Agency Aspirations: Understanding Users’ Preferences And Perceptions Of Their Role In Personalised News CurationRecommender systems are increasingly employed by journalistic outlets to deliver personalised news, transforming news curation into a reciprocal yet insufficiently defined process influenced by editors, recommender systems, and individual user actions. To understand the tension in this dynamic and users’ preferences and perceptions of their role in personalised news curation, we conducted a study with UK participants aged 16-34. Building on a preliminary survey and interview study, which revealed a strong desire from participants for increased agency in personalisation, we designed an interactive news recommender provotype (provocative design artefact) which probed the role of agency in news curation with participants (n=16). Findings highlighted a behaviour-intention gap, indicating participants desire for agency yet reluctance to intervene actively in personalisation. Our research offers valuable insights into how users perceive their agency in personalised news curation, underscoring the importance for systems to be designed to support individuals becoming active agents in news personalisation.2024ARAnna Marie Rezk et al.University of EdinburghExplainable AI (XAI)Recommender System UXCHI
Examining the Impact of Provenance-Enabled Media on Trust and Accuracy PerceptionsIn recent years, industry leaders and researchers have proposed to use technical provenance standards to address visual misinformation spread through digitally altered media. By adding immutable and secure provenance information such as authorship and edit date to media metadata, social media users could potentially better assess the validity of the media they encounter. However, it is unclear how end users would respond to provenance information, or how to best design provenance indicators to be understandable to laypeople. We conducted an online experiment with 595 participants from the US and UK to investigate how provenance information altered users' accuracy perceptions and trust in visual content shared on social media. We found that provenance information often lowered trust and caused users to doubt deceptive media, particularly when it revealed that the media was composited. We additionally tested conditions where the provenance information itself was shown to be incomplete or invalid, and found that these states have a significant impact on participants' accuracy perceptions and trust in media, leading them, in some cases, to disbelieve honest media. Our findings show that provenance, although enlightening, is still not a concept well-understood by users, who confuse media credibility with the orthogonal (albeit related) concept of provenance credibility. We discuss how design choices may contribute to provenance (mis)understanding, and conclude with implications for usable provenance systems, including clearer interfaces and user education.2023KFK. J. Kevin Feng et al.Security and TrustCSCW
Proxemics and Social Interactions in an Instrumented Virtual Reality WorkshopVirtual environments (VEs) can create collaborative and social spaces, which are increasingly important in the face of remote work and travel reduction. Recent advances, such as more open and widely available platforms, create new possibilities to observe and analyse interaction in VEs. Using a custom instrumented build of Mozilla Hubs to measure position and orientation, we conducted an academic workshop to facilitate a range of typical workshop activities. We analysed social interactions during a keynote, small group breakouts, and informal networking/hallway conversations. Our mixed-methods approach combined environment logging, observations, and semi-structured interviews. The results demonstrate how small and large spaces influenced group formation, shared attention, and personal space, where smaller rooms facilitated more cohesive groups while larger rooms made small group formation challenging but personal space more flexible. Beyond our findings, we show how the combination of data and insights can fuel collaborative spaces' design and deliver more effective virtual workshops.2021JWJulie R. Williamson et al.University of GlasgowSocial & Collaborative VRMixed Reality WorkspacesCHI
Adaptive Subtitles: Preferences and Trade-Offs in Real-Time Media AdaptionSubtitles can help improve the understanding of media content. People enable subtitles based on individual characteristics (e.g., language or hearing ability), viewing environment, or media context (e.g., drama, quiz show). However, some people find that subtitles can be distracting and that they negatively impact their viewing experience. We explore the challenges and opportunities surrounding interaction with real-time personalisation of subtitled content. To understand how people currently interact with subtitles, we first conducted an online questionnaire with 102 participants. We used our findings to elicit requirements for a new approach called Adaptive Subtitles that allows the viewer to alter which speakers have subtitles displayed in real-time. We evaluated our approach with 19 participants to understand the interaction trade-offs and challenges within real-time adaptations of subtitled media. Our evaluation findings suggest that granular controls and structured onboarding allow viewers to make informed trade-offs when adapting media content, leading to improved viewing experiences.2021BGBenjamin M. Gorman et al.Bournemouth UniversityVoice AccessibilityDeaf & Hard-of-Hearing Support (Captions, Sign Language, Vibration)CHI
Personalising the TV Experience using Augmented Reality: An Exploratory Study on Delivering Synchronised Sign Language InterpretationAugmented Reality (AR) technology has the potential to extend the screen area beyond the rigid frames of televisions. The additional display area can be used to augment televisions (TVs) with extra information tailored to individuals, for instance, the provision of access services like sign language interpretations. We invited 23 (11 in the UK, 12 in Germany) users of signed content to evaluate three methods of watching a sign language interpreted programme – one traditional in-vision method with signed programme content on TV and two AR-enabled methods in which an AR sign language interpreter (a 'half-body' version and a 'full-body' version) is projected just outside the frame of the TV presenting the programme. In the UK, participants were split 3-ways in their preferences while in Germany, half the participants preferred the traditional method followed closely by the 'half-body' version. We discuss our participants reasoning behind their preferences and implications for future research.2019VVVinoba Vinayagamoorthy et al.BBC R&DMultilingual & Cross-Cultural Voice InteractionDeaf & Hard-of-Hearing Support (Captions, Sign Language, Vibration)CHI
Developing Accessible Services: Understanding Current Knowledge and Areas for Future SupportWhen creating digital artefacts, it is important to ensure that the product being made is accessible to as much of the population as is possible. Many guidelines and supporting tools exist to assist reaching this goal. However, little is known about developers' understanding of accessible practice and the methods that are used to implement this. We present findings from an accessibility design workshop that was carried out with a mixture of 197 developers and digital technology students. We discuss perceptions of accessibility, techniques that are used when designing accessible products, and what areas of accessibility development participants believed were important. We show that there are gaps in the knowledge needed to develop accessible products despite the effort to promote accessible design. Our participants are themselves aware of where these gaps are and have suggested a number of areas where tools, techniques and guidance would improve their practice.2019MCMichael Crabb et al.University of DundeeCognitive Impairment & Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia)Aging-Friendly Technology DesignUniversal & Inclusive DesignCHI
Media of Things: Supporting The Production of Metadata Rich Media Through IoT SensingRich metadata is becoming a key part of the broadcast production pipeline. This information can be used to deliver compelling new consumption experiences which are personalized, location-aware, interactive and multi-screen. However, media producers are struggling to generate the metadata required for such experiences, using inefficient post-production solutions which are limited in how much of the original context they can capture. In response, we present Media of Things (MoT), a tool for on-location media productions. MoT enables practical and flexible generation of sensor based point-of-capture metadata. We demonstrate how embedded ubiquitous sensing technologies such as the Internet of Things can be leveraged to produce context rich, time sequenced metadata in a production studio. We reflect on how this workflow can be integrated within the constraints of broadcast production and the possibilities that emerge from access to rich data at the beginning of the production lifecycle to produce well described media for reconfigurable consumption.2018GWGerard Wilkinson et al.Newcastle University, BBCInteractive Data VisualizationGeospatial & Map VisualizationContext-Aware ComputingCHI