Around the table: Are multiple-touch surfaces better than single-touch for children's collaborative interactions?

This paper presents a classroom study that investigated the potential of using touch tabletop technology to support children's collaborative learning interactions. Children aged 7-10 worked in groups of three on a collaborative planning task in which they designed a seating plan for their classroom. In the single-touch condition, the tabletop surface allowed only one child to interact with the digital content at a time. In the multiple-touch condition, the children could interact with the digital content simultaneously. Results showed that touch condition did not affect the frequency or equity of interactions, but did influence the nature of children's discussion. In the multiple-touch condition, children talked more about the task; in the single-touch condition, they talked more about turn taking. We also report age and gender differences

The potential of Heat as a service as a route to decarbonisation for Scotland

To reach its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2045, Scotland needs to decarbonise heat and improve the energy efficiency of its buildings. This evidence review examines the potential of Heat as a Service (HaaS) to support this aim by providing a route to the decarbonisation of heat in domestic properties in Scotland. Heat as a Service is a term which covers a range of services that enable people to achieve a warm home in a variety of ways. These include services which provide or enable finance to purchase and install heating equipment; maintenance of heating equipment; energy efficiency upgrades of building fabric; paying for the amount of heat delivered to the home; paying for the temperature the home is heated to; paying flat-rate tariffs for the home to be heated; or combinations of these. Although, to date, there is not much evidence as to what has been tried or how effective it has been in delivering substantial emissions reductions, the limited evidence we found suggests that some HaaS offers potential to: help get Scotland to net zero by accelerating the uptake of low-carbon heating systems and improving energy efficiency across the domestic energy market; improve outcomes for consumers, especially the more vulnerable, by helping target financial support and providing better cost certainty; and support businesses in developing new, sustainable, business models and creating new jobs. The report outlines HaaS business models that have been tried across Europe, and categorises them in terms of the outcomes they offer consumers. It looks into the potential benefits of HaaS for Scotland, and some of the current barriers. Through case studies, it explores in more detail how different business models might work and be adapted to Scotland, and makes six recommendations as to how the Scottish Government could take HaaS forward

Balancing Boundaries : Using Multiple Devices to Manage Work-Life Balance

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to give us increased flexibility about when and where we choose to work and the freedom to deal with home tasks whilst at work. However more use of ICT for work during non-work time has been linked with negative outcomes including lower work and life satisfaction and increased stress. Previous work has suggested that in order to reduce some of these negative effects, people should adopt technology use strategies that aid separation of their home and work lives. In this paper we report the results of a questionnaire study investigating work-life balance boundary behaviours and technology use. We find that people use multiple devices as a way of creating boundaries between home and work, and the extent to which they do this relates to their boundary behaviour style. These findings have particular relevance given the increasing trend for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies

Life-swap:how discussions around personal data can motivate desire for change

Personal informatics technologies support the collection of and reflection on personal data, but enabling people to learn from and act on this data is still an on-going challenge. Sharing and discussing data is one way people can learn from it, but as yet, little research explores how peer discourses around data can shape understandings and promote action. We ran 3 workshops with 5-week follow-ups, giving 18 people the opportunity to swap their data and discuss it with another person. We found that these workshops helped them to recontextualise and to better understand their data, identify new strategies for changing their behaviour and motivated people to commit to changes in the future. These findings have implications for how personal informatics tools could help people identify opportunities for change and feel motivated to try out new strategies

Enhancing Personal Informatics Through Social Sensemaking

Personal informatics practices are increasingly common, with a range of consumer technologies available to support, largely individual, interactions with data (e.g., performance measurement and activity/health monitoring). In this paper, we explore the concept of social sensemaking. In contrast to high-level statistics, we posit that social networking and reciprocal sharing of fine-grained self-tracker data can provide valuable context for individuals in making sense of their data. We present the design of an online platform called Citizense Makers (CM), which facilitates group sharing, annotating and discussion of self-tracker data. In a field trial of CM, we explore design issues around willingness to share data reciprocally; the importance of familiarity between individuals; and understandings of common activities in contextualising one's own data

Changing perspectives of time: Is the future of time Flexi-time?

ABSTRACT With the increase in world population, the growth of cities and the stress this puts on infrastructure and ever depleting natural resources, this paper speculates that reconceptualising time and how we use it is now a necessity. The future is flexi-time. One way we as HCI researchers and designers can begin to re-think and question our assumptions about time is to provide people with tools to reflect on their own an other's use of time. A framework for how this might be done is presented

Exploring the potential of passive image capture to support reflection on experience

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