Uncovering inclusivity gaps in design pedagogy through the digital design marginalization framework

Designers play a key role in the design of inclusive and socially conscious interfaces. Thus, it is imperative for designers to be thoughtful of the ethical and social implications of design. However, gaps in the foundational training that designers receive (e.g., as university students) can negatively impact their ability to consider the social implications of their design practice. This can result in consequences such as digital marginalization, which, as defined by the Digital Design Marginalization (DDM) framework, is the “pushing away”, whether intentional or not, of a defined group of users from a digital or online service or system, where the exclusion has additional, indirect, and long-lasting social consequences on that particular user group. Designers can contribute, even unintentionally, to digital marginalization through their design practices and the design choices they make. We argue that our role as educators includes ensuring not only that our design pedagogy is inclusive, but that the designers we train now are prepared to conduct their future design practice in a manner that is inclusive to all users. As such, we propose to use the Digital Design Marginalization as a lens to guide a reflection-based approach to identify gaps in our pedagogy that may lead to designers becoming ill-equipped to identify how their designs may lead to digital marginalization. Through seven case studies from our own teaching practice, we demonstrate the use of the DDM framework to guide marginalization-focused introspective reflections of curricula. These reflections through the DDM lens revealed gaps in our pedagogy with respect to providing future designers with training that enables them to consider the broader societal and individual implications of the design choices they will make in future practice. Based on our experience using the DDM framework, we then discuss in greater depth how reflection of social consequences of design pedagogy can be operationalized within institutions to reduce educational gaps that may be associated with design-mediated digital marginalization. Finally, we comment on avenues for further development of pedagogical reflection using DDM

CUI@IUI: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Intelligent Conversational User Interface Interactions

This workshop aims to bring together the Intelligent User Inter- face (IUI) and Conversational User Interface (CUI) communities to understand the theoretical and methodological challenges in designing, deploying and evaluating CUIs. CUIs have continued to prosper with the increased use and technological developments in both text-based chatbots and speech-based systems. However, challenges remain in creating established theoretical and method- ological approaches for CUIs, and how these can be used with recent engineering advances. These include assessing the impact of inter- face design on user behaviours and perceptions, developing design guidelines, understanding the role of personalisation and issues of ethics and privacy. Our half-day multidisciplinary workshop brings together researchers and practitioners from the IUI and CUI communities in academia and industry. We aim to (1) identify and map out key focus areas and research challenges to address these critical theoretical and methodological gaps and (2) foster strong relationships between disciplines within and related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Ethics of Conversational User Interfaces

Building on the prior workshops on conversational user interfaces (CUIs) [2, 40], we tackle the topic of ethics of CUIs at CHI 2022. Though commercial CUI developments continue to rapidly advance, our scholarly dialogue on ethics of CUIs is underwhelming. The CUI community has implicitly been concerned with ethics, yet making it central to the growing body of work thus far has not been adequately done. Since ethics is a far-reaching topic, perspectives from philosophy, design, and engineering domains are integral to our CUI research community. For instance, philosophical traditions, e.g., deontology or virtue ethics, can guide ethical concepts that are relevant for CUIs, e.g., autonomy or trust. The practice of design through approaches like value sensitive design can inform how CUIs should be developed. Ethics comes into play with technical contributions, e.g., privacy-preserving data sharing between conversational systems. By considering such multidisciplinary angles, we come to a special topic of interest that ties together philosophy, design, and engineering: conversational disclosure, e.g., sharing personal information, transparency, e.g., as how to transparently convey relevant information in a conversational manner, and vulnerability of diverse user groups that should be taken into consideration

Older Adults' Acceptance of Virtual Doctors: A Preliminary Investigation

The use of virtual doctors is increasing; yet, we have not fully studied their impact and how they are perceived by the public, especially by digitally-marginalized users such as older adults. We also do not know how virtual doctors compare to other technology-mediated alternatives, like traditional telemedicine. More broadly, the factors leading to older users’ adoption of virtual doctors are not well understood. In other similar fields, users’ perceptions of early generations of conversational interfaces have been extensively studied. This raises the question of how virtual agents’ fidelity (e.g. video vs. speech-only) and agency (e.g. human vs. machine) influence confidence, comfort, and ease of use in target groups like older adults. To fill these knowledge gaps, I have conducted a mixed-methods study with older adults in which they engaged with different versions of telemedicine setups. The versions varied along the dimensions of fidelity (e.g. video vs. speech-only) and agency (e.g. human vs. machine). Analysis of interview and survey data shows that older adults were most confident and comfortable with speech-only machine-powered interfaces for general healthcare information, and with video-based link with human doctors for specific healthcare information. The findings also show that in order for virtual doctor systems to be accepted by older adults, they need to do the following: complement older adults’ visits to their existing doctors, fit their existing information practices for gathering healthcare information, and have perceived value compared to their currently available alternatives.M.I.S

EduCHI 2022 - 4th Annual Symposium on HCI Education

EduCHI 2022 will bring together an international community of scholars, practitioners, and researchers to shape the future of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) education. Held as part of the CHI 2022 conference, the two-day symposium will feature in- teractive discussions about trends, curricula, pedagogies, teaching practices, and current and future challenges facing HCI educators. In addition to providing a platform to share curriculum plans and teaching materials, EduCHI 2022 will also provide opportunities for HCI educators to learn new instructional strategies and deepen their pedagogical knowledge