Nintey Years of Mental Metaphors

In this paper we seek to trace the way in which psychologists' concepts of the mind have evolved over the roughly ninety years since the study of empirical psychology began in America. We examined metaphors used by psychologists to describe mental phenomena, based on a corpus of mental metaphors used in the journal Psychology Review from 1894 to the present. The cheif finding was that the nature of the mental metaphors changed over time. Spatial metaphors and animate-being metaphors predominate in the early stages, declining later in favor of systems metaphors predominate in the early stages, and artificial intelligence. A secondary finding was that the numbers of mental metaphors varied: They are more prevalent in the early and late stages of the century that in the mid-stages. These patterns are interpreted in terms of the evolution of psychologists' models of the mind

Learning from a Generative AI Predecessor -- The Many Motivations for Interacting with Conversational Agents

For generative AI to succeed, how engaging a conversationalist must it be? For almost sixty years, some conversational agents have responded to any question or comment to keep a conversation going. In recent years, several utilized machine learning or sophisticated language processing, such as Tay, Xiaoice, Zo, Hugging Face, Kuki, and Replika. Unlike generative AI, they focused on engagement, not expertise. Millions of people were motivated to engage with them. What were the attractions? Will generative AI do better if it is equally engaging, or should it be less engaging? Prior to the emergence of generative AI, we conducted a large-scale quantitative and qualitative analysis to learn what motivated millions of people to engage with one such 'virtual companion,' Microsoft's Zo. We examined the complete chat logs of 2000 anonymized people. We identified over a dozen motivations that people had for interacting with this software. Designers learned different ways to increase engagement. Generative conversational AI does not yet have a clear revenue model to address its high cost. It might benefit from being more engaging, even as it supports productivity and creativity. Our study and analysis point to opportunities and challenges.Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 2 table

Language Evolution and Human-Computer Interaction

Many of the issues that confront designers of interactive computer systems also appear in natural language evolution. Natural languages and human-computer interfaces share as their primary mission the support of extended ''dialogues'' between responsive entities. Because in each case one participant is a human being, some of the pressures operating on natural languages, causing them to evolve in order to better support such dialogue, also operate on human-computer ''languages'' or interfaces. This does not necessarily push interfaces in the direction of natural language - since one entity in this dialogue is not a human, this is not to be expected. Nonetheless, by discerning where the pressures that guide natural language evolution also appear in human-computer interaction, we can contribute to the design of computer systems and obtain a new perspective on natural languages

A taxonomy of wiki genres in enterprise settings

ABSTRACT A growing body of work examines enterprise wikis. In this paper, we argue that "enterprise wiki" is a blanket term describing three different genres of wiki: single contributor wikis, group or team wikis, and internal-use encyclopedias emulating Wikipedia. Based on the results of a study of wiki usage in a multinational software company, we provide a taxonomy of enterprise wiki genres. We discuss emerging challenges specific to company-wide encyclopedias for which platforms such as Wikipedia provide surprisingly little guidance. These challenges include platform and content management decisions, territoriality, establishment of contribution norms, dispute resolution, and employee turnover

A Critique of Personas as representations of "the other" in Cross-Cultural Technology Design

A literature review on cross-cultural personas reveals both, a trend in projects lacking accomplishment and personas reinforcing previous biases. We first suggest why failures or incompleteness may have ensued, while then we entice a thoughtful alteration of the design process by creating and validating personas together with those that they embody. Personas created in people's own terms support the design of technologies by truly satisfying users' needs and drives. Examining the experiences of those working "out there", and our practises, we conclude persona is a vital designerly artefact to empowering people in representing themselves. A persona-based study on User-Created Persona in Namibia contrasts the current persona status-quo via an ongoing co-design effort with urban and rural non-designers. However we argue persona as a design device must ease its implicit colonial tendency to and impulses in depicting "the other". Instead we endorse serenity, mindfulness and local enabling in design at large and in the African context in particular

An Examination of the Work Practices of Crowdfarms

Crowdsourcing is a new value creation business model. Annual revenue of the Chinese market alone is hundreds of millions of dollars, yet few studies have focused on the practices of the Chinese crowdsourcing workforce, and those that do mainly focus on solo crowdworkers. We have extended our study of solo crowdworker practices to include crowdfarms, a relatively new entry to the gig economy: small companies that carry out crowdwork as a key part of their business. We report here on interviews of people who work in 53 crowdfarms. We describe how crowdfarms procure jobs, carry out macrotasks and microtasks, manage their reputation, and employ different management practices to motivate crowdworkers and customers

Next steps for Human-Computer Integration

Human-Computer Integration (HInt) is an emerging paradigm in which computational and human systems are closely interwoven. Integrating computers with the human body is not new. However, we believe that with rapid technological advancements, increasing real-world deployments, and growing ethical and societal implications, it is critical to identify an agenda for future research. We present a set of challenges for HInt research, formulated over the course of a five-day workshop consisting of 29 experts who have designed, deployed, and studied HInt systems. This agenda aims to guide researchers in a structured way towards a more coordinated and conscientious future of human-computer integration

Personas revisited: Extending the use of personas to enhance participatory design

Personas are a well-established tool in interactive system development, largely used with designers and developers. They can also be included in work with potential and actual users, particularly in eliciting user needs and concerns. We present three case studies in which personas are part of the research with potential users of interactive systems. Blind participants in research on assistive technologies often spontaneously generated personas who would benefit more from the technology than they themselves would. This was a way of being able to discuss potential needs and concerns, without admitting to having them oneself. Older participants exploring the potential of indoor drones generated personas who were older than themselves and would need the system more. Finally, personas were created to aid discussions with forestry workers about fatigue and safety issues that they might not want to admit to having themselves. From these case studies we draw recommendations for how personas can be deployed in working with potential and actual users of interactive systems in a variety of ways