Virtual Environments as Spaces of Symbolic Construction and Cultural Identity. Latin-American Virtual Communities

The aim of this work is to understand the sociopsychological\ud and cultural realities of virtual communities as live spaces of meeting and high interaction framed within the Latin American context. The study will consist of a comparative ethnographic study of several Latin communities, using the tools of participant observation and focused interviews

Comparing the cognitive profile of the HCI professional and the HCI educator

Previous research into Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) education has focussed mainly on the curriculum, pedagogy and the gap between education, and little is known about the cognitive profile of the HCI practitioner or educator, or how their individual differences impact upon practice in the field or the classroom. This research intends to address this gap by investigating the cognitive style of HCI practitioners, educators, and those with both roles. 315 professionals responded to a global online survey which captured their individual cognitive style using the Allinson and Hayes Cognitive Style Index (CSI) which tests whether the subject tends more towards an intuitivist or analyst, and the Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire (OSIVQ) which suggests a three dimensional model of cognitive style – object imagers who prefer to construct pictorial images, spatial imagers who prefer schematic representations and verbalizers who prefer to use verbal-analytical tools. Together, these two instruments provide a profile that matches the skills required to work within the field of HCI. The respondents included practitioners in the field (N=179), educators (N=61), and some who were both practitioner and educator (N=75). A one-way between-groups ANOVA and MANOVA was performed to investigate differences in the role of the professional, and the CSI and OSIVQ profiles respectively, followed by the Welch t-test to compare their OSIVQ scores with the published normative values. The ANOVA comparing the CSI scores for each of the groups revealed a statistically significant difference of F(2, 312) = 3.35, p= 0.38 and post-hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for the educators was significantly different from that of the ‘both’ group. The practitioners did not differ significantly from either the educators or ‘both’. This may in some part be explained by the fact that very often HCI is taught by an academic with a computer science background rather than an HCI specialist, but further investigation is needed in this area. The MANOVA used the three constructs of the OSIVQ as dependent variables. No significant difference was found between the groups. However, the t-tests comparing the professional against the normative data revealed that whilst there was no significant difference between the object imager score of the HCI professional and the scientist, there was a difference between the spatial imager score of the HCI professional and the visual artist, perhaps again reflecting the computer science background of many professionals. 24 survey respondents have been interviewed and the resulting data will form the basis of a thematic analysis to extend the cognitive profile, and to identify the predominant technological frames of operation. Applying this concept of technological frames to the domain of HCI, will help to make sense of the adoption and application of knowledge, tools and techniques amongst this community. In order for the curriculum to meet the needs of the market, the educator needs to understand the practitioner in order to produce graduates equipped for the role. Finally, as HCI is delivered in a multidisciplinary environment, should it not also be taught by a multidisciplinary team

Validating cultural and contextual traits of a\ud collectivistic community

Sub-Saharan African communities are classified as collectivist\ud societies. But, what exactly is meant by collectivism and to what extent\ud individuals adhere to this given the differences in their socio-economic\ud conditions? This paper is an empirical exploration of the contextual and cultural\ud traits of a rural sub-Saharan African community in order to facilitate their\ud interpretation towards technology design and adoption. Card sorting is used to\ud validate and make explicit contextual and cultural traits previously identified\ud during interviews. It is a confirmation of the collectivist nature of these cultures\ud with more details such as eagerness to confirm personal views and requirements\ud with that of the group in order to save “face”, among other traits

The politics of co-configuration in participatory design: a technological frame perspective

An argument for the use of the concept of Technological Frame by Bijker to understand the constructionist and semiotic power dynamics of different groups in participatory design is presented. This is illustrated with case study of design in rural Kenya. It is shown how dominant groups' frames can construct meanings of design decisions in terms of whether they are appropriate or not. The political leverage of the scripts embedded in artefacts used in the process of design is also explained from a semiotic perspective

Exploring sociotechnical gaps in an intercultural, multidisciplinary design project

This paper highlights the need for the creation of artefacts that make\ud visible the gap between social requirements and the technical affordances of\ud technology. Augmenting the visibility of this gap can lead to a better integration\ud of the process and product of interaction design in intercultural and\ud multidisciplinary projects. Sociotechnical matrices are presented as artefacts that\ud can help to explore this gap. This is illustrated with a case study of the design of\ud interactive systems for farmers in rural Kenya. We discuss experiences in the use\ud of these matrices and new challenges that have emerged in using them

Reflecting on the usability of research on culture in designing interaction

The concept of culture has been attractive to producers of interactive\ud systems who are willing to design useful and relevant solutions to users\ud increasingly located in culturally diverse contexts. Despite a substantial body of\ud research on culture and technology, interaction designers have not always been\ud able to apply these research outputs to effectively define requirements for\ud culturally diverse users. This paper frames this issue as one of understanding of\ud the different paradigms underpinning the cultural models being applied to\ud interface development and research. Drawing on different social science theories,\ud the authors discuss top-down and bottom-up perspectives in the study of users‟\ud cultural differences and discuss the extent to which each provides usable design\ud knowledge. The case is made for combining bottom-up and top-down perspectives\ud into a sociotechnical approach that can produce knowledge useful and usable by\ud interaction designers. This is illustrated with a case study about the design of\ud interactive systems for farmers in rural Kenya

The ethics and politics of design for the common good: a lesson from Alibaug

In this chapter I argue for a socio-technical approach to technology design for the common good that addresses its ethical and political aspects. The background is that the life of marginalized people in contemporary society is challenging and uncertain. The marginalized can face health and cognitive issues as well as a lack of stability in social structures such as family, work and social inclusion. In this context, certain democratic values embedded in technology design can conceal political asymmetries and fail to deliver ethical value exchange, where value extraction is not dominated by one party but equally shared across all stakeholders. I discuss two socio-technical perspectives called human work interaction design (HWID) and Technological Frames (TF) to expose and tackle the challenges of designing technology for the common good. I introduce and evaluate an ongoing case of a digital service delivered through an app to support a fishing community in Alibaug, India. The evaluation of the socio-technical infrastructure surrounding this app is done in two parts: firstly, I use HWID to highlight inwardly and outwardly socio-technical, ethical and power relations between human work and interaction design; secondly, an argument for the use of the concept of TF to understand the constructionist and semiotic power dynamics of different groups in participatory technology design is presented. It is shown how dominant groups’ frames can construct meanings of design decisions in terms of whether they are appropriate or not. The political leverage of the scripts embedded in artefacts used in the process of design is also explained from a semiotic perspective. I conclude by highlighting the value of an ethical and political socio-technical framework for technology design for the common good with people at the margins

Context and culture in human computer interaction: usable does not mean senseful

Computers and their interfaces are part of the spaces from which social reality emerges. They are indicators of direct and indirect cultural negotiations between the networks of production and consumption of these technologies. Technology is thus conceived as not only a product, but also as part of a cultural process of encoding and decoding. This implies a new concept of the Human-Computer relationship that breaks the prevalent idea of symmetry between human and computers as abstract information processing entities, i.e. it re-humanizes users as persons and re-locates computers and its interfaces as tools in real sociocultural settings. The paper briefly discusses the main theoretical strands that study the shaping of computer systems design and use by context and culture. These are Situated Action, the Semiotic perspective, Scenario-based Design, Activity theory, and the Systems-Management approach. Further, the role of ethnography, qualitative methods and intercultural studies are discussed as important contributors to a better understanding of the significance of context and culture in computer use and design. The Hermeneutic approach of Gadamer and Winograd and the idea of technology as interpretatively flexible text shaped by specific genres and tastes, serve as the main cornerstone of this discussion. A starting theoretical framework composed of three cultural dimensions (workplace, tool-related, and personal background) is proposed for researching the role of culture in systems and interface use and design. The main reflection from this discussion is that the question “Does this technology make sense for them?” is rarely made in pursuit of successful systems design. Therefore, the direction for research presented here tries to answer the question of how people situated in concrete cultural configurations make sense of computer systems

Ordinary user experiences at work: a study of greenhouse growers

We investigate professional greenhouse growers’ user experience (UX) when using climate-management systems in their daily work. We build on the literature on UX, in particular UX at work, and extend it to ordinary UX at work. In a ten-day diary study, we collected data with a general UX instrument (AttrakDiff), a domain-specific instrument, and interviews. We find that AttrakDiff is valid at work; its three-factor structure of pragmatic quality, hedonic identification quality, and hedonic stimulation quality is recognizable in the growers’ responses. In this paper, UX at work is understood as interactions among technology, tasks, structure, and actors. Our data support the recent proposal for the ordinariness of UX at work. We find that during continued use UX at work is middle-of-the-scale, remains largely constant over time, and varies little across use situations. For example, the largest slope of the four AttrakDiff constructs when regressed over the ten days was as small as 0.04. The findings contrast existing assumptions and findings in UX research, which is mainly about extraordinary and positive experiences. In this way, the present study contributes to UX research by calling attention to the mundane, unremarkable, and ordinary user experiences at work

A tone driven offline information kiosk

In this paper we introduce the concept of a low-cost, offline information kiosk that is controlled through a sound-based interface. More specifically, we will describe how we use a mobile phone to control a kiosk by communicating DTMF phone tones. Our main use-case is deployment within developing countries where we intend to examine issues related to cross-cultural interface design