MRL at CHI 2016

This paper explores the design space of bio-responsive entertainment, in this case using a film that responds to the brain and blink data of users. A film was created with four parallel channels of footage, where blinking and levels of attention and meditation, as recorded by a commercially available EEG device, affected which footage participants saw. As a performance-led piece of research in the wild, this experience, named #Scanners, was presented at a week long national exhibition in the UK. We examined the experiences of 35 viewers, and found that these forms of partially-involuntary control created engaging and enjoyable, but sometimes distracting, experiences. We translate our findings into a two-dimensional design space between the extent of voluntary control that a physiological measure can provide against the level of conscious awareness that the user has of that control. This highlights that novel design opportunities exist when deviating from these two-dimensions - when giving up conscious control and when abstracting the affect of control. Reflection on of how viewers negotiated this space during an experience reveals novel design tactics.

We explore how physical artefacts can be connected to digital records of where they have been, who they have encountered and what has happened to them, and how this can enhance their meaning and utility. We describe how a travelling technology probe in the form of an augmented acoustic guitar engaged users in a design conversation as it visited homes, studios, gigs, workshops and lessons, and how this revealed the diversity and utility of its digital record. We describe how this record was captured and flexibly mapped to the physical guitar and proxy artefacts. We contribute a conceptual framework for accountable artefacts that articulates how multiple and complex mappings between physical artefacts and their digital records may be created, appropriated, shared and interrogated to deliver accounts of provenance and use as well as methodological reflections on technology probes.

Non-digital forms of play that allow players to direct brute force directly upon each other, such as martial arts, boxing and full contact team sports,are very popular. However, inter-player brutality has largely been unexplored as a feature of digital gaming. In this paper, we describe the design and study of 2 multi-player games that encourage players to use brute force directly against other players. Balance of Poweris a tug-of-war style game implemented with Xbox Kinect, while Bundleis a playground-inspired chasing game implemented with smartphones. Two groups of five participants(n=10) played both games while being filmed, and were subsequently interviewed. A thematic analysis identified five keycomponents ofthe brutalmultiplayer video gameexperience, which informsa set of sevendesign considerations.This work aims to inspire the design of engaging game experiences based on awareness and enjoyment of our own and others’ physicality.

The widespread deployment of technology by professional health services will provide a substantial opportunity for studies that consider usage in naturalistic settings. Our study has documented experiences of engaging with technologies intended to support recovery from common mental health problems, often used as a part of a multi-year recovery process. In analyzing this material, we identify issues of broad interest to effective health technology design, and reflect on the challenge of studying engagement with health technologies over lengthy time periods. We also consider the importance of designing technologies that are sensitive to the needs of users experiencing chronic health problems, and discuss how the term sensitivity might be defined in a technology design context.

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.

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' workdays 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.

Amongst the many tasks in our lives, we encounter web forms on a regular basis, whether they are mundane like registering for a website, or complex and important like tax returns. There are many aspects of Usability, but one concern for user interfaces is to reduce mental workload and error rates. Whilst most assessment of mental workload is subjective and retrospective reporting by users, we examine the potential of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a tool for objectively and concurrently measuring mental workload during usability testing. We use this technology to evaluate the design of three different form layouts for a car insurance claim process, and show that a form divided into subforms increases mental workload, contrary to our expectations. We conclude that fNIRS is highly suitable for objectively examining mental workload during usability testing, and will therefore be able to provide more detailed insight than summative retrospective assessments. Further, for the fNIRS community, we show that the technology can easily move beyond typical psychology tasks, and be used for more natural study tasks.

This paper explores the design space of bio-responsive entertainment, in this case using a film that responds to the brain and blink data of users. A film was created with four parallel channels of footage, where blinking and levels of attention and meditation, as recorded by a commercially available EEG device, affected which footage participants saw. As a performance-led piece of research in the wild, this experience, named #Scanners, was presented at a week long national exhibition in the UK. We examined the experiences of 35 viewers, and found that these forms of partially-involuntary control created engaging and enjoyable, but sometimes distracting, experiences. We translate our findings into a two-dimensional design space between the extent of voluntary control that a physiological measure can provide against the level of conscious awareness that the user has of that control. This highlights that novel design opportunities exist when deviating from these two-dimensions - when giving up conscious control and when abstracting the affect of control. Reflection on of how viewers negotiated this space during an experience reveals novel design tactics.

Carolan is an acoustic guitar that has been decorated with interactive patterns that can be scanned using a mobile camera so as to connect to a digital record of how the instrument was made, where it has been and who has played it. Carolan was created as a travelling technology probe to explore the concept of accountable artefects, everyday objects that connect to and draw on rich digital records in order to tell meaningful stories of provenance and use. This demonstration will enable participants to encounter Carolan, scan its inlaid patterns, explore its extensive digital record and to play it and contribute to its record if they wish.

For logistical reasons, iMorphia cannot be displayed at CHI, although will still feature in the catalogue. 

iMorphia combines body tracking, games engine technology and projection to create the illusion of an embodied virtual character within a virtual set. The performer wears a white costume onto which a virtual character is projected creating the illusion of a three dimensional figure, which through body tracking, closely follows the movements of the performer. Video glasses connected to a video camera enable the performer to see their transformed self from the same perspective as the audience. This shift in perspective, 'the embodied performative turn', represents a novel performative form of interaction directed at an audience whilst challenging inherent conventions of screen based interaction.

Jocelyn Spence, a visiting researcher in the lab, will be launching her new book at the conference.

This book presents a novel framework for understanding and designing performative experiences with digital technologies. It introduces readers to performance theory and practice in the context of HCI and gives a practical and holistic approach for understanding complex interactions with digital technologies at the far end of third-wave HCI.

The author presents a step-by-step explanation of the Performative Experience Design methodology, along with a detailed case study of the design process as it was applied to co-located digital photo sharing. Finally, the text offers guidelines for design and a vision of how PED can contribute to an ethical, critical, exploratory, and humane understanding of the ways that we engage meaningfully with digital technology.

Researchers, students and practitioners working in this important and evolving field will find this state-of-the-art book a valuable addition to their reading. 

nfair reputation systems, slow payments, lack of transparency, and socio-spatial inequalities are some of the many reasons for conflicts in crowdsourcing. The divisive logic of the system and the sharing processes in the peer-community creates interesting dynamics and new focus on old conflicts.

In this workshop we explore the reasons, processes, power relations, and dynamics of conflicts within crowdsourcing. We invite participants from a diversity of disciplines and perspectives to contribute with insights from different types of crowd-work, and thereby deepen our understanding of the relations in contexts such as crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, peer-production and citizen science. Furthermore, we examine strategies for accommodating differences in crowdsourcing environments.

This one-day workshop, to be held on May 8, 2016, seeks to advance the discussion around making and fabrication in HCI, ranging from notions of hobbyist making, industrial production, and fabrication in research. The workshop aims to elaborate on the mutual implications between changing fabrication cultures and HCI research and practice. We particularly aim to discuss critical alternatives that move us beyond the binary between hobbyist and industrial fabrication, focusing on the intersections, transitions, and fusions of diverse perspectives.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together different perspectives to discuss their inherent fabrication cultures, motivations, challenges, and, especially, intersections. Finally, we envision contouring a landscape of fabrication, aiming to critically examine implications for HCI research: What research agendas are related to fabrication? Which challenges do we face when researching fabrication? What economic / democratic visions do we need to take into account? Where are the blind spots in the landscape of fabrication research? How does fabrication practice relate to research? What happens if we fabricate in research?

Recent research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices. However, existing practices fail to fully account for the culturally-dependent spatial relationships between co-present others and their digital devices (i.e. the proxemic relationships). Building on the ideas of proxemics, this workshop is motivated by the concept of ‘proxemic mobile collocated interactions’ by harnessing new or existing technologies to create engaging and interactionally relevant experiences. Such approaches would allow devices to not only react to presence and interaction, but also other indicators, such as the interpersonal distance people naturally use. The aim of this one-day workshop is to bring together a community of researchers, designers and practitioners who are interested in exploring proxemics and mobile collocated interactions.