156 research outputs found
Digital Mental Health and Social Connectedness
A detailed understanding of the mental health needs of people from refugee backgrounds is crucial for the design of inclusive mental health technologies. We present a qualitative account of the digital mental health experiences of women from refugee backgrounds. Working with community members and community workers of a charitable organisation for refugee women in the UK, we identify social and structural challenges, including loneliness and access to mental health technologies. Participants' accounts document their collective agency in addressing these challenges and supporting social connectedness and personal wellbeing in daily life: participants reported taking part in community activities as volunteers, sharing technological expertise, and using a wide range of non-mental health-focused technologies to support their mental health, from playing games to supporting religious practices. Our findings suggest that, rather than focusing only on individual self-care, research also needs to leverage community-driven approaches to foster social mental health experiences, from altruism to connectedness and belonging
"They're all going out to something weird": workflow, legacy and metadata in the music production process
In this paper we use results from two ethnographic studies of the music production process to examine some key issues regarding how work is currently accomplished in studio production environments. These issues relate in particular to workflows and how metadata is adapted to the specific needs of specific parts of the process. We find that there can be significant tensions between how reasoning is applied to metadata at different stages of production and that this can lead to overheads where metadata has to be either changed or created anew to make the process work. On the basis of these findings we articulate some of the potential solutions we are now examining. These centre in particular upon the notions of Digital/Dynamic Musical Objects and flexible metadata shells
Designing Collaborative Data Collection Interfaces for Low-literate Users
Data collection applications on smartphone devices support indigenous communities in developing countries to record and preserve traditional ecological knowledge, collaboratively collect data around issues that are important to them and use these tools to subsequently identify locally-acceptable solutions with global impacts. Development of these interfaces needs to consider usersâ familiarity with technology as well as their education and literacy levels. This study builds on existing HCI4D research, which is also of interest to the CSCW community, in order to develop and evaluate, for their usability and user preferences, four user interfaces with low-literate people in the UK. Our findings suggest that linear navigation structures and a tangible interface are almost equally usable and preferred when they require minimum interaction with the device. Our preliminary analysis provides a deeper insight into the design issues to inform development of smartphone-based interfaces using various interaction types and we report on our methodological challenges from carrying out HCI research with low-literate people in the UK. The findings of this paper are used to inform the experimental design of additional work that we carry out with low-literate users in Namibia
Annual Report 2016-2017
The College of Computing and Digital Media has always prided itself on curriculum, creative work, and research that stays current with changes in our various fields of instruction. As we looked back on our 2016-17 academic year, the need to chronicle the breadth and excellence of this work became clear. We are pleased to share with you this annual report, our first, highlighting our accomplishments.
Last year, we began offering three new graduate programs and two new certificate programs. We also planned six degree programs and three new certificate programs for implementation in the current academic year. CDM faculty were published more than 100 times, had their films screened more than 200 times, and participated in over two dozen exhibitions. Our students were recognized for their scholarly and creative work, and our alumni accomplished amazing things, from winning a Student Academy Award to receiving a Pulitzer. We are proud of all the work we have done together.
One notable priority for us in 2016-17 was creating and strengthening relationships with industryâincluding expanding our footprint at Cinespace and developing the iD Labâas well as with the community, through partnerships with the Chicago Housing Authority, Wabash Lights, and other nonprofit organizations. We look forward to continuing to provide innovative programs and spaces this academic year. Two areas in particular weâve been watching closely are makerspaces and the âinternet of things.â Weâve already made significant commitments to these areas through the creation of our 4,500 square foot makerspace, the Idea Realization Lab, and our new cyber-physical systems bachelorâs program and lab. We are excited to continue providing the opportunities, curriculum, and facilities to support our remarkable students.
David MillerDean, College of Computing and Digital Mediahttps://via.library.depaul.edu/cdmannual/1000/thumbnail.jp
Designing human-centered technologies to mobilize social media data into institutional contexts
Social media platforms have become an established and alternative mechanism for communities to mobilize and exchange information in response to humanitarian or local crises. Due to the richness of experiences accumulated on social media platforms, this content can be valuable for civil and non-profit organizations working to address social and development challenges. At the core of my dissertation is to examine what entails not only analyzing social media data but also the implications of integrating the insights obtained from that analysis into the context of actors and institutions who might act upon those insights, such as civil and non-profit organizations.
Using social media data as evidence by institutions to inform their work entails three main challenges âaccuracy, representation, and contextâ due to the nature of social media data. Additionally, using this type of content to inform the design of interventions and technologies that will support the studied communities entails reflecting on how we make sense of data. Within the CSCW and HCI community, there has been a growing focus on using a computational approach to establish metrics and develop tools to analyze and make inferences from social media data. However, by constraining the examination of this type of data through the exclusive use of computational techniques, there is a high risk of neglecting the social, cultural, and temporal context of the data.
In response, my fieldwork consisted in following a mixed-methods approach to understanding the underlying situations that force communities to use social media platforms as a means of organization and the implications for non-profit organizations to make social media data actionable to inform their work. Based on the findings of my fieldwork, I designed, deployed, and evaluated a toolkit addressed to practitioners working in civil and non-profit organizations interested in using data from Twitter to identify local capacities, monitor community crises, and develop interventions. The toolkit comprises computational tools that allow searching, collecting, and analyzing data from Twitter. Additionally, the toolkit includes a manual and worksheets that guide practitioners to critically approach social media data and recognize the possibilities and limitations of this type of data by considering the challenges previously mentioned âaccuracy, representation, and context.
In summary, the outcome of my research provides empirical evidence and situated tools for approaching social media data not as an independent identity but rather in light of the interplay between the online and offline behavior of the communities that produce such data. This dissertation offers two contributions to the growing body of work in HCI and CSCW invested in reflecting on the transformative character of data. First, it illuminates the large ecosystem of norms and practices of multiple actors, infrastructures, and databases that we need to consider to mobilize data from online platforms into institutional contexts. Second, the design of the toolkit proposes an actionable example of how to promote a situated examination of data. While my research has focused only on examining data from social media platforms, the contributions of my work are meaningful in the broader context of data-centric technologies. As we continue to deploy this technology, it is imperative to interrogate the assumptions and biases encapsulated within those technologies, specifically the data that feed them, and how they impact our understanding of human networks and communities.Ph.D
Sculpting reality from our dreams: Prefigurative design for civic engagement
At their core, organizing and activist work are about envisioning and working towards an alternative, more just political future. Various digital tools are used to support activist work, however these tools engage with values that are at odds with activist practices: where many activists do work in the service of social justice and equity, the digital tools they use are often corporate made, and thus support the status quo, i.e. profit generation, cis-heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, oppression. The ideals underlying activistsâ equitable visionsâof a more accessible and just futureâdrive their practices. This intentional alignment falls under the purview of prefigurative politics, where political work âexpress[es] the political âendsâ of their actions through their âmeans.ââ [53] If activists envision a more democratic future, they adopt more equitable practices in the present in anticipation of building a more equitable future. This dissertation explores the role of digital tools to contribute toâto prefigureâalternative, more radical political values. My work uses design research and anarchist literature to explore the opportunities that ICTs offer in support of radically progressive political organizing. This work offers prefigurative design as an approach for designers and practitioners who work with communities in service of progressive political change. Prefigurative design is an orientation within HCI design and research that encourages critical reflection of research and design practices to better align design artifacts and processes with anarchist goals of anti-oppression and collective liberation, ultimately building counter-structures to replace existing institutions complicit in violence and oppression.Ph.D
Privacy For Whom? A Multi-Stakeholder Exploration of Privacy Designs
Privacy is considered one of the fundamental human rights. Researchers have been investigating privacy issues in various domains, such as our physical privacy, data privacy, privacy as a legal right, and privacy designs. In the Human-Computer Interaction field, privacy researchers have been focusing on understanding people\u27s privacy concerns when they interact with computing systems, designing and building privacy-enhancing technologies to help people mitigate these concerns, and investigating how people\u27s privacy perceptions and the privacy designs influence people\u27s behaviors.
Existing privacy research has been overwhelmingly focusing on the privacy needs of end-users, i.e., people who use a system or a product, such as Internet users and smartphone users. However, as our computing systems are becoming more and more complex, privacy issues within these systems have started to impact not only the end-users but also other stakeholders, and privacy-enhancing mechanisms designed for the end-users can also affect multiple stakeholders beyond the users.
In this dissertation, I examine how different stakeholders perceive privacy-related issues and expect privacy designs to function across three application domains: online behavioral advertising, drones, and smart homes. I choose these three domains because they represent different multi-stakeholder environments with varying nature of complexity. In particular, these environments present the opportunities to study technology-mediated interpersonal relationships, i.e., the relationship between primary users (owners, end-users) and secondary users (bystanders), and to investigate how these relationships influence people\u27s privacy perceptions and their desired ways of privacy protection.
Through a combination of qualitative, quantitative, and design methods, including interviews, surveys, participatory designs, and speculative designs, I present how multi-stakeholder considerations change our understandings of privacy and influence privacy designs. I draw design implications from the study results and guide future privacy designs to consider the needs of different stakeholders, e.g., cooperative mechanisms that aim to enhance the communication between primary and secondary users.
In addition, this methodological approach allows researchers to directly and proactively engage with multiple stakeholders and explore their privacy perceptions and expected privacy designs. This is different from what has been commonly used in privacy literature and as such, points to a methodological contribution.
Finally, this dissertation shows that when applying the theory of Contextual Integrity in a multi-stakeholder environment, there are hidden contextual factors that may alter the contextual informational norms. I present three examples from the study results and argue that it is necessary to carefully examine such factors in order to clearly identify the contextual norms. I propose a research agenda to explore best practices of applying the theory of Contextual Integrity in a multi-stakeholder environment
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Newcomersâ Barriers. . . Is That All? An Analysis of Mentorsâ and Newcomersâ Barriers in OSS Projects
Newcomersâ seamless onboarding is important for open collaboration communi- ties, particularly those that leverage outsidersâ contributions to remain sustainable. Nevertheless, previous work shows that OSS newcomers often face several barriers to contribute, which lead them to lose motivation and even give up on contributing. A well-known way to help newcomers overcome initial contribution barriers is men- toring. This strategy has proven effective in offline and online communities, and to some extent has been employed in OSS projects. Studying mentorsâ perspectives on the barriers that newcomers face play a vital role in improving onboarding pro- cesses; yet, OSS mentors face their own barriers, which hinder the effectiveness of the strategy. Since little is known about the barriers mentors face, in this thesis, we investigate the barriers that affect mentors and their newcomer mentees. We interviewed mentors from OSS projects and qualitatively analyzed their answers.
We found 44 barriers: 19 that affect mentors; and 34 that affect newcomers (9 af- fect both newcomers and mentors). Interestingly, most of the barriers we identified (66%) have a social nature. Additionally, we identified 10 strategies that mentors indicated to potentially alleviate some of the barriers. Since gender-related chal- lenges emerged in our analysis, we conducted nine follow-up structured interviews to further explore this perspective. The contributions of this thesis include: iden- tifying the barriers mentors face; bringing the unique perspective of mentors on barriers faced by newcomers; unveiling strategies that can be used by mentors to support newcomers; and investigating gender-specific challenges in OSS mentor- ship. Mentors, newcomers, online communities, and educators can leverage this knowledge to foster new contributors to OSS projects
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