Beyond Bridging Divides: Examining the Goals of Digital Inclusion Practice in Post-Digital SocietiesThe widespread digitalisation of critical civic services in contexts of economic austerity, neoliberalism, and the COVID-19 pandemic, has renewed focus in HCI on interventions to enable digital access for populations considered ‘digitally excluded’. While digital inclusion (DI) practitioners play a critical role in this area, their perspectives remain under-explored in HCI. This paper reports on a series of asset-based engagements with digital inclusion practitioners in the North East of England. These engagements explored the values, assets, and needs comprising their practices and used these insights as design material to ideate strategies for future intervention. We contribute findings describing the complexities, contradictions, and diversity of digital inclusion practices and efforts. Based on these findings, we argue for a shift towards considering DI practice through the lens of care, and provide directions for future HCI research to support DI practitioners in doing care work.2025APAdam W Parnaby et al.Newcastle University, Open LabUniversal & Inclusive DesignDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)CHI
Hostile Systems: A Taxonomy of Harms Articulated by Citizens Living with Socio-Economic DeprivationThere is increasing interest in how digitalisation variously impacts different socio-economic demographics’ ability to access, and realise benefits from, public services. Centring citizens’ lived experience in the identification of harms and benefits is critical for the evaluation of digital services, and more broadly for responsible innovation. Yet this poses significant challenges, particularly when engaging those living in precarious conditions. This paper reports on a study that engaged citizens living with poverty (n=76) to articulate harms arising from digitalisation in the context of an e-government social protection service. Interviews and surveys supported by speculative scenarios of ongoing changes helped surface and express citizen-centric harm characteristics within wider ecosystems before, during and after access, beyond a narrower service-lifecycle viewpoint. Drawing on the findings, we develop a taxonomy of harms and discuss how this can be utilised by HCI practitioners concerned with responsible innovation in digital welfare contexts.2024CWColin Watson et al.Newcastle UniversityInclusive DesignEmpowerment of Marginalized GroupsDeveloping Countries & HCI for Development (HCI4D)CHI
Participatory Design Goes to School: Co-Teaching as a Form of Co-Design for Educational TechnologyEducational technologies offer benefits in the classroom but there are barriers to their successful integration, including teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their skills and experience. Participatory Design (PD) approaches offer one way in which teachers can be directly involved in the design of classroom technologies, however PD processes alone fail to address the challenges of integrating technology within existing practices. In this paper we propose co-teaching as a novel form of co-design practice. We describe a two year longitudinal Co-Teaching project resulting in the development and use of three digital designs for the classroom. Using the TPACK model to guide our reflections we offer insights into the ways that co-teaching can support the design and integration of educational technologies. We suggest that co-teaching as a form of co-design practice offers a way to move teachers from passive adopters of technology to active participants in the design and integration of educational technologies.2022RNRebecca Nicholson et al.Newcastle UniversityCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingUser Research Methods (Interviews, Surveys, Observation)CHI
Blending into Everyday Life: Designing a Social Media-Based Peer Support SystemPeer support through social media has been shown to have significant potential to improve health care outcomes. Despite this, very little is understood about how to design a social media-based peer support system. We use the model of unplatformed design to structure a multi-phase design process of a WhatsApp-based peer support system, with and for participants undergoing extreme weight loss as part of a health care intervention into diabetes management. From a mixed-methods evaluation of a three-month deployment of the system and reflections upon the design process we explore the value of the model in facilitating the expression of authentic peer support, and identify how the unique characteristics of unplatformed design allowed for the creation of a peer support system that was responsive to participants’ existing everyday use of social media technologies.2021DLDaniel Lambton-Howard et al.Newcastle UniversityMental Health Apps & Online Support CommunitiesSocial Platform Design & User BehaviorCHI
PIP Kit: An Exploratory Investigation into using Lifelogging to support Disability Benefit ClaimantsDisability assessment processes are complex and stressful, with claimants finding it challenging to prepare an effective account of their disabilities to support their claim. This project focuses on a disability benefit called Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which is received by millions of people with disabilities in the UK. We present a multi-stage exploratory investigation into how lifelogging could help address the challenges claimants have in accessing disability benefits. In the first study, benefit advisors participated in interviews and workshops to inform the design of PIP Kit, a highly customisable prototype elicitation diary to help disability claimants articulate their experiences. In the second study, PIP Kit was trialled by benefit claimants whilst making their actual PIP claims. We found that PIP Kit helped empower claimants in understanding the claim process and assisted in building arguments for their claims. We also have identified clear principles for supporting disability benefit claimants with technological interventions.2020CWColin Watson et al.Newcastle UniversityCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Universal & Inclusive DesignSpecial Education TechnologyCHI
Unplatformed Design: A Model for Appropriating Social Media Technologies for Coordinated ParticipationUsing existing social media technologies as a resource for design offers significant potential for sustainable and scalable ways of coordinating participation. We look at three exemplar projects in three distinct domains that have successfully coordinated participation through the configuration and augmentation of existing social media technologies: participatory future forecasting, participatory health research, and connectivist learning. In this paper we conceptualise social media technologies as material for design, that is, as the raw material with which coordinated participation is realized. From this we develop a model that proposes four material qualities of social media technologies, morphology, role, representation of activity and permeability, and point to how they can be productively employed in the design of coordination of participation.2020DLDaniel Lambton-Howard et al.Newcastle UniversityCommunity Engagement & Civic TechnologyParticipatory DesignCHI
We are the Greatest Showmen: Configuring a Framework for Project-Based Mobile LearningLittle research has explored how mobile-learning technologies could be used by students to produce interactive artefacts during project-based learning processes. Following a design-based approach, we report on engagements spanning classroom and outdoor learning with students (ages 6-13) and teachers from three different UK schools and a summer school of Travelling Showchildren. Working within the time constraints of each context, we deployed a variety of configurations of a project-based mobile learning (PBML) framework intended to support the production of student-designed mobile-learning activities. We contribute insights gained from these engagements, including how mobile technologies can harness students' existing desire for independence and how they can be configured to leverage the physical and social attributes of place and community as learning resources. We argue for further exploration of the potential roles for mobile technologies within project-based learning, and contribute our PBML framework with recommendations for its re-configuration in response to contextual constraints.2020DRDan Richardson et al.Newcastle UniversityK-12 Digital Education ToolsCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingCHI
WhatFutures: Designing Large-Scale Engagements on WhatsAppWhatsApp, as the world's most popular messaging application, offers significant opportunities for improving the reach and effectiveness of engagement projects. In collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) we designed WhatFutures, a collaborative future forecasting engagement for global youth using WhatsApp. WhatFutures was successfully deployed with 487 players across 5 countries (Kenya, Bulgaria, Finland, Australia and Hong Kong) to inform strategic change within the IFRC. Based on our analysis of the activity – including 16,100 messages, 95 multimedia artifacts, and a post-engagement survey – we present a reflection upon the design decisions underpinning WhatFutures and identify how decisions made around group structures, processes and externalization of outputs influenced engagement and data quality. We conclude with the wider implications of our findings for the design of engagements that best utilize the affordances of existing messaging applications.2019DLDaniel Lambton-Howard et al.Newcastle UniversityConversational ChatbotsCommunity Engagement & Civic TechnologyCHI
HOPE for Computing Education: Towards the Infrastructuring of Support for University-School PartnershipsThe state of computing education in the UK is described as "patchy and fragile" with universities tasked to provide further support to schools. However, little guidance exists towards the provision of this support. To explore the development of university-school partnerships, we present findings of an extended educational engagement coordinated by Newcastle University, as part of the national "Create, Learn and Inspire with the micro:bit and the BBC" initiative. Following an action research approach, we explore the experiences of undergraduate students, schoolteachers and an educational broker through the process, including recruitment, content development, and delivery of over 30 computing lessons by nine undergraduates. We identify a number of design considerations towards the development of High Opportunity Progression Ecosystems for the improvement of computing education, such as student identity, workload model,and process visibility. We then discuss the potential role of technology in infrastructuring support for university-school partnerships2019MVMegan Venn-Wycherley et al.Newcastle UniversityProgramming Education & Computational ThinkingCollaborative Learning & Peer TeachingCHI
A Unified Model for User Identification on Multi-touch Surfaces. A Survey and Meta-analysis.User identification on interactive surfaces is a desirable feature that is not inherently supported by existing technologies. We have conducted an extensive survey of existing identification techniques, which led us to formulate a unified model for user identification. We start by introducing this model that 1) classifies existing user identification approaches in 5 categories according to the identification technology; 2) identifies 8 characteristic identification system parameters; and 3) proposes a way for visualizing the system’s characteristics as points on a radar-chart to allow for quick comparison and contrast between systems. This model is then used to present our survey of existing user identification approaches and visualize their characteristics, highlighting their strengths and limitations. The model also makes it possible to visually represent requirements of systems that require user identification, identify existing approaches that can meet an application’s requirements, and help report on and evaluate new approaches to user identification systematically.2018AKAhmed Kharrufa et al.Newcastle UniversityEye Tracking & Gaze InteractionContext-Aware ComputingCHI
ThinkActive: Designing for Pseudonymous Activity Tracking in the ClassroomWe report on the design of ThinkActive - a system to encourage primary aged school children to reflect on their own personal activity data in the classroom. We deployed the system with a cohort of 30 school children, over a six-week period, in partnership with an English Premier League Football club’s health and nutrition programme. The system utilizes inexpensive activity trackers and pseudonymous avatars to promote reflection with personal data using an in-situ display within the classroom. Our design explores pseudonymity as an approach to managing privacy and personal data within a public setting. We report on the motivations, challenges, and opportunities for students, teachers, and third-party providers to engage in the collection and sharing of activity data with primary school children.2018AGAndrew Garbett et al.Newcastle UniversityUniversal & Inclusive DesignFitness Tracking & Physical Activity MonitoringContext-Aware ComputingCHI