Audience and Expert Perspectives on Second Screen Engagement with Political Debates

Televised debates remain a key point in elections, during which there are vast amounts of online activity, much of it conducted through personal devices or second screens. Amidst growing recognition of the influence of online political discourse, we explore the issues and opportunities arising at this specific point in election cycles, using a design-led multi-stakeholder approach to understand both the audience and expert perspectives. Workshops with debate viewers highlighted six key issues and possible solutions, which were encapsulated in four speculative design concepts. These were used to prompt further discussion with political and media experts, who were able to identify the implications and challenges of addressing the opportunities identified by the participants. Together, these perspectives allow us to unravel some of the complexities of designing for this multifaceted problem

Large displays and tablets:Data exploration and its effects on data collection

Data is pivotal to open government initiatives, where citizens are often expected to be informed and actively participate. Yet, it can be difficult for people to understand the meaning of data. Presenting data to the public in an appropriate way may also increase citizen's willingness to participate in data collection. Here we present a study which explores how large screens can support socially relevant data exploration. In a between subject laboratory experiment, we analysed how pairs of participants explored data visualisations on a high-resolution display (LHRD) and a tablet. Our results indicate that LHRDs are less cognitively demanding, while tablets offer more shared control of the interface. Data exploration had limited effect on increasing comfort with sharing personal data but helped increase perceptions of trustworthiness within the data collection process. We observed that appropriately visualised data on either platform has significant potential to increase the public's understanding of large data sets

ShopComm:Community-Supported Online Shopping for Older Adults

© 2017 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved. The United Kingdom has an ageing population whose members experience significant life transitions as they grow older, for example, losing mobility due to deteriorating health. For these adults, digital technology has the potential to sustain their independence and improve their quality of life. However older adults can be reluctant to use digital solutions. In this paper, we review a local charity providing a grocery shopping service for older adults who are unable to go themselves. We explore how older adults perceive the benefits and drawbacks of both physical and digital shopping. Using these insights, we designed ShopComm to enable and support older adults with mobility impairments to shop online

Supporting Real-Time Contextual Inquiry Through Sensor Data

A key challenge in carrying out product design research is obtaining rich contextual information about use in the wild. We present a method that algorithmically mediates between participants, researchers, and objects in order to enable real-time collaborative sensemaking. It facilitates contextual inquiry, revealing behaviours and motivations that frame product use in the wild. In particular, we are interested in developing a practice of use driven design, where products become research tools that generate design insights grounded in user experiences. The value of this method was explored through the deployment of a collection of Bluetooth speakers that capture and stream live data to remote but co-present researchers about their movement and operation. Researchers monitored a visualisation of the real-time data to build up a picture of how the speakers were being used, responding to moments of activity within the data, initiating text conversations and prompting participants to capture photos and video. Based on the findings of this explorative study, we discuss the value of this method, how it compares to contemporary research practices, and the potential of machine learning to scale it up for use within industrial contexts. As greater agency is given to both objects and algorithms, we explore ways to empower ethnographers and participants to actively collaborate within remote real-time research

Designing for the End of Life of IoT Objects

The Internet of Things (IoT) and ubiquitous computing are leading to an increase in objects with a short lifespan - either through breakage, “bricking” by the manufacturer, or discontinued use by the owner. This leads to a surplus of material and e-waste that cannot or is not readily recycled, upcycled or otherwise reused, aggravating material scarcity. In part, this is due to custom-built hardware, and use of unrecyclable materials. However, it is also due to the limited value people place on these objects (e.g., sentimental and environmental). This one-day workshop will explore how the configuration of values designed into IoT objects influences the end-user practices of disposal, recycling and upcycling. Through this lens, we will collectively consider potential design strategies that can be instilled during the process of design, to support the continuity of the material life of IoT objects after their “death”

OSKARRR:Data-driven Design Speculations For The Future of Domestic Waste

Waste infrastructure is largely non-digital and resists mapping and datafication. Waste itself can be seen as material information, revealing of its creators, which is lost along with the material resources that are thrown away. Design and HCI can unlock this information. Most people’s engagement with waste begins and ends at the domestic dustbin, with minimal consideration of what is wasted and where it goes. When aggregated waste practices have significant sustainability impacts. Digital technologies designed to raise awareness of environmental issues compete for our finite cognitive capacity with the demands of everyday life. To address this challenge, this paper uses speculative design of domestic waste devices. These speculative ‘data objects’ build on work in speculative design, sustainable HCI, and waste infrastructure mapping. The aim of this pictorial is to provoke debate on digital technology’s ability to engage us with consumption and waste, resulting in behavior change and reduced environmental degradation

Entangled ethnography:Towards a collective future understanding

In this work, we develop a vision for entangled ethnography, where constellations of people, artefacts, algorithms and data come together to collectively make sense of the relations between people and objects. This is grounded in New Materialism’s picture of a world understood through entanglement, through resonant constellations, through a multiplicity of unique individual viewpoints and their relationships. These perspectives are especially relevant for design ethnography, in particular for research around smart connected products, which collect data about their environment, the networks they are a part of, and the ways they are used. However, we are concerned about the current trend of many connected systems towards surveillance capitalism, as data is colonised, machinations are hidden, and a narrow definition of value is extracted. There is a key tension that while design, particularly of networked objects, attempts to go beyond human centeredness, the infrastructures that support it are moving towards a less than human perspective in their race to accumulate and dispossess. Our work tries to imagine the situations where participants in networked systems are richly engaged, rather than exploited. We hope for a future where human agency is central to a respectful and acceptable collaborative development of understanding

Digital Twins as a Resource for Design Research

IoT products are embedded with sensors that transmit live data about their use and environment. A key challenge for designers is to gather useful insights from this data in order to accelerate product research, which can be time consuming and labour intensive. Through the Chatty Products dashboard we aim to explore how virtual representations of IoT products and their sensor data, also known as digital twins, can support insight gathering. This demo will present a series of Bluetooth IoT speakers, which are connected to the Chatty Products dashboard, a data exploration and visualisation research tool containing supervisory digital twins of the speakers. The project aims to visualise live data as it relates to the physical product in the wild, enabling contextual inquiry and supporting data exploration. The demo will promote a dialogue around how digital twins can be used to gather design insights based on live data