Lanterns: Configuring a Digital Resource to Inspire Preschool Children’s Free Play OutdoorsPrevious HCI research has highlighted opportunities for digital technologies to support outdoor play amongst children. However, the tendency has been to focus on older children and forms of play that are structured and rule-based. We report on a Research-through-Design (RtD) inquiry, grounded in an Embodied Interactional approach, that investigated configurations of off-the-shelf Internet of Things (IoT) tool-kits to inspire new forms of free play outdoors for preschool children. We designed the Lanterns, a tangible interactive resource that is made using household materials and guided by a template, and which explores new possibilities to inspire social play and embodied interaction outdoors. Based on observations of the Lanterns being used by preschool children and Early Years Practitioners outdoors, we identify qualities of free play promoted by the Lanterns outdoors, such as enchantment, improvisation, anticipation and choice. We discuss our findings by defining three sensitising concepts to support future design research in this space: Choosing the Way; Improvising through Movement; Anticipating a Response.2021TDThomas Dylan et al.Northumbria UniversityMicromobility (E-bike, E-scooter) InteractionAugmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC)Early Childhood Education TechnologyCHI
ReFind: Design, Lived Experience and Ongoingness in BereavementWe describe the design and use of ReFind, a handheld artefact made for people who are bereaved and are ready to re-explore their relationship to the deceased person. ReFind was made within a project seeking to develop new ways to curate and create digital media to support ongoingness – an active, dynamic component of continuing bonds. We draw on bereavement theory and care championing practices that enable a continued sense of connection between someone bereaved and a person who has died. We present the design development of ReFind and the lived experience of the piece by the first author. We discuss our wider methodology which includes autobiographical design and reflections on if and how the piece supported ongoing connections, the challenges faced, and insights gained.2020JWJayne Wallace et al.Northumbria UniversityMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesFood Culture & Food InteractionCHI
Designing IoT Resources to Support Outdoor Play for ChildrenWe describe a Research-through-Design (RtD) project that explores the Internet of Things (IoT) as a resource for children's free play outdoors. Based on initial insights from a design ethnography, we developed four RtD prototypes for social play in different scenarios of use outdoors, including congregating on a street or in a park to play physical games with IoT. We observed these prototypes in use by children in their free play in two community settings, and report on the qualitative analysis of our fieldwork. Our findings highlight the designs' material qualities that encouraged social and physical play under certain conditions, suggesting social affordances that are central to the success of IoT designs for free play outdoors. We provide directions for future research that addresses the challenges faced when deploying IoT with children, contributing new considerations for interaction design with children in outdoor settings and free play contexts.2020TDThomas Dylan et al.Northumbria UniversityCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingChildren & Family IoTCHI
Voice as a Design Material: Sociophonetic Inspired Design Strategies in Human-Computer InteractionWhile there is a renewed interest in voice user interfaces (VUI) in HCI, little attention has been paid to the design of VUI voice output beyond intelligibility and naturalness. We draw on the field of sociophonetics - the study of the social factors that influence the production and perception of speech - to highlight how current VUIs are based on a limited and homogenised set of voice outputs. We argue that current systems do not adequately consider the diversity of peoples' speech, how that diversity represents sociocultural identities, and how voices have the potential to shape user perceptions and experiences. Ultimately, as other technological developments have influenced the ideologies of language, the voice outputs of VUIs will influence the ideologies of speech. Based on our argument, we pose three design strategies for VUI voice output design - individualisation, context awareness, and diversification - to motivate new ways of conceptualising and designing these technologies.2019SSSelina Jeanne Sutton et al.Northumbria UniversityVoice User Interface (VUI) DesignMultilingual & Cross-Cultural Voice InteractionAgent Personality & AnthropomorphismCHI
Designing for Digital Playing OutWe report on a design-led study in the UK that aimed to understand barriers to children (aged 5 to 14 years) 'playing out' in their neighbourhood and explore the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for supporting children's free play that extends outdoors. The study forms a design ethnography, combining observational fieldwork with design prototyping and co-creative activities across four linked workshops, where we used BBC micro:bit devices to co-create new IoT designs with the participating children. Our collective account contributes new insights about the physical and interactive features of micro:bits that shaped play, gameplay, and social interaction in the workshops, illuminating an emerging design space for supporting 'digital playing out' that is grounded in empirical instances. We highlight opportunities for designing for digital playing out in ways that promote social negotiation, supports varying participation, allows for integrating cultural influences, and accounts for the weaving together of placemaking and play.2019GWGavin Wood et al.Northumbria UniversityEarly Childhood Education TechnologyChildren & Family IoTCHI
Rethinking Engagement with Online News through Social and Visual Co-AnnotationThe emergence of fake news, as well as filter bubbles and echo chambers, has precipitated renewed attention upon the ways in which news is consumed, shared and reflected and commented upon. While online news comments sections offer space for pluralist and critical discussion, studies suggest that this rarely occurs. Motivated by common practices of annotating, defacing and scribbling on physical newspapers, we built a mobile app – Newsr – that supports co-annotation, in the form of graffiti, on online news articles, which we evaluated in-the-wild for one month. We report on how the app encouraged participants to reflect upon the act of choosing news stories, whilst promoting exploration, the critique of content, and the exposure of bias within the writing. Our findings highlight how the re-design of interactive online news experiences can facilitate more directed, “in-the-moment” critique of online news stories as well as encourage readers to expand the range of news content they read.2018GWGavin Wood et al.Northumbria UniversityUniversal & Inclusive DesignMisinformation & Fact-CheckingUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
Everything We Do, Everything We Press: Data-Driven Remote Performance Management in a Mobile WorkplaceThis paper examines how data-driven performance monitoring technologies affect the work of telecommunications field engineers. As a mobile workforce, this occupational group rely on an array of smartphone applications to plan, manage and report on their jobs, and to liaise remotely with managers and colleagues. These technologies intend to help field engineers be more productive and have greater control over their work; however they also gather data related to the quantity and effectiveness of their labor. We conducted a qualitative study examining engineers’ experiences of these systems. Our findings suggest they simultaneously enhance worker autonomy, support co-ordination with and monitoring of colleagues, but promote anxieties around productivity and the interpretation of data by management. We discuss the implications of data-driven performance management technologies on worker agency, and examine the consequences of such systems in an era of quantified workplaces.2018LBLyndsey L Bakewell et al.Loughborough UniversityWorkplace Monitoring & Performance TrackingCHI
“Grand Visions” for Post-Capitalist Human-Computer InteractionThe design, development and deployment of new technology is a form of intervention on the social, psychological and physical world. Whether explicitly intended or not, all digital technology is designed to support some vision of how work, leisure, education, healthcare, and so on, is organised in the future [11]. For example, most efforts to make commercial systems more usable, efficient and pleasurable, are ultimately about the vision of increased profits as part of a capitalist society. This workshop will bring together researchers, designers and practitioners to explore an alternative, post-capitalist, “grand vision” for HCI, asking what kind of futures the community sees itself as working towards. Are the futures we are building towards any different from those envisioned by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, which are typically neoliberal, absent of strict labour laws, licensing fees, tax declarations and the necessity to deal with government bureaucracy?2018TFTom Feltwell et al.Northumbria UniversityTechnology Ethics & Critical HCICHI
Troubling Vulnerability: Designing with LGBT Young People's Ambivalence Towards Hate Crime ReportingHCI is increasingly working with ‘vulnerable’ people, yet there is a danger that the label of vulnerability can alienate and stigmatize the people such work aims to support. We report our study investigating the application of interaction design to increase rates of hate crime reporting amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender young people. During design-led workshops, participants expressed ambivalence towards reporting. While recognizing their exposure to hate crime, they simultaneously rejected being identified as victim as implied in the act of reporting. We used visual communication design to depict the young people’s ambivalent identities and contribute insights into how these fail and succeed to account for the intersectional, fluid and emergent nature of LGBT identities through the design research process. We argue that by producing ambiguously designed texts alongside conventional outcomes, we ‘trouble’ our design research narratives as a tactic to disrupt static and reductive understandings of vulnerability within HCI.2018CGCally Gatehouse et al.Northumbria UniversityInclusive DesignGender & Race Issues in HCIEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsCHI
Maker Movements, Do-It-Yourself Cultures and Participatory Design: Implications for HCI Research.Falling costs and the wider availability of computational components, platforms and ecosystems have enabled the expansion of maker movements and DIY cultures. This can be considered as a form of democratization of technology systems design, in alignment with the aims of Participatory Design approaches. However, this landscape is constantly evolving, and long-term implications for the HCI community are far from clear. The organizers of this one-day workshop invite participants to present their case studies, experiences and perspectives on the topic with the goal of increasing understanding within this area of research. The outcomes of the workshop will include the articulation of future research directions with the purpose of informing a research agenda, as well as the establishment of new collaborations and networks.2018MSMichael Smyth et al.Edinburgh Napier UniversityMakerspace CultureParticipatory DesignComputational Methods in HCICHI
Making Problems in Design Research: The Case of Teen Shoplifters on TumblrHCI draws on a variety of traditions but recently there have been calls to consolidate contributions around the problems researchers set out to solve. However, with this comes the assumption that problems are tractable and certain, rather than constructed and framed by researchers. We take as a case study a Tumblr community of teen shoplifters who post on how to steal from stores, discuss shoplifting as political resistance, and share jokes and stories about the practice. We construct three different “problems” and imagine studies that might result from applying different design approaches: Design Against Crime; Critical Design and Value Sensitive Design. Through these studies we highlight how interpretations of the same data can lead to radically different design responses. We conclude by discussing problem making as a historically and politically contingent process that allow researchers to connect data and design according to certain moral and ethical principles.2018EEEnrique Encinas et al.Northumbria UniversityTechnology Ethics & Critical HCIParticipatory DesignCHI