Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resour... more In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resourced women of colour who are novices to making, predominantly migrants and refugee women. We report on a 21 month long ethnographic fieldwork at nine makerspaces across two metropolitan Australian cities. The findings present barriers and opportunities around access of under-resourced women of colour into makerspaces. We present these findings through four themes: first impressions and visual representations; dimensions of the enabling environment; role of community partnerships; and intersectional identities of women. We conclude by discussing three contributions this paper makes to the HCI and CSCW literature, with supporting lessons and recommendations so that makerspaces no longer encode the involvement of only certain types of users (predominantly well-educated white males or white females), to the exclusion of women at the intersectional margins. If makerspaces can facilitate an ena...
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
While varying degrees of participatory methods are often explored by the HCI community to enable ... more While varying degrees of participatory methods are often explored by the HCI community to enable design with different user groups, this paper seeks to add weight to the burgeoning demand for community-led design when engaging with diverse groups at the intersections of marginalisation. This paper presents a 24-month-long qualitative study, where the authors observed a community-based organisation that empowers refugee and migrant women in Australia through making. We report how the organisation led its own process to pivot from face-to-face to online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing the design and delivery of an app and the intersectional challenges faced by the women as they learnt to navigate online making. This paper expands feminist intersectional praxis in HCI to new contexts and critiques the positionality of researchers in this work. It contributes to the literature on design justice, providing an exemplar of how community-led design more effectively dismantl...
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Men's sheds are community makerspaces where retired men can socialize and cooperatively organ... more Men's sheds are community makerspaces where retired men can socialize and cooperatively organize craftwork type activities (predominantly - woodworking). The HCI and CSCW literature has increasingly shown the importance of positive health outcomes associated with makerspace-type environments. This paper aims to study how men's shed members engage in making practices and what health benefits such a hyper-masculine maker culture brings to retired older men. Informed by the occupational wellbeing framework, we report on eight-month-long ethnographic fieldwork at an Australian men's shed. Our findings show that factors such as post-retirement support, materiality afforded by the space and social factors associated with the men's shed create a positive sense of experience among retired men. We situate our findings into the CSCW literature on making and maker cultures; and provide a nuanced view on how such a maker culture can be seen a site for positive health outcomes.
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
The conventional 'participant-as-informant' model of user research has recently been chal... more The conventional 'participant-as-informant' model of user research has recently been challenged by approaches that advocate for participants to have a greater authorial control over narratives that portray their lived experiences. This is particularly important for addressing relationships of power and representation. Informed by narrative approaches in social work, we report on a study exploring the use of self-authored videos captured by 16 participants from under-resourced communities. Participants portrayed their mundane life experiences in a form of a video biography. Co-analysis of resulting videos showed that video biographies were used for: authentic representation of daily routines and life stories; portrayal of DIY identities; and promoting living well. Findings show how the self-authored biographies afforded participants a vehicle for challenging cultural stereotypes often associated with the research population. We further demonstrate the value of video-based app...
Contrary to stereotypes, the capacity for creativity and innovation does not diminish post-retire... more Contrary to stereotypes, the capacity for creativity and innovation does not diminish post-retirement. The domain of older adult-led maker-based communities offers HCI researchers the opportunity to explore not only how older adults innovatively and collaboratively create in later life, but also how we might design with these communities rather than for them. We report findings from a design workshop study spanning over two weeks involving 13 members of an urban Australian men's shed. Our findings show that making in the men's shed was influenced by (1) socio-materiality, (2) interpersonal dynamics and (3) shared expertise. We provide HCI researchers with an understanding of how older adults worked collaboratively within their own creative community as found through the deployment of a novel card-based probe, a workshop and followup investigations. We further unpack recommendations for organising design workshops with older adult maker communities that work towards meaningful community-oriented participation and greater agency in co-design studies.
This position paper presents our experiences of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) projects with ec... more This position paper presents our experiences of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) projects with economically-marginalised participants to demonstrate the role design research and artefacts can play in fostering digital skills for low-income people and their communities. We present two case studies with low-income participants of different demographics: one with women in crisis situations at a community care centre, and another with volunteers at e-waste recycling workshop. We illuminate the ways in which design activities such as self-reported experiences through video documentaries, and repurposing second-hand digital products, can facilitate digital and community participation for low-income people both in their homes, and in the broader community. In our discussion we reflect on the intersections of the two case studies: developing digital skills and enabling community participation through these digital skills, as well as the opportunities this has provided for participant engage...
In this paper we discuss some preliminary results of an ethnographic study focused on the ways mo... more In this paper we discuss some preliminary results of an ethnographic study focused on the ways money and financial issues are collaboratively handled within families. Families develop ‘systems’ or methods through which they organize and manage their everyday financial activities. These systems not only organize everyday family finances, but represent and shape family relationships. Through analysis of our ethnographic field study data, we develop four types of financial systems that we observed in the field: banking arrangements, physical hubs, goal-oriented systems and spatio-temporal organization. In this paper, we discuss examples of these systems and their implications for designing tools to support household financial practices.
Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, 2020
This paper presents findings from a set of 'magic machines' workshops with newly arrived Iraqi re... more This paper presents findings from a set of 'magic machines' workshops with newly arrived Iraqi refugees in Australia. The aim was to allow a broad range of response in designing innovative and creative technologies that can help refugees deal with specific challenges. To bring the 'future' into the present and to understand their needs and experiences, we asked 12 participants to create low-fi objects from different materials and to enact them in different scenarios. The magic machines workshops helped access refugees' voices and provided future contexts for them to deal with their challenges. The data analysis of the two workshops revealed three broad themes: information provision barriers, security and ethical challenges, and mistrust and cultural aspects. Our findings show that adopting a speculative design approach has encouraged refugees to have a strong voice-creatively articulated in the form of a set of magic machines. The study offers insights into refugees' perceptions of the future and current technology. It also informs policymakers of the issues around current policy hurdles newcomer refugees face in their settlement in the host community.
In this paper, we focus on creative practices associated with smartphone images for supporting sc... more In this paper, we focus on creative practices associated with smartphone images for supporting scientific work. We employed observations and semi-structured interviews with 12 research staff members from a biomedical engineering institute over a period of three months and explored the role smartphone images play in supporting their scientific activities. We studied different ways smartphone images are incorporated into researchers' everyday work. Our findings highlight practices and motivations associated with the use of smartphone images. Based on our findings, we provide implications for designing innovative smartphone apps and particularly emphasize the role smartphones can play in developing and maintaining hybrid lab-books. 1 Introduction Studies of science and technology [12, 28] have pointed to the fact that while final outcomes of any scientific work, be it scientific articles, functional technologies or newspaper reports, inform about scientific facts and truths, a large number of procedural insights and local contingency are often filtered out. In particular, how scientists come about making sense of their data, images, or other type of information and what cognitive processes manifest themselves is rarely reported. The conduct of scientific research involves a varied set of cognitive processes and skills. Some of these are internal processes of the sort that have been the focus of the traditional cognitive science for decades, such as, categorization, reasoning, problem solving, and analogy formation. Others are processes that take place when information is propagated across different representational media, such as documents, papers and other types of external representations (e.g. [10, 11, 26, 27, 30]). Researchers have recognized that cognition is a socially and culturally embedded phenomenon that is situated and distributed between people concerned [8, 10, 11, 17, 21, 26, 27]. Cognition is as much rooted in mental processes as it is in the external world of objects, artifacts and social practices. In particular, the importance of external representations in reasoning and knowledge construction has been noted by many researchers seeking to understand the nature of the science [11, 14, 16, 20].
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2017
People experiencing financial hardship often possess resilient and resourceful behaviors when han... more People experiencing financial hardship often possess resilient and resourceful behaviors when handling their day-to-day activities. Understanding how these individuals manifest resilience during adversity could provide insights into how technologies can support their existing efforts. In a partnership with an Australian community care center, we identified resilient practices of people with low socioeconomic status. Following a strength-based approach, we collected data via home visits and semi-structured interviews involving 14 participants, and observed activities at the care center over 8 months. Our participants exhibited three key facets of resilience: (1) resilience as an integral part of their everyday lives, (2) a spirited phenomenon, and (3) a social and care-focused process. We contribute empirical insights into our participants' situated resilience and articulate ways through which design can support their existing social and collaborative practices. We compare and co...
International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2016
This paper contends that problems such as poverty and economic disadvantage are equally social in... more This paper contends that problems such as poverty and economic disadvantage are equally social in their nature as they are economic. As such, a social frame of reference is helpful in design. Using a qualitative approach, we study the ways 13 Australian households living on a low income manage, organise and interact in their everyday financial activities and what this means for designers of technology that might assist them with this. We highlight the highly social nature of many practices concerned with managing and saving money. We provide implications for how these practices may be supported through fostering social connections and how informal and sharing economies may be leveraged to provide value to those experiencing financial hardship. An argument is made that classifying an otherwise heterogeneous population based on income alone is reductive. In response we propose a rationale for amending the "low income" demographic classifier, incorporating a broader measure we tentatively term Social-financial Connectedness which captures the importance of social connections in overall financial wellbeing and identifies people's capacity to live well and share, irrespective of their financial circumstances.
Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern yo... more Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 2016
In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and fin... more In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and financial issues are handled within family settings. Families develop 'systems' or methods through which they coordinate and manage their everyday financial activities. Through an analysis of our fieldwork data collected from fifteen families, we provide several examples of such systems, highlighting their qualities and illustrating how such systems come to support the handling of financial activities in the home. Our results show that these systems are developed with a careful consideration of familial values, relationships and routines; and incorporate the use of physical and digital tools. Consequently, we suggest that design should consider the use and non-use of technology when supporting household financial management, taking into account the richness of families' existing organically formed practices surrounding financial systems. Finally, our findings point to the fact that financial management in the domestic setting is socially organized and is closely connected to supporting everyday household activities.
Proceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: the Future of Design, 2014
A new era of visible and sharable electricity information is emerging. Where eco-feedback is inst... more A new era of visible and sharable electricity information is emerging. Where eco-feedback is installed, households can now visualise many aspects of their energy consumption and share this information with others through Internet platforms such as social media. Despite providing users with many affordances, eco-feedback information can make public previously private actions from within the intimate setting of the family home. This paper represents a study focussing specifically on the privacy aspects of nascent ways for viewing and sharing this new stream of personal information. It explores the nuances of privacy related to eco-feedback both within and beyond the family home. While electricity consumption information may not be considered private itself, the household practices which eco-feedback systems makes visible may be private. We show that breaches of privacy can occur in unexpected ways and have the potential to cause distress. The paper concludes with some suggestions for how to realise the benefits of sharing energy consumption information whist effectively maintaining individuals' conceptions of adequate privacy.
Designing systems for multiple stakeholders requires frequent collaboration with multiple stakeho... more Designing systems for multiple stakeholders requires frequent collaboration with multiple stakeholders from the start. In many cases at least some stakeholders lack a professional habit of formal modeling. We report observations from student design teams as well as two case studies, respectively of a prototype for supporting creative communication to design objects, and of stakeholder-involvement in early design. In all observations and case studies we found that non-formal techniques supported strong collaboration resulting in deep understanding of early design ideas, of their value and of the feasibility of solutions.
Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in two industrial design departments and two design ... more Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in two industrial design departments and two design companies, we explore the role of spatial arrangements for supporting creative design practices within different design studios. From our results, we show that designers explicitly make use of the physical space for 1) communicating and inspiring design ideas, 2) exploring design solutions and 3) managing design projects. We believe that these design practices could bring insightful implications for developing ubiquitous technologies to support the design profession.
CHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2012
New parents cherish photos of their children. In their homes one can observe a varied set of arra... more New parents cherish photos of their children. In their homes one can observe a varied set of arrangements of their young ones' photos. We studied eight families with young children to learn about their practices related to photos. We provide preliminary results from the field study and elaborate on three interesting themes that came out very strongly from our data: physical platforms; family dynamics and values; and creative uses of photos. These themes provide an insight into families' perceived values for photo curating, displaying and experiencing them over a longer period. We provide future directions for supporting practices surrounding children's photos.
Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing, 2010
Figure 1: (a) CAM running on an iPhone; (b) Reading a design sketch using Microsoft's TagReader c... more Figure 1: (a) CAM running on an iPhone; (b) Reading a design sketch using Microsoft's TagReader client. In this paper, we report the results of a field trial of a Ubicomp system called CAM that is aimed at supporting and enhancing collaboration in a design studio environment. CAM uses a mobile-tagging application which allows designers to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design objects in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. The purpose of our field trial was to explore the role of augmented objects in supporting and enhancing creative work. Our results show that CAM was used not only to support participants' mutual awareness and coordination but also to facilitate designers in appropriating their augmented design objects to be explorative, extendable and playful, supporting creative aspects of design work. In general, our results show how CAM transformed static design objects into 'remarkable' objects that made the creative and playful side of cooperative design visible.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, 2011
In this paper, we present a field trial of a pervasive system called Panorama that is aimed at su... more In this paper, we present a field trial of a pervasive system called Panorama that is aimed at supporting social awareness in work environments. Panorama is an intelligent situated display in the staff room of an academic department. It artistically represents non-critical user generated content such as images from holidays, conferences and other social gatherings, as well as textual messages on its display. It also captures images and videos from different public spaces of the department and streams them onto the Panorama screen, using appropriate abstraction techniques. We studied the use of Panorama for two weeks and observed how Panorama affected staff members' social awareness and community building. We report that Panorama simulated curiosity and learning, initiated new interactions and provided a mechanism for cherishing old memories.
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resour... more In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resourced women of colour who are novices to making, predominantly migrants and refugee women. We report on a 21 month long ethnographic fieldwork at nine makerspaces across two metropolitan Australian cities. The findings present barriers and opportunities around access of under-resourced women of colour into makerspaces. We present these findings through four themes: first impressions and visual representations; dimensions of the enabling environment; role of community partnerships; and intersectional identities of women. We conclude by discussing three contributions this paper makes to the HCI and CSCW literature, with supporting lessons and recommendations so that makerspaces no longer encode the involvement of only certain types of users (predominantly well-educated white males or white females), to the exclusion of women at the intersectional margins. If makerspaces can facilitate an ena...
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
While varying degrees of participatory methods are often explored by the HCI community to enable ... more While varying degrees of participatory methods are often explored by the HCI community to enable design with different user groups, this paper seeks to add weight to the burgeoning demand for community-led design when engaging with diverse groups at the intersections of marginalisation. This paper presents a 24-month-long qualitative study, where the authors observed a community-based organisation that empowers refugee and migrant women in Australia through making. We report how the organisation led its own process to pivot from face-to-face to online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing the design and delivery of an app and the intersectional challenges faced by the women as they learnt to navigate online making. This paper expands feminist intersectional praxis in HCI to new contexts and critiques the positionality of researchers in this work. It contributes to the literature on design justice, providing an exemplar of how community-led design more effectively dismantl...
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Men's sheds are community makerspaces where retired men can socialize and cooperatively organ... more Men's sheds are community makerspaces where retired men can socialize and cooperatively organize craftwork type activities (predominantly - woodworking). The HCI and CSCW literature has increasingly shown the importance of positive health outcomes associated with makerspace-type environments. This paper aims to study how men's shed members engage in making practices and what health benefits such a hyper-masculine maker culture brings to retired older men. Informed by the occupational wellbeing framework, we report on eight-month-long ethnographic fieldwork at an Australian men's shed. Our findings show that factors such as post-retirement support, materiality afforded by the space and social factors associated with the men's shed create a positive sense of experience among retired men. We situate our findings into the CSCW literature on making and maker cultures; and provide a nuanced view on how such a maker culture can be seen a site for positive health outcomes.
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
The conventional 'participant-as-informant' model of user research has recently been chal... more The conventional 'participant-as-informant' model of user research has recently been challenged by approaches that advocate for participants to have a greater authorial control over narratives that portray their lived experiences. This is particularly important for addressing relationships of power and representation. Informed by narrative approaches in social work, we report on a study exploring the use of self-authored videos captured by 16 participants from under-resourced communities. Participants portrayed their mundane life experiences in a form of a video biography. Co-analysis of resulting videos showed that video biographies were used for: authentic representation of daily routines and life stories; portrayal of DIY identities; and promoting living well. Findings show how the self-authored biographies afforded participants a vehicle for challenging cultural stereotypes often associated with the research population. We further demonstrate the value of video-based app...
Contrary to stereotypes, the capacity for creativity and innovation does not diminish post-retire... more Contrary to stereotypes, the capacity for creativity and innovation does not diminish post-retirement. The domain of older adult-led maker-based communities offers HCI researchers the opportunity to explore not only how older adults innovatively and collaboratively create in later life, but also how we might design with these communities rather than for them. We report findings from a design workshop study spanning over two weeks involving 13 members of an urban Australian men's shed. Our findings show that making in the men's shed was influenced by (1) socio-materiality, (2) interpersonal dynamics and (3) shared expertise. We provide HCI researchers with an understanding of how older adults worked collaboratively within their own creative community as found through the deployment of a novel card-based probe, a workshop and followup investigations. We further unpack recommendations for organising design workshops with older adult maker communities that work towards meaningful community-oriented participation and greater agency in co-design studies.
This position paper presents our experiences of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) projects with ec... more This position paper presents our experiences of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) projects with economically-marginalised participants to demonstrate the role design research and artefacts can play in fostering digital skills for low-income people and their communities. We present two case studies with low-income participants of different demographics: one with women in crisis situations at a community care centre, and another with volunteers at e-waste recycling workshop. We illuminate the ways in which design activities such as self-reported experiences through video documentaries, and repurposing second-hand digital products, can facilitate digital and community participation for low-income people both in their homes, and in the broader community. In our discussion we reflect on the intersections of the two case studies: developing digital skills and enabling community participation through these digital skills, as well as the opportunities this has provided for participant engage...
In this paper we discuss some preliminary results of an ethnographic study focused on the ways mo... more In this paper we discuss some preliminary results of an ethnographic study focused on the ways money and financial issues are collaboratively handled within families. Families develop ‘systems’ or methods through which they organize and manage their everyday financial activities. These systems not only organize everyday family finances, but represent and shape family relationships. Through analysis of our ethnographic field study data, we develop four types of financial systems that we observed in the field: banking arrangements, physical hubs, goal-oriented systems and spatio-temporal organization. In this paper, we discuss examples of these systems and their implications for designing tools to support household financial practices.
Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, 2020
This paper presents findings from a set of 'magic machines' workshops with newly arrived Iraqi re... more This paper presents findings from a set of 'magic machines' workshops with newly arrived Iraqi refugees in Australia. The aim was to allow a broad range of response in designing innovative and creative technologies that can help refugees deal with specific challenges. To bring the 'future' into the present and to understand their needs and experiences, we asked 12 participants to create low-fi objects from different materials and to enact them in different scenarios. The magic machines workshops helped access refugees' voices and provided future contexts for them to deal with their challenges. The data analysis of the two workshops revealed three broad themes: information provision barriers, security and ethical challenges, and mistrust and cultural aspects. Our findings show that adopting a speculative design approach has encouraged refugees to have a strong voice-creatively articulated in the form of a set of magic machines. The study offers insights into refugees' perceptions of the future and current technology. It also informs policymakers of the issues around current policy hurdles newcomer refugees face in their settlement in the host community.
In this paper, we focus on creative practices associated with smartphone images for supporting sc... more In this paper, we focus on creative practices associated with smartphone images for supporting scientific work. We employed observations and semi-structured interviews with 12 research staff members from a biomedical engineering institute over a period of three months and explored the role smartphone images play in supporting their scientific activities. We studied different ways smartphone images are incorporated into researchers' everyday work. Our findings highlight practices and motivations associated with the use of smartphone images. Based on our findings, we provide implications for designing innovative smartphone apps and particularly emphasize the role smartphones can play in developing and maintaining hybrid lab-books. 1 Introduction Studies of science and technology [12, 28] have pointed to the fact that while final outcomes of any scientific work, be it scientific articles, functional technologies or newspaper reports, inform about scientific facts and truths, a large number of procedural insights and local contingency are often filtered out. In particular, how scientists come about making sense of their data, images, or other type of information and what cognitive processes manifest themselves is rarely reported. The conduct of scientific research involves a varied set of cognitive processes and skills. Some of these are internal processes of the sort that have been the focus of the traditional cognitive science for decades, such as, categorization, reasoning, problem solving, and analogy formation. Others are processes that take place when information is propagated across different representational media, such as documents, papers and other types of external representations (e.g. [10, 11, 26, 27, 30]). Researchers have recognized that cognition is a socially and culturally embedded phenomenon that is situated and distributed between people concerned [8, 10, 11, 17, 21, 26, 27]. Cognition is as much rooted in mental processes as it is in the external world of objects, artifacts and social practices. In particular, the importance of external representations in reasoning and knowledge construction has been noted by many researchers seeking to understand the nature of the science [11, 14, 16, 20].
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2017
People experiencing financial hardship often possess resilient and resourceful behaviors when han... more People experiencing financial hardship often possess resilient and resourceful behaviors when handling their day-to-day activities. Understanding how these individuals manifest resilience during adversity could provide insights into how technologies can support their existing efforts. In a partnership with an Australian community care center, we identified resilient practices of people with low socioeconomic status. Following a strength-based approach, we collected data via home visits and semi-structured interviews involving 14 participants, and observed activities at the care center over 8 months. Our participants exhibited three key facets of resilience: (1) resilience as an integral part of their everyday lives, (2) a spirited phenomenon, and (3) a social and care-focused process. We contribute empirical insights into our participants' situated resilience and articulate ways through which design can support their existing social and collaborative practices. We compare and co...
International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2016
This paper contends that problems such as poverty and economic disadvantage are equally social in... more This paper contends that problems such as poverty and economic disadvantage are equally social in their nature as they are economic. As such, a social frame of reference is helpful in design. Using a qualitative approach, we study the ways 13 Australian households living on a low income manage, organise and interact in their everyday financial activities and what this means for designers of technology that might assist them with this. We highlight the highly social nature of many practices concerned with managing and saving money. We provide implications for how these practices may be supported through fostering social connections and how informal and sharing economies may be leveraged to provide value to those experiencing financial hardship. An argument is made that classifying an otherwise heterogeneous population based on income alone is reductive. In response we propose a rationale for amending the "low income" demographic classifier, incorporating a broader measure we tentatively term Social-financial Connectedness which captures the importance of social connections in overall financial wellbeing and identifies people's capacity to live well and share, irrespective of their financial circumstances.
Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern yo... more Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 2016
In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and fin... more In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and financial issues are handled within family settings. Families develop 'systems' or methods through which they coordinate and manage their everyday financial activities. Through an analysis of our fieldwork data collected from fifteen families, we provide several examples of such systems, highlighting their qualities and illustrating how such systems come to support the handling of financial activities in the home. Our results show that these systems are developed with a careful consideration of familial values, relationships and routines; and incorporate the use of physical and digital tools. Consequently, we suggest that design should consider the use and non-use of technology when supporting household financial management, taking into account the richness of families' existing organically formed practices surrounding financial systems. Finally, our findings point to the fact that financial management in the domestic setting is socially organized and is closely connected to supporting everyday household activities.
Proceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: the Future of Design, 2014
A new era of visible and sharable electricity information is emerging. Where eco-feedback is inst... more A new era of visible and sharable electricity information is emerging. Where eco-feedback is installed, households can now visualise many aspects of their energy consumption and share this information with others through Internet platforms such as social media. Despite providing users with many affordances, eco-feedback information can make public previously private actions from within the intimate setting of the family home. This paper represents a study focussing specifically on the privacy aspects of nascent ways for viewing and sharing this new stream of personal information. It explores the nuances of privacy related to eco-feedback both within and beyond the family home. While electricity consumption information may not be considered private itself, the household practices which eco-feedback systems makes visible may be private. We show that breaches of privacy can occur in unexpected ways and have the potential to cause distress. The paper concludes with some suggestions for how to realise the benefits of sharing energy consumption information whist effectively maintaining individuals' conceptions of adequate privacy.
Designing systems for multiple stakeholders requires frequent collaboration with multiple stakeho... more Designing systems for multiple stakeholders requires frequent collaboration with multiple stakeholders from the start. In many cases at least some stakeholders lack a professional habit of formal modeling. We report observations from student design teams as well as two case studies, respectively of a prototype for supporting creative communication to design objects, and of stakeholder-involvement in early design. In all observations and case studies we found that non-formal techniques supported strong collaboration resulting in deep understanding of early design ideas, of their value and of the feasibility of solutions.
Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in two industrial design departments and two design ... more Based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in two industrial design departments and two design companies, we explore the role of spatial arrangements for supporting creative design practices within different design studios. From our results, we show that designers explicitly make use of the physical space for 1) communicating and inspiring design ideas, 2) exploring design solutions and 3) managing design projects. We believe that these design practices could bring insightful implications for developing ubiquitous technologies to support the design profession.
CHI '12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2012
New parents cherish photos of their children. In their homes one can observe a varied set of arra... more New parents cherish photos of their children. In their homes one can observe a varied set of arrangements of their young ones' photos. We studied eight families with young children to learn about their practices related to photos. We provide preliminary results from the field study and elaborate on three interesting themes that came out very strongly from our data: physical platforms; family dynamics and values; and creative uses of photos. These themes provide an insight into families' perceived values for photo curating, displaying and experiencing them over a longer period. We provide future directions for supporting practices surrounding children's photos.
Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing, 2010
Figure 1: (a) CAM running on an iPhone; (b) Reading a design sketch using Microsoft's TagReader c... more Figure 1: (a) CAM running on an iPhone; (b) Reading a design sketch using Microsoft's TagReader client. In this paper, we report the results of a field trial of a Ubicomp system called CAM that is aimed at supporting and enhancing collaboration in a design studio environment. CAM uses a mobile-tagging application which allows designers to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design objects in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. The purpose of our field trial was to explore the role of augmented objects in supporting and enhancing creative work. Our results show that CAM was used not only to support participants' mutual awareness and coordination but also to facilitate designers in appropriating their augmented design objects to be explorative, extendable and playful, supporting creative aspects of design work. In general, our results show how CAM transformed static design objects into 'remarkable' objects that made the creative and playful side of cooperative design visible.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, 2011
In this paper, we present a field trial of a pervasive system called Panorama that is aimed at su... more In this paper, we present a field trial of a pervasive system called Panorama that is aimed at supporting social awareness in work environments. Panorama is an intelligent situated display in the staff room of an academic department. It artistically represents non-critical user generated content such as images from holidays, conferences and other social gatherings, as well as textual messages on its display. It also captures images and videos from different public spaces of the department and streams them onto the Panorama screen, using appropriate abstraction techniques. We studied the use of Panorama for two weeks and observed how Panorama affected staff members' social awareness and community building. We report that Panorama simulated curiosity and learning, initiated new interactions and provided a mechanism for cherishing old memories.
Uploads
Papers by Dhaval Vyas