Medical Selfies: Emotional Impacts and Practical Challenges

Medical images taken with mobile phones by patients, i.e. medical selfies, allow screening, monitoring and diagnosis of skin lesions. While mobile teledermatology can provide good diagnostic accuracy for skin tumours, there is little research about emotional and physical aspects when taking medical selfies of body parts. We conducted a survey with 100 participants and a qualitative study with twelve participants, in which they took images of eight body parts including intimate areas. Participants had difficulties taking medical selfies of their shoulder blades and buttocks. For the genitals, they prefer to visit a doctor rather than sending images. Taking the images triggered privacy concerns, memories of past experiences with body parts and raised awareness of the bodily medical state. We present recommendations for the design of mobile apps to address the usability and emotional impacts of taking medical selfies

We learned we can do something to reduce bullying: Children designing anti-bullying mobile apps to empower their peers

Mobile applications have thoroughly pervaded the lives of today's children, who live and learn through and with them. However, limited research has been conducted on children designing such apps and not only using those designed by adults. Inviting children to design such apps is the focus of our study. Moreover, in contemporary society, it is emphasized that children should be empowered to take civic action and engage in making the world a better place. In the literature, however, less emphasis has been placed on how children can be invited to do so through the means of digital technology, particularly mobile application design. In this study, 13–15-year-old children are invited to take civic action to address the serious societal problem of bullying through the design of mobile apps. We discussed the design process and analyzed the applications the children designed from the viewpoint of how they aim to tackle bullying. We examined how their app designs aim at empowering other children in the context of bullying, and thus considered what kinds of opportunities emerge for children to learn skills related to the prevention or management of bullying in the apps they have designed. We showed that the children's app designs informed us of the seriousness of bullying in children's lives and that they advocate for the empowerment of other children in different ways. Hence, we have increased our understanding of how smart, interactive technologies designed by children address the learning and empowerment of other children, i.e., application users. We also studied the children's learning from both their and their teachers' perspectives. This study showcases an alternative way educators can integrate digital technologies and apps in school settings to educate children on important societal matters and digital technology

Corrigendum: We learned we can do something to reduce bullying: children designing anti-bullying mobile apps to empower their peers

Mobile applications have thoroughly pervaded the lives of today's children, who live and learn through and with them. However, limited research has been conducted on children designing such apps and not only using those designed by adults. Inviting children to design such apps is the focus of our study. Moreover, in contemporary society, it is emphasized that children should be empowered to take civic action and engage in making the world a better place. In the literature, however, less emphasis has been placed on how children can be invited to do so through the means of digital technology, particularly mobile application design. In this study, 13–15-year-old children are invited to take civic action to address the serious societal problem of bullying through the design of mobile apps. We discussed the design process and analyzed the applications the children designed from the viewpoint of how they aim to tackle bullying. We examined how their app designs aim at empowering other children in the context of bullying, and thus considered what kinds of opportunities emerge for children to learn skills related to the prevention or management of bullying in the apps they have designed. We showed that the children's app designs informed us of the seriousness of bullying in children's lives and that they advocate for the empowerment of other children in different ways. Hence, we have increased our understanding of how smart, interactive technologies designed by children address the learning and empowerment of other children, i.e., application users. We also studied the children's learning from both their and their teachers' perspectives. This study showcases an alternative way educators can integrate digital technologies and apps in school settings to educate children on important societal matters and digital technology.</p

In Pursuit of Inclusive and Diverse Digital Futures : Exploring the Potential of Design Fiction in Education of Children

2020 marks the beginning of a new era as the pandemic catapulted us into new digital and virtual ways of everyday life. As the world changes, we reimagine empowering, equitable, accessible, diverse, and inclusive digital futures, through a series of projects and workshops with a diverse set of participants - children in schools and Child Computer Interaction researchers. We conducted one long-term project with two schools in Finland and two one-day workshops with an international set of participants. Through an analysis of participants’ experiences and outcomes in the project and workshops, we build a case for diversity and inclusion through design fiction in the context of children’s education. In addition, through an analysis of the process we as researchers took for developing the project and workshops, we showcase the support of diversity and inclusion in design fiction.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

The characteristics and development of urban computing practices:utilizing practice toolkit approach to study public display network

Abstract This thesis concentrates on understanding people’s daily interactions with urban technologies and the role they play in everyday life by investigating use practices for the on urban, multipurpose, public display network in the city of Oulu in northern Finland. The goal is two-fold, namely, to investigate different aspects of emerging urban computing practices and understand the versatility of the contributing factors behind these practices. The work is grounded in practice theory that understands practices as a result of an historical evolution influenced by several forces. On the one hand, the thesis concentrates on the local accomplishment of practices; on the other hand it, seeks to understand the broader connections between these practices as well as their history and evolution. The material comes from three main sources: Users of the public displays, their developers and additional stakeholders involved in the design process, and citizen comments on the display network project on social media. The research is based on empirical qualitative research material; quantitative use statistics are applied to support the findings. The findings reveal that urban computing practices take on influences from several directions including designers and other stakeholders during the design phase, the users’ lives and existing practices, and ongoing societal and communal discourses. The thesis offers increased understanding of the designing and implementation of successful ubiquitous computing projects in a public setting.Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy ymmärtämään ihmisten päivittäistä vuorovaikutusta kaupunkiteknolgian kanssa tutkimalla käytäntöjä julkisten näyttöjen verkoston ympärillä. Tavoite on toisaalta tutkia kaupunkiteknologiakäytänteitä eri näkökulmista ja toisaalta ymmärtää monipuolisia osatekijöitä käytäntöjen takana. Työ perustuu käytäntöteoriaan, joka ymmärtää käytäntöjä historiallisen kehityksen seurauksena sekä usean osatekijän tuloksena. Toisaalta tutkielma keskittyy paikallisiin käytäntöihin; toisaalta se yrittää ymmärtää laajempia yhteyksiä käytäntöjen välillä sekä niiden historiaa ja evoluutiota. Materiaali tulee kolmesta päälähteestä: 1) Julkisten näyttöjen verkoston kehittäjiltä ja muilta suunnitteluprosessin sidosryhmiltä, 2) näyttöjen käyttäjiltä sekä 3) kaupunkilaisilta, jotka kommentoivat näyttöverkkoprojektia sosiaalisessa mediassa. Tutkimus perustuu laadulliseen tutkimusaineistoon, jonka lisäksi määrällistä käyttötilastoaineistoa sovelletaan tukemaan laadullisia havaintoja. Havainnot paljastavat, että urbaanin teknologian käytänteisiin vaikuttavat monet tekijät mukaan lukien suunnittelijat ja muut suunnitteluvaiheen sidosryhmät, käyttäjien elämä ja heidän olemassa olevat käytänteensä sekä ajankohtainen yhteiskunnallinen ja yhteisöllinen keskustelu. Tutkielma tarjoaa uudenlaista ymmärrystä jokapaikan tietotekniikka -projektien suunnittelusta ja toteutuksesta julkisissa ympäristöissä

Introducing a practice toolkit for understanding and shaping children’s digitalized everyday life:case children and public displays

Abstract Children of today live increasingly digitalized lives. Child computer interaction (CCI) research has a strong agenda to empower children in the digital age through participation in new digital technology design. While children’s role in digital technology design has been studied from various perspectives, existing research is limited in understanding and approaching children’s continuously evolving digital lives and practices. In this paper, we scrutinize a practice toolkit method for making sense and shaping children’s digitalized everyday life and practice. We concretize its use through an analysis of children’s and their families’ engagement with an interactive public display infrastructure, providing zoom-in and zoom-out analyses of emergent practices around the infrastructure. We show various kinds of creative and collaborative accomplishments, the importance of the material world and the relationship of the practices to media discourses and discuss how these practices can be used to inspire and shape further digital technology development. We demonstrate the value of the practice toolkit and emergent practices for CCI research and practice