Unfriend, Unfollow, Unsubscribe: Unsociability on social network sites

Social network sites (SNSs) are virtual spaces for social activity where users can “undo” their social interactions, returning to a previous system state. In this thesis I study this “reversed” sociability – unsociability – as a novel way to approach and support online social interactions. Using focus groups as research method, I explore the practices and perceptions of users engaging in unsocial events over four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. As focus groups enable people to discuss their opinions in a relaxed yet moderated environment, I gathered opinions of participants expressed in their own terms. Subsequently, I used two data analysis techniques, content analysis and grounded theory, to explore participants’ utterances and group dynamics. The results show that the structure of each site reviewed is determinant to understanding how they support unsociability. Most notably, it was found that people follow a social-over-technical pattern on Facebook, as they base their interactions on their social understanding of this site instead of its technical capabilities. By following this pattern, people engage in unsocial events to save face and regulate their privacy boundaries. I found that people try to keep their unsocial behaviors as positive as possible to reduce accountability for these behaviors. Consequently, they prefer using features that place a self-boundary around them, which I call the soft unsocial features. The hard unsocial features place a dyadic boundary, producing increased social costs. Nevertheless, different people interpret these features in different ways, as I found three distinctive attitude styles towards them: the experimental, cautious, and restrictive. As these platforms become ubiquitous, I argue that unsociability should become an important consideration for designers of SNSs. I propose that SNSs should offer integrated options to revert social interactions in a silent, easy, and flexible way, to support users to “reverse” the increased sociability enabled on these sites. Asiasanat:social network sites, features, unsociability, desig

The harm in conflating aging with accessibility

Including older adults as full stakeholders in digital society. </p

Unfriend, Unfollow, Unsubscribe: Unsociability on social network sites

Social network sites (SNSs) are virtual spaces for social activity where users can “undo” their social interactions, returning to a previous system state. In this thesis I study this “reversed” sociability – unsociability – as a novel way to approach and support online social interactions. Using focus groups as research method, I explore the practices and perceptions of users engaging in unsocial events over four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. As focus groups enable people to discuss their opinions in a relaxed yet moderated environment, I gathered opinions of participants expressed in their own terms. Subsequently, I used two data analysis techniques, content analysis and grounded theory, to explore participants’ utterances and group dynamics. The results show that the structure of each site reviewed is determinant to understanding how they support unsociability. Most notably, it was found that people follow a social-over-technical pattern on Facebook, as they base their interactions on their social understanding of this site instead of its technical capabilities. By following this pattern, people engage in unsocial events to save face and regulate their privacy boundaries. I found that people try to keep their unsocial behaviors as positive as possible to reduce accountability for these behaviors. Consequently, they prefer using features that place a self-boundary around them, which I call the soft unsocial features. The hard unsocial features place a dyadic boundary, producing increased social costs. Nevertheless, different people interpret these features in different ways, as I found three distinctive attitude styles towards them: the experimental, cautious, and restrictive. As these platforms become ubiquitous, I argue that unsociability should become an important consideration for designers of SNSs. I propose that SNSs should offer integrated options to revert social interactions in a silent, easy, and flexible way, to support users to “reverse” the increased sociability enabled on these sites. Asiasanat:social network sites, features, unsociability, desig

Validación del cuestionario breve de confianza situacional en muestra clínica con drogodependencia

Introducción: numerosos estudios han concluido que la autoeficacia es una variable esencial dentro del área de drogadicciones y clave para el mantenimiento de la abstinencia y prevención de recaídas. El Cuestionario de confianza situacional, elaborado por Annis y colaboradores (1987), es uno de los instrumentos más utilizados para medir la autoeficacia y ha tenido diversas modificaciones. El Cuestionario Breve de Confianza Situacional (CBCS), en su versión más corta cuenta con sólo ocho ítems. Objetivo: obtener la validez factorial y fiabilidad del CBCS con muestra clínica en modalidad residencial. Método: el estudio contó con una muestra de 41 pacientes voluntarios, adolescentes y adultos, internos en un centro de rehabilitación en modalidad residencial. La evaluación cumplió con las normas para el desarrollo y revisión de estudios instrumentales. Resultados: al realizar el análisis factorial exploratorio se quedaron los ocho reactivos originales, compuestos en un sólo factor que explica 71.39% de la varianza, una carga factorial entre los rangos de .76 y .91 y con un índice de consistencia interna de α = .941. Discusión y conclusiones: el Cuestionario Breve de Confianza Situacional presenta una consistencia interna con alta fiabilidad y aceptables cargas factoriales, en similitud con lo encontrado en otros estudios realizados. Por lo que se sugiere su utilización en México como herramienta de evaluación en un ambiente clínico, con pacientes que sean internos en un centro de rehabilitación. Es recomendable realizar replicaciones con muestras más representativas y seleccionada aleatoriamente. Además, se sugiere incluir el análisis factorial confirmatorio para obtener mayor certeza en los resultados

Background

Abstract Modern design teams must deal with limitations related to the lack of adequate tools to support their practices. This paper introduces my efforts to pinpoint the bottlenecks in collaboration and propose solutions that adapt to the practices of multidisciplinary design teams

Respecting Human Autonomy through Human-Centered AI : Editorial

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Respecting Human Autonomy through Human-Centered AI

AI is becoming more pervasive in our everyday lives and people are increasingly having to relinquish control and decision-making to “smart” systems. Concurrently, people are confronted with a reduced sense of autonomy as a result of being monitored and guided in their actions by complex and autonomous technologies they do not fully understand or control. HCI researchers are investigating how to design intelligible and human-centered autonomous systems to increase trust and address various ethical and societal challenges. In this workshop, we want to deepen and expand the discussion on tensions between human and machine autonomy when designing AI systems, focusing on scientific, technological and ethical challenges that it poses. We will adopt a pragmatic and multidisciplinary approach to look into how human-centered approaches could enhance human autonomy/agency when interacting with intelligent autonomous systems

COnCEPT - Developing Intelligent Information Systems to Support Colloborative Working Across Design Teams

Rapid developments in hardware and software are creating opportunities to enhance the user experience. For example, advances in social analytics can provide near instant feedback. State of the art information extraction tools, filtering, categorization and presentation mechanisms all greatly facilitate knowledge exploitation activities. However, these technologies are not yet fully integrated into modern business systems. This paper describes research being undertaken in order to develop a new collaborative creative design platform (COnCEPT) aimed at investigating of new data-mining and collaboration technologies in order to enhance the information systems of future businesses. This paper describes the software architecture and the components, together with the design principles which underpin the design of the new COnCEPT platform, which is being developed to address the needs of professional design teams working collaboratively in a professional context