Using grounded theory methods to inform the design of an authoring tool

Self-tracking, the process of recording one's own behaviours, thoughts and feelings, is a popular approach to enhance one's self-knowledge. While dedicated self-tracking apps and devices support data collection, previous research highlights that the integration of data constitutes a barrier for users. In this study we investigated how members of the Quantified Self movement---early adopters of self-tracking tools---overcome these barriers. We conducted a qualitative analysis of 51 videos of Quantified Self presentations to explore intentions for collecting data, methods for integrating and representing data, and how intentions and methods shaped reflection. The findings highlight two different intentions---striving for self-improvement and curiosity in personal data---which shaped how these users integrated data, i.e. the effort required. Furthermore, we identified three methods for representing data---binary, structured and abstract---which influenced reflection. Binary representations supported reflection-in-action, whereas structured and abstract representations supported iterative processes of data collection, integration and reflection. For people tracking out of curiosity, this iterative engagement with personal data often became an end in itself, rather than a means to achieve a goal. We discuss how these findings contribute to our current understanding of self-tracking amongst Quantified Self members and beyond, and we conclude with directions for future work to support self-trackers with their aspirations

Supporting practitioners in social story interventions: the ISISS Authoring Tool

Children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) have difficulties in learning social and communication skills. This leads to impairments in social interaction, including lack of understanding others’ intentions, emotions, and mental states, and impairments in communication both verbal and nonverbal. One of the most widely used interventions that addresses social and communication skills is the “social story”. A social story aims to support children with ASC in coping with their own behaviour. Practitioners use social stories to present specific scenarios and to help children understand how they should respond. However, the development of social stories is time consuming, and teachers comment that it is difficult to share them as a resource for others or to customise them to individual children, using their current tools. This thesis explores how a social story authoring tool can be designed, developed and evaluated. The final aim is to better support practitioners in writing, using and assessing social stories for children with ASC compared with their current approaches. A series of studies with practitioners and researchers was carried out to inform the design of a social story authoring tool and to evaluate it. A framework for social stories was built with the purpose of informing the design. Based on this framework, a prototype was iteratively designed and developed. The final prototype (ISISSImproving Social Interaction through Social Stories) was evaluated with practitioners with experience in social story interventions. The evaluation showed that ISISS is perceived by practitioners to be a considerable improvement over their current approaches. The methodology employed in this research combines Action Research, User-Centred Design and Participatory Design. Practitioners and researchers were empowered with different roles at different research stages in order to maximise their contributions to the development process

Exploring Techno-Spirituality: Design strategies for transcendent user experiences

This thesis presents a study of transcendent experiences (TXs) — experiences of connection with something greater than oneself — focusing on what they are, how artefacts support them, and how design can contribute to that support. People often find such experiences transformative, and artefacts do support them — but the literature rarely addresses designing artefact support for TXs. This thesis provides a step toward filling that gap. The first phase of research involved the conduct and analysis of 24 interviews with adults of diverse spiritual perspectives, using constructivist Grounded Theory methods informed by relevant literature and by studies performed earlier in the PhD programme. Analysis found that TXs proceed in three phases — creating the context, living the experience, integrating the experience — and that artefacts support two phases and people desire enhancements to all three. This TX framework supports and extends experience structures from the literature: it recognises the top-level categories as phases in a cycle where integration may alter future contexts, and it extends the structure of TX by incorporating the relationships of artefacts and of enhancement desires to the phases of these experiences. This extended structure constitutes a grounded theory of transcendent user experience (TUX). The second phase involved the design and conduct of three “Transcendhance” game workshops for enhancing transcendence, which incorporated themes from the grounded theory and aimed to elicit design ideas in an atmosphere of imagination, fun, and play. Participants sketched 69 speculative ideas for techno-spiritual artefacts, and analysis mapped them to TX phases and identified possible extensions inspired by relevant research. The great majority of ideas mapped to the phase Creating the Context, with very few mapping to Living the Experience, which suggests that context may be easier than lived experience to understand and address directly. This point is especially important for experiences such as TX that are tricky to define, impossible to arrange or anticipate, and thus unsuitable for straight-forward “classic” user experience methods. The final phase involved the elaboration of workshop ideas to explore the extension of design fiction for TUX. Analysis related design fiction to the TX phases and suggested features that affect design ideas’ potential for TUX design fiction. This phase ended with the proposal and analysis of three new forms of design fiction — extended imaginary abstracts, comparative imaginary abstracts, and design poetry — using workshop ideas to illustrate the forms, their construction and use, and their benefits to TUX design. Transcendhance workshops and TUX design fictions approach techno-spiritual design peripherally, “sneaking up” on lived experience by addressing context and enabling the consideration of ineffable experience through storytelling, metaphors, and oblique imagery. This thesis combines the grounded theory of transcendent user experience with the Transcendhance workshop process and new forms of design fiction, presenting peripheral design as a promising strategy for facilitating design to enhance transcendent experience