Culture-based artefacts to inform ICT design: foundations and practice

Cultural aspects frame our perception of the world and direct the many different ways people interact with things in it. For this reason, these aspects should be considered when designing technology with the purpose to positively impact people in a community. In this paper, we revisit the foundations of culture aiming to bring this concept in dialogue with design. To inform design with cultural aspects, we model reality in three levels of formality: informal, formal, and technical, and subscribe to a systemic vision that considers the technical solution as part of a more complex social system in which people live and interact. In this paper, we instantiate this theoretical and methodological view by presenting two case studies of technology design in which culture-based artefacts were employed to inform the design process. We claim that as important as including issues related to culture in the ICT design agenda—from the conception to the development, evaluation, and adoption of a technology—is the need to support the design process with adequate artefacts that help identifying cultural aspects within communities and translating them into sociotechnical requirements. We argue that a culturally informed perspective on design can go beyond an informative analysis, and can be integrated with the theoretical and methodological framework used to support design, throughout the entire design process

Co-designing for Community Resilience Beyond the Local

In this position paper we highlight our strategy for co-creating a platform to support community resilience that goes beyond a situated research. We first engage with a diverse set of stakeholders to conceive the design problem, and then we address the implementation aspects with local communities. We briefly illustrate a number of methods and strategies used to identify and extract the general socio-technical requirements from communities in different contexts

Strategies and Tools to Raise Energy Awareness Collectively

Providing smart meters and technology for feedback on energy consumption have been considered strategic in current energy policies as part of the battle against climate change. However, feedback alone does not always lead to energy savings. Beyond information on their own consumption and generic advices, people usually still need more specific guidance on how to change their behaviour in an effective and sustainable way. This research considers electricity consumption feedback as a learning element for collective knowledge building, and relies mainly on dialogue and collaboration to engage people with energy conservation as a social issue. To this end, a set of artefacts for triggering and mediating discussions on energy consumption within social groups was developed and evaluated with community leaders in the UK. In a series of 3 workshops, participants discussed how this approach and tools could help them in their mission of disseminating the energy conservation message to the community. Our results show that developing knowledge within a social group is an effective approach in raising awareness, and suggest that tangible artefacts can have an important role in engaging people. Also, initiatives aiming at engaging a wide range of the public must consider different degrees of familiarity with technology, as well as the different perceptions people may have relating energy consumption and environmental protection

Perceptions and behaviour towards climate change and energy savings: the role of social media

Success in promoting changes in behaviour is often dependent on the choice of interventions. This research investigates the use of social technology features as interventions to raise energy awareness and to promote a collective behaviour change towards saving energy. Aiming at understanding this scenario, an online survey was conducted to extract from Internet users their current position towards climate change, energy savings, and social media usage. Main results are reported in this paper indicating, for instance, that social media is not yet a main source of information in this context. Triggering discussions around the consumption of specific appliances, and associating it with energy-saving tips based on personal experiences were pointed out as promising approaches to support behaviour change through social media

Interaction on digital tv : electronic government study and proposal

Orientador: Maria Cecilia Calani BaranauskasDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: A TV digital interativa pode ser considerada uma ferramenta com potencial para contribuir na inclusão digital. Dentro de alguns anos, essa tecnologia estará disponível em grande parte dos domicílios brasileiros, incluindo aqueles que não possuem acesso a outros tipos de Tecnologia de Informação e Comunicação. Além disso, a TV já é um dispositivo conhecido por grande parte da população, o que pode facilitar a transposição de barreiras relacionadas à alfabetização digital. Para oferecer aplicações interativas na TV digital que façam sentido para a população brasileira, é necessário conhecer esses usuários prospectivos e entender como eles poderão interagir com essa nova mídia. Além disso, é preciso despertar o interesse dessa população em experimentar a interação na TV, até que essa tecnologia se torne parte do dia-a-dia dessas pessoas. Nesse contexto, este trabalho faz uma análise do cenário brasileiro para a oferta de interatividade na TV com o objetivo de identificar as principais questões que um designer de aplicações interativas encontra ao projetar uma interface de usuário para toda a população, incluindo usuários inexperientes e com baixa alfabetização digital. Artefatos da Semiótica Organizacional são aplicados na condução dessa análise. Conceber uma aplicação de governo eletrônico com o intuito de abranger a maior parte da sociedade implica em analisar a acessibilidade dessa mídia. Esse tema é estudado, mais uma vez fazendo uso da Semiótica Organizacional, para se chegar a recomendações de acessibilidade que possam ser aplicadas à interface de aplicações em TV interativa. Com base nesses estudos, é proposto um protótipo de aplicação de governo eletrônico na TV. Essa aplicação, chamada ciT-goV, representa um canal de comunicação entre o cidadão e a prefeitura de sua cidade. Sua interface de usuário foi concebida de forma a ser auto-explicativa, auxiliando a interação de usuários na sua primeira experiência com a TV interativa. A validação desse protótipo por grupos de usuários confirmou o interesse potencial da população nesse tipo de aplicação. Também foram avaliadas as decisões de design tomadas na sua concepção, respondendo algumas das questões levantadas no início do trabalho e apontando direções para futuras pesquisasAbstract: The interactive digital TV can be considered a potential tool to cope with digital divide. In some years, this technology will be available to most of Brazilians households, including those without access to other Information and Communications Technologies. Furthermore, as TV is already a familiar device for most part of the population, this may overcome a digital literacy barrier. To offer interactive applications on digital TV that make sense to the Brazilian people, it is necessary to identify the prospective users and to understand how they would interact with this new media. Moreover, it is necessary to attract people¿s interest to try interaction on TV, until this technology become part of their daily life. In this context, this work analyses the Brazilian scenario to offer interactivity on TV aiming at identifying the main questions an application designer faces to design a user interface to the whole population, including non-expert and low digital literacy users. Organizational Semiotics artifacts are applied to conduct this analysis. Conceiving an electronic government application to reach most part of the society implies analyzis of this media accessibility. This topic is studied, once again using Organizational Semiotics artifacts, to determine accessibility recommendations that may be applied to applications interfaces of interactive TV. Based on these studies, a prototype of an electronic government application on TV prototype is proposed. This application, named ciT-goV, stands for a communication channel between the citizen and the municipal administration. Its user interface was conceived to be self-explanatory, helping users during their first experience with interactive TV. The validation of this prototype validation by groups of users confirmed the potential population¿s interest on this kind of application. Design decisions on conception were also validated, answering some questions identified in the beginning of this work and pointing out some directions for future researchesMestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Aspectos motivacionais no design de tecnologia para mudanças sociais

Orientador: Maria Cecília Calani BaranauskasTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Conectando pessoas e presente em todos os aspectos da vida, quando projetadas para este fim, as tecnologias têm potencial de influenciar a forma com que pessoas em um grupo social percebem e se relacionam com as coisas no ambiente. Este estudo de doutorado em Interação Humano-Computador (IHC) investiga como elementos motivacionais da Psicologia podem ser aplicados para informar o design, explo- rando esse potencial da tecnologia em promover mudanças sociais. O estudo é instanciado no domínio de consumo de energia elétrica, lidando com o desafio contemporâneo de cons- cientizar a sociedade dos limites naturais do planeta no que diz respeito ao uso de recursos naturais. Informar o design com aspectos motivacionais é uma abordagem recente em IHC. Quando encontrada na literatura, comumente tem foco em aspectos individuais e intrín- secos da motivação. Contudo, como argumentado nessa pesquisa, o contexto sociocultural evidencia a importância de considerar também os fatores externos que motivam as pessoas a se engajarem com uma tecnologia e com uma determinada questão social. Por considerar tanto fontes intrínsecas quanto extrínsecas de motivação, a Teoria da Autodeterminação é então considerada o principal referencial teórico da Psicologia nessa investigação, e a Semiótica Organizacional é a base metodológica para analisar os elemen- tos socioculturais que influenciam a motivação extrínseca. A análise situada dos dados socioculturais por uma perspectiva motivacional levou ao design da Tecnologia Socialmente Informada para Eco-Feedback de Energia (sigla SEET, em inglês), uma arquitetura que tem por objetivo estabelecer um novo padrão de com- portamento, ou uma nova maneira de perceber o consumo de energia coletivamente. O SEET é composto por um sistema interativo que promove colaboração, e pela Árvore da Energia, um dispositivo de feedback tangível para locais onde há encontro de pessoas. O SEET é avaliado em dois cenários complementares: uma Escola de Ensino Funda- mental no Brasil, onde os dados socioculturais foram coletados, analisados e aplicados para informar o design; e no contexto de um departamento de uma universidade no Reino Unido. Aspectos motivacionais da arquitetura do SEET são então analisadas, assim como o impacto dessa tecnologia ao desencadear as esperadas mudanças sociaisAbstract: By connecting people and being present in almost all aspects of life, when properly de- signed for that, technology can potentially influence the way people in a social group perceive and relate with things in their environment. This PhD study in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field investigates how motivational elements from Psychology can be applied to inform the design aiming at exploring this potential of technology for promoting a social change. The study is in- stantiated in the energy consumption domain, coping with the contemporary challenge of raising awareness among the society of the planet¿s natural resources usage and limits. Informing the design with motivational aspects is a recent approach in HCI. When found in literature, it is mostly focused on individual and intrinsic aspects of motivation. However, as argued in this research, the sociocultural context evidences the importance of considering also the external factors that motivate people to be engaged with technology and the social issue. By taking into account both intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation, the Self- Determination Theory is then considered the main theoretical background from Psychol- ogy in this investigation, and the Organisational Semiotics the methodological basis to analyse sociocultural elements that influence extrinsic motivation. The situated analysis of sociocultural data with motivational lenses has led to the de- sign of a Socially-informed Energy Eco-feedback Technology (SEET), an architecture that aims at establishing a "new pattern of behaviour", or a new way of perceiving collective energy consumption. The SEET is composed by an interactive system that promotes collaboration and The Energy Tree, a tangible and public feedback device for gathering places. The SEET is evaluated in two complementary scenarios: an elementary school in Brazil, where the sociocultural data was collected, analysed and applied to inform design; and in the context of an university department in the United Kingdom. Motivational as- pects of the SEET architecture are then analysed, as well as the impact of this technology to trigger the desired social changeDoutoradoCiência da ComputaçãoDoutora em Ciência da Computaçã

Climate Change Engagement: Results of a Multi-Task Game with a Purpose

Addressing the challenge of engaging people with climate change, this paper sheds light on the Climate Challenge, a crowdsourcing application in the tradition of games with purpose that relies on different strategies for informing and inviting users to adopt sustainable lifestyle choices. Towards building an extensive perspective of engagement, we statistically analyse specific game strategies based on users’ participation and performance, and build a panorama of users’ positioning in a behaviour change process. Preliminary results suggest features that should be considered in a Climate Challenge design roadmap

Application Design and Engagement Strategy of a Game with a Purpose for Climate Change Awareness

The Climate Challenge is an online application in the tradition of games with a purpose that combines practical steps to reduce carbon footprint with predictive tasks to estimate future climate-related conditions. As part of the Collective Awareness Platform, the application aims to increase environmental literacy and motivate users to adopt more sustainable lifestyles. It has been deployed in conjunction with the Media Watch on Climate Change, a publicly available knowledge aggregator and visual analytics system for exploring environmental content from multiple online sources. This paper presents the motivation and goals of the Climate Challenge from an interdisciplinary perspective, outlines the application design including the types of tasks built into the application, discusses incentive mechanisms, and analyses the pursued user engagement strategies

Clarifying culture in technology design: what, why, and how we think about it

Culture influences our way to perceive the world, to interact with it. To inform technology design with cultural aspects, we model our reality in three levels: technical, where the artefacts are; formal, where existing rules shape our behaviour; and informal, composed by values, beliefs and other aspects that influence how we perceive the world. We can promote a social change, redefining a community, by introducing new technology at the technical level. This is how and why we understand the importance of culture in design. In this paper, we present an overview of our design perspective under the Socially Aware approach, and illustrate this understanding applied to two case studies of design informed by sociocultural aspects

Prospecting Socially-Aware Concepts and Artefacts for Designing for Community Resilience

Defining flexible and consistent methods and artefacts to design for social impact is a current challenge for HCI. The ephemeral and vulnerable conditions of people living as refugees add even more questions about the suitability of design methods to the complexity of real — and many times tough — life . In this position paper we briefly introduce two concepts embraced by the Socially-aware Design Approach, the Semiotic Onion and the Basic Block of Culture. We then reflect about the potential contributions of applying these concepts and artefacts to inform design for boosting community resilience of people living as refugees