A competencies framework of visual impairments for enabling shared understanding in design

Existing work in Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research has long sought to investigate the experiences of people with visual impairments in order to address their needs through technology design and integrate their participation into different stages of the design process. Yet challenges remain regarding how disabilities are framed in technology design and the extent of involvement of disabled people within it. Furthermore, accessibility is often considered a specialised job and misunderstandings or assumptions about visually impaired people’s experiences and needs occur outside dedicated fields. This thesis presents an ethnomethodology-informed design critique for supporting awareness and shared understanding of visual impairments and accessibility that centres on their experiences, abilities, and participation in early-stage design. This work is rooted in an in-depth empirical investigation of the interactional competencies that people with visual impairments exhibit through their use of technology, which informs and shapes the concept of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments. Although past research has established stances for considering the individual abilities of disabled people and other social and relational factors in technology design, by drawing on ethnomethodology and its interest in situated competence this thesis employs an interactional perspective to investigate the practical accomplishments of visually impaired people. Thus, this thesis frames visual impairments in terms of competencies to be considered in the design process, rather than a deficiency or problem to be fixed through technology. Accordingly, this work favours supporting awareness and reflection rather than the design of particular solutions, which are also strongly needed for advancing accessible design at large. This PhD thesis comprises two main empirical studies branched into three different investigations. The first and second investigations are based on a four-month ethnographic study with visually impaired participants examining their everyday technology practices. The third investigation comprises the design and implementation of a workshop study developed to include people with and without visual impairments in collaborative reflections about technology and accessibility. As such, each investigation informed the ones that followed, revisiting and refining concepts and design materials throughout the thesis. Although ethnomethodology is the overarching approach running through this PhD project, each investigation has a different focus of enquiry: • The first is focused on analysing participants’ technology practices and unearthing the interactional competencies enabling them. • The second is focused on analysing technology demonstrations, which were a pervasive phenomenon recorded during fieldwork, and the work of demonstrating as exhibited by visually impaired participants. • Lastly, the third investigation defines a workshop approach employing video demonstrations and a deck of reflective design cards as building blocks for enabling shared understanding among people with and without visual impairments from different technology backgrounds; that is, users, technologists, designers, and researchers. Overall, this thesis makes several contributions to audiences within and outside academia, such as the detailed accounts of some of the main technology practices of people with visual impairments and the methodological analysis of demonstrations in empirical Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research. Moreover, the main contribution lies in the conceptualisation of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments from the empirical analysis of interactional competencies and their practical exhibition through demonstrations, as well as the creation and use of a deck of cards that encapsulates the competencies and external elements involved in the everyday interactional accomplishments of people with visual impairments. All these contributions are lastly brought together in the implementation of the workshop approach that enabled participants to interact with and learn from each other. Thus, this thesis builds upon and advances contemporary strands of work in Human Computer Interaction that call for re-orienting how visual impairments and, overall, disabilities are framed in technology design, and ultimately for re-shaping the design practice itself

A competencies framework of visual impairments for enabling shared understanding in design

Existing work in Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research has long sought to investigate the experiences of people with visual impairments in order to address their needs through technology design and integrate their participation into different stages of the design process. Yet challenges remain regarding how disabilities are framed in technology design and the extent of involvement of disabled people within it. Furthermore, accessibility is often considered a specialised job and misunderstandings or assumptions about visually impaired people’s experiences and needs occur outside dedicated fields. This thesis presents an ethnomethodology-informed design critique for supporting awareness and shared understanding of visual impairments and accessibility that centres on their experiences, abilities, and participation in early-stage design. This work is rooted in an in-depth empirical investigation of the interactional competencies that people with visual impairments exhibit through their use of technology, which informs and shapes the concept of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments. Although past research has established stances for considering the individual abilities of disabled people and other social and relational factors in technology design, by drawing on ethnomethodology and its interest in situated competence this thesis employs an interactional perspective to investigate the practical accomplishments of visually impaired people. Thus, this thesis frames visual impairments in terms of competencies to be considered in the design process, rather than a deficiency or problem to be fixed through technology. Accordingly, this work favours supporting awareness and reflection rather than the design of particular solutions, which are also strongly needed for advancing accessible design at large. This PhD thesis comprises two main empirical studies branched into three different investigations. The first and second investigations are based on a four-month ethnographic study with visually impaired participants examining their everyday technology practices. The third investigation comprises the design and implementation of a workshop study developed to include people with and without visual impairments in collaborative reflections about technology and accessibility. As such, each investigation informed the ones that followed, revisiting and refining concepts and design materials throughout the thesis. Although ethnomethodology is the overarching approach running through this PhD project, each investigation has a different focus of enquiry: • The first is focused on analysing participants’ technology practices and unearthing the interactional competencies enabling them. • The second is focused on analysing technology demonstrations, which were a pervasive phenomenon recorded during fieldwork, and the work of demonstrating as exhibited by visually impaired participants. • Lastly, the third investigation defines a workshop approach employing video demonstrations and a deck of reflective design cards as building blocks for enabling shared understanding among people with and without visual impairments from different technology backgrounds; that is, users, technologists, designers, and researchers. Overall, this thesis makes several contributions to audiences within and outside academia, such as the detailed accounts of some of the main technology practices of people with visual impairments and the methodological analysis of demonstrations in empirical Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research. Moreover, the main contribution lies in the conceptualisation of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments from the empirical analysis of interactional competencies and their practical exhibition through demonstrations, as well as the creation and use of a deck of cards that encapsulates the competencies and external elements involved in the everyday interactional accomplishments of people with visual impairments. All these contributions are lastly brought together in the implementation of the workshop approach that enabled participants to interact with and learn from each other. Thus, this thesis builds upon and advances contemporary strands of work in Human Computer Interaction that call for re-orienting how visual impairments and, overall, disabilities are framed in technology design, and ultimately for re-shaping the design practice itself

An ethnographic study of people’s strategies to avoid food waste

Disturbing volumes of food waste generation around the world have been recently reported. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, 2011) estimate that one third of food is wasted or lost each year worldwide. It has also been reported that in developed countries about half of food waste generated in a year comes from households (Quested & Parry, 2011). Although government policies and campaigns have been created to reduce these amounts, very little has been done to thoroughly understand the practices and activities that trigger the generation of food waste inside households, and the strategies that are presently used to avoid it. This study investigated such strategies through an ethnographic study of three different households conducted for three weeks, carrying out fieldwork combined with semi-structured and contextual interviews, diaries and instant messaging. Many strategies to avoid food waste were identified within ordinary activities related to food such as shopping, storing, preparing, cooking, eating and discarding. Important factors to accomplish such strategies, and possible areas to be supported by technology, were ascertained through analysis. A set of design requirements were generated informed by the study findings and ultimately a paper-based prototype of a mobile application was designed based on the requirements and evaluated. The results showed that there are commonalities among households influencing food waste and its avoidance, but at the same time exposed the need to design systems with flexibility, acknowledging that households may have different needs and different types of users. These are the factors designers and developers must take note of, because they are the key point to reduce food waste in households

Demonstrating Interaction: The Case of Assistive Technology

Technology 'demos' have become a staple in technology design practice, especially for showcasing prototypes or systems. However, demonstrations are also commonplace and multifaceted phenomena in everyday life, and thus have found their way into empirical research of technology use. In spite of their presence in HCI, their methodical character as a research tool has so far received little attention in our community. We analysed 102 video-recorded demonstrations performed by visually impaired people, captured in the context of a larger ethnographic study investigating their technology use. In doing so, we exhibit core features of demonstrational work and discuss the relevance of the meta-activities occurring around and within demonstrations. We reflect on their value as an approach to doing HCI research on assistive technologies, for enabling shared understanding and letting us identify opportunities for design. Lastly, we discuss their implications as a research instrument for accessibility and HCI research more broadly

Augmented robotic telepresence (ART): A prototype for enhancing remote interaction and participation

Mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) allows remote users’ access and mobility in a range of local environments. MRP devices have been adopted in societally significant domains such as workplaces, museums, commerce, education, and healthcare, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide accessibility to these spaces when physical attendance was precluded. Although telepresence robots have autonomous systems features such as collision avoidance, they do not typically allow for physical manipulation of the environment, so they have been found to engender limited trustworthiness and have yet to achieve widespread adoption. This work presents a prototype exploring the potential of Augmented Robotic Telepresence (ART) to improve on inclusion, accessibility, and independence provided to remote users of MRP, broadening the space for interaction and participation, by augmenting affordances in the local environment via techniques such as Augmented Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), and remote actuation. Herein we describe the ART prototype developed thus far, which is built on top of a commercial MRP robot, the Double 3 by Double Robotics; we elaborate on the ART prototype design, its implementation, and current capabilities. Lastly, we describe our research plans, including design workshops with museum stakeholders, and point towards directions for future work

Technology for Environmental Policy: Exploring Perceptions, Values, and Trust in a Citizen Carbon Budget App

Personal Carbon Allowances (PCAs) are a policy idea for reducing individual carbon emissions, originally proposed in the UK in the 1990s, but promptly discarded due to concerns about low public acceptability and technological limitations. Decades later, we face the global challenge of a worsened climate crisis, thus proponents of PCAs argue that they should be reconsidered. We conducted an online survey with 300 UK based participants, investigating the viability, trustworthiness, and public acceptance of a Citizen Carbon Budget (CCB) app to monitor and encourage carbon emission reduction from personal activities and the relation of responses to Schwartz’s Portrait Values Questionnaire. Our findings indicate that trust in using this kind of applications should not only be focused on their technical aspects but on the preconditions of trusting the implementation of this policy. Further, we found that holding stronger social values relate to a greater willingness to contribute to minimising individual carbon emissions and consequently to use the app across the board, including greater acceptance of automated features, and willingness to trust the app and stakeholders involved; these were not the case when holding stronger personal values. Various solutions may be needed to appeal to people with different values and leanings for mitigating climate change

Understanding Trust and Changes in Use After a Year With the NHS COVID-19 Contact Tracing App in the United Kingdom: Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study

Background: Digital contact tracing (DCT) apps have been implemented as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has focused on understanding acceptance and adoption of these apps, but more work is needed to understand the factors that may contribute to their sustained use. This is key to public health because DCT apps require a high uptake rate to decrease the transmission of the virus within the general population. Objective: This study aimed to understand changes in the use of the National Health Service Test & Trace (T&T) COVID-19 DCT app and explore how public trust in the app evolved over a 1-year period. Methods: We conducted a longitudinal mixed methods study consisting of a digital survey in December 2020 followed by another digital survey and interview in November 2021, in which responses from 9 participants were explored in detail. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview transcripts. This paper focuses on the thematic analysis to unpack the reasoning behind participants' answers. Results: In this paper, 5 themes generated through thematic analysis are discussed: flaws in the T&T app, usefulness and functionality affecting trust in the app, low trust in the UK government, varying degrees of trust in other stakeholders, and public consciousness and compliance dropping over time. Mistrust evolved from participants experiencing sociotechnical flaws in the app and led to concerns about the app's usefulness. Similarly, mistrust in the government was linked to perceived poor pandemic handling and the creation and procurement of the app. However, more variability in trust in other stakeholders was highlighted depending on perceived competence and intentions. For example, Big Tech companies (ie, Apple and Google), large hospitality venues, and private contractors were seen as more capable, but participants mistrust their intentions, and small hospitality venues, local councils, and the National Health Service (ie, public health system) were seen as well-intentioned but there is mistrust in their ability to handle pandemic matters. Participants reported complying, or not, with T&T and pandemic guidance to different degrees but, overall, observed a drop in compliance over time. Conclusions: These findings contribute to the wider implications of changes in DCT app use over time for public health. Findings suggest that trust in the wider T&T app ecosystem could be linked to changes in the use of the app; however, further empirical and theoretical work needs to be done to generalize the results because of the small, homogeneous sample. Initial novelty effects occurred with the app, which lessened over time as public concern and media representation of the pandemic decreased and normalization occurred. Trust in the sociotechnical capabilities of the app, stakeholders involved, and salience maintenance of the T&T app in conjunction with other measures are needed for sustained use

Biopolímeros de cáscaras de mango y su importancia en la soberanía alimentaria

Mediante la presente revisión bibliográfica se ha encontrado que los biopolímeros a base de subproductos del mango serían capaces de prolongar la vida útil de los alimentos sin afectar su calidad y propiedades organolépticas. Los compuestos bioactivos de la cáscara de este fruto protegerían a un producto de daños fisicoquímicos y contaminación microbiana. Además, estos empaques podrían disminuir los residuos y contaminantes ambientales. Esta revisión se realizó considerando como indicadores de calidad: la permeabilidad al vapor de agua y cantidad de compuestos fenólicos principalmente. Se encontró que la película de gelatina de pescado con 5% de extracto de cáscara de mango (MPE) tendría una baja permeabilidad al vapor de agua WVP: 1.98 ± 0.15 g mm/kPa s m2 mientras que sus compuestos antioxidantes permitirían el aumento de la vida útil del alimento, por sus propiedades de barrera, contribuyendo así a reducir los desperdicios de la industria alimentaria. Asimismo, los biopolímeros de subproductos de cáscara de mango contribuirían al concepto de soberanía alimentaria pues promueven la conservación de los alimentos de manera sustentable, sostenible y accesible, manteniendo al mismo tiempo la calidad, inocuidad y el valor nutricional del producto. Los biopolímeros son una alternativa a los envases sintéticos

"They’re not going to do all the tasks we do": Understanding trust and reassurance towards a UV-C disinfection robot

Increasingly, robots are adopted for routine tasks such as cleaning and disinfection of public spaces, raising questions about attitudes and trust of professional cleaners who might in future have robots as teammates, and whether the general public feels reassured that disinfection is carried out by robots. In this paper, we present the results of a mixed- methods user study exploring how trust and reassurance by both professional cleaners and members of the public is affected by the use of a UV-C robot and information about its performance disinfecting a simulated classroom. The results show a range of insights for those designing and wishing to deploy UV-C robots: we found that trust and reassurance is affected by information about the UV-C robots’ task performance, with more information coinciding with significantly more agreement to be able to judge that the robot is doing a good job, although care should be taken when designing information about task performance to avoid misinterpretation. Overall, the results suggest a generally positive picture regarding the use of UV- C disinfecting robots and that cleaning professionals would be happy to have them as their teammates; however, there were also some concerns regarding the effect on less-skilled jobs. Taken together, our results provide considerations to make UV- C robots welcomed by cleaning teams as well as to provide reassurance to space users