Chasing the Chatbots: Directions for Interaction and Design Research

Big tech-players have been successful in pushing the chatbots forward. Investments in the technology are growing fast, as well as the number of users and applications available. Instead of driving investments towards a successful diffusion of the technology, user-centred studies are currently chasing the popularity of chatbots. A literature analysis evidences how recent this research topic is, and the predominance of technical challenges rather than understanding users’ perceptions, expectations and contexts of use. Looking for answers to interaction and design questions raised in 2007, when the presence of clever computers in everyday life had been predicted for the year 2020, this paper presents a panorama of the recent literature, revealing gaps and pointing directions for further user-centred research

Higher Quality at Lower Cost: Community Health Worker Interventions in the Health Care Innovation Awards

Background: Published evidence regarding cost savings, reduced utilization, and improved quality associated with employing community health workers (CHWs) is largely lacking. This paper presents findings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Health Care Innovation Awards (HCIA), with a focus on six diverse programs that employ CHWs. We examine outcomes associated with programs incorporating CHWs into care teams for a broad age range of patients with various health issues such as cancer, asthma, and complex conditions. Methods: This mixed-methods study used data from claims and site visits to assess the effectiveness of CHW programs. In difference-in-differences analyses of Medicare fee-for-service and Medicaid claims, we compared utilization and spending for beneficiaries participating in each CHW program with propensity score matched non-participant beneficiaries for baseline (2010 – 2012) and post-intervention (2013 – 2016). We adjusted for geographic area, prior utilization, and clinical and sociodemographic characteristics. We assessed changes in care quality through beneficiary focus groups and interviews with program leadership and staff. Results: Five of the six programs saw a significant reduction in utilization and/or spending relative to a comparison group, and all programs had positive qualitative findings regarding quality of care. In three of the six programs, the adjusted total cost of care was significantly reduced (-$143 to -$2,044 per beneficiary quarter). We hypothesize that some reductions in spending can be attributed to CHWs’ provision of enhanced access outside of regular clinic hours, which facilitated patient adherence to evidence-based treatment pathways and averted unnecessary ED visits and hospitalizations. Culturally competent CHW encounters engaged patients in health care decisions, generated confidence in their decisions, encouraged adherence to treatment pathways, and mitigated social barriers to care. Conclusions: Programs were associated with improved quality and reductions in health care utilization and spending up to $20,000 per patient over the three-year period. Findings suggest a strong business case for the use of CHWs as part of interdisciplinary teams as CHW programs can provide a significant return on investment for payers. Reimbursement policies that do not account for the services of non-clinical staff such as CHWs impede the sustainability and spread of these interventions, despite mounting evidence of CHWs’ effectiveness. Organizations looking to integrate CHWs into care delivery may conduct feasibility assessments of available workforce and the capacity for clinical oversight, physician buy-in, and funding sustainability. Established programs could be leveraged for mentorship

A Comparative Usability Study of Two-Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication (2F) aims to enhance resilience of password-based authentication by requiring users to provide an additional authentication factor, e.g., a code generated by a security token. However, it also introduces non-negligible costs for service providers and requires users to carry out additional actions during the authentication process. In this paper, we present an exploratory comparative study of the usability of 2F technologies. First, we conduct a pre-study interview to identify popular technologies as well as contexts and motivations in which they are used. We then present the results of a quantitative study based on a survey completed by 219 Mechanical Turk users, aiming to measure the usability of three popular 2F solutions: codes generated by security tokens, one-time PINs received via email or SMS, and dedicated smartphone apps (e.g., Google Authenticator). We record contexts and motivations, and study their impact on perceived usability. We find that 2F technologies are overall perceived as usable, regardless of motivation and/or context of use. We also present an exploratory factor analysis, highlighting that three metrics -- ease-of-use, required cognitive efforts, and trustworthiness -- are enough to capture key factors affecting 2F usability.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper appears in USEC 201

Bots as Virtual Confederates: Design and Ethics

The use of bots as virtual confederates in online field experiments holds extreme promise as a new methodological tool in computational social science. However, this potential tool comes with inherent ethical challenges. Informed consent can be difficult to obtain in many cases, and the use of confederates necessarily implies the use of deception. In this work we outline a design space for bots as virtual confederates, and we propose a set of guidelines for meeting the status quo for ethical experimentation. We draw upon examples from prior work in the CSCW community and the broader social science literature for illustration. While a handful of prior researchers have used bots in online experimentation, our work is meant to inspire future work in this area and raise awareness of the associated ethical issues.Comment: Forthcoming in CSCW 201

Conspiracy in the Time of Corona: Automatic detection of Emerging Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories in Social Media and the News

Abstract Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confi- dence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the Covid-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of scientific consensus on the virus’s spread and containment, or on the long term social and economic ramifications of the pandemic. Among the stories currently circulating are ones suggesting that the 5G telecommunication network activates the virus, that the pandemic is a hoax perpetrated by a global cabal, that the virus is a bio-weapon released deliberately by the Chinese, or that Bill Gates is using it as cover to launch a broad vaccination program to facilitate a global surveillance regime. While some may be quick to dismiss these stories as having little impact on real-world behavior, recent events including the destruction of cell phone towers, racially fueled attacks against Asian Americans, demonstrations espousing resistance to public health orders, and wide-scale defiance of scientifically sound public mandates such as those to wear masks and practice social distancing, countermand such conclusions. Inspired by narrative theory, we crawl social media sites and news reports and, through the application of automated machine-learning methods, discover the underlying narrative frame- works supporting the generation of rumors and conspiracy theories. We show how the various narrative frameworks fueling these stories rely on the alignment of otherwise disparate domains of knowledge, and consider how they attach to the broader reporting on the pandemic. These alignments and attachments, which can be monitored in near real-time, may be useful for identifying areas in the news that are particularly vulnerable to reinterpretation by conspiracy theorists. Understanding the dynamics of storytelling on social media and the narrative frameworks that provide the generative basis for these stories may also be helpful for devising methods to disrupt their spread

The role of social media in the collaboration, interaction, co-creation and co-delivery of a social venture in an uncertain conflict environment

This research case study examines the creation and development of a bottom-up social enterprise immediately after the outbreak of a civil war in an Arab country by a group of young patriots in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings in the 2010s. Drawing on Linders’ (2012) model of social action lifecycle, our study examines how different actors become involved and co-created a socially entrepreneurial venture (SEV), how these actors contributed to the coproduction and co-delivery of the social actions (values) over time, and how social media play roles in these processes. Drawing from the empirical evidences of citizen co-production within the existing literature, we found that SEVs operate in very different ways in which the role of social media is critical, both from their equivalents operating in a penurious but stable environment, and those intending to pursue political action within a conflict situation. In our case study, social media was not intended for mass-mobilisation, but for selected mobilisation amongst those within the network. This is due to the insecure environment and the fear of infiltration from opposing parties. We also examine how new actors were, over time, being carefully screened and selected, and potential harmful existing players being excluded, which in turn contributed to the evolving nature of the social enterprises

National Campaign to Reform State Juvenile Justice Systems and the National Communications Effort

Note: This evaluation is accompanied by an evaluation of the Models for Change initiative as well as introduction to the evaluation effort by MacArthur's President, Julia Stasch, and a response to the evaluation from the program team. Access these related materials here.This evaluation's principal focus was to determine if and how the National Communications Effort shaped and elevated a narrative that reached its target audiences and increased their understanding and support for juvenile justice reform. More broadly, the evaluation also examined the ways in which a complementary, experimental communications strategy could help support and sustain a movement of juvenile justice reform. Additionally, the MacArthur Foundation expressed a desire to know whether the National Communications Effort had an impact on policy reform and the broader media landscape, even though these were not objectives or intended outcomes of the National Communications Effort