After interaction

Interaction turns on the outmoded idea that there is a natural separation between people and things. Technologies have always been about producing dense, interconnected relationships of humans and non-humans. Seeing design as performing expansive networks of relations opens up possibilities beyond the human-computer interactions. The relations go much deeper than any discrete interactions between user and machine. Extensive investigations have also demonstrated how cognitive capacities can extend beyond the individual's mind and into the interactions between people

Autonomy in Weapons Systems. The Military Application of Artificial Intelligence as a Litmus Test for Germany’s New Foreign and Security Policy

The future international security landscape will be critically impacted by the military use of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. With the advent of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) and a currently unfolding transformation of warfare, we have reached a turning point and are facing a number of grave new legal, ethical and political concerns. In light of this, the Task Force on Disruptive Technologies and 21st Century Warfare, deployed by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, argues that meaningful human control over weapon systems and the use of force must be retained. In their report, the task force authors offer recommendations to the German government and the German armed forces to that effect

Human-centered Explainable AI: Towards a Reflective Sociotechnical Approach

Explanations--a form of post-hoc interpretability--play an instrumental role in making systems accessible as AI continues to proliferate complex and sensitive sociotechnical systems. In this paper, we introduce Human-centered Explainable AI (HCXAI) as an approach that puts the human at the center of technology design. It develops a holistic understanding of "who" the human is by considering the interplay of values, interpersonal dynamics, and the socially situated nature of AI systems. In particular, we advocate for a reflective sociotechnical approach. We illustrate HCXAI through a case study of an explanation system for non-technical end-users that shows how technical advancements and the understanding of human factors co-evolve. Building on the case study, we lay out open research questions pertaining to further refining our understanding of "who" the human is and extending beyond 1-to-1 human-computer interactions. Finally, we propose that a reflective HCXAI paradigm-mediated through the perspective of Critical Technical Practice and supplemented with strategies from HCI, such as value-sensitive design and participatory design--not only helps us understand our intellectual blind spots, but it can also open up new design and research spaces.Comment: In Proceedings of HCI International 2020: 22nd International Conference On Human-Computer Interactio

Caring for the patient, caring for the record: an ethnographic study of 'back office' work in upholding quality of care in general practice

© 2015 Swinglehurst and Greenhalgh; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Additional file 1: Box 1. Field notes on summarising (Clover Surgery). Box 2. Extract of document prepared for GPs by summarisers at Clover Surgery. Box 3. Fieldnotes on coding incoming post, Clover (original notes edited for brevity).This work was funded by a research grant from the UK Medical Research Council (Healthcare Electronic Records in Organisations 07/133) and a National Institute of Health Research doctoral fellowship award for DS (RDA/03/07/076). The funders were not involved in the selection or analysis of data nor did they make any contribution to the content of the final manuscript

Task analysis for error identification: Theory, method and validation

This paper presents the underlying theory of Task Analysis for Error Identification. The aim is to illustrate the development of a method that has been proposed for the evaluation of prototypical designs from the perspective of predicting human error. The paper presents the method applied to representative examples. The methodology is considered in terms of the various validation studies that have been conducted, and is discussed in the light of a specific case study

Co-existence or displacement : do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?

This paper examines recent street tests of autonomous vehicles (AV) in the UK and makes the case for an experimental approach in the sociology of intelligent technology. In recent years intelligent vehicle testing has moved from the laboratory to the street, raising the question of whether technology trials equally constitute tests of society. To adequately address this question, I argue, we need to move beyond analytic frameworks developed in 1990s Science and Technology Studies, which stipulated "a social deficit" of both intelligent technology and technology testing. This diagnosis no longer provides an effective starting point for sociological analysis, as real-world tests of intelligent technology explicitly seek to bring social phenomena within the remit of technology testing. I propose that we examine instead whether and how the introduction of intelligent vehicles into the street involves the qualification and re-qualification of relations and dynamics between social actors. I develop this proposal through a discussion of a field study of AV street trials in three cities in the UK - London, Milton Keynes and Coventry. These urban trials were accompanied by the claim that automotive testing on the open road will enable cars to operate in tune with the social environment, and I show how iterations of street testing undo this proposition and compel its reformulation. Current test designs are limited by their narrow conception of sociality in terms of interaction between cars and other road users. They exclude from consideration the relational capacities of vehicles and human road users alike - their ability to co-exist on the open road. I conclude by making the case for methodological innovation in social studies of intelligent technology: by combining social research and design methods, we can re-purpose real-world test environments in order to elucidate social issues and dynamics raised by intelligent vehicles in society by experimental means, and, possibly, test society

Service Interaction Flow Analysis Technique for Service Personalization

Abstract Service interaction flows are difficult to capture, analyze, outline, and represent for research and design purposes. We examine how variation of personalized service flows in technology-mediated service interaction can be modeled and analyzed to provide information on how service personalization could support interaction. We have analyzed service interaction cases in a context of technology-mediated car rental service. With the analysis technique we propose, inspired by Interaction Analysis method, we were able to capture and model the situational service interaction. Our contribution regarding technology-mediated service interaction design is twofold: First, with the increased understanding on the role of personalization in managing variation in technology-mediated service interaction, our study contributes to designing service management information systems and human-computer interfaces that support personalized service interaction flows. Second, we provide a new analysis technique for situated interaction analysis, particularly when the aim is to understand personalization in service interaction flows

A qualitative study of stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment

Over two billion people are using the Internet at present, assisted by the mediating activities of software agents which deal with the diversity and complexity of information. There are, however, ethical issues due to the monitoring-and-surveillance, data mining and autonomous nature of software agents. Considering the context, this study aims to comprehend stakeholders' perspectives on the social network service environment in order to identify the main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services in the near future. Twenty-one stakeholders, belonging to three key stakeholder groups, were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy for unstandardised semi-structured e-mail interviews. The interview data were analysed using a qualitative content analysis method. It was possible to identify three main considerations for the design of software agents in social network services, which were classified into the following categories: comprehensive understanding of users' perception of privacy, user type recognition algorithms for software agent development and existing software agents enhancement

Searching for music: understanding the discovery, acquisition, processing and organization of music in a domestic setting for design

This series of studies make it clear that a wide range of both physical and digital resources are involved in domestic music consumption. The selection of digital resources is particularly evident, and it can be observed that domestic music consumption is a fragmented business, taking advantage of many different "channels'' for getting, using and preparing music. While there are not a series of common channels, each home displayed a variety of methods in respect to using metadata in multiple different modalities: regardless, the activities involved in getting, using and preparing music cohere through a noticeable, emergent set of workflows. We find that not only does metadata support searching, as one might expect, but also it pervades all parts of the workflow and is used in real-time as a reflexive artifact and in terms of its future perceived/prescribed use. The findings of the research raise a series of possibilities and issues that form the basis for understanding and designing for metadata use

An Action-Based Approach to Presence: Foundations and Methods

This chapter presents an action-based approach to presence. It starts by briefly describing the theoretical and empirical foundations of this approach, formalized into three key notions of place/space, action and mediation. In the light of these notions, some common assumptions about presence are then questioned: assuming a neat distinction between virtual and real environments, taking for granted the contours of the mediated environment and considering presence as a purely personal state. Some possible research topics opened up by adopting action as a unit of analysis are illustrated. Finally, a case study on driving as a form of mediated presence is discussed, to provocatively illustrate the flexibility of this approach as a unified framework for presence in digital and physical environment