Tunneling Through Alternative Facts:The Qwand Problem Space Machine

The Post-Truth Age is characterized by an information multiverse where truths are multiple and simultaneously manifest. Post-truth appeals to emotions and personal beliefs, and is often based on alternative facts. Truth, instead, sits at the center of scientific endeavor, which is based on observable and measurable evidence. Design is less concerned with truth than science and it is at ease with deception, misdirection and magic as it is with facts. In other words, design tunnels through science and belief. This paper reports on the design of the Qwand, a Quantum Wand, that invokes the parallel exploration of all the possible truths of a given problem space

Text-based user-kNN:measuring user similarity based on text reviews

This article reports on a modification of the user-kNN algorithm that measures the similarity between users based on the similarity of text reviews, instead of ratings. We investigate the performance of text semantic similarity measures and we evaluate our text-based user-kNN approach by comparing it to a range of ratings-based approaches in a ratings prediction task. We do so by using datasets from two different domains: movies from RottenTomatoes and Audio CDs from Amazon Products. Our results show that the text-based userkNN algorithm performs significantly better than the ratings-based approaches in terms of accuracy measured using RMSE

Embedding a Crowd inside a Relay Baton:A Case Study in a Non-Competitive Sporting Activity

This paper presents a digital relay baton that connects long-distance runners with distributed online spectators. Such baton broadcasts athletes’ live locative data to a social network and communicates back remote-crowd support through haptic and audible cheers. Our work takes an exploratory design approach to bring new insights into the design of real-time techno-mediated social support. The prototype was deployed during a 170-mile charity relay race across the UK with 13 participants, 261 on-line supporters, and collected a total of 3153 ‘cheers’. We report on the insights collected during the design and deployment process and identify three fundamental design considerations: the degree of expressiveness afforded by the system design, the context applicability, and the data flow within the social networ

Embedding a Crowd inside a Relay Baton:A Case Study in a Non-Competitive Sporting Activity

This paper presents a digital relay baton that connects long-distance runners with distributed online spectators. Such baton broadcasts athletes’ live locative data to a social network and communicates back remote-crowd support through haptic and audible cheers. Our work takes an exploratory design approach to bring new insights into the design of real-time techno-mediated social support. The prototype was deployed during a 170-mile charity relay race across the UK with 13 participants, 261 on-line supporters, and collected a total of 3153 ‘cheers’. We report on the insights collected during the design and deployment process and identify three fundamental design considerations: the degree of expressiveness afforded by the system design, the context applicability, and the data flow within the social networ

The role of design thinking and physical prototyping in social software engineering

Social Software Engineering (Social SE), that is SE aiming to promote positive social change, is a rapidly emerging area. Here, software and digital artefacts are seen as tools for social change, rather than end products or ‘solutions’. Moreover, Social SE requires a sustained buy-in from a range of stakeholders and end-users working in partnership with multidisciplinary software development teams often at a distance. This context poses new challenges to software engineering: it requires both an agile approach for handling uncertainties in the software development process, and the application of participatory, creative design processes to bridge the knowledge asymmetries and the geographical distances in the partnership. This paper argues for the role of design thinking in Social SE and highlights its implications for software engineering in general. It does so by reporting on the contributions that design thinking— and in particular physical design—has brought to (1) the problem space definition, (2) user requirements capture and (3) system feature design of a renewable energy forecasting system developed in partnership with a remote Scottish Island community

On the edge of supply:designing renewable energy supply into everyday life

With peak oil behind us, nuclear generation capacity dwindling, and increasingly daunting looking carbon emissions targets, we are moving to a world where we must consider transitioning to renewable energy sources. Renewables are time varying and their inherent unpredictability must challenge our everyday assumptions around energy availability—leading, we believe, to an emphasis on ‘supply’ rather than ‘demand’. Using a range of methods including action research, participatory design and technology mediated enquiry, we report on our work in partnership with the community of Tiree as an exemplar of this future. Tiree is the outermost of the Scottish Inner Hebrides— a remote island on the edge of the national electricity grid with a precarious grip on energy—here we uncover the role of renewables and the resilience of a community in moving away from traditional energy provision. We offer opportunities for designing ICT to support supply driven practices in this context, and a simple framework for exploiting under and over supply

'The issue with that sort of data?':Clinicians’ accountability concerns around COPD self-monitoring tools

There is an increasing interest in CSCW to understand how technology can be used for the monitoring of chronic conditions, and how collaboration for care planning can occur between clinicians and patients through its use. Many studies in this area have focussed on the patients’experience of using such technology.We report findings from a small-scale study, where a smartphone app for monitoring Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease symptoms was introduced into a community respiratory service for patients’ use. Our findings provide three key insights into the clinicians’experiences in receiving the patient reported data and supporting the patients’ use of the app as part of their service

Agility in Transdisciplinary Research:Lessons Learnt from a Research Sprint on Digital Technologies and Flood Risk Management

Environmental challenges demand radically transdisciplinary approaches in order to respond to their complexity. Whilst transdisciplinarity has become a buzzword, less attention has been given to approaches that genuinely transcend disciplinary boundaries and support work within multifaceted and volatile research environments. This paper examines the adaptation of an existing transdisciplinary research management framework and extracts lessons learnt from its adoption in a one-year research sprint exploring the role of digital technologies in flood risk management (the flood sprint). Drawing on interviews (N=14) with the flood sprint core university team (including researchers and the project administrator) and partners, we present the opportunities and challenges of this approach. Specifically, we find that whilst the approach fostered meaningful relationships and knowledge building between the researchers and the partners, challenges were experienced within the research team around internal collaboration and the pressures of the sprint cycle. The balance between rapid prototyping and longevity was also a challenge

Values in computing

Whether it is in the form of software, system architecture or interface design, anything digital is inevitably affected by values: the organizational values of the project sponsor, the values of the research partners, and the values of each developer and designer. Some values (e.g. commercial success, academic prestige) are easier to quantify than others (e.g. social justice, care for the environment) with the latter often dismissed in decision making processes as lacking of measurable ‘evidence’. However, less easy to measure values are not less real: they are simply less visible. The aim of this one-day workshop is precisely to investigate mechanisms which give more exposure to those values in computing that are less frequently considered. We do so by bringing together practitioners from different computing backgrounds (e.g. software engineering, interaction design, information systems) who have first-hand experience of trying to represent on an equal footing all human values in computing

Crowdsourcing synchronous spectator support:(go on, go on, you're the best)n-1

Many studies have shown that crowd-support, such as cheering during sport events, can have a positive impact on athletes’ performance. However, up until recently this support was only possible if the supporters and the athletes were geographically co-located. Can cheering be done remotely and would this be effective? In this paper we investigate the effect and possibilities of live remote cheering on co-located athletes and online supporting crowds that have a weak social tie and no social tie with the athlete. We recruit 140 online spectators and 5 athletes for an ad-hoc 5km road race. Results indicate that crowds socially closer to the athletes are significantly more engaged in the support. The athletes were excited by live remote cheering from friendsourced spectators and cheering from unknown crowdsourced participants indicating that remote friends and outsourced spectators could be an important source of support