Android-based customizable media crowdsourcing toolkit for machine vision research

Smart devices have become more complex and powerful, increasing in both computational power, storage capacities, and battery longevity. Currently available online facial recognition databases do not offer training datasets with enough contextually descriptive metadata for novel scenarios such as using machine vision to detect if people in a video like each other based on their facial expressions. The aim of this research is to design and implement a software tool to enable researchers to collect videos from a large pool of people through crowdsourcing means for machine vision analysis. We are particularly interested in the tagging of the videos with the demographic data of study participants as well as data from custom post hoc survey. This study has demonstrated that smart devices and their embedded technologies can be utilized to collect videos as well as self-evaluated metadata through crowdsourcing means. The application makes use of sensors embedded within smart devices such as the camera and GPS sensors to collect videos, survey data, and geographical data. User engagement is encouraged using periodic push notifications. The collected videos and metadata using the application will be used in the future for machine vision analysis of various phenomena such as investigating if machine vision could be used to detect people’s fondness for each other based on their facial expressions and self-evaluated post-task survey data

User perceptions of personal data in healthcare:ethics, reuse, and valuation

Abstract There has been global concern about how personal data are collected and managed. A focused examination of people’s perceptions of their personal data collection and use is relevant given the growing importance of personal data in the use of modern technologies. This thesis focuses on people’s perceptions of their personal data particularly within the health domain. The exploration is carried out from multiple perspectives: ownership; ethics; reuse; and valuation. Future health services that rely on personal data may be developed considering several data ownership, reuse, privacy, and ethical issues. This thesis is conducted with two core objectives: 1) to develop research probes for collecting personal data in the health domain; and 2) to conduct a series of case studies on the perception of personal data using the research probes. The findings of this thesis demonstrate people’s willingness to donate personal data of varying sensitivity levels both for monetary benefits and for social good. Further, it presents insights into personal data management based on empirical investigations using purpose-built research probes complemented by online experiments. Throughout the thesis, I highlight opportunities and challenges that people consider critical to them regarding the collection, storage, processing, and management of their personal data. In this thesis, I demonstrate that gaining an understanding of user perceptions of personal data can benefit digital services that rely on such data. This thesis also highlights the important role that crowdsourcing marketplaces can play by serving as human-subject pools to contribute a vast amount of data. Towards the end of this thesis, I revisit the research questions and highlights how they were answered. The thesis also discusses the implications of personal data for future digital health services that rely on such data. I then take a look into the future with a potential paradigm for managing personal data in a more granular way. I conclude the thesis by restating the thesis’s aim and objectives, and consider the opportunities and challenges of using personal data and possible directions for future research.Tiivistelmä Henkilötietojen keräämiseen ja hallintaan liittyy maailmanlaajuinen huoli. On merkityksellistä tarkastella ihmisten käsityksiä henkilötietojensa keräämisestä ja käytöstä, ottaen huomioon henkilötietojen kasvavan merkityksen modernien teknologioiden käytössä. Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy ihmisten käsityksiin heidän henkilötiedoistaan erityisesti terveysalalla. Tarkastelussa on mukana useita näkökulmia: omistajuus; etiikka; uudelleenkäyttö; ja arvon määrittäminen. Tämän väitöskirjan kaksi ydintavoitetta ovat: 1) kehittää tutkimussovelluksia henkilötietojen keräämiseksi terveysalalla; ja 2) suorittaa sarja tapaustutkimuksia henkilötietojen käsityksestä käyttäen tutkimussovelluksia. Tämän väitöskirjan tulokset osoittavat ihmisten halukkuuden lahjoittaa vaihtelevan arkaluontoisia henkilötietoja sekä rahallisten etujen että yhteiskunnallisen hyvän vuoksi. Lisäksi väitöskirja tarjoaa näkemyksiä henkilötietojen hallintaan perustuen empiirisiin tutkimuksiin, joissa käytetääntarkoitukseen kehitettyjä tutkimussovelluksia sekä täydentävää verkkotutkimusta. Väitöskirja korostaa mahdollisuuksia ja haasteita, joita ihmiset pitävät kriittisinä liittyen heidän henkilötietojensa keräämiseen, säilytykseen, käsittelyyn ja hallintaan. Väitöskirja osoittaa, että käyttäjien henkilötietoihin liittyvien käsitysten ymmärtäminen voi hyödyttää digitaalisia palveluita, jotka nojaavat tällaisiin tietoihin. Väitöskirja myös korostaa kaupallisten joukkoistamisalustojen roolia tutkitun tiedon tuottamisessa. Väitöskirjan lopussa palaan tutkimuskysymyksiin ja näiden vastauksiin. Pohdin henkilötietojen merkitystä tulevaisuuden digipalveluille, jotka ovat näistä tiedoista riippuvaisia. Luonuo katsauksen tulevaisuuteen, joka tarjoaa yksityiskohtaisemman tavan hallita henkilötietoja. Päätän väitöskirjan toistamalla sen tavoitteen ja pohdin henkilötietojen käytön mahdollisuuksia ja haasteita sekä mahdollisia suuntia tulevalle tutkimukselle

Contrasting the expectations and experiences related to mobile health use for chronic pain:questionnaire study

Abstract Background: Chronic pain is a prolonged condition that deteriorates one’s quality of life. Treating chronic pain requires a multicomponent approach, and in many cases, there are no “silver bullet” solutions. Mobile health (mHealth) is a rapidly expanding category of solutions in digital health with proven potential in chronic pain management. Objective: This study aims to contrast the viewpoints of 2 groups of people with chronic pain concerning mHealth: people who have adopted the use of mHealth and those who have not. We highlight the benefits of mHealth solutions for people with chronic pain and the perceived obstacles to their increased adoption. We also provide recommendations to encourage people to try mHealth solutions as part of their self-care. Methods: The Prolific crowdsourcing platform was used to collect crowdsourced data. A prescreening questionnaire was released to determine what type of pain potential participants have and whether they are currently using mHealth solutions for chronic pain. The participants were invited based on their experience using mHealth to manage their pain. Similar questions were presented to mHealth users and nonusers. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed to determine the outcomes of this study. Results: In total, 31 responses were collected from people (aged 19–63 years, mean 31.4, SD 12.1) with chronic pain who use mHealth solutions. Two-thirds (n=20, 65%) of the users identified as female and 11 (35%) as male. We matched these mHealth users with an equal number of nonusers: 31 responses from the pool of 361 participants in the prescreening questionnaire. The nonusers’ ages ranged from 18 to 58 years (mean 30.8, SD 11.09), with 15 (50%) identifying as female and 15 (50%) as male. Likert-scale questions were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon (MWW) test. Results showed that the 2 groups differed significantly on 10 (43%) of 23 questions and shared similar views in the remaining 13 (57%). The most significant differences were related to privacy and interactions with health professionals. Of the 31 mHealth users, 12 (39%) declared that using mHealth solutions has made interacting with health or social care professionals easier (vs n=22, 71%, of nonusers). The majority of the nonusers (n=26, 84%) compared with about half of the users (n=15, 48%) expressed concern about sharing their data with, for example, third parties. Conclusions: This study investigated how mHealth is currently used in the context of chronic pain and what expectations mHealth nonusers have for mHealth as a future chronic pain management tool. Analysis revealed contrasts between mHealth use expectations and actual usage experiences, highlighting privacy concerns toward mHealth solutions. Generally, the results showed that nonusers are more concerned about data privacy and expect mHealth to facilitate interacting with health professionals. The users, in contrast, feel that such connections do not exist

Accessibility to library : A survey about deafs’ usage of and expectations for libraries.

 Previous studies have shown that deaf people are a difficult group for libraries to reach. The purpose of this study is to generate more knowledge about deafs’ usage and expectation of libraries. Three research questions were created: How do deaf people use the library? How can prerequisites of deafs’ usage of libraries be understood through indicators of social sustainability? And How can libraries work to be able to reach deaf as a target group?     A survey was created to gather data and sent out through Sweden’s Deaf National Association’s Facebook-page. Twentythree people answered the survey and nineteen of those were analysed for the results.   The results showed that a majority of the respondents visit the       library in some capacity. They borrow books, read newspapers and magazines. Some of the respondents participate in the activities libraries offer, but a lot of respondents express an interest in participating in a variety of activities if they were accessible through sign interpretation or in Swedish sign language.    The conclusion was that the respondents use the library but would like to see more books, movies and resources that are about deafness and Swedish sign language. To be able to participate in more of the activities libraries usually offers. A few of their requests were about the librarians having more knowledge about deafness and learning to speak Swedish sign language

Assessing MyData scenarios:ethics, concerns, and the promise

Abstract Public controversies around the unethical use of personal data are increasing, spotlighting data ethics as an increasingly important field of study. MyData is a related emerging vision that emphasizes individuals’ control of their personal data. In this paper, we investigate people’s perceptions of various data management scenarios by measuring the perceived ethicality and level of felt concern concerning the scenarios. We deployed a set of 96 unique scenarios to an online crowdsourcing platform for assessment and invited a representative sample of the participants to a second-stage questionnaire about the MyData vision and its potential in the field of healthcare. Our results provide a timely investigation into how topical data-related practices affect the perceived ethicality and the felt concern. The questionnaire analysis reveals great potential in the MyData vision. Through the combined quantitative and qualitative results, we contribute to the field of data ethics

Reimagining Global Crowdsourcing for Better Human-AI Collaboration

Crowdworkers silently enable much of today's AI-based products, with several online platforms offering a myriad of data labelling and content moderation tasks through convenient labour marketplaces. The HCI community has been increasingly interested in investigating the worker-centric issues inherent in the current model and seeking for potential improvements that could be implemented in the future. This workshop explores how a reimagined perspective on crowdsourcing platforms could provide a more equitable, fair, and rewarding experience. This includes not only the workers but also the platforms, who could benefit e.g. from better processes for worker onboarding, skills-development, and growth. We invite visionary takes in various formats on this topic to spread awareness of worker-centric research and developments to the CHI community. As a result of interactive ideation work in the workshop, we articulate a future direction roadmap for research centred around crowdsourcing platforms. Finally, as a specific interest area, the workshop seeks to study crowdwork from the context of the Global South, which has been arising as an important but critically understudied crowdsourcing market in recent years

Fueling AI with public displays?:a feasibility study of collecting biometrically tagged consensual data on a university campus

Abstract Interactive public displays have matured into highly capable two-way interfaces. They can be used for efficiently delivering information to people as well as for collecting insights from their users. While displays have been used for harvesting opinions and other content from users, surprisingly little work has looked into exploiting such screens for the consensual collection of tagged data that might be useful beyond one application. We present a field study where we collected biometrically tagged data using public kiosk-sized interactive screens. During 61 days of deployment time, we collected 199 selfie videos, cost-efficiently and with consent to leverage the videos in any non-profit research. 78 of the videos also had metadata attached to them. Overall, our studies indicate that people are willing to donate even highly sensitive data about themselves in public but that, at the same time, the participants had specific ethical and privacy concerns over the future of their data. Our study paves the way forward toward a future where volunteers can ethically help advance innovations in computer vision research across a variety of exciting application domains, such as health monitoring and care