[1]
Reflective Informatics: Conceptual Dimensions for Designing Technologies of
Reflection
Reflecting Upon Design Reflection
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.585-594
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Despite demonstrated interest in designing for reflection, relatively little
work provides a detailed explication of what exactly is meant by reflection or
how to design around it. This paper fills that gap by reviewing and engaging
with conceptual and theoretical models of reflection, organized by the
disciplinary and epistemological perspectives each embodies. Synthesizing
across this theoretical background, the paper identifies three dimensions of
reflection: breakdown, inquiry, and transformation. Together, these dimensions
serve as the foundation for reflective informatics, a conceptual approach that
helps bring clarity and guidance to the discussion of designing for reflection.
The paper distinguishes reflective informatics by demonstrating how it both
differs from and complements existing related work. Finally, the paper provides
a critically reflexive consideration of its own latent assumptions, especially
about the value of reflection, and how they might impact work on designing for
reflection.
[2]
Usees
UX Methods 4
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.3295-3298
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: HCI has developed a powerful vocabulary for thinking about, and methods for
engaging with, users. Similarly, recent work has advanced complementary
understanding of technology non-use. However, other spaces of interaction with
technology may occur that sit uncomfortably between these two poles. This paper
presents two case studies highlighting individuals who neither are clearly
users of a system nor are clearly non-users. Based on these cases, the paper
develops the concept of 'usee' to help account for such situations that lie
between existing analytic categories.
[3]
Making Things Visible: Opportunities and Tensions in Visual Approaches for
Design Research and Practice
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Snyder, Jaime
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Voida, Stephen
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Adams, Phil
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Halpern, Megan
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Choudhury, Tanzeem
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Gay, Geri
Human-Computer Interaction
2014-08
v.29
n.5/6
p.451-486
© Copyright 2014 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC
Summary: Visual approaches for conducting research during the design process often
give voice to people and ideas that might otherwise remain obscured. Recent and
increasing interest in visual research techniques has coincided with
technological advances such as camera phones and visually oriented mobile
applications. As a result of this close association between digital
technologies and image-based research techniques, there are multiple
opportunities and challenges within human-computer interaction (HCI) design
practice to employ these strategies to improve user experiences. This article
provides an overview of current visual approaches to research highlighting the
role technology has played in facilitating and inspiring these techniques. A
series of case studies are presented that provide a basis for understanding a
breadth of visual approaches in HCI design practices as well as serve as a
point of entry to a critical and reflective discussion about the use of these
approaches in different circumstances. Based on these reflections, three value
statements are offered as a means to encourage the use of these visual
approaches more broadly and critically in HCI design studies.
[4]
Reviewing reflection: on the use of reflection in interactive system design
Reflection
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Khovanskaya, Vera
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Matthews, Mark
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Reynolds, Lindsay
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Sosik, Victoria Schwanda
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Gay, Geri
Proceedings of DIS'14: Designing Interactive Systems
2014-06-21
v.1
p.93-102
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Designers have demonstrated an increased interest in designing for
reflection. However, that work currently occurs under a variety of diverse
auspices. To help organize and investigate this literature, this paper present
a review of research on systems designed to support reflection. Key findings
include that most work in this area does not actually define the concept of
reflection. We also find that most evaluations do not focus on reflection per
se rather but on some other outcome arguably linked to reflection. Our review
also describes the relationship between reflection and persuasion evidenced
implicitly by both rhetorical motivations for and implementation details of
system design. After discussing the significance of our findings, we conclude
with a series of recommendations for improving research on and design for
reflection.
[5]
Staccato social support in mobile health applications
Interfaces for care and support
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Adams, Phil
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Baumer, Eric PS
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Gay, Geri
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2014-04-26
v.1
p.653-662
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Social support plays an important role in health systems. While significant
work has explored the role of social support in CMC environments, less analysis
has considered social support in mobile health systems. This paper describes
socially supportive messages in VERA, a mobile application for sharing health
decisions and behaviors. The short and bursty interactions in social awareness
streams [36] afford a particular style of social support, for which we offer
the label staccato social support. Results indicate that, in comparison to
previous work, staccato social support is characterized by a greater prevalence
of esteem support, which builds respect and confidence. We further note the
presence of 'following up', a positive behavior that contributes to supportive
interactions, likely via social pressure and accountability [7,38]. These
findings suggest design recommendations to developers of mobile social support
systems and contribute to understanding technologically mediated social support
for health.
[6]
Refusing, limiting, departing: why we should study technology non-use
Workshop summaries
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Ames, Morgan G.
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Brubaker, Jed R.
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Burrell, Jenna
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Dourish, Paul
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2014-04-26
v.2
p.65-68
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: In contrast to most research in HCI, this workshop focuses on non-use, that
is, situations where people do not use computing technology. Using a reflexive
pre-workshop activity and discussion-oriented sessions, we will consider the
theories, methods, foundational texts, and central research questions in the
study of non-use. In addition to a special issue proposal, we expect the
research thread brought to the fore in this workshop will speak to foundational
questions of use and the user in HCI.
[7]
CHI 2039: speculative research visions
alt.chi: limits and futures
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Ahn, June
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Bie, Mei
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Bonsignore, Elizabeth M.
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Börütecene, Ahmet
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Buruk, Oguz Turan
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Clegg, Tamara
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Druin, Allison
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Echtler, Florian
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Gruen, Dan
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Guha, Mona Leigh
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Hordatt, Chelsea
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Krüger, Antonio
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Maidenbaum, Shachar
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Malu, Meethu
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McNally, Brenna
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Muller, Michael
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Norooz, Leyla
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Norton, Juliet
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Ozcan, Oguzhan
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Patterson, Donald J.
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Riener, Andreas
/
Ross, Steven I.
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Rust, Karen
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Schöning, Johannes
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Silberman, M. Six
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Tomlinson, Bill
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Yip, Jason
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2014-04-26
v.2
p.761-770
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: This paper presents a curated collection of fictional abstracts for papers
that could appear in the proceedings of the 2039 CHI Conference. It provides an
opportunity to consider the various visions guiding work in HCI, the futures
toward which we (believe we) are working, and how research in the field might
relate with broader social, political, and cultural changes over the next
quarter century.
[8]
Limiting, leaving, and (re)lapsing: an exploration of Facebook non-use
practices and experiences
Papers: social media practices
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Adams, Phil
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Khovanskaya, Vera D.
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Liao, Tony C.
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Smith, Madeline E.
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Sosik, Victoria Schwanda
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Williams, Kaiton
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2013 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2013-04-27
v.1
p.3257-3266
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Despite the abundance of research on social networking sites, relatively
little research has studied those who choose not to use such sites. This paper
presents results from a questionnaire of over 400 Internet users, focusing
specifically on Facebook and those users who have left the service. Results
show the lack of a clear, binary distinction between use and non-use, that
various practices enable diverse ways and degrees of engagement with and
disengagement from Facebook. Furthermore, qualitative analysis reveals numerous
complex and interrelated motivations and justifications, both for leaving and
for maintaining some type of connection. These motivations include: privacy,
data misuse, productivity, banality, addiction, and external pressures. These
results not only contribute to our understanding of online sociality by
examining this under-explored area, but they also build on previous work to
help advance how we conceptually account for the sociological processes of
non-use.
[9]
"Everybody knows what you're doing": a critical design approach to personal
informatics
Papers: understanding privacy
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Khovanskaya, Vera
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Cosley, Dan
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Voida, Stephen
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Gay, Geri
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2013 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2013-04-27
v.1
p.3403-3412
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: We present an alternative approach to the design of personal informatics
systems: instead of motivating people to examine their own behaviors, this
approach promotes awareness of and reflection on the infrastructures behind
personal informatics and the modes of engagement that they promote.
Specifically, this paper presents an interface that displays personal web
browsing data. The interface aims to reveal underlying infrastructure using
several methods: drawing attention to the scope of mined data by displaying
deliberately selected sensitive data, using purposeful malfunction as a way to
encourage reverse engineering, and challenging normative expectations around
data mining by displaying information in unconventional ways. Qualitative
results from a two-week deployment show that these strategies can raise
people's awareness about data mining, promote efficacy and control over
personal data, and inspire reflection on the goals and assumptions embedded in
infrastructures for personal data analytics.
[10]
Sustainably unpersuaded: how persuasion narrows our vision of sustainability
Critical perspectives on design
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Brynjarsdottir, Hronn
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Håkansson, Maria
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Pierce, James
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Baumer, Eric
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DiSalvo, Carl
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Sengers, Phoebe
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2012 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2012-05-05
v.1
p.947-956
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: In this paper we provide a critical analysis of persuasive sustainability
research from 2009-2011. Drawing on critical sociological theory of modernism,
we argue that persuasion is based on a limited framing of sustainability, human
behavior, and their interrelationship. This makes supporting sustainability
easier, but leads to characteristic patterns of breakdown. We then detail
problems that emerge from this narrowing of vision, such as how the framing of
sustainability as the optimization of a simple metrics places technologies
incorrectly as objective arbiters over complex issues of sustainability. We
conclude by suggesting alternative approaches to move beyond these problems.
[11]
Massively distributed authorship of academic papers
alt.chi
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Tomlinson, Bill
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Ross, Joel
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Andre, Paul
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Baumer, Eric
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Patterson, Donald
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Corneli, Joseph
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Mahaux, Martin
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Nobarany, Syavash
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Lazzari, Marco
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Penzenstadler, Birgit
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Torrance, Andrew
/
Callele, David
/
Olson, Gary
/
Silberman, Six
/
Stünder, Marcus
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Palamedi, Fabio Romancini
/
Salah, Albert Ali
/
Morrill, Eric
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Franch, Xavier
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Mueller, Florian Floyd
/
Kaye, Joseph 'Jofish'
/
Black, Rebecca W.
/
Cohn, Marisa L.
/
Shih, Patrick C.
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Brewer, Johanna
/
Goyal, Nitesh
/
Näkki, Pirjo
/
Huang, Jeff
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Baghaei, Nilufar
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Saper, Craig
Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI'12 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2012-05-05
v.2
p.11-20
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of
benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different
disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model
of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This
model, developed by a collective of thirty authors, identifies key tools and
techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The
process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate,
and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the
first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale
collaborative research.
[12]
Prescriptive persuasion and open-ended social awareness: expanding the
design space of mobile health
On the road: mobile
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Katz, Sherri Jean
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Freeman, Jill E.
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Adams, Phil
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Gonzales, Amy L.
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Pollak, John
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Retelny, Daniela
/
Niederdeppe, Jeff
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Olson, Christine M.
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Gay, Geri K.
Proceedings of ACM CSCW'12 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
2012-02-11
v.1
p.475-484
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: Most mobile technology systems designed to encourage healthy decisions focus
on prescriptive persuasion, telling the user either implicitly or explicitly
what to do, as the primary means of improving health. However, other
technically and socially viable options exist. Drawing on both relevant social
theory and previous CSCW research, this paper suggests that open-ended social
awareness, making users aware of both others' and their own decisions, may also
serve as an effective central design principle for mobile health. To explore
this approach, this paper presents analysis of qualitative data from two
studies of such a system. Results suggest that open-endedness allowed users
flexibility and freedom in defining what counts as health, and that the social
aspects compounded both the positive and the occasionally negative impacts of
this openness. The paper concludes with implications for the design and
evaluation of research on mobile health technology, as well as suggestions for
how future work can further explore the design space of mobile health beyond
prescriptive persuasion.
[13]
Going to college and staying connected: communication between college
freshmen and their parents
Privacy and the home
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Smith, Madeline E.
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Nguyen, Duyen T.
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Lai, Charles
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Leshed, Gilly
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
Proceedings of ACM CSCW'12 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
2012-02-11
v.1
p.789-798
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: For many first-year college students in their late teen years, communicating
with parents provides crucial social support. When going to college involves
moving away from home for the first time, students and their parents must rely
on technologies to keep communication channels open. We studied the ways in
which college freshmen communicate with their parents and the various
communication technologies they use. Interviews with nineteen first-year
students at a major United States university revealed insights into students'
perspectives of their communication and relationships with parents. We found
students to use a variety of tools to connect with their parents and identified
some considerations they make when choosing tools. Furthermore, the use of
these communication tools played a significant role in mediating students'
social and emotional closeness with, and independence from, their parents. We
conclude by discussing technical and social implications for social support of
students and student-parent relationships.
[14]
Normative communication processes and associated emotion in mobile health
groups
Interactive poster
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Deline, Mary Beth
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Gay, Geri
Companion Proceedings of ACM CSCW'12 Conference on Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work
2012-02-11
v.2
p.75-78
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: This project uses content analysis to investigate normative communication
processes and associated emotion in two case studies. Individuals were formed
into groups and used a mobile health application, VERA, to perform 'health
behaviors' (such as indicating what they were eating or their exercise
behaviors) for other group members via mobile posts. Initial results indicate
that these performances tended to be more normatively descriptive than
judgmental. In addition, in both cases comparisons between judgmental and
descriptive performances showed more negative emotion with judgmental
performances. Further analysis will involve determining normative performance
patterns over time in the groups, as well as whether the performer's self
report of emotion was similar to or different from the performed normative
emotion. These findings will better our understanding of how norms are
developed and used in group contexts, which could lead to more effective
normative health interventions.
[15]
Comparing activity theory with distributed cognition for video analysis:
beyond "kicking the tires"
Research methods
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Tomlinson, Bill
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2011-05-07
v.1
p.133-142
© Copyright 2011 ACM
Summary: The field of HCI is growing, not only in the variety of application areas or
the volume of research conducted, but also in the number of analytical
approaches for use in the evaluation and design of interactive systems.
However, despite the abundance of theoretical frameworks available, relatively
little work has directly compared the application of these frameworks. This
paper compares video analysis methods based on two analytic frameworks --
activity theory (AT) and distributed cognition (DCog) -- by performing an
analysis of the same system from each of the two different theoretical
perspectives. The results presented here provide a better understanding of how
such theoretically informed methods in practice both resemble and differ from
one another. Furthermore, this comparison enables specific insights about each
of the theories themselves, as well as more general discussion about the role
of theory in HCI.
[16]
MoBoogie: creative expression through whole body musical interaction
Art, music & movement
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Halpern, Megan K.
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Tholander, Jakob
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Evjen, Max
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Davis, Stuart
/
Ehrlich, Andrew
/
Schustak, Kyle
/
Baumer, Eric P. S.
/
Gay, Geri
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2011-05-07
v.1
p.557-560
© Copyright 2011 ACM
Summary: In this paper we describe MoBoogie, an application that allows users to
manipulate and arrange music through movement. MoBoogie is designed to foster
experiences in creative expression for children and potentially adults. The
application responds to users' movements by changing variables in a continuous
stream of music loops. Results from this study suggest that the creative
expressions arose in the joint space of movement and music, and did not
primarily have to be in one form or the other. This allowed users with limited
experience in dance and music making to be creative in such forms of
expression.
[17]
When the implication is not to design (technology)
Design Methods
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
/
Silberman, M. Six
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2011-05-07
v.1
p.2271-2274
© Copyright 2011 ACM
Summary: As HCI is applied in increasingly diverse contexts, it is important to
consider situations in which computational or information technologies may be
less appropriate. This paper presents a series of questions that can help
researchers, designers, and practitioners articulate a technology's
appropriateness or inappropriateness. Use of these questions is demonstrated
via examples from the literature. The paper concludes with specific arguments
for improving the conduct of HCI. This paper provides a means for understanding
and articulating the limits of HCI technologies, an important but heretofore
under-explored contribution to the field.
[18]
Bloggers and Readers Blogging Together: Collaborative Co-creation of
Political Blogs
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Sueyoshi, Mark
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Tomlinson, Bill
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
2011-04
v.20
n.1
p.1-36
Keywords: blog readers; blogging; blogs; online activism; political blogs; social
media
Copyright © 2011 Springer-Verlag
Summary: A significant amount of research has focused on blogs, bloggers, and
blogging. However, relatively little work has examined blog readers, their
interactions with bloggers, or their impact on blogging. This paper presents a
qualitative study focusing specifically on readers of political blogs to
develop a better understanding of readers' interactions with blogs and
bloggers. This is the first such study to examine the same blogging activity
from both readers' and bloggers' perspectives. Readers' significance and
contributions to blogs are examined through a number of themes, including:
community membership and participation; the relationship between political
ideology, reading habits, and political participation; and differences and
similarities between mainstream media (MSM) and blogs. Based on these analyses,
this paper argues that blogging is not only a social activity, but is a
collaborative process of co-creation in which both bloggers and readers engage.
Implications of this finding contribute to the study and understanding of
reader participation, to the design of technologies for bloggers and blog
readers, and to the development of theoretical understandings of social media.
[19]
America is like Metamucil: fostering critical and creative thinking about
metaphor in political blogs
Expressing and understanding opinions in social media
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
/
Sinclair, Jordan
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Tomlinson, Bill
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2010-04-10
v.1
p.1437-1446
Keywords: blog readers, computational metaphor identification, creativity, critical
thinking, metaphor, political blogs
© Copyright 2010 ACM
Summary: Blogs are becoming an increasingly important medium -- socially,
academically, and politically. Much research has involved analyzing blogs, but
less work has considered how such analytic techniques might be incorporated
into tools for blog readers. A new tool, metaViz, analyzes political blogs for
potential conceptual metaphors and presents them to blog readers. This paper
presents a study exploring the types of critical and creative thinking fostered
by metaViz as evidenced by user comments and discussion on the system. These
results indicate the effectiveness of various system features at fostering
critical thinking and creativity, specifically in terms of deep, structural
reasoning about metaphors and creatively extending existing metaphors.
Furthermore, the results carry broader implications beyond blogs and politics
about exploring alternate configurations between computation and human thought.
[20]
Synergizing in Cyberinfrastructure Development
Special Issue: Sociotechnical Studies of Cyberinfrastructure and e-Research:
Supporting Collaborative Research
/
Bietz, Matthew J.
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
/
Lee, Charlotte P.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
2010
v.19
n.3/4
p.245-281
Keywords: Cyberinfrastructure; Synergizing; Leveraging; Aligning; Infrastructure;
Metagenomics
© Copyright 2010 Springer
Summary: This paper investigates the work of creating infrastructure, using as a case
study the development of cyberinfrastructure for metagenomics research.
Specifically, the analysis focuses on the role of embeddedness in
infrastructure development. We expand on the notion of human infrastructure to
develop the concepts of synergizing, leveraging, and aligning, which denote the
active processes of creating and managing relationships among people,
organizations, and technologies in the creation of cyberinfrastructure. This
conceptual lens highlights how embeddedness is not only an important result of
infrastructure development, but is also a precursor that can act as both a
constraint and a resource for development activities.
[21]
Fostering metaphorical creativity using computational metaphor
identification
Theory, metrics, methods & tools II
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Baumer, Eric P. S.
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Tomlinson, Bill
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Richland, Lindsey E.
/
Hansen, Janice
Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Creativity and Cognition
2009-10-26
p.315-324
Keywords: computational metaphor identification, creativity, metaphor, science
education
© Copyright 2009 ACM
Summary: Metaphor is often seen as a mode of creative thinking or as a means of
fostering creativity. However, little work has studied creative generation of
novel metaphors. This paper explores the use of computational metaphor
identification (CMI) to foster creative generation of novel metaphors. CMI is a
technique for analyzing textual corpora to identify potential conceptual
metaphors. Drawing those metaphors to readers' attention can provide an
opportunity to consider alternatives to current metaphors. This paper describes
results from a study using CMI to foster metaphorical creativity in the context
of science education. The results show that CMI leads to more creative mappings
within metaphors. The key contributions of this paper are a demonstration that
CMI can be used to foster more original metaphorical reasoning, and, more
generally, implications for the study of metaphorical creativity.
[22]
Exploring the role of the reader in the activity of blogging
Shared Authoring
/
Baumer, Eric
/
Sueyoshi, Mark
/
Tomlinson, Bill
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2008-04-05
v.1
p.1111-1120
© Copyright 2008 ACM
Summary: Within the last decade, blogs have become an important element of popular
culture, mass media, and the daily lives of countless Internet users. Despite
the medium's interactive nature, most research on blogs focuses on either the
blog itself or the blogger, rarely if at all focusing on the reader's impact.
In order to gain a better understanding of the social practice of blogging, we
must take into account the role, contributions, and significance of the reader.
This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of blog readers,
including common blog reading practices, some of the dimensions along which
reading practices vary, relationships between identity presentation and
perception, the interpretation of temporality, and the ways in which readers
feel that they are a part of the blogs they read. It also describes
similarities to, and discrepancies with, previous work, and suggests a number
of directions and implications for future work on blogging.
[23]
Dreaming of adaptive interface agents
Interactivity
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Tomlinson, Bill
/
Baumer, Eric
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Yau, Man Lok
/
Alpine, Paul Mac
/
Canales, Lorenzo
/
Correa, Andrew
/
Hornick, Bryant
/
Sharma, Anju
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2007-04-28
v.2
p.2007-2012
© Copyright 2007 ACM
Summary: This interactive project uses the metaphor of human sleep and dreaming to
present a novel paradigm that helps address problems in adaptive user interface
design. Two significant problems in adaptive interfaces are: interfaces that
adapt when a user does not want them to do so, and interfaces where it is hard
to understand how it changed during the process of adaptation. In the project
described here, the system only adapts when the user allows it to go to sleep
long enough to have a dream. In addition, the dream itself is a visualization
of the transformation of the interface, so that a person may see what changes
have occurred. This project presents an interim stage of this system, in which
an autonomous agent collects knowledge about its environment, falls asleep, has
dreams, and reconfigures its internal representation of the world while it
dreams. People may alter the agent's environment, may prevent it from sleeping
by making noise into a microphone, and may observe the dream process that
ensues when it is allowed to fall asleep. By drawing on the universal human
experience of sleep and dreaming, this project seeks to make adaptive
interfaces more effective and comprehensible.
[24]
Using social agents to visualize software scenarios
Session 5
/
Alspaugh, Thomas A.
/
Tomlinson, Bill
/
Baumer, Eric
Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Software Visualization
2006-09-04
p.87-94
Keywords: ScenarioML, interactive animation, scenario analysis, social autonomous
characters
© Copyright 2006 ACM
Summary: Enabling nonexperts to understand a software system and the scenarios of
usage of that system can be challenging. Visually modeling a collection of
scenarios as social interactions can provide quicker and more intuitive
understanding of the system described by those scenarios. This project combines
a scenario language with formal structure and automated tool support
(ScenarioML) and an interactive graphical game engine featuring social
autonomous characters and text-to-speech capabilities. We map scenarios to
social interactions by assigning a character to each actor and entity in the
scenarios, and animate the interactions among these as social interactions
among the corresponding characters. The social interactions can help bring out
these important aspects: interactions of multiple agents, pattern and timing of
interactions, non-local inconsistencies within and among scenarios, and gaps
and missing information in the scenario collection. An exploratory study of
this modeling's effectiveness is presented.
[25]
The EcoRaft project: a multi-device interactive graphical exhibit for
learning about restoration ecology
Work-in-progress
/
Tomlinson, Bill
/
Yau, Man Lok
/
Baumer, Eric
/
Goetz, Sara
/
Carpenter, Lynn
/
Pratt, Riley
/
Young, Kristin
/
May-Tobin, Calen
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2006-04-22
v.2
p.1445-1450
© Copyright 2006 ACM
Summary: The EcoRaft Project, an interactive installation designed to help children
learn about restoration ecology, allows participants to engage physically with
animated agents via a natural and intuitive interface. This physical engagement
occurs when the agents transfer seamlessly from stationary computers to mobile
devices, on which the agents are realized as quasi-physical manifestations.
Utilizing tablet PCs to act simultaneously as objects in the physical world and
as mobile virtual spaces, the system incorporates embodied mobile agents that
increase levels of engagement. The project has been publicly shown at several
venues, where over 2000 participants interacted with the system. This paper
presents initial evaluation results based on interviews with participants
indicating that the embodied, physical interaction in this installation leads
to participant engagement and collaboration, and enhanced educational
effectiveness.