The Role of ICT in Office Work Breaks
Workplace Social Performance
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Skatova, Anya
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Bedwell, Ben
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Shipp, Victoria
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Huang, Yitong
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Young, Alexandra
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Rodden, Tom
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Bertenshaw, Emma
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.3049-3060
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Break activities -- deliberate and unexpected -- are common throughout the
working day, playing an important role in the wellbeing of workers. This paper
investigates the role of increasingly pervasive ICT in creating new
opportunities for breaks at work, what impact the technology has on management
of boundaries at work, and the effects these changes have on personal
wellbeing. We present a study of the routines of office-workers, where we used
images from participants' work-days to prompt and contextualize interviews with
them. Analysis of coded photographs and interview data makes three
contributions: an account of ubiquitous ICT creating new forms of micro-breaks,
including the opportunity to employ previously wasted time; a description of
the ways in which staff increasingly bring "home to work"; and a discussion of
the emergence of "screen guilt". We evaluate our findings in relation to
previous studies, and leave three research implications and questions for
future work in this domain.
'A bit like British Weather, I suppose': Design and Evaluation of the
Temperature Calendar
Display and Visualizations
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Costanza, Enrico
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Bedwell, Ben
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Jewell, Michael O.
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Colley, James
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Rodden, Tom
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.4061-4072
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: In this paper we present the design and evaluation of the Temperature
Calendar -- a visualization of temperature variation within a workplace over
the course of the past week. This highlights deviation from organizational
temperature policy, and aims to bring staff "into the loop" of understanding
and managing heating, and so reduce energy waste. The display was deployed for
three weeks in five public libraries. Analysis of interaction logs,
questionnaires and interviews shows that staff used the displays to understand
heating in their buildings, and took action reflecting this new understanding.
Bringing together our results, we discuss design implications for workplace
displays, and an analysis of carbon emissions generated in constructing and
operating our design. More in general, the findings helped us to reflect on the
role of policy on energy consumption, and the potential for the HCI community
to engage with its application, as well as its definition or modification.
"Just whack it on until it gets hot": Working with IoT Data in the Home
Smart Homes, Devices and Data
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Fischer, Joel E.
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Crabtree, Andy
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Rodden, Tom
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Colley, James A.
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Costanza, Enrico
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Jewell, Michael O.
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Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.5933-5944
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: This paper presents findings from a co-design project that aims to augment
the practices of professional energy advisors with environmental data from
sensors deployed in clients' homes. Premised on prior ethnographic observations
we prototyped a sensor platform to support the work of tailoring advice-giving
to particular homes. We report on the deployment process and the findings to
emerge, particularly the work involved in making sense of or accounting for the
data in the course of advice-giving. Our ethnomethodological analysis focuses
on the ways in which data is drawn upon as a resource in the home visit, and
how understanding and advice-giving turns upon unpacking the indexical
relationship of the data to the situated goings-on in the home. This insight,
coupled with further design workshops with the advisors, shaped requirements
for an interactive system that makes the sensor data available for visual
inspection and annotation to support the situated sense-making that is key to
giving energy advice.
"This has to be the cats" -- Personal Data Legibility in Networked Sensing
Systems
Managing Personal Data
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Tolmie, Peter
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Crabtree, Andy
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Rodden, Tom
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Colley, James
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Luger, Ewa
Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2016 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work and Social Computing
2016-02-27
v.1
p.491-502
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Notions like 'Big Data' and the 'Internet of Things' turn upon anticipated
harvesting of personal data through ubiquitous computing and networked sensing
systems. It is largely presumed that understandings of people's everyday
interactions will be relatively easy to 'read off' of such data and that this,
in turn, poses a privacy threat. An ethnographic study of how people account
for sensed data to third parties uncovers serious challenges to such ideas. The
study reveals that the legibility of sensor data turns upon various orders of
situated reasoning involved in articulating the data and making it accountable.
Articulation work is indispensable to personal data sharing and raises real
requirements for networked sensing systems premised on the harvesting of
personal data.
Playing the Legal Card: Using Ideation Cards to Raise Data Protection Issues
within the Design Process
Privacy, Security & Interruptions
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Luger, Ewa
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Urquhart, Lachlan
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Rodden, Tom
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Golembewski, Michael
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.457-466
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: The regulatory climate is in a process of change. Design, having been
implicated for some time, is now explicitly linked to law. This paper
recognises the heightened role of designers in the regulation of ambient
interactive technologies. Taking account of incumbent legal requirements is
difficult. Legal rules are convoluted, uncertain, and not geared towards
operationalisable heuristics or development guidelines for system designers.
Privacy and data protection are a particular moral, social and legal concern
for technologies. This paper seeks to understand how to make emerging European
data protection regulation more accessible to our community. Our approach
develops and tests a series of data protection ideation cards with teams of
designers. We find that, whilst wishing to protect users, regulation is viewed
as a compliance issue. Subsequently we argue for the use of instruments, such
as our cards, as a means to engage designers in leading a human-centered
approach to regulation.
Provenance for the People: An HCI Perspective on the W3C PROV Standard
through an Online Game
Experience Design for Games
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Bachour, Khaled
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Wetzel, Richard
/
Flintham, Martin
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Huynh, Trung Dong
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Rodden, Tom
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Moreau, Luc
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.2437-2446
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: In the information age, tools for examining the validity of data are
invaluable. Provenance is one such tool, and the PROV model proposed by the
World Wide Web Consortium in 2013 offers a means of expressing provenance in a
machine readable format. In this paper, we examine from a user's standpoint
notions of provenance, the accessibility of the PROV model, and the general
attitudes towards history and the verifiability of information in modern data
society. We do this through the medium of an online-game designed to explore
these issues and present the findings of the study along with a discussion of
some of its implications.
Building a Birds Eye View: Collaborative Work in Disaster Response
Disasters & Humanitarian Events
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Fischer, Joel E.
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Reeves, Stuart
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Rodden, Tom
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Reece, Steve
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Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
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Jones, David
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.4103-4112
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Command and control environments ranging from transport control rooms to
disaster response have long been of interest to HCI and CSCW as rich sites of
interactive technology use embedded in work practice. Drawing on our engagement
with disaster response teams, including ethnography of their training work, we
unpack the ways in which situational uncertainty is managed while a shared
operational 'picture' is constituted through various practices around tabletop
work. Our analysis reveals how this picture is collaboratively assembled as a
socially shared object and displayed by drawing on digital and physical
resources. Accordingly, we provide a range of principles implicated by our
study that guide the design of systems augmenting and enriching disaster
response work practices. In turn, we propose the Augmented Bird Table to
illustrate how our principles can be implemented to support tabletop work.
Datawear: Self-reflection on the Go or How to Ethically Use Wearable Cameras
for Research
Interactivity
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Skatova, Anya
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Shipp, Victoria E.
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Spacagna, Lee
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Bedwell, Benjamin
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Beltagui, Ahmad
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Rodden, Tom
Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems
2015-04-18
v.2
p.323-326
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: A growing number of studies use wearable sensors, including cameras, to
detect user activity patterns. When an object of academic investigation, these
patterns are interpreted by researchers and conclusions are drawn about
people's habits and routines. Alternatively, interpretations are provided by
users themselves during extensive post-study interviews. Such approaches
inevitably expose personal data collected about individuals to researchers,
which can potentially change the behavior under investigation. We introduce a
new approach to using wearable sensor data in research. It allows people to
interpret and self-reflect on their data and submit for investigation only
reflections, without sharing their raw data. In this interactivity, we present
and discuss the Datawear mobile application prototype, which is designed to
conduct "in the wild" studies of personal experiences.
Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel
poverty
Energy & environment
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Fischer, Joel E.
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Costanza, Enrico
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Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
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Colley, James
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Rodden, Tom
Proceedings of the 2014 International Joint Conference on Pervasive and
Ubiquitous Computing
2014-09-13
v.1
p.447-458
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: We present an ethnographic study of energy advisors working for a charity
that provides support, particularly to people in fuel poverty. Our fieldwork
comprises detailed observations that reveal the collaborative, interactional
work of energy advisors and clients during home visits, supplemented with
interviews and a participatory design workshop with advisors. We identify
opportunities for Ubicomp technologies that focus on supporting the work of the
advisor, including complementing the collaborative advice giving in home
visits, providing help remotely, and producing evidence in support of accounts
of practices and building conditions useful for interactions with landlords,
authorities and other third parties. We highlight six specific design
challenges that relate the domestic fuel poverty setting to the wider Ubicomp
literature. Our work echoes a shift in attention from energy use and the
individual consumer, specifically to matters of advice work practices and the
domestic fuel poverty setting, and to the discourse around inclusive Ubicomp
technologies.
How do you solve a problem like consent?: the workshop
How do you solve a problem like consent? Workshop addressing the challenge
of user consent
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Luger, Ewa
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Jirotka, Marina
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Rodden, Tom
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Edwards, Lilian
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2014 International Joint Conference on Pervasive
and Ubiquitous Computing
2014-09-13
v.2
p.613-619
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Ubiquitous computing systems raise unprecedented challenges to how we
currently elicit, secure and sustain user consent. Consent is the interactional
process by which a user agrees to the terms of engagement with a system, and it
represents the principle mechanism by which we protect our privacy online.
However, whereas traditional online interactions are explicit, offering a
series of moments at which one might inform and engage the user, the growing
'era of ubiquity' has decoupled users from devices, presenting no clear moment
for consent to occur. Whilst there have been efforts to raise issues of consent
within HCI and cognate disciplines, these remain disparate. The aim of this
workshop is to bring together a solution-oriented community with a specific
focus on consent issues within interactive environments. It will create a
transnational, multidisciplinary platform for discussion and offer
opportunities for collaboration, support and the development of a new research
agenda.
An emerging tool kit for attaining informed consent in UbiComp
How do you solve a problem like consent? Workshop addressing the challenge
of user consent
/
Moran, Stuart
/
Luger, Ewa
/
Rodden, Tom
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2014 International Joint Conference on Pervasive
and Ubiquitous Computing
2014-09-13
v.2
p.635-639
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Existing approaches to attaining informed consent are outdated and
inappropriate for use in ubiquitous computing systems. The pervasiveness of the
technology and the nature of user interaction require a rethinking of consent
mechanisms. In this paper we briefly introduce and discuss several new
approaches to consent acquisition developed specifically for the new era of
ubiquitous computing.
Literatin: beyond awareness of readability in terms and conditions
How do you solve a problem like consent? Workshop addressing the challenge
of user consent
/
Moran, Stuart
/
Luger, Ewa
/
Rodden, Tom
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2014 International Joint Conference on Pervasive
and Ubiquitous Computing
2014-09-13
v.2
p.641-646
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) are frequently unread as a consequence of
their complexity and length. Readability formulas are used to objectively
measure this complexity, but ironically their outputs are also unreadable to
many. This motivated the development of a chrome extension called Literatin
that compares the complexity of popular fictional literature to T&Cs in
order sensitise people to their complexity. In this paper we discuss whether
this has been achieved, and outline plans to further develop the extension.
Sustaining consent through agency: a framework for future development
How do you solve a problem like consent? Workshop addressing the challenge
of user consent
/
Luger, Ewa
/
Rodden, Tom
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2014 International Joint Conference on Pervasive
and Ubiquitous Computing
2014-09-13
v.2
p.659-664
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Whilst being addressed in terms of traditional online interactions, the
concept of consent has only recently seen attention in respect of pervasive
systems. This paper takes the position that consent (online), as it currently
stands, is a fiction. It reflects only the most basic requirements of the
original concept and, as such, should not be transferred to Ubicomp systems
without careful reconfiguration. In a world of pervasive sensors, software
agents and tick and click consent, where is the space for human agency? This
paper draws on the findings of previous studies to suggest an emerging
framework that seeks to move beyond securing consent, to sustaining user agency
within the design of Ubicomp systems.
An exploration of user recognition on domestic networks using NetFlow
records
HomeSys 2014
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Brown, Anthony
/
Mortier, Richard
/
Rodden, Tom
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2014 International Joint Conference on Pervasive
and Ubiquitous Computing
2014-09-13
v.2
p.903-910
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: In this paper, we describe HomeNetViewer, a system for collecting,
visualising and annotating domestic network NetFlow records from a domestic
network gateway. HomeNetViewer is designed to collect ground truth data which,
enables the linking of users to low level network traffic. We present our first
annotated dataset from a real household in the UK and the results of our
preliminary work to build a user identification system. Our initial classifier
achieves a true-positive rate of 64% with false-positive rate of 28% when
compared to the ground truth annotations. This work attempts to address the
lack of transparency and accountability within the domestic network
infrastructure by identifying the user behind the device.
Develop, implement, and improve a web session detection model
Doctoral consortium
/
Ye, Chaoyu
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Wilson, Max L.
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Rodden, Tom
Proceedings of the 2014 Symposium on Information Interaction in Context
2014-08-26
p.336-338
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: More research in web and Information Retrieval is turning towards
session-based retrieval rather than single item or query investigation.
However, most of the session detection attempts only used simplistic rules
(e.g. "30 mins inactivity creates a new session"). Up to this point, there are
various fuzzy definitions of session, but no general consensus about it in the
literature [3]. Whilst comparably little work has involved the mental model
about the "web session" from real users. In response to these, my research
focuses on web session detection involving real users with a comprehensive set
of factors identified by them rather than the "simple fixed timeout". My
objective is to develop a session detection model with corresponding rules for
each factor, and then embedded them into a Chrome Extension to automatically
detect more accurate web sessions from log data.
Supporting Team Coordination on the Ground: Requirements from a Mixed
Reality Game
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Fischer, Joel E.
/
Jiang, Wenchao
/
Kerne, Andruid
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Greenhalgh, Chris
/
Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
/
Reece, Steven
/
Pantidi, Nadia
/
Rodden, Tom
Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on the Design of
Cooperative Systems
2014-05-27
p.49-67
© Copyright 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
Summary: We generate requirements for time-critical distributed team support relevant
for domains such as disaster response. We present the Radiation Response Game
to investigate socio-technical issues regarding team coordination. Field
responders in this mixed-reality game use smartphones to coordinate, via text
messaging, GPS, and maps, with headquarters and each other. We conduct
interaction analysis to examine field observations and log data, revealing how
teams achieve local and remote coordination and maintain situational awareness.
We uncover requirements that highlight the role of local coordination,
decision-making resources, geospatial referencing and message handling.
Doing the laundry with agents: a field trial of a future smart energy system
in the home
Smart homes and sustainability
/
Costanza, Enrico
/
Fischer, Joel E.
/
Colley, James A.
/
Rodden, Tom
/
Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
/
Jennings, Nicholas R.
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2014-04-26
v.1
p.813-822
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Future energy systems that rely on renewable energy may bring about a
radical shift in how we use energy in our homes. We developed and prototyped a
future scenario with highly variable, real-time electricity prices due to a
grid that mainly relies on renewables. We designed and deployed an agent-based
interactive system that enables users to effectively operate the washing
machine in this scenario. The system is used to book timeslots of washing
machine use so that the agent can help to minimize the cost of a wash by
charging a battery at times when electricity is cheap. We carried out a
deployment in 10 households in order to uncover the socio-technical challenges
around integrating new technologies into everyday routines. The findings reveal
tensions that arise when deploying a rationalistic system to manage
contingently and socially organized domestic practices. We discuss the
trade-offs between utility and convenience inherent in smart grid applications;
and illustrate how certain design choices position applications along this
spectrum.
Listening to the forest and its curators: lessons learnt from a bioacoustic
smartphone application deployment
Issues that matter
/
Moran, Stuart
/
Pantidi, Nadia
/
Rodden, Tom
/
Chamberlain, Alan
/
Griffiths, Chloe
/
Zilli, Davide
/
Merrett, Geoff
/
Rogers, Alex
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2014-04-26
v.1
p.2387-2396
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Our natural environment is complex and sensitive, and is home to a number of
species on the verge of extinction. Surveying is one approach to their
preservation, and can be supported by technology. This paper presents the
deployment of a smartphone-based citizen science biodiversity application. Our
findings from interviews with members of the biodiversity community revealed a
tension between the technology and their established working practices. From
our experience, we present a series of general guidelines for those designing
citizen science apps.
Books as a social technology
Social technologies and well-being
/
Hupfeld, Annika
/
Rodden, Tom
Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2014 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work and Social Computing
2014-02-15
v.1
p.639-651
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: E-books are becoming ubiquitous. Whether or not they will eventually replace
books or merely complement them, there is a concern that something important
might be lost in moving from print to digital books. While there is a wealth of
research into the challenges and opportunities of e-reading, there is little
research aiming to understand the broader role of books in everyday life.
Rather than speculating on what books are in the digital age, in this paper, we
wish to ask what books do. To do so, we conducted a series of in-depth
interviews with ten UK households to understand everyday uses of books. Our
findings suggest that books are not merely reading technologies but a resource
for everyday social and personal engagements. We discuss re-framing books as
social technologies and implications for the design of e-books.
Supporting group interactions in museum visiting
Identifying opportunities for collaboration
/
Tolmie, Peter
/
Benford, Steve
/
Greenhalgh, Chris
/
Rodden, Tom
/
Reeves, Stuart
Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2014 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work and Social Computing
2014-02-15
v.1
p.1049-1059
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Ethnographic study in two contrasting museums highlights a widespread but
rarely documented challenge for CSCW design. Visitors' engagement with exhibits
often ends prematurely due to the need to keep up with or attend to fellow
group members. We unpack the mechanics of these kinds of phenomena revealing
how the behaviours of summoning, pressurizing, herding, sidelining, and
rounding up, lead to the responses of following, skimming and digging in. We
show how the problem is especially challenging where young children are
involved. As an initial prompt we explore two ways in which CSCW could help
address this challenge: enabling a more fluid association between information
and exhibits; and helping reconfigure the social nature of visiting.
Doing innovation in the wild
New spaces for design
/
Crabtree, A.
/
Chamberlain, A.
/
Davies, M.
/
Glover, K.
/
Reeves, S.
/
Rodden, T.
/
Tolmie, P.
/
Jones, Matt
Proceedings of CHItaly '13: ACM SIGCHI Italian Chapter International
Conference on Computer-Human Interaction
2013-09-16
p.25
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Doing research 'in the wild is becoming an increasingly popular approach
towards developing innovative computing systems and applications. This paper
reflects upon a research project conducted in the wild, and key aspects of the
work involved in making the project work, to examine current tropes about the
approach. It suggests that doing research in the wild is rather more
complicated than is reflected in current understandings, and that even greater
involvement of ethnographers, computer scientists, software engineers and other
disciplines operating within systems design is needed if innovation is to be
effectively driven within and by real world contexts of use.
An informed view on consent for UbiComp
User experience design
/
Luger, Ewa
/
Rodden, Tom
Proceedings of the 2013 International Joint Conference on Pervasive and
Ubiquitous Computing
2013-09-08
v.1
p.529-538
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Ubiquitous computing systems tend to be complex, seamless, data-driven and
interactive. Reacting to both context, and users' implicit actions resulting
from the lived experience, they cast all traces of human life as potential
'data'. To augment users' endeavours, such systems are necessarily embedded
below the line of human attention, drawing upon new and highly sensitive types
of data. This begs the question, where is the moment of user consent and how
can this moment be truly informed? We would argue that it is time to revisit
our design principles in respect of consent and redress the balance of agency
towards the user. We draw upon a series of multidisciplinary interviews with
experts to (a) reframe consent for ubicomp, and (b) offer three indicative
principles, supportive of consent, for designers to 'balance' against system
functionality. We hope that this will afford a new prism through which
designers might make value judgements.
Communities in the clouds: support for high-rise living
Workshop: HomeSys 2013: workshop on design, technology, systems and
applications for the home
/
Lodge, Tom
/
Rodden, Tom
/
Mortier, Richard
Adjunct Proceedings of the 2013 International Joint Conference on Pervasive
and Ubiquitous Computing
2013-09-08
v.2
p.829-836
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Research into domestic infrastructures has focused upon a user's
understanding and control of in-home networking technologies. It has exposed a
range of needs that have either lead to the creation of new tools and services,
or have triggered a fundamental re-evaluation of the status quo. We consider a
class of domestic environment that has largely been neglected: large scale
communal living. Urban high-rises, composed of hundreds of apartments and
hundreds or thousands of occupants, expose their residents to a set of problems
which impose complex requirements upon supporting technologies. We examine the
requirements of high-rise communities, through a set of illustrative scenarios,
inspired by forums, social media and literature. We consider how commonly
appropriated social media tools fail to address these requirements and we
discuss the nature of the services required to better support high-rise
communities.
Terms of Agreement: Rethinking Consent for Pervasive Computing
The Social Implications of Embedded Systems
/
Luger, E.
/
Rodden, T.
Interacting with Computers
2013-05
v.25
n.3
p.229-241
© Copyright 2013 Authors
Summary: With its emphasis on 'smart environments', the vision of pervasive computing
raises critical concerns with respect to consent. When sensors capture data
about people, and digital systems interpret and respond to that data below the
line of user visibility, two fundamental questions arise. First, are current
notions of consent relevant in the emerging class of pervasive systems and,
secondly, what are the practical consequences of dealing with consent for such
environments? This paper reflects on the key principles of consent and the
challenges raised by pervasive systems through a review of multidisciplinary
perspectives on consent and technology. The developing complexity and
decreasing visibility of pervasive computing systems, coupled with the
increasing value and sensitivity of personal data, mean that it is no longer
sufficient to design systems that assume users capable of making informed
decisions at a single moment. In particular, the unprecedented sensitivity of
contextual data, and the potential harms associated with inferences made on the
basis of that data, highlights the need to revisit our design principles. Many
of these discussions are nuanced and implicate a broad range of perspectives;
however, it is clear that there is unlikely to be a 'moment of consent' in
pervasive systems. In order to progress this agenda we offer the following set
of recommendations to designers, as considerations for future systems design:
(i) electronic consent mechanisms (ECMs) must cease to be designed around
'moments in time' and allow for negotiation, (ii) systems should enable
establishment of user expectations and development of norms, (iii) systems
should be sensitive to third-party interactions and (iv) we should move beyond
designing for user control towards designing for user autonomy.
At home with agents: exploring attitudes towards future smart energy
infrastructures
Papers: sustainable energy
/
Rodden, Tom A.
/
Fischer, Joel E.
/
Pantidi, Nadia
/
Bachour, Khaled
/
Moran, Stuart
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2013 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2013-04-27
v.1
p.1173-1182
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Energy systems researchers are proposing a broad range of future "smart"
energy infrastructures to promote more efficient management of energy
resources. This paper considers how consumers might relate to these future
smart grids within the UK. To address this challenge we exploited a combination
of demonstration and animated sketches to convey the nature of a future smart
energy infrastructure based on software agents. Users' reactions suggested that
although they felt an obligation to engage with energy issues, they were
principally disinterested. Users showed a considerable lack of trust in energy
companies raising a dilemma of design. While users might welcome agents to help
in engaging with complex energy infrastructures, they had little faith in those
that might provide them. This suggests the need to consider how to design
software agents to enhance trust in these socio-economic settings.
