then conducted, the resulting data being used to both inform and validate a new iteration of the scheme. Stemming from challenges of the applicability of the scheme to complex resilience cases, we introduced the notion of a new type of compound strategy, and developed a framework to support their analysis by deconstructing them to examine their motivational and functional components. A final controlled laboratory study was undertaken to apply our insights. The resultant refined categorisation scheme and conceptual framework enrich our understanding of the phenomenon of user or individual resilience and could potentially be leveraged to inform and support the design of future technical and sociotechnical systems

INTERACT 2015 Adjunct Proceedings. 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 14-18 September 2015, Bamberg, Germany

INTERACT is among the world’s top conferences in Human-Computer Interaction. Starting with the first INTERACT conference in 1990, this conference series has been organised under the aegis of the Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction of the UNESCO International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). This committee aims at developing the science and technology of the interaction between humans and computing devices. The 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2015 took place from 14 to 18 September 2015 in Bamberg, Germany. The theme of INTERACT 2015 was "Connection.Tradition.Innovation". This volume presents the Adjunct Proceedings - it contains the position papers for the students of the Doctoral Consortium as well as the position papers of the participants of the various workshops