The Family Window: Perceived Usage and Privacy Concerns

Families have a strong need to connect with their loved ones over distance. However, most technologies do not provide the same feelings of connectedness that one feels from seeing remote family members. Hence our goal was to understand if a video connection, in the form of a media space, could help families feel more connected. To answer this, we designed a video media space called the Family Window and deployed it within the homes of two families for eight months and four families for five weeks. We also interviewed 16 individuals to obtain additional feedback about the system and to learn about their privacy concerns

Exploring DIY practices of complex home technologies

We are surrounded by increasingly complex networks of smart objects, yet our understanding and attachment to them is rather limited. One way to support stronger end users’ engagement with such complex technologies is by involving them in the design process and with the advent of Arduino prototyping platform, even in their making. While DIY practice offers the potential for stronger user engagement with physical artifacts, we know little about end users’ DIY practice of making complex electronic technologies and their potential to ensure engagement with such devices. In this paper, we report on interviews with 18 participants from two green communities who built and used an open source DIY energy monitor, with the aim to explore the end users DIY practices of making such complex electronic devices. Findings indicate four key qualities of DIY monitors: transparent modularity, open-endedness, heirloom and disruptiveness, and how they contribute to more meaningful engagement with the DIY monitors, elevating them from the status of unremarkable objects to that of things. We conclude with three implications for design for supporting end user development of complex electronic DIY: designing transparent open hardware technologies, standardizing communication protocols for the current and future DIY of IoT; and deliberately calling for personal investment and labor in the assembling of DIY kits

Collaboration Surrounding Beacon Use During Companion Avalanche Rescues

When facing an avalanche, backcountry skiers need to work effectively both individually and as a group to rescue buried victims. If they don’t, death is likely. One of the tools used by each person is a digital beacon that transmits an electromagnetic signal. If buried, others use their beacons to locate victims by searching for their signals, and then dig them out. This study focuses on the collaborative practices of avalanche rescue and the interactions with beacons while backcountry skiing. We conducted interviews with backcountry recreationists and experts, and we observed avalanche rescue practice scenarios. Our results highlight aspects and challenges of mental representation, trust, distributed cognition, and practice. Implications include three considerations for the redesign of beacons: simplicity, visibility and practice

Intimacy in Long-Distance Relationships over Video Chat

Many couples live a portion of their lives being separated from each other as part of a long-distance relationship (LDR). This includes a large number of dating college students as well as couples who are geographically-separated because of situational demands such as work. We conducted interviews with individuals in LDRs to understand how they make use of video chat systems to maintain their relationships. In particular, we have investigated how couples use video to “hang out” together and engage in activities over extended periods of time. Our results show that regardless of the relationship situation, video affords a unique opportunity for couples to share presence over distance, which in turn provides intimacy and reduced idealization. While beneficial, couples still face challenges in using video, including contextual (e.g., location of partners, time zone differences), technical (e.g., mobility, audio and video quality, networking), and personal (e.g., a lack of true physicality needed by most in order to support intimate sexual acts) challenges

Image harmony for consumer images

Images elicit a variety of emotional responses related to image content, overall aesthetic appeal, or a combination of both. One aspect of aesthetic appeal is harmony: the pleasing or congruent arrangement of parts producing internal calm or tranquility. We conducted a series of experiments to identify what factors, if any, could predict harmony in an image. Subjective judgments of image harmony were collected for images representative of typical consumer photography. Our results show that for simplified images (pixelated to control for emotional responses) reasons for image harmony are fairly dependent on the viewer, but typically involve edge contrast, average lightness, range of lightness, or the inclusion of Gestalt principles. Extraction of global image features may help to explain results with black and white and color images. Index Terms — image harmony, image quality, computational assessment, consumer photograph

The role of community and groupware in geocache creation and maintenance

Applications that provide location-based experiences are an increasingly viable design space given the proliferation of GPS-enabled mobile devices. However, these applications are in their infancy, and we do not yet know what design factors will contribute to their success. For this reason, we have studied the well-established location-based experience of geocaching. We report on the results of a survey of geocachers along with observations from our own in-depth geocaching activities. Our findings illustrate that geocaching permits users to create a range of experiences for others within a permeable yet restricted culture of norms. Once created, geocaches are maintained by the community of geocachers through a well-designed groupware system. Here maintenance acts can be performed “in the small, ” given their lightweight and well-defined nature, and become less about maintenance and more about personal participation. These findings provide insight into how community and groupware can be leveraged to support applications for location-based experiences

SIG on Telepresence Robots

In this document we explain the need and plans for a SIG Meeting at CHI on telepresence robots. We describe the organization of this SIG, our expected attendees, procedure and schedule of topics to be discussed, as well as our recruitment plan. Our goal is to provide a forum to discuss key issues surrounding the uses and usefulness of telepresence robots, including challenges and best practices

How Automatic Speed Control Based on Distance Affects User Behaviours in Telepresence Robot Navigation Within Dense Conference-like Environments

Telepresence robots allow users to be spatially and socially present in remote environments. Yet, it can be challenging to remotely operate telepresence robots, especially in dense environments such as academic conferences or workplaces. In this paper, we primarily focus on the effect that a speed control method, which automatically slows the telepresence robot down when getting closer to obstacles, has on user behaviors. In our first user study, participants drove the robot through a static obstacle course with narrow sections. Results indicate that the automatic speed control method significantly decreases the number of collisions. For the second study we designed a more naturalistic, conference-like experimental environment with tasks that require social interaction, and collected subjective responses from the participants when they were asked to navigate through the environment. While about half of the participants preferred automatic speed control because it allowed for smoother and safer navigation, others did not want to be influenced by an automatic mechanism. Overall, the results suggest that automatic speed control simplifies the user interface for telepresence robots in static dense environments, but should be considered as optionally available, especially in situations involving social interactions

Understanding sequence and reply relationships within email conversations: A mixed-model visualization.

ABSTRACT It has been proposed that email clients could be improved if they presented messages grouped into conversations. An email conversation is the tree of related messages that arises from the use of the reply operation. We propose two models of conversation. The first model characterizes a conversation as a chronological sequence of messages; the second as a tree based on the reply relationship. We show how existing email clients and prior research projects implicitly support each model to a greater or lesser degree depending on their design, but none fully supports both models simultaneously. We present a mixed-model visualization that simultaneously presents sequence and reply relationships among the messages of a conversation, making both visible at a glance. We describe the integration of the visualization into a working prototype email client. A usability study indicates that the system meets our usability goals and verifies that the visualization fully conveys both types of relationships within the messages of an email conversation