Understanding Context to Capture when Reconstructing Meaningful Spaces for Remote Instruction and Connecting in XR

Recent technological advances are enabling HCI researchers to explore interaction possibilities for remote XR collaboration using high-fidelity reconstructions of physical activity spaces. However, creating these reconstructions often lacks user involvement with an overt focus on capturing sensory context that does not necessarily augment an informal social experience. This work seeks to understand social context that can be important for reconstruction to enable XR applications for informal instructional scenarios. Our study involved the evaluation of an XR remote guidance prototype by 8 intergenerational groups of closely related gardeners using reconstructions of personally meaningful spaces in their gardens. Our findings contextualize physical objects and areas with various motivations related to gardening and detail perceptions of XR that might affect the use of reconstructions for remote interaction. We discuss implications for user involvement to create reconstructions that better translate real-world experience, encourage reflection, incorporate privacy considerations, and preserve shared experiences with XR as a medium for informal intergenerational activities.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, 4 table

Post-mortem information management: exploring contextual factors in appropriate personal data access after death

\ua9 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.With the increasing size and complexity of personal information and data landscapes, there is a need for guidance and support in the appropriate management of a deceased person’s postmortem privacy and digital legacy. However, most people engage poorly with existing mechanisms for specifying and planning for access and suitable usage of their own data. We report on two studies exploring the ways in which contextual factors such as the accessor and the data type may affect the appropriateness of personal data flows differently during life and after death. Our findings indicate that suitable data access after death is highly individual and contextual, with differences in appropriateness between during-life and after-death data flows significantly affected by the accessor and the data type in question. We identify that ambiguous accessor motivation, failure to communicate intent, changing temporal context and latent data values further complicate the act of digital legacy planning. Our findings also provide further evidence for the existence of a postmortem privacy paradox in which reported user behaviors do not reflect intent. With this in mind, we offer design recommendations for the integration of digital legacy planning functionality within Personal Information Management (PIM) and Group Information Management (GIM) systems

Defining What Matters When Preserving Web-Based Personal Digital Collections: Listening to Bloggers

User-generated content (UGC) has become a part of personal digital collections on the Web, as such collections often contain personal memories, activities, thoughts and even profiles. With the increase in the creation of personal materials on the Web, the needs for archiving and preserving these materials are increasing, not only for the purpose of developing personal archives but also for the purpose of capturing social memory and tracking human traces in this era. Using both survey and interview methods, this study investigated blogs, one popular type of UGC, and analyzed travel bloggers’ perceptions of the value of blogs and the elements of blogs that are important for preservation. The study respondents found personal and sentimental value (e.g., a way to express themselves, a way to keep personal memories and thoughts, and a way to maintain a record for their family) to be the most important reason for preserving blogs, followed by informational value and cultural/historical value. Sharing also appeared as one of the values that respondents found in their blogs. The respondents reported that self-created blog posts (content) and information related to the blog posts (context) are more important to preserve than some other elements (behavior and appearance). Integrating what bloggers consider as most valuable and what archivists think are worth preserving may be an important step when collecting personal blogs

Designing Hybrid Interactions through an Understanding of the Affordances of Physical and Digital Technologies

Two recent technological advances have extended the diversity of domains and social contexts of Human-Computer Interaction: the embedding of computing capabilities into physical hand-held objects, and the emergence of large interactive surfaces, such as tabletops and wall boards. Both interactive surfaces and small computational devices usually allow for direct and space-multiplex input, i.e., for the spatial coincidence of physical action and digital output, in multiple points simultaneously. Such a powerful combination opens novel opportunities for the design of what are considered as hybrid interactions in this work. This thesis explores the affordances of physical interaction as resources for interface design of such hybrid interactions. The hybrid systems that are elaborated in this work are envisioned to support specific social and physical contexts, such as collaborative cooking in a domestic kitchen, or collaborative creativity in a design process. In particular, different aspects of physicality characteristic of those specific domains are explored, with the aim of promoting skill transfer across domains. irst, different approaches to the design of space-multiplex, function-specific interfaces are considered and investigated. Such design approaches build on related work on Graspable User Interfaces and extend the design space to direct touch interfaces such as touch-sensitive surfaces, in different sizes and orientations (i.e., tablets, interactive tabletops, and walls). These approaches are instantiated in the design of several experience prototypes: These are evaluated in different settings to assess the contextual implications of integrating aspects of physicality in the design of the interface. Such implications are observed both at the pragmatic level of interaction (i.e., patterns of users' behaviors on first contact with the interface), as well as on user' subjective response. The results indicate that the context of interaction affects the perception of the affordances of the system, and that some qualities of physicality such as the 3D space of manipulation and relative haptic feedback can affect the feeling of engagement and control. Building on these findings, two controlled studies are conducted to observe more systematically the implications of integrating some of the qualities of physical interaction into the design of hybrid ones. The results indicate that, despite the fact that several aspects of physical interaction are mimicked in the interface, the interaction with digital media is quite different and seems to reveal existing mental models and expectations resulting from previous experience with the WIMP paradigm on the desktop PC

Enhancing intangible cultural heritage for sustainable tourism development in rural areas: the case of the “Marche food and wine memories” project (Italy)

In the context of increasing interest in the contribution made by culture to the implementation of the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the present research investigates how intangible cultural heritage (ICH) can help sustainable tourism in rural areas. Adopting a case study methodology, we analyzed the “Marche Food and Wine Memories” project, an initiative promoted by CiùCiù, a winery based in Offida, a small village in the Marche region (Italy). After discussing the strategies and tools adopted to enhance rural heritage, the analysis focuses on the involvement of local communities and businesses in the different phases of the process. The research aimed to understand: (1) the project’s current contribution to the economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions of sustainability; and (2) its strengths and weaknesses and possible future improvements. The research findings confirm the high potentialities of ICH-based initiatives for sustainable tourism development in rural areas, but also reveal the need to improve the level of networking with local businesses and highlight gaps in marketing and management skills. Finally, the results provide policy and managerial implications for similar ICH-based initiatives

Grassroots Heritage: A Multi-Method Investigation of How Social Media Sustain the Living Heritage of Historic Crises

Unprecedented uses of information and communication technology (ICT) and particularly social media (e.g., Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter) are occurring in times of crisis. This dissertation investigates the socio-technical practices emerging from the use of social media and how these practices help to sustain the living heritage of historic crises. The purpose is to provide empirical evidence on how heritage is a living and participatory phenomenon that needs to be considered when designing technology for heritage matters. The concepts of grassroots heritage and socially-distributed curation are offered as a way of interpreting heritage in the context of the participatory culture. This dissertation presents a multi-method investigation to determine what crisis narratives appeared in social media and how social media were used to sustain these narratives through curatorial activities. The first study surveys the social media presence of 111 crisis events that occurred between 1960 and 2010 to examine if and how past historically significant crisis events were being commemorated in the present day through new media. Then, ethnographic and automated collection methods were used to identify narratives appearing in the social media landscape for four crisis events that exhibited a high social media presence in the survey. The dissertation presents five meta-narratives for two crisis cases: (1) the 1984 Bhopal gas leak and (2) the 2001 September 11 attacks. One critical finding is that people sustain the heritage of historic crises in the digital world by perpetually revising narratives while adapting these messages to the new media of today. The second study critiques both the concept of “curator” as a profession as well as the concept of “curation” that is emerging from the social web to develop an initial conceptual model of curation. The final study involved the application and assessment of this initial conceptual model by analyzing the curatorial activities that produced the crisis narratives found in the first study. From this assessment, I articulate a theoretical model called socially-distributed curation to inform the design of future social technology

Investigating Obfuscation as a Tool to Enhance Photo Privacy on Social Networks Sites

Photos which contain rich visual information can be a source of privacy issues. Some privacy issues associated with photos include identification of people, inference attacks, location disclosure, and sensitive information leakage. However, photo privacy is often hard to achieve because the content in the photos is both what makes them valuable to viewers, and what causes privacy concerns. Photo sharing often occurs via Social Network Sites (SNSs). Photo privacy is difficult to achieve via SNSs due to two main reasons: first, SNSs seldom notify users of the sensitive content in their photos that might cause privacy leakage; second, the recipient control tools available on SNSs are not effective. The only solution that existing SNSs (e.g., Facebook, Flickr) provide is control over who receives a photo. This solution allows users to withhold the entire photo from certain viewers while sharing it with other viewers. The idea is that if viewers cannot see a photo, then privacy risk is minimized. However, withholding or self-censoring photos is not always the solution people want. In some cases, people want to be able to share photos, or parts of photos, even when they have privacy concerns about the photo. To provide better online photo privacy protection options for users, we leverage a behavioral theory of privacy that identifies and focuses on two key elements that influence privacy -- information content and information recipient. This theory provides a vocabulary for discussing key aspects of privacy and helps us organize our research to focus on the two key parameters through a series of studies. In my thesis, I describe five studies I have conducted. First, I focus on the content parameter to identify what portions of an image are considered sensitive and therefore are candidates to be obscured to increase privacy. I provide a taxonomy of content sensitivity that can help designers of photo-privacy mechanisms understand what categories of content users consider sensitive. Then, focusing on the recipient parameter, I describe how elements of the taxonomy are associated with users\u27 sharing preferences for different categories of recipients (e.g., colleagues vs. family members). Second, focusing on controlling photo content disclosure, I invented privacy-enhancing obfuscations and evaluated their effectiveness against human recognition and studied how they affect the viewing experience. Third, after discovering that avatar and inpainting are two promising obfuscation methods, I studied whether they were robust when de-identifying both familiar and unfamiliar people since viewers are likely to know the people in OSN photos. Additionally, I quantified the prevalence of self-reported photo self-censorship and discovered that privacy-preserving obfuscations might be useful for combating photo self-censorship. Gaining sufficient knowledge from the studies above, I proposed a privacy-enhanced photo-sharing interface that helps users identify the potential sensitive content and provides obfuscation options. To evaluate the interface, I compared the proposed obfuscation approach with the other two approaches – a control condition that mimics the current Facebook photo-sharing interface and an interface that provides a privacy warning about potentially sensitive content. The results show that our proposed system performs better over the other two in terms of reducing perceived privacy risks, increasing willingness to share, and enhancing usability. Overall, our research will benefit privacy researchers, online social network designers, policymakers, computer vision researchers, and anyone who has or wants to share photos online

Interpretation, meaning-making, and civic engagement at Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site

Using qualitative methodology, this study investigated interpretation, meaning-making, and civic engagement at Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. Based upon constructivist learning theory, the research focused on eight research questions including: 1) What memories do visitors recall from their visit to CHSNHS? 2) What kind of knowledge do visitors remember? 3) Are visitors making meaningful connections to the resource? 4) What meanings are visitors making? 5) How are the meanings made? 6) Are these meanings connected to civic engagement? 7) What types of citizens are visitors to Central High School NHS? 8) Longitudinal changes in knowledge, meaningful connections, and how meanings were constructed?;Visitors exhibited four types of memories: declarative, experiential, episodic and structural, and five different types of knowledge: declarative, experiential, episodic, structural and socio-cultural. Visitors made meaningful connections which were cognitive and emotional, which were both positive and negative, and these meanings were made through evaluation, establishment, personal experience, absolute description, and special knowledge. Visitors participated in various community activities, but their knowledge and feeling about the site did not translate into action. There were six passive citizens, seven active, and four civically engaged citizens. Longitudinally, there were increases in types of knowledge, changes in meaningful connections, and differences in how meanings were made. Future research should focus on the role of churches in civic engagement and conversations with others when investigating interpretation, meaning-making, and civic engagement