Aspects of everyday design: Resourcefulness, adaptation, and emergence

This article discusses how families appropriate artifacts and surroundings that lead to the design of everyday household systems, such as combining a chalkboard, a door frame, and a hanging basket with paper and sticky notes to manage lists and messages. Such systems continually evolve through the catalytic pressures of individual actions and design-in-use. The article reports on a study of four families in which the concept of everyday design in the home was being researched. In-depth descriptions and discussions of the observations and patterns are presented. The design implications of this study are also discussed. The research contributions are an explanation of everyday design as a novel way to understand interactions and routines in the home, descriptions of the key actions and process in everyday design, and the need to reconstruct the user in the sense of an everyday designer

The Smartphone: A Lacanian Stain, A Tech Killer, and an Embodiment of Radical Individualism

YAFR (Yet another futile rant) presents the smartphone: an unstoppable piece of technology generated from a perfect storm of commercial, technological, social and psychological factors. We begin by misquoting Steve Jobs and by being unfairly rude about the HCI community. We then consider the smartphone's ability to kill off competing technology and to undermine collectivism. We argue that its role as a Lacanian stain, an exploitative tool, and as a means of concentrating power into the hands of the few, make it a technology that will rival the personal automobile in its effect on modern society

Who Learns What From the New Human-Computer Interaction: Toward a New Perspective

A new human-computer interaction (HCI) in which narrow-form interaction with devices more seamlessly serves broader-form interaction among people and organizations, especially over the Web, marks an important phase of the information revolution of recent decades. Four forms of broad computer-mediated interaction among individuals are identified: informational, cooperational, transactional, and social. Who learns what from the new HCI varies significantly across forms. In addition to the parties to the interactions, third parties that facilitate them learn too, amplifying the overall process. The perspective of the new HCI provides a promising foundation for guiding and potentially uniting future information systems research

A sustainable identity: The creativity of an everyday designer

In this paper we explore sustainability in interaction design by reframing concepts of user identity and use in a domestic setting. Building on our own work on everyday design and Blevis’s Sustainable Interaction Design principles, we present examples from an ethnographic study of families in their homes which illustrate design-in-use: the creative and sustainable ways people appropriate and adapt designed artifacts. We claim that adopting a conception of the user as a creative everyday designer generates a new set of design principles that promote sustainable interaction design

From users to citizens: Some thoughts on designing for polity and civics

This paper presents an essay aimed at prompting broad discussion crucial in keeping the interaction design discourse fresh, critical, and in motion. We trace the changing role of people who have advanced from consumers to producers, from stationary office workers to mobile urban nomads, from passive members of the plebs to active instigators of change. Yet, interaction designers often still refer to them only as ‘users.’ We follow some of the historic developments from the information superhighway to the smart city in order to provide the backdrop in front of which we critically analyse three core areas. First, the issue of echo chambers and filter bubbles in social media results in a political polarisation that jeopardises the formation of a functioning public sphere. Second, pretty lights and colourful façades in media architecture are increasingly making way for situated installations and interventions fostering community engagement. And third, civic activism is often reduced to forms of slacktivism. We synthesise our discussion to propose ‘citizen-ability’ as an alternative goal for interaction designers to aspire to in order to create new polities and civics for a better quality of life

Theory, Design and Evaluation – (Don’t Just) Pick any Two

The following discussion takes to heart Benbasat’s (2010) and Lyytinen’s (2010) suggestion that design science techniques should be more fully embraced by the HCI community. Design science approaches, which – in their ideal form – equally emphasize theory, design, and evaluation through an iterative design/research process (Amiel and Reeves, 2008, Hevner et al., 2004, March and Smith, 1995, Markus et al., 2002, Wang and Hannafin, 2005), offer a comprehensive way to tackle many of the complex and sometimes highly subjective design-oriented research questions that are so familiar within the HCI discipline. In this response paper, three typical, high-quality HCI papers are examined in detail to explore the nature of the “pick any two” problem. Suggestions for how missing methodologies might be incorporated into these works through the design science approach are provided. Additionally, a brief review of HCI literature from three publication venues is conducted in order to roughly identify the extent of the “pick any two” problem. Several broad-based reasons for methodology omission are discussed, with suggestions for ways that these institutional challenges might be circumvented or overcome

Reflexões sobre o Fazer e o Compreender Pesquisa em IHC

Reflexões sobre o Fazer e o Compreender Pesquisa em IH

Explicit feedback from users attenuates memory biases in human-system dialogue

In human–human dialogue, the way in which a piece of information is added to the partners’ common ground (i.e., presented and accepted) constitutes an important determinant of subsequent dialogue memory. The aim of this study was to determine whether this is also the case in human-system dialogue. An experiment was conducted in which naïve participants and a simulated dialogue system took turns to present references to various landmarks featured on a list. The kind of feedback used to accept these references (verbatim repetition vs. implicit acceptance) was manipulated. The participants then performed a recognition test during which they attempted to identify the references mentioned previously. Self-presented references were recognised better than references presented by the system; however, such presentation bias was attenuated when the initial presentation of these references was followed by verbatim repetition. Implications for the design of automated dialogue systems are discussed

Talking about quality improvement : impacts of communication and quality management on hospital management : an empirical study

The current aging demographic challenges societies to develop structures that meet their physical and psycho-emotional needs. Nevertheless, the frequent use of medical services and or hospital units overload the system, causing a shortage of resources that may compromise the quality and safety of care for users. The study I am presenting aims to verify the contributions of a Quality Management System in the communication practices of CHO and thus contribute to improving patient safety. Twenty-nine health professionals were interviewed, distributed among different professional categories. The results showed that the means of communication used among professionals are multiple, existing information overload and or communication failure that are potentially harmful to the patient's safety. All interviewees recognize the need to improve the communication process in order to optimize its effectiveness. The implementation of a QMS can contribute to the improvement of the CHO's communication practices. Once the QMS is implemented and internalized in an organization, the improvements in results are evident. Quality management systems are important for the continuous improvement of any organization, optimizing its resources and improving its performance.O envelhecimento demográfico desafia as sociedades mundiais a desenvolver estruturas que respondam às suas necessidades bio psicosocioemocionais. O recurso frequente a unidades hospitalares sobrecarrega o sistema, originando escassez de recursos, e comprometendo a qualidade / segurança dos utentes. O estudo que apresento pretende verificar os contributos de um Sistema de qualidade de gestão nas práticas de comunicação do CHO e assim contribuir para melhorar a segurança dos pacientes. É de abordagem qualitativa, a colheita de dados foi efetuada através de entrevista telefónica, devido ao contexto atual de pandemia COVID. Foram entrevistados 29 profissionais de saúde, distribuídos por diversas categorias profissionais. Os resultados demonstraram que os meios de comunicação utilizados entre os profissionais são múltiplos, existindo sobrecarga de informação e ou falha de comunicação que são potencialmente prejudiciais à segurança do utente. Todos os entrevistados reconhecem a necessidade de melhorar o processo comunicacional de forma a otimizar a sua eficácia. A implementação de um SGQ pode contribuir na melhoria das práticas de comunicação do CHO. Uma vez que quando implementado e interiorizado o SGQ numa organização, as melhorias dos resultados são evidentes. Os sistemas de gestão de qualidade são importantes para a melhoria contínua de qualquer organização, otimizando os seus recursos e melhorando o seu desempenho

The fidelity of prototype and testing environment in usability tests

This doctoral thesis investigated what setup of a usability test can best support valid test outcomes. Several aspects of contextual fidelity were manipulated in experimental usability studies, to examine their impact on test results. The first study demonstrated that the medium of prototype presentation has effects on test outcomes, which have not been found in previous research. Using a more hypothesis-driven approach, it was shown that participants exhibited more reading activity when using a paper-based as compared to a computer prototype presented on screen. This resulted in better performance, if task success required reading a short paragraph of text. Consequently, the medium of prototype presentation needs to be considered to avoid that respective usability problems go undetected. A second study demonstrated that additional observers may cause stress for test participants, which can be measured at the physiological level. Some performance indicators were affected, but only in interaction with perceived developmental stage of the test system. A third study investigated the effects of a work or leisure context on the outcome of a usability test. No effects were found for the type of usage context, but even short response time delays proved to be relevant for performance and emotions. Relevant factors for the validity of usability test outcomes were identified and theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Keywords: Usability test; paper prototype; fidelity; observer presence; work and leisure domain; system response time; heart rate variability; validity