Care Workers Making Use of Robots: Results of a Three-Month Study on Human-Robot Interaction within a Care HomeResearch on social robots in care has often focused on either the care recipients or the technology itself, neglecting the care workers who, in and through their collaborative and coordinative practices, will need to work with the robots. To better understand these interactions with a social robot (Pepper), we undertook a 3 month long-term study within a care home to gain empirical insights into the way the robot was used. We observed how care workers learned to use the device, applied it to their daily work life, and encountered obstacles. Our findings show that the care workers used the robot regularly (1:07 hours/day) mostly in one-to-one interactions with residents. While the robot had a limited effect on reducing the workload of care workers, it had other positive effects, demonstrating the potential to enhance the quality of care.2022FCFelix Carros et al.University of SiegenSocial Robot InteractionRobots in Education & HealthcareCHI
Leaving the Field: Designing a Socio-Material Toolkit for Teachers to Continue to Design Technology with ChildrenLeaving the field when conducting research in situated contexts, and finding ways to sustain project outcomes beyond academia, is an ongoing struggle in HCI. In our research project, we co-designed technologies with children in classroom contexts for three years. Nearing the projects' end, we focused on creating resources that enable teachers to continue our work with their pupils. In collaboration with teachers, we developed socio-material tools that support them in empowering neurodiverse children to engage with technology in creative ways and create their own technologies. While the majority of technology design toolkits are stand-alone artefacts, part of our toolkit is an infrastructure to keep guiding and supporting teachers beyond the project's end. In this paper, we discuss the teachers expectations and requirements for a toolkit and argue that an infrastructure must be part of a toolkit. We present a set of guidelines for researchers planning for a project’s end.2021LSLaura Scheepmaker et al.TU WienCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingSpecial Education TechnologyParticipatory DesignCHI
Unaccompanied Migrant Youth and Mental Health Technologies: A Social-Ecological Approach to Understanding and DesigningResearch increasingly shows that technology can improve access to mental health interventions. However, unaccompanied migrant youth (UMY) still struggle in accessing appropriate mental health resources in spite of their high need for mental health support. Through co-design workshops, and using the lens of the social-ecological model of resilience, we explored the social-ecological factors that support or hinder UMY's use of mental health apps as resources. We identified the strong influence of the macro-system (i.e. resettlement policies) on the bio-and micro-systems, which in turn limits participants' abilities to use the apps. Our findings highlight the factors specific to each social-ecological system - including personal experiences, technological infrastructure and social environment - that need to be accounted for when designing technological mental health resources for UMY. This contributes: a rich description of the interplay of mental health apps with social-ecological systems in which UMY are embedded; and the corresponding design considerations.2021FTFranziska Tachtler et al.TU WienMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsParticipatory DesignCHI
Supporting the Supporters of Unaccompanied Migrant Youth: Designing for Social-ecological ResilienceUnaccompanied migrant youth, fleeing to a new country without their parents, are exposed to mental health risks. Resilience interventions mitigate such risks, but access can be hindered by systemic and personal barriers. While much work has recently addressed designing technology to promote mental health, none has focused on the needs of these populations. This paper presents the results of interviews with 18 professional/ volunteer support workers and 5 unaccompanied migrant youths, followed by three design workshops. The results point to the diverse systems that can facilitate youths' resilience development. The relationship between the youth and volunteers acting as mentors is particularly important for increasing resilience but comes with challenges. This suggests the relevance of a social-ecological model of resilience with a focus on designing technology to support the mentors in order to help them better support the youth. We conclude by mapping out the design space for mentor support.2020FTFranziska Tachtler et al.TU WienMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsCHI
Emotion Work in Experience-Centered DesignExperience Centered Design (ECD) implores us to develop empathic relationships and understanding of participants, to actively work with our senses and emotions within the design process. However, theories of experience-centered design do little to account for emotion work undertaken by design researchers when doing this. As a consequence, how a design researcher's emotions are experienced, navigated and used as part of an ECD process are rarely published. So, while emotion is clearly a tool that we use, we don't share with one another how, why and when it gets used. This has a limiting effect on how we understand design processes, and opportunities for training. Here, we share some of our experiences of working with ECD. We analyse these using Hochschild's framework of emotion work to show how and where this work occurs. We use our analysis to question current ECD practices and provoke debate.2019MBMadeline Balaam et al.KTH Royal Institute of TechnologyParticipatory DesignUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
An Autonomy-Perspective on the Design of Assistive Technology Experiences of People with Multiple SclerosisIn HCI and Assistive Technology design, autonomy is regularly equated with independence. This is a shortcut and leaves out design opportunities by omitting a more nuanced idea of autonomy. To improve our understanding of how people with severe physical disabilities experience autonomy, particularly in the context of Assistive Technologies, we engaged in in-depth fieldwork with 15 people with Multiple Sclerosis who were used to assistive devices. We constructed a grounded theory from a series of interviews, focus groups and observations, pointing to strategies in which participants sought autonomy either in the short-term (managing their daily energy reserve) or in the long-term (making future plans). The theory shows how factors like enabling technologies, capital (human, social, psychological resources), and compatibility with daily practices facilitated a sense of being in control for our participants. Moreover, we show how over-ambitious or bad design (e.g., paternalism) can lead to opposite results and restrict autonomy.2019FGFlorian Güldenpfennig et al.New Design University and Technische Universität WienCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC)Universal & Inclusive DesignCHI
A Schnittmuster for Crafting Context-Sensitive ToolkitsDIY-making can be an expensive pastime if makers are relying on ready-made toolkits, specialised materials and off-shelf components. Many prefabricated commercial kits seek to lower the learning barrier of making and to help beginners to successfully take their first steps in engineering. However, as soon as the novices become a little more advanced, these toolkits often do not fit the specific requirements of personal maker projects anymore. We introduce the idea of a Schnittmuster (or a meta-toolkit) as a novel approach to toolkit design that seeks to address these creativity-limiting factors as well as practical entrance hurdles. To demonstrate the adaptive power of the Schnittmuster concept, we discuss an exemplar in the context of capacitive touch sensing (FlexE-Touch). Implemented under the constraints of materials, user skill sets and making environments, we illustrate how the Schnittmuster facilitated four cheap and flexible toolkit instantiations for crafting custom touch sensor electrodes.2018JMJanis Lena Meissner et al.Newcastle UniversityCircuit Making & Hardware PrototypingCustomizable & Personalized ObjectsMakerspace CultureCHI
Daring to Change: Creating a Slower More Sustainable Academic LifeNumerous reports and studies point to increasing performance criteria and workplace stress for academics/researchers. Together with the audience, this panel will explore how we experience this in the HCI community, focussing particularly on what we can do to change this for a slower more sustainable academic culture. The future of good quality HCI research is dependent on happy healthy researchers and reasonable realistic academic processes.2018GFGeraldine Fitzpatrick et al.TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology)Research Ethics & Open ScienceSustainable HCICHI
3rd Early Career Development SymposiumThis one-day workshop will help early career researchers/academics develop their careers in HCI through intensive interaction with senior mentors from academia and industry who are experienced in research and professional service. Application to the workshop is open to all members of the HCI community who have received their PHDs in the past five years.2018MMMichael Muller et al.IBM ResearchUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
Mediating Conflicts in Minecraft: Empowering Learning in Online Multiplayer GamesMultiplayer online games, such as Minecraft, have the potential to be powerful sites for youth learning, but can be plagued by inter-personal conflicts. This brings the need for online moderation. However, only very little is known about the practices through which such moderation happens, or how socio-technical systems could be designed to enable `safe' learning spaces online. To start addressing this gap, our research examines the existing mediation practices within a moderated Minecraft server for children aged 8-13. As part of our 14 months long engagement, we triangulate data from participant observation, interviews, and analysis of server logs. We demonstrate how---in trying to `keep peace'---the online moderators monopolised the conflict resolution process, essentially preventing the children from actively working with and learning from the experiences of conflict. In response to these findings, we present an alternative framework for online conflict mediation, suggesting ways in which existing conflict resolution techniques originating in Prevention Science could be re-interpreted for online multiplayer settings2018PSPetr Slovák et al.University College LondonMultiplayer & Social GamesCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingCHI
Cross-Strait Frenemies: Chinese Netizens VPN in to Facebook TaiwanContributing to research on social activism as a form of collective action, we report on Diba, a sizable group of Chinese nationalists, who overcame the Great Firewall in order to troll Taiwan’s political leadership. Diba’s political activism can be characterized as negotiating a tension between two seemingly opposed goals. On the one hand is their construction of a pro-PRC message using the tactics of Internet subcultures (memes, trolling, etc.), but toned down to meet standards of civility. On the other hand, by collectively breaching the Great Firewall and establishing Facebook accounts, the group transgressed PRC technical and legal norms, which were designed to prevent unsanctioned collective action. We argue that the Diba Expedition exemplifies the coordinated use of a complex, transnational social media ecology to support and produce a mass-scale event and newsworthy spectacle, loosened if not severed from state control, and a discursively innovative polysemous message targeted at diverse international audiences: civilized trolling.2018SYYukun Yang et al.Cross-Cultural PerspectivesCSCW
Understanding the Mundane Nature of Self-care: Ethnographic Accounts of People Living with Parkinson'sSelf-care technologies have been influenced by medical values and models. One of the values that was acritically incorporated was that self-care was medicalised, and, as a result, technologies were designed to afford use with clinicians and fit structured medical processes. This paper seeks to broaden the understanding of self-care in HCI, to acknowledge the mundane ways in which self-care is achieved. Drawing on in-depth interviews with patients and carers, and online ethnography of an online community, we describe how the self-care of Parkinson's is mundane. The fieldwork contrasts with more medicalised perspectives on self-care, thus we discuss the properties of a self-care concept that would acknowledge its mundane nature. Our hope is to sensitise designers to identify the mundane ways in which self-care is performed and, consequently, design technologies that better fit the complexities of everyday life with a chronic condition.2018FNFrancisco Nunes et al.Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, TUWIEN (Vienna University of Technology)Mental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesChronic Disease Self-Management (Diabetes, Hypertension, etc.)CHI
Intersectionality as a Lens to Promote Equity and Inclusivity within SIGCHIThe ACM SIGCHI community has been at the forefront of addressing issues of equity and inclusivity in the design and use of technology, accounting for various aspects of users’ identities such as gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. With this panel, we wish to explore how we, as SIGCHI, might better target similar goals of equity and inclusivity—across intersections—within our own community. We wish to create a forum for recognizing best practices regarding equity and inclusivity in participants’ local and global contexts that we might feasibly integrate across SIGCHI. By equally prioritizing the voices of those in the audience and on the panel, we intend to foster a lively and constructive discussion that will help us chart a way forward. The takeaways from this panel will be articulated into an article for the Interactions magazine, targeting the larger human-computer interaction (HCI) community.2018PWPamela J Wisniewski et al.The University of Central FloridaGender & Race Issues in HCIEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI