Designing Ad-Hoc Cross Device Collaborations For Small Groups

The curation of historic documents is a difficult task as it requires to combine information and raw material from many different sources. Digital tools can support such a sensemaking task and group collaboration can help the discovery of knowledge. While most of people’s personal devices (such as phones, tablets and laptops) are connected to the internet, they are not aware of each other’s presence or relationship when in close proximity. Leveraging people’s personal devices and other devices in their surroundings provides an opportunity to support the curation of historic documents in ad hoc small group scenarios. I describe my motivation and a selection of related work, leading to requirements for such a system. I then state how I am planning to address these challenges and my current state of research, following two parallel tracks: building and testing technology as well as conducting observational studies and interviews to inform my designs

CurationSpace: Cross-Device Content Curation Using Instrumental Interaction

For digital content curation of historical artefacts, curators collaboratively collect, analyze and edit documents, images, and other digital resources in order to display and share new representations of that information to an audience. Despite their increasing reliance on digital documents and tools, current technologies provide little support for these specific collaborative content curation activities. We introduce CurationSpace – a novel cross-device system – to provide more expressive tools for curating and composing digital historical artefacts. Based on the concept of Instrumental Interaction, CurationSpace allows users to interact with digital curation artefacts on shared interactive surfaces using personal smartwatches as selectors for instruments or modifiers (applied to either the whole curation space, individual documents, or fragments). We introduce a range of novel interaction techniques that allow individuals or groups of curators to more easily create, navigate and share resources during content curation. We report insights from our user study about people’s use of instruments and modifiers for curation activities

MakeMe, codeme, connectus: Learning digital fluency through tangible magic cubes

Recent years have seen an increased empirical interest in designing new approaches to teaching digital fluency to wide audiences. Tangible physical computing interfaces provide much scope for teaching abstract digital fluency concepts in an engaging and playful way. However, questions remain as to how both the form factor and the corresponding task types of such interfaces can be best designed to support learning. In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore how digital fluency topics might be taught through making, discovery learning and coding by interacting with the tangible Magic Cubes toolkit (Figure 1). The workshop will culminate in a discussion of how tangible toolkits for learning can be better designed to encourage collaborative and engaging learning experiences

The Challenges of Using an Existing Cross-Device Interaction Prototype for Supporting Actual Curation Practices

Volunteer-driven organisations curating historic documents, such as societies and charities, often work within a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) practice and their meetings are in varying situations. A recurring challenge is finding lightweight ways to enable them to share and collectively work with documents using their own devices while in situ. We are working on building novel interaction techniques and applications (prototyped with a custom developer toolkit) for supporting the curation of digital collections – for example, historic documents. We discuss the pros and cons of using an existing prototype system for this purpose and points to consider when taking a prototype from the lab into the wild

Surface constellations applications: Use cases of ad-hoc reconfigurable cross-device workspaces

SurfaceConstellations is a modular hardware platform that allows users to easily create their own novel cross-device environments by assembling multiple mobile surfaces with 3D printed link modules. Our platform combines the advantages of multi-monitor workspaces and multi-surface environments with the flexibility and extensibility of more recent cross-device setups. The platform includes a comprehensive library of 3D-printed link modules to connect and arrange tablets into new workspaces, several strategies for creating new setups, and a web-based visual configuration tool for creating new setups and automatically generating link modules. We will demonstrate different use-case applications across the design space of reconfigurable cross-device workspaces and the configuration tool

AirConstellations: In-Air Device Formations for Cross-Device Interaction via Multiple Spatially-Aware Armatures

AirConstellations supports a unique semi-fixed style of cross-device interactions via multiple self-spatially-aware armatures to which users can easily attach (or detach) tablets and other devices. In particular, AirConstellations affords highly flexible and dynamic device formations where the users can bring multiple devices together in-air - with 2-5 armatures poseable in 7DoF within the same workspace - to suit the demands of their current task, social situation, app scenario, or mobility needs. This affords an interaction metaphor where relative orientation, proximity, attaching (or detaching) devices, and continuous movement into and out of ad-hoc ensembles can drive context-sensitive interactions. Yet all devices remain self-stable in useful configurations even when released in mid-air. We explore flexible physical arrangement, feedforward of transition options, and layering of devices in-air across a variety of multi-device app scenarios. These include video conferencing with flexible arrangement of the person-space of multiple remote participants around a shared task-space, layered and tiled device formations with overview+detail and shared-to-personal transitions, and flexible composition of UI panels and tool palettes across devices for productivity applications. A preliminary interview study highlights user reactions to AirConstellations, such as for minimally disruptive device formations, easier physical transitions, and balancing "seeing and being seen"in remote work

Pulmonary CCR2⁺CD4⁺  T cells are immune regulatory and attenuate lung fibrosis development.

BACKGROUND: Animal models have suggested that CCR2-dependent signalling contributes to the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis, but global blockade of CCL2 failed to improve the clinical course of patients with lung fibrosis. However, as levels of CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells in paediatric lung fibrosis had previously been found to be increased, correlating with clinical symptoms, we hypothesised that distinct CCR2(+) cell populations might either increase or decrease disease pathogenesis depending on their subtype. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the role of CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells in experimental lung fibrosis and in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and other fibrosis. METHODS: Pulmonary CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells were analysed using flow cytometry and mRNA profiling, followed by in silico pathway analysis, in vitro assays and adoptive transfer experiments. RESULTS: Frequencies of CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells were increased in experimental fibrosis-specifically the CD62L(-)CD44(+) effector memory T cell phenotype, displaying a distinct chemokine receptor profile. mRNA profiling of isolated CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells from fibrotic lungs suggested immune regulatory functions, a finding that was confirmed in vitro using suppressor assays. Importantly, adoptive transfer of CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells attenuated fibrosis development. The results were partly corroborated in patients with lung fibrosis, by showing higher percentages of Foxp3(+) CD25(+) cells within bronchoalveolar lavage fluid CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells as compared with CCR2(-)CD4(+) T cells. CONCLUSION: Pulmonary CCR2(+)CD4(+) T cells are immunosuppressive, and could attenuate lung inflammation and fibrosis. Therapeutic strategies completely abrogating CCR2-dependent signalling will therefore also eliminate cell populations with protective roles in fibrotic lung disease. This emphasises the need for a detailed understanding of the functions of immune cell subsets in fibrotic lung disease