Publications

Young people living in out-of-home care (OoHC) are widely considered to be one of the most vulnerable groups in the community. This article describes the evaluation and implementation study protocol of a healthy lifestyle programme developed to improve the eating and physical activity habits of young people living in residential OoHC. The study will employ a longitudinal multi-group pre-post process evaluation to assess our implementation strategy in the dissemination of HEALing Matters at the: 1) system-level; 2) organizational-level; 3) residential home-level; and 4) individual-level (N = approximately 60 residential homes [approximately 400–500 staff and 240 young people]). Implementation- and program-related outcomes will be assessed using self-report surveys, semi-structured interviews and focus groups, house audits and website usage data collected prior, during and after implementation. Results are expected to inform and help guide the further development and training of residential care staff’s understanding and application of health literacy. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

INTRODUCTION: The impact of disease-modifying agents on disease progression in Parkinson's disease is largely assessed in clinical trials using clinical rating scales. These scales have drawbacks in terms of their ability to capture the fluctuating nature of symptoms while living in a naturalistic environment. The SPHERE (Sensor Platform for HEalthcare in a Residential Environment) project has designed a multi-sensor platform with multimodal devices designed to allow continuous, relatively inexpensive, unobtrusive sensing of motor, non-motor and activities of daily living metrics in a home or a home-like environment. The aim of this study is to evaluate how the SPHERE technology can measure aspects of Parkinson's disease. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This is a small-scale feasibility and acceptability study during which 12 pairs of participants (comprising a person with Parkinson's and a healthy control participant) will stay and live freely for 5 days in a home-like environment embedded with SPHERE technology including environmental, appliance monitoring, wrist-worn accelerometry and camera sensors. These data will be collected alongside clinical rating scales, participant diary entries and expert clinician annotations of colour video images. Machine learning will be used to look for a signal to discriminate between Parkinson's disease and control, and between Parkinson's disease symptoms 'on' and 'off' medications. Additional outcome measures including bradykinesia, activity level, sleep parameters and some activities of daily living will be explored. Acceptability of the technology will be evaluated qualitatively using semi-structured interviews. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval has been given to commence this study; the results will be disseminated as widely as appropriate. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.

A plethora of assistive technologies are designed to cater to relatively common types of disabilities. However, some people have disabilities or circumstances that fall outside these pluralities, requiring a bespoke assistive technology to be developed and custom built to meet their unique requirements. To explore the opportunities and challenges of such an endeavor, we document the process undertaken to build a braille keyboard for a one-handed blind person over the course of 18-months. This process involved iterative prototyping within an intensive co-creation process, due to the unique needs arising from having two intersecting impairments and the challenges of effectively developing an entirely new format of AAT. Through a structured reflection on this process, we provide an account of the practical, pragmatic and ethical considerations that apply when developing a bespoke assistive technology, whilst illustrating the wider value of bespoke assistive technology development for a more general community of people with disabilities. © 2020 Owner/Author.

When learning sign language, feedback on accuracy is critical to vocabulary acquisition. When designing technologies to provide such visual feedback, we need to research effective ways to identify errors and present meaningful and effective feedback to learners. Motion capture technologies provide new opportunities to enhance sign language learning experiences through the presentation of visual feedback that indicates the accuracy of the signs made by learners. We designed, developed, and evaluated an embodied agent-based system for learning the location and gross motor movements of sign language vocabulary. The system presents a sign, tracks the learner's attempts at a sign, and provides visual feedback to the learner on their errors. We compared five different types of visual feedback, and in a study involving 51 participants we established that learners preferred visual feedback where their attempts at a sign were shown concurrently with the movements of the instructor with or without explicit corrections. © 2020 ACM.

Community engagements are qualitative processes that make use of participants local knowledge for democratic decision-making, but often exclude participants from data analysis and dissemination. This can mean that they are left feeling that their voice is not properly represented in the final output. This paper presents a digital community engagement process, TalkFutures, that actively involves participants in the production, distributed analysis and summarization of qualitative data. The design of TalkFutures was explored through a five-week deployment with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) as part of a consultation designed to inform future strategy. Our analysis of deployment metrics and post-deployment interviews outline how TalkFutures: (i) increased modes of participation across the qualitative workflow; (ii) reduced barriers to participation; and (iii) improved representation in the engagement processes. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Addressing human values in design has become an increasingly important consideration in the design of interactive systems. Within HCI, this trend is perhaps best emphasized by the increased volume of work that follows a Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. This trend is mirrored in human rights, especially in Europe, where individual values have been increasingly incorporated into the jurisprudence on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). There are a number of striking similarities between VSD and recent ECHR jurisprudence. This paper explores those similarities and how ECHR jurisprudence may be used to help with Values in Design problems and vice versa, thereby enabling VSD and similar approaches to be considered from a human rights perspective, whilst contributing to debates about the future of Values in Design. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Background: Lebanon currently hosts around one million Syrian refugees. There has been an increasing interest in integrating eHealth and mHealth technologies into the provision of primary health care to refugees and Lebanese citizens. Objective: We aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the potential for technology integration in primary health care provision in the context of the protracted Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon. Methods: A total of 17 face-to-face semistructured interviews were conducted with key informants (n=8) and health care providers (n=9) involved in the provision of health care to the Syrian refugee population in Lebanon. Interviews were audio recorded and directly translated and transcribed from Arabic to English. Thematic analysis was conducted. Results: Study participants indicated that varying resources, primarily time and the availability of technologies at primary health care centers, were the main challenges for integrating technologies for the provision of health care services for refugees. This challenge is compounded by refugees being viewed by participants as a mobile population thus making primary health care centers less willing to invest in refugee health technologies. Lastly, participant views regarding the health and technology literacies of refugees varied and that was considered to be a challenge that needs to be addressed for the successful integration of refugee health technologies. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that in the context of integrating technology into the provision of health care for refugees in a low or middle income country such as Lebanon, some barriers for technology integration related to the availability of resources are similar to those found elsewhere. However, we identified participant views of refugees’ health and technology literacies to be a challenge specific to the context of this refugee crisis. These challenges need to be addressed when considering refugee health technologies. This could be done by increasing the visibility of refugee capabilities and configuring refugee health technologies so that they may create spaces in which refugees are empowered within the health care system and can work toward debunking the views discovered in this study. ©Reem Talhouk, Chaza Akik, Vera Araujo-Soares, Balsam Ahmad, Sandra Mesmar, Patrick Olivier, Madeline Balaam, Kyle Montague, Andrew Garbett, Hala Ghattas.

There is an emerging concern that modern technology-saturated environments, particularly computer games, are inhibiting the development of children’s empathic behaviour and social skills. We argue that the solution is embedded in the problem when hybrid learning design blends real-life social interpersonal interactions with digital representations. We present theory-informed design principles for creating tablet games with a focus on promoting empathic perception—a building block for the ability to see, sense and understand other’s internal states. Based on these principles, the game Empathy World was developed and trialled in a naturalistic three-month study in an early childhood education setting. Children learned to perceive empathy-worthy cues in various scenes and interacted with the tablet game to further their perspective-taking and to associate emotions with social contexts. The findings from this study show an increase in the selective tendency of children’s in-game perception of empathy-worthy stimuli and enhanced empathic concern. We argue that future design for learning can utilise the strengths of hybrid design for social development at a larger scale: integrating theoretically informed and rigorously tested digital tools in existing educational and social environments. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic Research has examined various developmental benefits of empathy and shown that empathy can be learnt. Digital games can be productive, easy to scale, tools that support learning. Sound design, based on theory-informed principles, can improve the effectiveness of digital learning games. What this paper adds It synthesises theories and research evidence of empathy and its development. It shows how empathy-related theoretical ideas and evidence were translated into hybrid design principles for developing empathy games and embedding them into children’s social learning environment. It illustrates how theory- and evidence-informed design principles were used to create a digital game to enhance empathic learning of young children in a hybrid technology-mediated environment. It explores and validates the effectiveness of a hybrid design approach by implementing the digital empathy game in children’s natural learning environment and analysing the data by capturing emerging patterns of development stemming from gameplay. Implications for practice and/or policy Pre-schools could enhance children's empathy learning by integrating specially designed empathy games in existing learning environments. Teachers and parents should be informed about how to create game-mediated hybrid environments that enhance children’s empathy. © 2020 British Educational Research Association

Training counselling and psychotherapy skills using new technology is a relatively unresearched area of study. The findings from a pilot evaluation of the effectiveness and acceptability of a new technology, mPath, using a mixed method design are reported. The study found that progressive integration of the new mPath technology into learning helping skills had the best results on developing competency, as assessed by the Person-Centred Experiential Psychotherapy Scale Training Version. Qualitative interviews showed the technology was acceptable to users. Further research is needed in this emerging field of deliberate practice. © 2019 British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

We are witnessing an increase in fieldwork within the field of HCI, particularly involving marginalized or under-represented populations. This has posed ethical challenges for researchers during such field studies, with "ethical traps" not always identified during planning stages. This is often aggravated by the inconsistent policy guidelines, training, and application of ethical principles. We ground this in our collective experiences with ethically-difficult research, and frame it within common principles that are common across many disciplines and policy guidelines - representative of the instructors' diverse and international backgrounds. © 2020 Owner/Author.

The notion of 'giving voice' to under-represented groups in design is fraught with issues of power and interpretation. This workshop will address socio-methodological issues at play across design contexts, and build a community comprised of those who seek to support the expression and inclusion of diverse needs, abilities, and experiences in design. Research often involves participants who communicate in ways which are in line with assumed social norms and practices (e.g. those who communicate verbally), while those who communicate differently can be under-represented in design research. We highlight a need to broaden the inclusion and support of communities who have different communication needs, including; people with functional communication impairments, neurodiverse people, people who experience adverse life situations or trauma, people who are discriminated against or under-represented, and many, many other individuals and communities. We aim to unpick - and develop pragmatic solutions to - several challenges around working with diverse communities in research and practice, producing functional guidelines for design research in this area and problematising current methods and terminology. © 2020 Owner/Author.

This panel will provoke the audience into reflecting on the dark side of interaction design. It will ask what role the HCI community has played in the inception and rise of digital addiction, digital persuasion, data exploitation and dark patterns and what to do about this state of affairs. The panelists will present their views about what we have unleashed. They will examine how 'stickiness' came about and how we might give users control over their data that is sucked up in this process. Finally, they will be asked to consider the merits and prospects of an alternative agenda, that pushes for interaction design to be fairer, more ethically-grounded and more transparent, while at the same time addressing head-on the dark side of interaction design. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Death, whilst an inevitable part of being alive, factors more significantly in our lives than the event itself. The role that technology can play in how people live as they approach end of life as well as in bereavement is full of rich possibilities, but research here is also fraught with ethical and methodological dilemmas. Although there has been a turn to focus on the topic of death by some in HCI we need to go far further to embrace the contexts relating to it more meaningfully and broadly. Through this design focused workshop, we will bring experts and interested parties together to creatively explore opportunities and challenges for HCI at the end of life and beyond. Discussions and design activities will be supported by conceptual resources for design, lived experience accounts, design methods and ethical resources. The workshop will provide a time and place to bring together experts but will also provide an open and accepting environment for those for whom HCI at end of life and beyond is a new area of concern. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Recent advancements and economic feasibility have led to the widespread adoption of conversational digital assistants for everyday work. While research has focused on the use of these conversational assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa, by young adults and families, very little work focuses on the acceptance and adaptability amongst the older adults. This SIG aims to discuss the use and benefits of these conversational digital assistants for the well being of older adults. The goals for this SIG are to: (i) explore the acceptance/adoption of voice-based conversational agents for older adults. (ii) explore anthropomorphism in the design of conversational digital assistants. (iii) understand triggers (scenarios of use) that can initiate the process of reminiscence thus leading to meaningful conversation. (iv) explore conversational User Experience. (v) explore the co-existence of non-conversational use cases. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Using existing social media technologies as a resource for design offers significant potential for sustainable and scalable ways of coordinating participation. We look at three exemplar projects in three distinct domains that have successfully coordinated participation through the configuration and augmentation of existing social media technologies: participatory future forecasting, participatory health research, and connectivist learning. In this paper we conceptualise social media technologies as material for design, that is, as the raw material with which coordinated participation is realized. From this we develop a model that proposes four material qualities of social media technologies, morphology, role, representation of activity and permeability, and point to how they can be productively employed in the design of coordination of participation. © 2020 Owner/Author.

We describe the design and use of ReFind, a handheld artefact made for people who are bereaved and are ready to re-explore their relationship to the deceased person. ReFind was made within a project seeking to develop new ways to curate and create digital media to support ongoingness - an active, dynamic component of continuing bonds. We draw on bereavement theory and care championing practices that enable a continued sense of connection between someone bereaved and a person who has died. We present the design development of ReFind and the lived experience of the piece by the first author. We discuss our wider methodology which includes autobiographical design and reflections on if and how the piece supported ongoing connections, the challenges faced, and insights gained. © 2020 ACM.

Self-harm is a prevalent issue amongst young people, yet it is thought around 40% will never seek professional help due to stigma surrounding it. It is generally a way of coping with emotional distress and can have a range of triggers which are highly heterogeneous to the individual. In a move towards enhancing the accessibility of personalized interventions for self-harm, we undertook a three-stage study. We first conducted interviews with 4 counsellors in self-harm to understand how they clinically respond to self-harm triggers. We then ran a survey with 37 young people, to explore perceptions of mobile sensing, and current and future uses for smartphone-based interventions. Finally, we ran a workshop with 11 young people to further explore how a context-aware self-management application might be used to support them. We contribute an in-depth understanding of how triggers for self-harm might be identified and subsequently predicted and prevented using mobile-sensing technology. © 2020 ACM.

Participatory video (PV) is an established practice for enabling communities to "speak truth to power" and has been widely used by local, national and international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). However, the digital media landscape has changed dramatically since PV became widely accessible with the rise of the camcorder in the 1980s. Current media practices have evolved considerably since, yet PV remains essentially unchanged. We report on an investigation of current PV practices and reflect on these in terms of what the future for PV holds. We conducted interviews with staff at a global humanitarian network who directly and indirectly engage in community story capture; and explore their reflections on the potentials and barriers to PV use. We propose a new vision for PV that draws on current visual media production, consumption and distribution technologies and practices, and propose principles on which PV 2.0, a new generation of Participatory Video can be founded. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Recent years have seen an explosion of internet of things (IoT) technologies being released to the market. There has also been an emerging interest in the potentials of IoT devices to support people with chronic health conditions. In this paper, we describe the results of engagements to scope the future potentials of IoT for supporting people with Parkinson's (PwP). We ran a 2-day multi-disciplinary event with professionals with expertise in Parkinson's and IoT, to explore the opportunities, challenges and benefits. We then ran 4 workshops, engaging 13 PwP and caregivers, to scope out the needs, values and desires that the community has for utilizing IoT to monitor their symptoms. This work contributes considerations for future IoT solutions that might support PwP in better understanding their condition, through the provision of objective measurements that correspond to their, currently unmeasured, subjective experiences. © 2020 ACM.

Ghana has a population of over 27 million people, of which 1 in 15 may have a communication disability. The number of speech and language therapists (SLTs) available to support these people remains remarkably small, presenting a major workforce challenge. As an emerging profession, there remain significant challenges around educating the first generation of SLTs. Ghana, however, has a healthy digital infrastructure which can be taken advantage of. We describe a comprehensive study which aimed to co-design a set of locally appropriate digital tools to enhance SLT training in Ghana. We contribute insights into how digital tools could support social learning and the transition from student to independent practitioner and future clinical supervisor. We offer a set of design recommendations for creating an online Community of Practice to enhance continuing professional development. © 2020 ACM.

Little research has explored how mobile-learning technologies could be used by students to produce interactive artefacts during project-based learning processes. Following a design-based approach, we report on engagements spanning classroom and outdoor learning with students (ages 6-13) and teachers from three different UK schools and a summer school of Travelling Showchildren. Working within the time constraints of each context, we deployed a variety of configurations of a project-based mobile learning (PBML) framework intended to support the production of student-designed mobile-learning activities. We contribute insights gained from these engagements, including how mobile technologies can harness students' existing desire for independence and how they can be configured to leverage the physical and social attributes of place and community as learning resources. We argue for further exploration of the potential roles for mobile technologies within project-based learning, and contribute our PBML framework with recommendations for its re-configuration in response to contextual constraints. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Delivering training to volunteers is a huge challenge for non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Traditional classroom-based approaches that dominate training are problematic due to the limited participation they offer to trainees. Peer-led approaches however, have shown promise in helping NGOs utilise trainee experiences within training. Although technologies are playing an increasing role in training, their benefits are not well understood. We describe our experience of designing peer-led training for community volunteers in rural India. Working alongside an NGO involved in community regeneration and social action, we collaboratively delivered a ten-day training workshop, deploying audio technologies to engage the participants in sharing lived experiences. We draw on reflections from trainers and trainees on how utilising participant voice can enhance training. We highlight opportunities around the usage of audio technologies for engaging with participant voice, including the ability to reclaim trainee agency within training and to work within cultural barriers. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Disability assessment processes are complex and stressful, with claimants finding it challenging to prepare an effective account of their disabilities to support their claim. This project focuses on a disability benefit called Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which is received by millions of people with disabilities in the UK. We present a multi-stage exploratory investigation into how lifelogging could help address the challenges claimants have in accessing disability benefits. In the first study, benefit advisors participated in interviews and workshops to inform the design of PIP Kit, a highly customisable prototype elicitation diary to help disability claimants articulate their experiences. In the second study, PIP Kit was trialled by benefit claimants whilst making their actual PIP claims. We found that PIP Kit helped empower claimants in understanding the claim process and assisted in building arguments for their claims. We also have identified clear principles for supporting disability benefit claimants with technological interventions. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Values are an integral part of human identity and have a pervasive impact upon human behavior. This makes understanding them a central concern in the design of technology, as exemplified by approaches such as Value Sensitive Design ("VSD"). Identifying and concreting the values held by a given population can be a difficult endeavor, especially where there is a cultural barrier limiting an effective discussion of them, for example in societies where freedom of expression is discouraged. Addressing this concern requires an in-depth consideration of appropriate value elicitation methods, which responds to the fact that it is not possible to understand values detached from their cultural context. We introduce a novel implicit method, Scenario Co-Creation Cards, and show how it can be used to incorporate existing models of culture in the value elicitation process. We demonstrate this in a case study of Saudi women's visibility in the digital media. © 2020 Owner/Author.

This paper discusses how characteristics of experience-centred and collaborative design can be translated to larger scales. We describe Metro Futures, a region-wide public consultation on the design of new light rail trains, where we followed an experience-centred co-design approach supported by digital media and tools to develop findings with a core group of 20 ?co-researchers' and ∼4000 public participants. The paper discusses how the characteristics of a focus on experience, and collaborative design exploration were achieved with co-researchers and, at scale, through online and face-to-face interactions using various digital media and tools. Whilst not at the depth of smaller scales, there are opportunities to retain characteristics of experience-centred co-design at scale to produce findings that can usefully inform ensuing design work, and avoid the averaging of public contributions often evident in large scale public consultations. © 2020 Owner/Author.

As a critical resource for tenants in cloud datacenter, network bandwidth is shared and competed by tenants at the same time. Previous static bandwidth allocation strategies have a good performance in the sharing case. However, for the competing case where bandwidth oversubscription causes conflicts in network resources, existing bandwidth allocation strategies cannot offer a satisfactory solution. In this article, we propose an auto pre-allocation strategy to solve the bandwidth oversubscription issue in cloud datacenter. Our proposal aims to design and implement a bandwidth allocation system embedded in cloud platform using the technology of software-defined networking (SDN). We employ two sampling methods in bandwidth collection and adopt the ARIMA model to make the prediction. Firstly, the virtual machines (VMs) are divided into predictable and unpredictable groups based on ARIMA model, and each predictable VM has three states in terms of its loading status. After that, corresponding bandwidth allocation strategy is produced to limit the bandwidth utilization in a proper range by adjusting the bandwidth for next period. The experimental results show that the auto pre-allocation strategy improves network performance of cloud datacenter, in both bandwidth utilization ratio and network capacity. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.

Background: Under-reporting because of the limitations of human memory is one of the key challenges in dietary assessment surveys that use the multiple-pass 24-hour recall. Research indicates that shortening a retention interval (ie, the time between the eating event and recall) reduces the burden on memory and may increase the accuracy of the assessment. Objective: This study aimed to explore the accuracy and acceptability of Web-based dietary assessment surveys based on a progressive recall, where a respondent is asked to record multiple recalls throughout a 24-hour period using the multiple-pass protocol and portion size estimation methods of the 24-hour recall. Methods: The experiment was conducted with a dietary assessment system, Intake24, that typically implements the multiple-pass 24-hour recall method where respondents record all meals they had for the previous day on a single occasion. We modified the system to allow respondents to add multiple recalls throughout the day using the multiple-pass protocol and portion size estimation methods of the 24-hour recall (progressive recall). We conducted a dietary assessment survey with 33 participants, where they were asked to record dietary intake using both 24-hour and progressive recall methods for weekdays only. We compared mean retention intervals (ie, the time between eating event and recall) for the 2 methods. To examine accuracy, we compared mean energy estimates and the mean number of reported foods. Of these participants, 23 were interviewed to examine the acceptability of the progressive recall. Results: Retention intervals were found to be, on average, 15.2 hours (SD 7.8) shorter during progressive recalls than those during 24-hour recalls. We found that the mean number of foods reported for evening meals for progressive recalls (5.2 foods) was significantly higher (P=.001) than that for 24-hour recalls (4.2 foods). The number of foods and the amount of energy reported for other meals remained similar across the 2 methods. In interviews, 65% (15/23) of participants said that the 24-hour recall is more convenient in terms of fitting in with their daily lifestyles, and 65% (15/23) of respondents indicated that they remembered meal content and portion sizes better with the progressive recall. Conclusions: The analysis of interviews and data from our study indicate that progressive recalls provide minor improvements to the accuracy of dietary assessment in Intake24. Additional work is needed to improve the acceptability of progressive recalls in this system. © 2020 Timur Osadchiy, Ivan Poliakov, Patrick Olivier, Maisie Rowland, Emma Foster.

Along with the rapid proliferation of Social Networking Sites (SNSs), there is renewed discussion on the influence of substantial and highly interactive digital social circles. There is much debate about an individual's interactions with his/her digital social circles and how s/he forms behaviours as a result of such interactions. This study hypothesizes two salient types of actions that individuals are likely to engage in, as a consequence of social influence from SNSs: symbolic (e.g. #activism) and substantive actions (e.g. real activism). Using a paired sample of survey data gathered from 311 respondents, this research attempts to understand which social influence perspectives are likely to influence symbolic and substantive actions. © 40th International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2019. All rights reserved.

Background: The emergence of new technologies measuring outcomes in Parkinson's disease (PD) to complement the existing clinical rating scales has introduced the possibility of measurement occurring in patients' own homes whilst they freely live and carry out normal day-to-day activities. Objective: This systematic review seeks to provide an overview of what technology is being used to test which outcomes in PD from free-living participant activity in the setting of the home environment. Additionally, this review seeks to form an impression of the nature of validation and clinimetric testing carried out on the technological device(s) being used. Methods: Five databases (Medline, Embase, PsycInfo, Cochrane and Web of Science) were systematically searched for papers dating from 2000. Study eligibility criteria included: adults with a PD diagnosis; the use of technology; the setting of a home or home-like environment; outcomes measuring any motor and non-motor aspect relevant to PD, as well as activities of daily living; unrestricted/unscripted activities undertaken by participants. Results: 65 studies were selected for data extraction. There were wide varieties of participant sample sizes (<10 up to hundreds) and study durations (<2 weeks up to a year). The metrics evaluated by technology, largely using inertial measurement units in wearable devices, included gait, tremor, physical activity, bradykinesia, dyskinesia and motor fluctuations, posture, falls, typing, sleep and activities of daily living. Conclusions: Home-based free-living testing in PD is being conducted by multiple groups with diverse approaches, focussing mainly on motor symptoms and sleep. © 2020-IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.

Teledermatology generally involves doctors taking images of patients; however, patients increasingly want to own or have easy access to their health data. MySkinSelfie (http://myskinselfie.com) is a mobile phone application (app) designed to improve the quality, consistency and accessibility of patient-held photos, and was developed to give patients the ability to generate and hold their own skin images to help guide their skin care. This study assessed the usability of this app in a cohort of patients attending a National Health Service Dermatology clinic. Patients were asked to use the app but were not given specific tasks to achieve. Of the 102 patients recruited, 32 downloaded the app and registered an account, 21 took at least one photo (median 5, range 1–103) and 19 completed the usability questionnaire. The majority of questionnaire respondents found the app easy to use but were more neutral on whether it really helped them to manage their skin problem. MySkinSelfie has been shown to be easy to use. Self-monitoring of skin problems may be useful for a subset of patients, and this is likely to depend on diagnosis, age and other patient factors. © 2019 British Association of Dermatologists

The authors regret to inform that the manuscript “Recommender system based on pairwise association rules” provides an incorrect parameter in line “To gather as many association rules as possible we set both the minimum support and the minimum confidence to the lowest value (3 × 104) that allows the completion of the mining process of our data set on our machine within a time limit of 5 minutes.” The actual number should be (3 × 10−4, three multiplied by ten to the power of minus four). The mistake occurred in the process of generating a pdf document from a latex source file and was not recognised in reviewing process. The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused. © 2019 The Author(s)

There is an increasing interest in CSCW to understand how technology can be used for the monitoring of chronic conditions, and how collaboration for care planning can occur between clinicians and patients through its use. Many studies in this area have focussed on the patients' experience of using such technology. We report findings from a small-scale study, where a smartphone app for monitoring Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease symptoms was introduced into a community care respiratory service for patients' use. Our findings provide three key insights into the clinicians' experiences in receiving the patient reported data and supporting the patients' use of the app as part of their service. © 2019 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

The underrepresentation of women in the STEM workforce is a global issue. In Saudi Arabia, women constitute 48% of undergraduates in STEM, but their participation in STEM careers remains particularly low. We explored the current state of e-mentoring, and the potential for co-designing to enhance e-mentoring experiences for youth in the Saudi context. We report on how we sought to understand the opportunities, barriers and requirements of e-mentoring for young women in Saudi Arabia through (1) the application of a traditional programme of STEM e-mentoring, (2) workshops on the redesign of e-mentoring, and (3) a co-design activity as the first phase of an alternative e-mentoring process. The study demonstrated that the traits of the participants’ generation had a major effect on the findings; more so than cultural norms. This means that the findings have wider implications than just within the Saudi context. We identify a number of recommendations for designing e-mentoring programmes for young women and teenagers, including un-platforming traditional approaches to e-mentoring and the inclusion of co-design activities as a first step in the e-mentoring process. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Ongoing research is providing new insights into the biological rudiments of empathy and its neurobiological underpinnings. There is also growing awareness that tablet technology, when used educationally and ethically, can aid adolescents and young-adults' empathic learning. However, there has been little attempt globally to translate this new knowledge into the learning and teaching of empathy in early years education. This small-scale study aimed at enhancing 3–6-year-olds' empathy by designing a tablet game and evaluating its developmental impact by combining teachers' observation with pre-electroencephalogram (EEG) and post-EEG. Children in one Australian preschool, were invited to (1) attend to and perceive emotionally salient events in a story, (2) actively share the emotions of the characters identified, and (3) take others' perspectives, reasoning why a given emotion arises within the context. Repeated measures analysis of both EEG and observation data indicate that interacting with the tablet game enhanced participating preschoolers' empathic learning. © 2019 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Background:: Many large studies have implemented wrist or thigh accelerometry to capture physical activity, but the accuracy of these measurements to infer activity energy expenditure (AEE) and consequently total energy expenditure (TEE) has not been demonstrated. The purpose of this study was to assess the validity of acceleration intensity at wrist and thigh sites as estimates of AEE and TEE under free-living conditions using a gold-standard criterion. Methods:: Measurements for 193 UK adults (105 men, 88 women, aged 40–66 years, BMI 20.4–36.6 kg m−2) were collected with triaxial accelerometers worn on the dominant wrist, non-dominant wrist and thigh in free-living conditions for 9–14 days. In a subsample (50 men, 50 women) TEE was simultaneously assessed with doubly labelled water (DLW). AEE was estimated from non-dominant wrist using an established estimation model, and novel models were derived for dominant wrist and thigh in the non-DLW subsample. Agreement with both AEE and TEE from DLW was evaluated by mean bias, root mean squared error (RMSE), and Pearson correlation. Results:: Mean TEE and AEE derived from DLW were 11.6 (2.3) MJ day−1 and 49.8 (16.3) kJ day−1 kg−1. Dominant and non-dominant wrist acceleration were highly correlated in free-living (r = 0.93), but less so with thigh (r = 0.73 and 0.66, respectively). Estimates of AEE were 48.6 (11.8) kJ day−1 kg−1 from dominant wrist, 48.6 (12.3) from non-dominant wrist, and 46.0 (10.1) from thigh; these agreed strongly with AEE (RMSE ~12.2 kJ day−1 kg−1, r ~ 0.71) with small mean biases at the population level (~6%). Only the thigh estimate was statistically significantly different from the criterion. When combining these AEE estimates with estimated REE, agreement was stronger with the criterion (RMSE ~1.0 MJ day−1, r ~ 0.90). Conclusions:: In UK adults, acceleration measured at either wrist or thigh can be used to estimate population levels of AEE and TEE in free-living conditions with high precision. © 2019, The Author(s).

We present a design of an always-on system connecting long-distance couples at bedtime, a time and space partners normally share together. The system offers a novel, real-time shared inking space for creative interactivity, a slow photo stream to balance privacy and remote presence. It adapts to the local light level in order to stay in the background, but can be also configured to reflect the remote light level to provide an additional communication channel. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

This paper describes Showboater, a simple system architecture for rural community display networks. We outline the context of our 2-year longitudinal study and outline five design goals: a functional, sustainable, scalable, resilient networked display solution which affords roles for the distribution of governance. We describe the design and implementation of Showboater and how it aligns to the design goals, as well as describing two separate deployments. We reflect on evaluation feedback and provide insight into the implications of deploying Showboater as rural community display system, respective of the initial design goals, and present our recommendations for future improvements. © 2019 ACM.

Background: Healthy eating and fitness mobile apps are designed to promote healthier living. However, for young people, body dissatisfaction is commonplace, and these types of apps can become a source of maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. Furthermore, such apps are designed to promote continuous engagement, potentially fostering compulsive behaviors. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify potential risks around healthy eating and fitness app use and negative experience and behavior formation among young people and to inform the understanding around how current commercial healthy eating and fitness apps on the market may, or may not, be exasperating such behaviors. Methods: Our research was conducted in 2 phases. Through a survey (n=106) and 2 workshops (n=8), we gained an understanding of young people's perceptions of healthy eating and fitness apps and any potential harm that their use might have; we then explored these further through interviews with experts (n=3) in eating disorder and body image. Using insights drawn from this initial phase, we then explored the degree to which leading apps are preventing, or indeed contributing to, the formation of maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. We conducted a review of the top 100 healthy eating and fitness apps on the Google Play Store to find out whether or not apps on the market have the potential to elicit maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. Results: Participants were aged between 18 and 25 years and had current or past experience of using healthy eating and fitness apps. Almost half of our survey participants indicated that they had experienced some form of negative experiences and behaviors through their app use. Our findings indicate a wide range of concerns around the wider impact of healthy eating and fitness apps on individuals at risk of maladaptive eating and exercise behavior, including (1) guilt formation because of the nature of persuasive models, (2) social isolation as a result of personal regimens around diet and fitness goals, (3) fear of receiving negative responses when targets are not achieved, and (4) feelings of being controlled by the app. The app review identified logging functionalities available across the apps that are used to promote the sustained use of the app. However, a significant number of these functionalities were seen to have the potential to cause negative experiences and behaviors. Conclusions: In this study, we offer a set of responsibility guidelines for future researchers, designers, and developers of digital technologies aiming to support healthy eating and fitness behaviors. Our study highlights the necessity for careful considerations around the design of apps that promote weight loss or body modification through fitness training, especially when they are used by young people who are vulnerable to the development of poor body image and maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. © Mahsa Honary, Beth T Bell, Sarah Clinch, Sarah E Wild, Roisin McNaney.

Recall assistance methods are among the key aspects that improve the accuracy of online dietary assessment surveys. These methods still mainly rely on experience of trained interviewers with nutritional background, but data driven approaches could improve cost-efficiency and scalability of automated dietary assessment. We evaluated the effectiveness of a recommender algorithm developed for an online dietary assessment system called Intake24, that automates the multiple-pass 24-hour recall method. The recommender builds a model of eating behavior from recalls collected in past surveys. Based on foods they have already selected, the model is used to remind respondents of associated foods that they may have omitted to report. The performance of prompts generated by the model was compared to that of prompts hand-coded by nutritionists in two dietary studies. The results of our studies demonstrate that the recommender system is able to capture a higher number of foods omitted by respondents of online dietary surveys than prompts hand-coded by nutritionists. However, the considerably lower precision of generated prompts indicates an opportunity for further improvement of the system. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Chronic respiratory conditions (CRCs) are life-long diseases affecting millions of people worldwide. They have a huge impact on individuals’ everyday lives, resulting in a number of physical and emotional challenges. Self-management interventions for CRCs are thought to provide empowerment and improve quality of life. However, despite the number of people living with CRCs, most self-management tools in previous HCI work have been designed without the insight of those affected by the conditions.In this paper, we contribute to the literature by investigating the experiences and everyday challenges faced by those with CRCs, through the involvement of 156 participants via interviews and an anonymous survey. Our findings reveal the self-care challenges of CRCs and the reactive management approaches taken by participants. We conclude by providing a set of design implications that support the design of future self-management tools forCRCs. © 2019 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

The integration of new technologies into counsellor education has progressed slowly. We present mPath: an online system designed to support iterative, multi-levelled and deep reflection on practice in skills training sessions. We propose the integration of new technologies to counsellor education as an area with scope for future research and development. © 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Participatory Video (PV) is emerging as a rich and valuable method for monitoring and evaluating (M & E) projects in the International Development sector. Although shown to be useful for engaging communities within short-term monitoring exercises or promotion, PV in these contexts presents signifcant complexity and logistical challenges for sustained uptake by Development organizations. In this paper, we present Our Story, a digitally mediated work fow iteratively designed and deployed on initiatives in Indonesia and Namibia. Developed in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), it supports end-to-end PV production in the feld, and was specifcally developed to make PV a more sustainable tool for monitoring. We discuss and evaluate Our Story, reporting on how by lowering skills barriers for facilitators and leveraging consumer technology, PV can be delivered at scale. © 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.

Community radio can support the process of having a voice in one’s community as a part of civic action, and promote community dialogue. However, older adults are underrepresented as producers of community radio shows in the UK, and face different challenges to their younger colleagues. By working within the radio production group of an existing organisation of older adults, we identify the motivations and challenges in supporting this type of civic participation in media in later life. Key challenges were identified, including audience engagement, content persistence and process sustainability. In response, we 1) supported the group’s audience engagement using Facebook Live and a phone-in option, and 2) developed a digital production tool. Reporting on the continued use of the tool by the organisation, we discuss how tailored and non-intrusive processes mediated by digital technology can support older adults in delivering richer media experiences whilst serving their civic participatory interests. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Work addressing the negative impacts of domestic violence on victim-survivors and service providers has slowly been contributing to the HCI discourse. However, work discussing the necessary, pre-emptive steps for researchers to enter these spaces sensitively and considerately, largely remains opaque. Heavily-politicised specialisms that are imbued with conflicting values and practices, such as domestic violence service delivery can be especially difficult to navigate. In this paper, we report on a mixed methods study consisting of interviews, a design dialogue and an ideation workshop with domestic violence service providers to explore the potential of an online service directory to support their work. Through this three-stage research process, we were able to characterise this unique service delivery landscape and identify tensions in services’ access, understandings of technologies and working practices. Drawing from our findings, we discuss opportunities for researchers to work with and sustain complex information ecologies in sensitive settings. © 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.

WhatsApp, as the world’s most popular messaging application, offers significant opportunities for improving the reach and effectiveness of engagement projects. In collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) we designed WhatFutures, a collaborative future forecasting engagement for global youth using WhatsApp. WhatFutures was successfully deployed with 487 players across 5 countries (Kenya, Bulgaria, Finland, Australia and Hong Kong) to inform strategic change within the IFRC. Based on our analysis of the activity - including 16,100 messages, 95 multimedia artifacts, and a post-engagement survey - we present a reflection upon the design decisions underpinning WhatFutures and identify how decisions made around group structures, processes and externalization of outputs influenced engagement and data quality. We conclude with the wider implications of our findings for the design of engagements that best utilize the affordances of existing messaging applications. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

We describe the iterative design, development and learning process we undertook to produce Gabber, a digital platform that aims to support distributed capture of spoken interviews and discussions, and their qualitative analysis. Our aim is to reduce both expertise and cost barriers associated with existing technologies, making the process more inclusive. Gabber structures distributed audio data capture, facilitates participatory sensemaking, and supports collaborative reuse of audio. We describe our design and development journey across three distinct field trials over a two-year period. Reflecting on the iterative design process, we offer insights into the challenges faced by non-experts throughout their qualitative practices, and provide guidance for researchers designing systems to support engagement in these practices. © 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.

We are witnessing an increase in fieldwork within the field of HCI, particularly involving marginalized or under-represented populations. This has posed ethical challenges for researchers during such field studies, with "ethical traps" not always identified during planning stages. This is often aggravated by the inconsistent policy guidelines, training, and application of ethical principles. We ground this in our collective experiences with ethically-difficult research, and frame it within common principles that are common across many disciplines and policy guidelines - representative of the instructors' diverse and international backgrounds. © 2019 Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). ACM I

Background Scalable weight loss maintenance (WLM) interventions for adults with obesity are lacking but vital for the health and economic benefits of weight loss to be fully realised. We examined the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a low-intensity technology-mediated behavioural intervention to support WLM in adults with obesity after clinically significant weight loss (≥5%) compared to standard lifestyle advice. Methods and findings The NULevel trial was an open-label randomised controlled superiority trial in 288 adults recruited April 2014 to May 2015 with weight loss of ≥5% within the previous 12 months, from a pre-weight loss BMI of ≥30 kg/m2. Participants were self-selected, and the majority self-certified previous weight loss. We used a web-based randomisation system to assign participants to either standard lifestyle advice via newsletter (control arm) or a technology-mediated low-intensity behavioural WLM programme (intervention arm). The intervention comprised a single face-to-face goal-setting meeting, self-monitoring, and remote feedback on weight, diet, and physical activity via links embedded in short message service (SMS). All participants were provided with wirelessly connected weighing scales, but only participants in the intervention arm were instructed to weigh themselves daily and told that they would receive feedback on their weight. After 12 months, we measured the primary outcome, weight (kilograms), as well as frequency of self-weighing, objective physical activity (via accelerometry), psychological variables, and cost-effectiveness. The study was powered to detect a between-group weight difference of ±2.5 kg at follow-up. Overall, 264 participants (92%) completed the trial. Mean weight gain from baseline to 12 months was 1.8 kg (95% CI 0.5–3.1) in the intervention group (n = 131) and 1.8 kg (95% CI 0.6–3.0) in the control group (n = 133). There was no evidence of an effect on weight at 12 months (difference in adjusted mean weight change from baseline: −0.07 [95% CI 1.7 to −1.9], p = 0.9). Intervention participants weighed themselves more frequently than control participants and were more physically active. Intervention participants reported greater satisfaction with weight outcomes, more planning for dietary and physical activity goals and for managing lapses, and greater confidence for healthy eating, weight loss, and WLM. Potential limitations, such as the use of connected weighing study in both trial arms, the absence of a measurement of energy intake, and the recruitment from one region of the United Kingdom, are discussed. Conclusions There was no difference in the WLM of participants who received the NULevel intervention compared to participants who received standard lifestyle advice via newsletter. The intervention affected some, but not all, process-related secondary outcomes of the trial. Trial registration This trial is registered with the ISRCTN registry (ISRCTN 14657176; registration date 20 March 2014). © 2019 Sniehotta et al.

HCI has a tradition of engaging in democratic practices and contributing to public service innovation. Working with complex socio-political realities presents significant challenges for HCI researchers, which are amplified by the current democratic and economic crisis. In this article, we present insights from a longitudinal study where we worked with multiple stakeholders in the context of an austerity-driven transformation of public parks service in a city in the North East of England. Over the course of 20 months, we developed a participatory socio-technical process designed to create collaborative spaces between communities and institutions to re-envision and re-shape the city's public parks service. The study contributes to HCI research concerned with developing tools and processes that aim at connecting across the boundaries between communities and institutions. Our process and the resulting analysis expose the practical complexities of transformation and co-creation processes and the troubles that come with opening spaces for wider participation within highly contested and political settings. We provide an orientation for HCI design research aspiring to contribute to social innovation and democratic practices in troubled times. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Background: Communication training for parents of young children with neurodisability is often delivered in groups and includes video coaching. Group teaching is problematic when there is wide variation in the characteristics and needs amongst participants. Aims: To assess the potential feasibility and acceptability of delivering one-to-one parent training supported by remote coaching using smartphone apps and of conducting further trials of the intervention. Methods &amp; Procedures: We aimed to recruit eight children aged 12–48 months with motor disorders and communication difficulties and to provide families with individual parent training in six weekly home visits supplemented by remote coaching via smartphone apps. For outcome measurement, parents recorded their interaction with their child thrice weekly during baseline (3 weeks), intervention, post-intervention (3 weeks) and follow-up (1 week). Measures comprised parent responsiveness and counts of children's communication and vocalization. Research design feasibility was measured through rates of recruitment, attrition, outcome measure completion and agreement between raters on outcome measurement. Intervention feasibility was assessed through the proportion of therapy sessions received, the number of videos and text messages shared using the apps in remote coaching, and message content. Parents were interviewed about the acceptability of the intervention and trial design. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Outcomes &amp; Results: Nine children were recruited over 16 weeks. All fitted the inclusion criteria. Four families withdrew from the study. Five families completed the intervention. No family submitted the target number of video recordings for outcome measurement. Interrater agreement was moderate for child communication (K = 0.46) and vocalization (K = 0.60) and high for The Responsive Augmentative and Alternative Communication Style scale (RAACS) (r s = 0.96). Parents who completed the intervention reported positive experiences of the programme and remote coaching via the apps. Therapist messages via the app contained comments on parent and child behaviour and requests for parental reflection/action; parental messages contained reflections on children's communication. Conclusions &amp; Implications: The intervention and study design demanded high levels of parental involvement and was not suitable for all families. Recording shorter periods of interaction via mobile phones or using alternative methods of data collection may increase feasibility of outcome measurement. © 2019 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

The advent of Social Networking Sites (SNS) took social influence to a new level allowing a large number of individuals to interact, and influence each other unlike the traditional society bound by face-to-face interactions. While this substantial change generated by SNS has motivated information systems researchers to examine social influence and attitude and behavioural change in individuals in the context of SNS, the studies have not paid adequate attention to exploring how individuals behave in light of the social influence s/he receives. As such, adopting a literature meta-analysis approach, and reviewing 65 studies, this research identified four distinct categories of responses to social influence given by individuals in SNS, based on social influence theoretical perspective. While the study was completed in SNS context, the broader implications of this study are applied to research development and methodology, where the study implications apply broadly across all research contexts. © Proceedings of the 23rd Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Secure ICT Platform for the 4th Industrial Revolution, PACIS 2019.

BackgroundLate-life depression (LLD) is associated with poor social functioning. However, previous research uses bias-prone self-report scales to measure social functioning and a more objective measure is lacking. We tested a novel wearable device to measure speech that participants encounter as an indicator of social interaction.MethodsTwenty nine participants with LLD and 29 age-matched controls wore a wrist-worn device continuously for seven days, which recorded their acoustic environment. Acoustic data were automatically analysed using deep learning models that had been developed and validated on an independent speech dataset. Total speech activity and the proportion of speech produced by the device wearer were both detected whilst maintaining participants' privacy. Participants underwent a neuropsychological test battery and clinical and self-report scales to measure severity of depression, general and social functioning.ResultsCompared to controls, participants with LLD showed poorer self-reported social and general functioning. Total speech activity was much lower for participants with LLD than controls, with no overlap between groups. The proportion of speech produced by the participants was smaller for LLD than controls. In LLD, both speech measures correlated with attention and psychomotor speed performance but not with depression severity or self-reported social functioning.ConclusionsUsing this device, LLD was associated with lower levels of speech than controls and speech activity was related to psychomotor retardation. We have demonstrated that speech activity measured by wearable technology differentiated LLD from controls with high precision and, in this study, provided an objective measure of an aspect of real-world social functioning in LLD. © 2020 The Author(s).

In the aforementioned article, the affiliation for Soren Brage is incorrect. The correct affiliation for Soren Brage is: MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK The authors would like to apologise for this error. © The Author(s) 2019.

This paper explores ‘A to B’ routing tools designed to chart accessible routes for wheelchair users. We develop and present a novel measurement framework based upon cost-benefit analysis in order to evaluate the real-world utility of routing systems for wheelchair users. Using this framework, we compare proposed routes generated by accessibility tools with the pedestrian routes generated by Google Maps by means of conducting expert assessments of the situation on the ground. Relative to tools aimed at pedestrians, we find that these tools are not significantly more likely to produce an accessible route, and more often than not, they present longer routes that arise from imaginary barriers that do not exist in the real world. This analysis indicates how future routing tools for wheelchair users should be designed to ensure that they genuinely ameliorate the effects of accessibility barriers in the built environment. © 2019, The Author(s).

Online self-reported 24-h dietary recall systems promise increased feasibility of dietary assessment. Comparison against interviewer-led recalls established their convergent validity; however, reliability and criterion-validity information is lacking. The validity of energy intakes (EI) reported using Intake24, an online 24-h recall system, was assessed against concurrent measurement of total energy expenditure (TEE) using doubly labelled water in ninety-eight UK adults (40-65 years). Accuracy and precision of EI were assessed using correlation and Bland-Altman analysis. Test-retest reliability of energy and nutrient intakes was assessed using data from three further UK studies where participants (11-88 years) completed Intake24 at least four times; reliability was assessed using intra-class correlations (ICC). Compared with TEE, participants under-reported EI by 25 % (95 % limits of agreement-73 % to +68 %) in the first recall, 22 % (-61 % to +41 %) for average of first two, and 25 % (-60 % to +28 %) for first three recalls. Correlations between EI and TEE were 0·31 (first), 0·47 (first two) and 0·39 (first three recalls), respectively. ICC for a single recall was 0·35 for EI and ranged from 0·31 for Fe to 0·43 for non-milk extrinsic sugars (NMES). Considering pairs of recalls (first two v.Third and fourth recalls), ICC was 0·52 for EI and ranged from 0·37 for fat to 0·63 for NMES. EI reported with Intake24 was moderately correlated with objectively measured TEE and underestimated on average to the same extent as seen with interviewer-led 24-h recalls and estimated weight food diaries. Online 24-h recall systems may offer low-cost, low-burden alternatives for collecting dietary information. Copyright © The Author(s) 2019 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background: Healthy eating and fitness mobile apps are designed to promote healthier living. However, for young people, body dissatisfaction is commonplace, and these types of apps can become a source of maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. Furthermore, such apps are designed to promote continuous engagement, potentially fostering compulsive behaviors. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify potential risks around healthy eating and fitness app use and negative experience and behavior formation among young people and to inform the understanding around how current commercial healthy eating and fitness apps on the market may, or may not, be exasperating such behaviors. Methods: Our research was conducted in 2 phases. Through a survey (n=106) and 2 workshops (n=8), we gained an understanding of young people’s perceptions of healthy eating and fitness apps and any potential harm that their use might have; we then explored these further through interviews with experts (n=3) in eating disorder and body image. Using insights drawn from this initial phase, we then explored the degree to which leading apps are preventing, or indeed contributing to, the formation of maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. We conducted a review of the top 100 healthy eating and fitness apps on the Google Play Store to find out whether or not apps on the market have the potential to elicit maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. Results: Participants were aged between 18 and 25 years and had current or past experience of using healthy eating and fitness apps. Almost half of our survey participants indicated that they had experienced some form of negative experiences and behaviors through their app use. Our findings indicate a wide range of concerns around the wider impact of healthy eating and fitness apps on individuals at risk of maladaptive eating and exercise behavior, including (1) guilt formation because of the nature of persuasive models, (2) social isolation as a result of personal regimens around diet and fitness goals, (3) fear of receiving negative responses when targets are not achieved, and (4) feelings of being controlled by the app. The app review identified logging functionalities available across the apps that are used to promote the sustained use of the app. However, a significant number of these functionalities were seen to have the potential to cause negative experiences and behaviors. Conclusions: In this study, we offer a set of responsibility guidelines for future researchers, designers, and developers of digital technologies aiming to support healthy eating and fitness behaviors. Our study highlights the necessity for careful considerations around the design of apps that promote weight loss or body modification through fitness training, especially when they are used by young people who are vulnerable to the development of poor body image and maladaptive eating and exercise behaviors. © Mahsa Honary, Beth T Bell, Sarah Clinch, Sarah E Wild, Roisin McNaney.

Recommender systems based on methods such as collaborative and content-based filtering rely on extensive user profiles and item descriptors as well as on an extensive history of user preferences. Such methods face a number of challenges; including the cold-start problem in systems characterized by irregular usage, privacy concerns, and contexts where the range of indicators representing user interests is limited. We describe a recommender algorithm that builds a model of collective preferences independently of personal user interests and does not require a complex system of ratings. The performance of the algorithm is analyzed on a large transactional data set generated by a real-world dietary intake recall system. © 2018 The Authors

As security technologies become more embedded into people's everyday lives, it becomes more challenging for researchers to understand the contexts in which those technologies are situated. The need to develop research methods that provide a lens on personal experiences has driven much recent work in human-computer interaction, but has so far received little focus in usable security. In this paper we explore the potential of the micro blogging site Twitter to provide experience-centered insights into security practices. Taking the topic of passwords as an example, we collected tweets with the goal to capture personal narratives of password use situated in its context. We performed a qualitative content analysis on the tweets and uncovered: how tweets contained critique and frustration about existing password practices and workarounds; how people socially shared and revoked their passwords as a deliberate act in exploring and defining their relationships with others; practices of playfully bypassing passwords mechanisms and how passwords are appropriated in portrayals of self. These findings begin to evidence the extent to which passwords increasingly serve social functions that are more complex than have been documented in previous research. © 2015 by The USENIX Association.

Dietary assessment is important for monitoring and evaluating population intakes. Online tools can reduce the level of participant burden and the time taken to complete records, compared with other methods. The study aimed to field test an online dietary recall tool (Intake24) to test the suitability for collecting dietary information in Scottish national surveys and to develop the system based on feedback and emerging issues. Previous Scottish Health Survey participants, aged 11+ years, were invited to complete Intake24 and provide feedback about it. Of those who agreed to take part, 60% completed at least one recall. Intake24 was found to be user-friendly, enjoyable to use, and easy to follow and understand. Users agreed they would like to use Intake24 often, (44% compared with 15% who disagreed) and >75% felt the system accurately captured their dietary intakes. The main challenge reported was finding foods within the database. Of those completing fewer recalls than requested, the majority reported that they believed they had completed the required number or reported not receiving emails requesting they complete a further recall. Intake24 was found to be a user-friendly tool allowing dietary assessment without interviewer presence. Feedback indicated the method for recall reminders needs to be refined and tailored. © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Access to Information regimes are under unremitting challenge from state actors. This article is the first to directly explore the ‘cost limit’ often included in Access to Information regimes, where requests can be refused by a Public Authority on the basis of an estimate that it would take too long to locate and extract the requested information. The validity of such estimates is particularly important in light of electronic information systems where search times are dependant upon technological expertise. This article presents a qualitative study of decisions made by the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner, where decision notices concerning the ‘cost limit’ are examined to identify technological errors. These technological errors were found to arise from specific practices of the Commissioner in 40% of cases where an estimate of the Public Authority was accepted. The author demonstrates that the concept of estimating the time taken to find information from an electronic information system is an objectively inappropriate means for estimating the burden placed on a Public Authority. Through the use of mathematics, it is demonstrated an estimation regime based on the volume of information requested is more appropriate as an alternative. From a wider regulatory perspective, this article also demonstrates that it would be highly desirable for Access to Information regimes to be regulated alongside data protection concerns, given the strong overlap in respect of the relevant technological issues. © 2018 The Author

Caregivers of people experiencing severe mental illness (SMI) report a multitude of psychosocial impacts, including feelings of loneliness and isolation, distress, societal stigma and prejudice around mental health. We describe the design of a series of video stories, performed by actors, which were based on the lived experiences of caregivers and people with SMI. We conducted a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with 11 participants, which formed the basis for the video content. We then worked alongside two caregivers (as advisors), at each stage of the production process, to develop a set of 45 video stories, using personas in our process. Through a discussion of our creative process, we offer a set of considerations for future researchers wishing to develop relatable and empathic digital content for online information provision and support tools. In addition, we offer a set of reflections around the complex ethical challenges underpinning this design space.

Many participatory design methods are heavily reliant on the presence of communication skills, with approaches often focusing on verbal or written outputs. For people with communication difficulties it can often be difficult to engage with such approaches. This workshop aims to bring together researchers, designers and practitioners to explore share both positive and challenging experiences of working with users with communication difficulties within participatory design. We will generate a description of a set of design methods which have been adapted and used with people communication difficulties, with a view to enhancing the knowledge and skills of workshop participants for the future. © 2018 ACM.

The potential for mobile technology to support bespoke learning activities seamlessly across learning contexts has not been fully realized. We contribute insights gained from four months of field studies of place-based mobile learning in two different contexts: formal education with a primary school and informal, community-led learning with volunteers in a nearby park. For these studies we introduced ParkLearn: a platform for creating, sharing and engaging with place-based mobile learning activities through seamless learning experiences. The platform enables the creation of easily configurable learning activities that leverage the targeted learning environment and mobile devices' hardware to support situated learning. Learners' uploaded responses to activities can be viewed and shared via a website, supporting seamless follow-up classroom activities. By supporting creativity and independence for both learners and activity designers, ParkLearn promoted a sense of ownership, increased engagement in follow-up activities and supported the leveraging of physical and social communal learning resources. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

We report upon the conduct and findings of an investigation into technology design for long-distance relationships (LDRs), where South Korean culture raises specific challenges. Through two qualitative studies we explore inter-generational LDRs from the perspective of South Korean students based in the United Kingdom. We identify and document the particular nuances within, and challenges that arise from, these relationships, before turning to the pragmatics of technology design for LDRs. Through both an extended diary study and interviews with students, we illustrate the impact of Korean familial obligations on intergenerational LDRs, and the mistrust and anxiety on both sides (parents and students) arising from limitations in communication channels. From our findings, we develop the notion of 'respectful disconnection' which we propose as a framework for designing interactions that appropriately support LDRs within this specific South Korean context. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

There is an increasing demand from healthcare providers for timely and accurate information about patients' conditions, to support appropriate decision making about their needs. Often, healthcare providers have limited data access due to complex issues surrounding sharing agreements and data recording and storage. Designing data supported decisionmaking (DSDM) tools in this environment is challenging, as they often fail to fully integrate into practice. Existing work focuses on implementing tools such as dashboards and smartphone apps to support decision making practices. However, these tools often operate independently from main systems, and there is limited HCI research on the challenges of designing and integrating such tools into long-term health-care delivery. We describe our participatory design research with clinical and service management staff on a respiratory care ward. We use the process of designing a DSDM dashboard to explore larger challenges behind designing DSDM tools for healthcare providers. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Background: It is important to be able to reliably and feasibly measure infant and toddler physical activity in order to determine adherence to current physical activity guidelines and effects on early life development, growth and health. This study aimed to describe the development of an infant wearable wrist-worn band for the measurement of physical activity; to determine the feasibility of the device data for observational measurement of physical activity and to determine the caregiver reported acceptability of the infant wearable wrist band. Methods: After various iterations of prototypes and piloting thereof, a final wearable band was designed to fit an Axivity AX3 monitor. Mother and infant/toddler (aged 3-24 months) pairs (n = 152) were recruited, and mothers were asked for their child to wear the band with enclosed monitor at all times for 1 week (minimum 3 days). Feasibility was assessed by determining technical reliability of the data, as well as wear time and compliance according to requirements for observational measurement. Acceptability was assessed via questionnaire. Results: Technical reliability of the Axivity AX3 monitors in this age group was good. After excluding days that did not have at least 15 h of wear time, only 2% of participants had less than three valid days of data remaining, and 4% of participants had no data (due to device loss or data loss). Therefore, 94% of participants were compliant, having three or more days of wear with at least 15 h of wear per day, thus providing enough valid data for observational measurement. The majority (60%) of mothers reported being "very happy" with the safety of the device, while only 8% were "a little worried". A large majority (86%) of mothers stated that the band attracted attention from others, although this was mostly attributed to curiosity about the function of the band. Most (80%) of participants rated the comfort of the band as "comfortable", and 10% rated it as "very comfortable". Conclusions: The infant wearable band proved to be feasible and acceptable according to the criteria tested, and compliance wearing the band was good. We have therefore provided a replicable, comfortable and acceptable wearable band for the measurement of infant and toddler physical activity. © 2018 The Author(s).

We aim to bring together a number of researchers to share their stories and discuss opportunities for improvement in research practice with Third Sector Organisations such as charities, NGOs, and other not-for-profit organisations. Through these discussions, we will develop a framework for good practice, providing guidance on conducting research with these organisations, their staff, and their beneficiaries through ethical methodologies and methods. We will do this by discussing three ways in which working with TSOs impact the work we do: (1) the ways in which this kind of work impacts the third sector; (2) the ways in which it impacts the research itself; and (3) the ways in which it impacts us as researchers and people. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Smart buildings generate a wealth of data about the spaces they contain. Yet, in evaluating them against occupant needs, sensor data alone is insufficient. Our contribution lies in a re-framing of smart building spaces around the human factor, and a critical lens on the criteria used to evaluate buildings. We propose future work on participatory technologies to evaluate complex and heterogeneous built environments with the people who live and work in them, recognising that their expertise is invaluable in creating quality spaces and ensuring their ongoing and sustainable use. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

The contexts of prison and incarceration are under-explored from a HCI and Design perspective and information about actual everyday life in prison is scarcely available. Whilst some prisons have begun incorporating technology into prison life, this is still in its infancy in terms of prisoner access. This Special Interest Group will provide HCI researchers, Design researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss the potentials and challenges in the prison context. Through participatory exercises we will discuss the particular issues surrounding HCI and Design in prison contexts and for incarcerated individuals. Participants will have opportunities to stay connected after the SIG and to develop collaborations for future research. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Thermal comfort in shared workplaces is often contested and impacts productivity, wellbeing, and energy use. Yet, subjective and situated comfort experiences are rarely captured and engaged with. In this paper, we explore roles for digital surveys in capturing and visualising subjective experiences of comfort in situ for comfort management. We present findings from a 3-week field trial of our prototype system called ThermoKiosk, which we deployed in an open plan, shared office with a history of thermal comfort complaints. In interviews with occupants and members of facilities management, we find that the data and interactions can play an important role in initiating dialogue to understand and handle tensions, and point to design considerations for more systematically integrating them into workplace comfort practices. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Solidarity organizations in Europe are committed to building a more socially just society through a better configuration of democracy, politics and economy. In this paper, we describe our efforts to contribute to the sociopolitical designed innovation of solidarity movements through the establishment of a research lab embedded in, and operating within, the solidarity economy. We describe three cases that span the polarities of everyday and expert design, and contribute to the scaling out of social innovations. We use these cases to exemplify the strategies and tactics that emerge from the ongoing negotiation of'infrastructuring' work with solidarity organizations. Finally, we discuss how guerilla infrastructuring, designing coalitions, and spanning design polarities can contribute to HCI and design for social innovation more generally. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

While user participation is central to HCI, co-inquiry takes this further by having participants direct and control research from conceptualisation to completion. We describe a co-inquiry, conducted over 16 months with a Parkinson's support group. We explored how the participation of members might be enabled across multiple stages of a research project, from the generation of research questions to the development of a prototype. Participants directed the research into developing alternative modes of information provision, resulting in'Parkinson's Radio' - a collectivist health information service produced and edited by members of the support group. We reflect on how we supported participation at different stages of the project and the successes and challenges faced by the team. We contribute insights into the design of collectivist health technologies for this group, and discuss opportunities and tensions for conducting co-inquiry in HCI research. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Stammering is a speech disorder affecting approximately 1% of the worldwide population. It can have associated impacts on daily life, such as loss of confidence in social situations and increased anxiety levels (particularly when speaking to strangers). Work exploring the development of digital tools to support people who stammer (PwS) is emerging. However, there is a paucity of research engaging PwS in the design process, with participation being facilitated mainly in testing phases. In this paper, we describe the user-centered design, development and evaluation of StammerApp, a mobile application to support PwS. We contribute insights into the challenges and barriers that PwS experience day-to-day and reflect on the complexities of designing with this diverse group. Finally, we present a set of design recommendations for the development of tools to support PwS in their everyday interactions, and provide an example of how these might be envisioned through the StammerApp prototype. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

We explore the role of digital media in supporting intergenerational interactions between people with dementia and young people. Though meaningful social interaction is integral to quality of life in dementia, initiating conversation with a person with dementia can be challenging, especially for younger people who may lack knowledge of someone's life history. This can be further compounded without a nuanced understanding of the nature of dementia, along with an unfamiliarity in leading and maintaining conversation. We designed a mobile application - Ticket to Talk - to support intergenerational interactions by encouraging young people to collect media relevant to individuals with dementia to use in conversations with people with dementia. We evaluated Ticket to Talk through trials with two families, a care home, and groups of older people. We highlight difficulties in using technologies such as this as a conversational tool, the value of digital media in supporting intergenerational interactions, and the potential to positively shape people with dementia's agency in social settings. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Workplace bullying and harassment have been identified as two of the most concerning silent and unseen occupational hazards of the 21st century. The design of bespoke training addressing domain-specific job roles and relations presents a particular challenge. Using the concept of data-in-place where data is understood as being bound and produced by a particular place, this paper describes how locally-situated accounts can be used to engage employees in workplacespecific training seminars. Using higher education as a case study, we describe a four-stage design process for future training efforts: (1) in-depth interviews for further understanding of bullying and harassment; (2) design of digital probes for capturing contextual data; (3) probe deployment and subsequent data analysis; (4) data-driven discussion-based seminars. We outline the potential for digital probes in promoting the denormalization of toxic workplace cultures, considerations for novel sensitive data governance models, and the discussion of data-in-place's temporal dimension. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Rich metadata is becoming a key part of the broadcast production pipeline. This information can be used to deliver compelling new consumption experiences which are personalized, location-aware, interactive and multi-screen. However, media producers are struggling to generate the metadata required for such experiences, using inefficient post-production solutions which are limited in how much of the original context they can capture. In response, we present Media of Things (MoT), a tool for on-location media productions. MoT enables practical and flexible generation of sensor based point-of-capture metadata. We demonstrate how embedded ubiquitous sensing technologies such as the Internet of Things can be leveraged to produce context rich, time sequenced metadata in a production studio. We reflect on how this workflow can be integrated within the constraints of broadcast production and the possibilities that emerge from access to rich data at the beginning of the production lifecycle to produce well described media for reconfigurable consumption. © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Fine-grained product feature extraction is the most important task in opinion mining. To realize the fine-grained product feature extraction in Chinese reviews, three main tasks have been solved in this paper. Firstly, we propose a dependency parsing based method to directly extract the explicit feature-opinion pairs. Then, by analyzing the characteristics of two synonyms features and the relations with opinion words, we calculate the similarities to cluster features. Finally, we propose a novel implicit feature extraction method by combining review context information and two kind opinions to extract implicit features. Experiments show that the dependency parsing based method can get high precision, by considering verbs as product feature can improve the recall obviously. Besides, several proven pruning strategies can improve the accuracy. The comparison demonstrates that our implicit feature extraction method outperforms existing method, and feature clustering before implicit feature mining can get better results. © 2017 IEEE.

Along with the proliferation of social networking sites (SNS), people around the world have gained the ability to influence each other in terms of many aspects of lives may it be a political interest or a simple purchase decision. However, most of the SNS studies have employed social influence constructs that were established prior to the advent of SNS to understand the nature and impact of social influence. Even though the application of such theories for SNS has generated a wealth of knowledge, it is vital to acknowledge the necessity of a new perspective that is specific to the current context. Therefore, we conducted a review of 65 studies to explore which social influence constructs have been employed by previous SNS studies and introduced five boundary conditions that should be taken into consideration when employing social influence theory for future SNS studies. © 2018 Chandrasekara and Sedera.

Recent security breaches have highlighted the consequences of reusing passwords across online accounts. Recent guidance on password policies by the UK government recommend an emphasis on password length over an extended character set for generating secure but memorable passwords without cognitive overload. This paper explores the role of three nudges in creating website-specific passwords: financial incentive (present vs absent), length instruction (long password vs no instruction) and stimulus (picture present vs not present). Mechanical Turk workers were asked to create a password in one of these conditions and the resulting passwords were evaluated based on character length, resistance to automated guessing attacks, and time taken to create the password. We found that users created longer passwords when asked to do so or when given a financial incentive and these longer passwords were harder to guess than passwords created with no instruction. Using a picture nudge to support password creation did not lead to passwords that were either longer or more resistant to attacks but did lead to account-specific passwords. © Dupré et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. Proceedings of British HCI 2018. Belfast, UK

In e-commerce platforms, the question-answering style reviews are emerging, which usually contains much aspect-related information about products. In this paper, Question-answering (QA) aspect classification is a new task that aims to identify the aspect category of a given QA text pair. According to characteristics of QA-style reviews, we draw up annotation guidelines and build a high-consistency annotated corpus for QA aspect classification. Then, we propose a recurrent neural network based on multi-attention representation to tackle this new task. Specifically, we firstly segment the answer text into clauses, and then leverage the multi-attention representation layer to match the question text with clauses inside answer text and generate multiple attention representations of the question text, which extends feature information of the question text. The experimental results demonstrate that our method for QA aspect classification, which is based on multi-attention representation, can make the most of useful information in answer texts and perform better than some strong baselines in QA aspect classification. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018.

In e-commerce websites, user-generated question-answering text pairs generally contain rich aspect information of products. In this paper, we address a new task, namely Question-answering (QA) aspect classification, which aims to automatically classify the aspect category of a given QA text pair. In particular, we build a high-quality annotated corpus with specifically designed annotation guidelines for QA aspect classification. On this basis, we propose a hierarchical attention network to address the specific challenges in this new task in three stages. Specifically, we firstly segment both question text and answer text into sentences, and then construct (sentence, sentence) units for each QA text pair. Second, we leverage a QA matching attention layer to encode these (sentence, sentence) units in order to capture the aspect matching information between the sentence inside question text and the sentence inside answer text. Finally, we leverage a self-matching attention layer to capture different importance degrees of different (sentence, sentence) units in each QA text pair. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed hierarchical attention network outperforms some strong baselines for QA aspect classification. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018.

Despite polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) being the most common endocrine condition affecting reproductive-aged women, studies have shown the information needs of PCOS consumers are not currently met. The expressed need by women with PCOS for accessible, evidence-based personalized PCOS information informed the design and development of the PCOS mobile tool-AskPCOS. The App provides a range of unique features such as: evidence-based PCOS health information, self-diagnostic function, a question prompt list to optimize health practitioner engagement, and a commonly asked questions list. A five-phase App development process involved extensive stakeholder consultation, system architecture design, development of the content repository, system prototyping, and evaluation. AskPCOS is the first evidence-based, consumer-driven mobile App developed by women and for women with PCOS and utilizes innovative technology to empower PCOS consumers and optimize health outcomes. The App content repository is enhanced by the best available evidence and expertise extracted from the International Evidence-Based Guideline in PCOS (2018). The AskPCOS App has extensive data capture capability through the usage of data gathering functions and backend analytics to optimize responsiveness to consumer needs. In addition, the multilingual content and not-for-profit cost model is designed to facilitate worldwide adoption of the tool, and address PCOS information inequities in developing countries. © 2018 by Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.

Considering the adoption and the continuous proliferation of social media platforms, the human degradation through social media is becoming much more sinister than what it appears on the surface. The objective of this research is to investigate how the social media usage influences subjective well-being of individuals. To investigate this, we applied the Buddhist philosophical perspectives to assess human qualities through five defilements (Nyanaponika Thera 1993) and in addition, we investigate the moderating role of the number of friends and time spent on social media for life satisfaction. By analyzing data collected from 480 sample, the study makes interesting insights into dark side of social media for social well-being.

This article presents a number of perspectives on mortality in light of both Victorian mourning and memento mori jewelry and bereavement therapy and grieving. Both help to reveal valuable qualities for digital design. The article then illustrates how these qualities influenced the design of four digital lockets, examining how both Victorian and modern practices relate to mortality, mourning, grief, and death, and exploring possibilities for digital design. Finally, ongoingness-by reference to the work of artist Moira Ricci-is explained as both a theoretical construct and a resource for design practice. Central in the proposal is the notion that, rather than being distanced or detached from the deceased (as has been the predominant grieving therapy approach of modernity), the bereaved can continue to have an active and growing relationship with them. © 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

User identification on interactive surfaces is a desirable feature that is not inherently supported by existing technologies. We have conducted an extensive survey of existing identification techniques, which led us to formulate a unified model for user identification.We start by introducing this model that (1) classifies existing user identification approaches in five categories according to the identification technology, (2) identifies eight characteristic identification system parameters, and (3) proposes a way for visualizing the system's characteristics as points on a radar chart to allow for quick comparison and contrast between systems. This model is then used to present our survey of existing user identification approaches and visualize their characteristics, highlighting their strengths and limitations. The model also makes it possible to visually represent requirements of systems that require user identification, identify existing approaches that can meet an application's requirements, and help report on and evaluate new approaches to user identification systematically. 2017 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Current eye tracking technologies have a number of drawbacks when it comes to practical use in real-world settings. Common challenges, such as high levels of daylight, eyewear (e.g. spectacles or contact lenses) and eye make-up, give rise to noise that undermines their utility as a standard component for mobile computing, design, and evaluation. To work around these challenges, we introduce CrowdEyes, a mobile eye tracking solution that utilizes crowdsourcing for increased tracking accuracy and robustness. We present a pupil detection task design for crowd workers together with a study that demonstrates the high-level accuracy of crowdsourced pupil detection in comparison to state-of-the-art pupil detection algorithms. We further demonstrate the utility of our crowdsourced analysis pipeline in a fixation tagging task. In this paper, we validate the accuracy and robustness of harnessing the crowd as both an alternative and complement to automated pupil detection algorithms, and explore the associated costs and quality of our crowdsourcing approach.

The built environment remains a persistent accessibility challenge for people with mobility impairments. Whilst platforms to report these inaccessible locations exist, the underlying documentation processes are verbose, time-consuming and fail to effectively communicate the barrier at hand. We propose WheelieMap, a platform which uses the motion of manual wheelchair users to support the identification and documentation of potentially problematic locations. WheelieMap captures and segments device video footage and GPS as evidence of the problematic space, which can then be shared with both other people with disabilities and the relevant authorities. We document the use of the WheelieMap prototype by both manual wheelchair users and planning experts through semi-structured interviews. The qualitative findings revealed this approach to be the most viable route for documenting inaccessibility, compared to the existing alternatives. We also offer guidance on how to design and develop similar community driven reporting and annotation systems in the accessibility setting.

Aiming at the problem that local precision and edge details are difficult to preserve in the existing process of image registration, an improved image feature extraction algorithm AKAZE-ILDB (accelerated KAZE-improved local difference binary) is proposed based on the A-KAZE algorithm. First, this algorithm uses nonlinear diffusion filtering equation to construct the image pyramid. The numerical solution is obtained by the fast explicit diffusion (FED) method. The coordinates of the image feature points with subpixel precision are obtained. Then, the invariant image feature vectors are constructed by the improved LDB descriptor. The eigenvectors are matched by KNN (K-nearest neighbor) with Hamming distance. Finally, the spatial mapping parameter matrix is computed based on the affine transformation model to realize image registration. The experimental results show that in terms of registration efficiency, the AKAZE-ILDB algorithm reduces average registration time by 300 ms compared with the original A-KAZE algorithm in the condition of maintaining the same matching accuracy. Meanwhile, the matching accuracy of the same image feature is also improved by 3.7% higher than the A-KAZE algorithm and 29% higher than the traditional feature extraction algorithm SURF (speed up robust feature). © 2017, Editorial Department of Journal of Southeast University. All right reserved.

Understanding, promoting, and teaching media literacy is an important societal challenge. STEM educators are increasingly looking to incorporate 21st century skills such as media literacy into core subject education. In this paper we investigate how undergraduate Computer Science (CS) students can learn media literacy as a by-product of collaborative video tutorial production. The paper presents a study of 34 third-year CS undergraduates who, as part of their learning, were each asked to produce three video tutorials on Raspberry Pi programming, using a collaborative video production tool for mobile phones (Bootlegger). We provide results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the production process and resulting video tutorials, and conclude that the student cohort demonstrated a clear development of media literacy skills. The paper's contribution is twofold. First, we add to the understanding of how the use of mobile collaborative video production technology by non-professionals can help them learn to create meaningful media messages with little scaffolding. Second, we present an alternative pedagogical approach that can help CS students acquire 21st century skills such as media literacy.

We present insights from a series of engagements with multiple stakeholders in local parks, aiming to explore the potential for technology to support bespoke outdoor civic learning activities. Our work investigates what it means to design for public spaces as infrastructures for civic learning. Rather than considering only parks' physical qualities or properties as resources for learning, we suggest that mobile technologies for civic learning would benefit from integrating incorporating the economic, socio-cultural and political infrastructures that comprise public spaces. Our findings identify significant opportunities and challenges in designing mobile applications aimed at fostering civic learning and enhancing the development of meaningful relationships with civic space. From our findings, we draw implications for designing digital platforms which harness places' existing multiple infrastructures as resources for civic learning. We also note technology's limitations, and produce a generalizable model of a civic m-learning design space. © 2017 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

We present an exploration of the potential benefits of connecting music classrooms with the surrounding music community through the act of music remixing. Inspired by the rise of an online participatory culture involving music remixing, we conducted a study where we transposed these activities from their informal, online context to a formal, classroom context. Our goal was not to make students proficient music remixers, but instead to explore whether remixing could serve as a tool to engage learners in their formal education and increase their desire to participate in both online and local music communities. Qualitative methods were used to gather data before Activity Theory was applied to evaluate the issues surrounding moving remixing activities between contexts. Our contribution is three-fold: (1) A demonstration of the benefits and challenges around connecting classrooms to local music communities through music remixing activities (2) Remix Portal, an easy to use music remixing and sharing application which can help young people move beyond a position of passive consumer of music towards a position of active contributor (3) The identification of key design criteria for growing the remixing application into a sustainable and social platform.

With 1,033,513 Syrian refugees adding a strain on the Lebanese healthcare system, innovation is key to improving access to healthcare. Our previous work identified the potential for technology to improve access to antenatal care services and increase refugee agency. Using (1) paper mock ups and a mobile based prototype, (2) process mapping, (3) focus groups and interviews and (4) key informant meetings, we explored the concept of refugee led community radio shows to deliver peerled healthcare.1We observed the influence of community radio shows on Syrian refugee health education, community dynamics and community agency in relationships between healthcare providers and refugees. Refugees were positively impacted through situating the technology within the community. We highlight issues around trust, agency, understanding, self-organization and privacy that resulted from running the shows through mock ups and a mobile based prototype. Our findings inform future work in community run radio shows. © 2017 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Mass adoption and innovation in the field of the Internet of Things has transformed the environments we live in, from stale siloes of technologies into rich interactive playgrounds. Nevertheless, the vast majority of surface area in these spaces are being overlooked and under-utilized in today's research. Surface imaging provides the means to extend and include typically out-of-reach, disconnected objects into these playgrounds. However, existing surface imaging technologies are impractical to embed in everyday environments, restricting researchers from exploring the design and interaction opportunities they can afforded these spaces. In this paper, we propose IRIS, a modular surface imaging prototype capable of providing scalable, low-cost, high-resolution surface imaging. We describe a real-world case study where IRIS is used to identify and track fresh fruit produce being prepared - a task that is typical infeasible with existing technologies. Through IRIS, we hope to enable the community to exploit these under-explored surface areas and enhance the rich, interactive, connected environments we inhabit. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

The application of Organic User Interface (OUI) technologies will revolutionize interior design, through the development of interactive and actuated surfaces, furnishings and decorative artefacts. However, to adequately explore these new design landscapes we must support multidisciplinary collaboration between Architects, Interior Designers and Technologists. Herein, we present the results of two workshops, with a total of 45 participants from the disciplines of Architecture and Interior Design, supported by a group of HCI researchers. Our objective was to study how design disciplines can productively engage with smart materials as a design resource using an evolving set of techniques to prototype new interactive interior spaces. Our paper reports on our experiences across the two workshops and contributes an understanding of techniques for supporting multidisciplinary collaboration when designing interactive interior spaces. © 2017 ACM.

Modern TV viewing has moved away from the traditional shared living room and sofa experience towards consumption on an ever-evolving set of devices, in a variety of locations, as individuals, or as physically co-located and geographically dispersed groups. However, the consumption of broadcast media still remains a relatively linear experience, fixed at production time. Significant interest has surfaced within the broadcast industry into the production of nonlinear, context specific forms of media presentation. The design of these interactive and reconfigurable televisual experiences at a public facing level requires a user-centered approach. Through the collaboration of researchers, designers, practitioners and stakeholders within the television industry, this workshop will provide a focused day for the design of future reconfigurable televisual experiences.

This workshop builds on the success of prior workshops that brought together HCI researchers to share stories about ethical challenges faced when conducting research in sensitive settings. There is growing recognition that reflective and empathetic approaches are needed to conduct ethical research in settings involving people who might be considered vulnerable or marginalized. At our previous workshops, researchers discussed personal experiences and described the complex challenges they have faced in research as diverse as designing information systems for families of children in palliative care [6] to analyzing social media posts about mental health [1]. In this follow-up workshop we aim to extend opportunities for knowledge-sharing, build on the lessons learned, and generate a range of resources to help HCI researchers manage complex ethical issues when working in sensitive settings. Copyright © 2017 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM).

The financial crisis and austerity politics in Europe has had a devastating impact on public services, social security and vulnerable populations. Greek civil society responded quickly by establishing solidarity structures aimed at helping vulnerable citizens to meet their basic needs and empower them to co-create an anti-austerity movement. While digital technology and social media played an important role in the initiation of the movement, it has a negligible role in the movement's on-going practices. Through embedded work with several solidarity structures in Greece, we have begun to understand the 'solidarity economy' (SE) as an experiment in direct democracy and self-organization. Working with a range of solidarity structures we are developing a vision for a 'Solidarity HCI' committed to designing to support personal, social and institutional transformation through processes of agonistic pluralism and contestation, where the aims and objectives of the SE are continuously re-formulated and put into practice. © 2017 ACM.

In this paper, we present 'Care and Connect', a mobile application created through the App Movement platform that aims to identify and rate public places (e.g., parks, shops, cafes) on their 'dementia-friendliness' - their suitability for people with dementia and their carers. Care and Connect saw significant support in its early stages on the online platform, yet failed to engage participants in its design phase and deployment. To unpack this, we contribute an account of its initial use in the community, and then describe findings from research engagements with carers and people with dementia. These workshops used Care and Connect to structure discussions of participants' own experiences of dementia-friendliness, and uncovered themes of 1) trust, 2) exclusion versus inclusion, 3) duration and quality of time, and 4) empathy becoming action. Using this evidence, we advance an account of online community commissioning as a process which needs to understand not only the general issues ongoing in communities facing significant life challenges, but also the particularity of community members' experiences. © 2017 ACM.

In this paper we explore the opportunities, challenges and best practices around designing technologies for those affected by self-harm. Our work contributes to a growing HCI literature on mental health and wellbeing, as well as understandings of how to imbue appropriate value-sensitivity within the digital design process in these contexts. The first phase of our study was centred upon a hackathon during which teams of designers were asked to conceptualise and prototype digital products or services for those affected by self-harm. We discuss how value-sensitive actions and activities, including engagements with those with lived experiences of self-harm, were used to scaffold the conventional hackathon format in such a challenging context. Our approach was then extended through a series of critical engagements with clinicians and charity workers who provided appraisal of the prototypes and designs. Through analysis of these engagements we expose a number of design challenges for future HCI work that considers self-harm; moreover we offer insight into the role of stakeholder critiques in extending and rethinking hackathons as a design method in sensitive contexts. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). © 2017 ACM.

Group Spinner is a digital visual tool intended to help teachers observe and reflect on children's collaborative technology-enhanced learning activities in the classroom. We describe the design of Group Spinner, which was informed by activity theory, previous work and teachers' focus group feedback. Based on a radar chart and a set of indicators, Group Spinner allows teachers to record in-class observations as to different aspects of group learning and learning behaviors, beyond the limited knowledge acquisition measures. Our exploratory study involved 6 teachers who used the tool for a total of 23 classes in subjects ranging from Maths and Geography to Sociology and Art. Semi-structured interviews with these teachers revealed a number of different uses of the tool. Depending on their experience and pedagogy, teachers considered Group Spinner to be a valuable tool to support awareness, reflection, communication, and/or planning. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). © 2017 ACM.

Neighbourhood planning devolves power to communities to create their own planning policy but traditional forms of participation are still relied upon. And despite the ubiquitous nature of technology in society, digital participation methods are rarely used. In this paper, we outline fieldwork with two neighbourhood planning groups who used participatory media technology to improve engagement though the art of storytelling. We focus on the configuration of participatory media as a way to widen participation and enable story creation and sharing amongst citizens. We highlight that storytelling using media technology can provide a model of and a model for the way we 'do' neighbourhood planning whilst emphasising the challenges of ensuring processes are linked to tangible actions and encouraging the multiplicity of stories. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). © 2017 ACM.

Although many common tools of media making such as video cameras have become more accessible in recent years, many remain inaccessible. Cinematography, lighting and sound-recording equipment for example can be prohibitively expensive to obtain, complex to configure, and/or require specialist knowledge to operate effectively. These barriers can prevent non-professionals who want to produce high-quality media from being able to. Cinehack is an ongoing project to research ways to overcome these barriers. In this paper, we specifically report on Cinehack: Cape Town, a participatory media making project. By co-producing hip hop videos within a community for whom media making is often a 'means-to-an-end', we were able gain insights into the kinds of support needed to enable high quality media making by non-professionals. Specifically, we highlight ways to meet users' needs by embracing informal codes of practice via experimental making and peer-support. © 2017 ACM.

There is a growing body of research examining the role of technology in supporting the care of - and relationships surrounding - people with dementia, yet little attention has been given to how this relates to younger family members. We conducted a qualitative study based on a series of 6 co-design workshops conducted with 14 young people who had personal experience with dementia. Initially, our workshops focused on understanding the difficulties that young people face when engaging, interacting and being with people with dementia. Initial analysis of workshop data informed the design of three digital tool concepts that were used as the basis for user enactment workshops. Our findings highlight the young people's desire to be more involved in their family discussions around dementia and a need for them to find new ways to connect with their loved ones with dementia. We offer a set of design considerations for future systems that support these needs and reflect on some of the complexities we faced around engaging young people in this difficult topic of discussion. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). © 2017 ACM.

In this paper, we explore the role of pervasive environmental sensor data in workplace building management. Current interactions between management and workplace occupants are limited by the gap between experiences of (dis)comfort (i.e. individual preferences and perceptions) and the rigid objectivity of organisational policies and procedures such as static setpoint temperatures for indoor spaces. Our hypothesis is that pervasive sensor data that captures the indoor climate can provide an effective platform from which to more successfully communicate about comfort and energy use. Through a qualitative study with building managers and occupants, we show that while data does not necessarily resolve these tensions, it provides an engaging forum for a more inclusive building management process, and we outline directions for taking a more conversational approach in the design of comfort and energy-use interventions for the workplace. © 2017 ACM.

Collecting large-scale population data on dietary intake is challenging, particularly when resources and funding are constrained. Technology offers the potential to develop novel ways of collecting large amounts of dietary information while making it easier, more convenient, intuitive, and engaging for users. INTAKE24 is an online multiple pass 24 h dietary recall tool developed for use in national food and nutrition surveys. The development of INTAKE24 was a four-stage iterative process of user interaction and evaluation with the intended end users, 11–24 years old. A total of 80 11–24 years old took part in the evaluation, 20 at each stage. Several methods were used to elicit feedback from the users including, ‘think aloud’, ‘eye tracking’, semi-structured interviews, and a system usability scale. Each participant completed an interviewer led recall post system completion. Key system developments generated from the user feedback included a ‘flat’ interface, which uses only a single interface screen shared between all of the various activities (e.g., free text entry, looking up foods in the database, portion size estimation). Improvements to the text entry, search functionality, and navigation around the system were also influenced through feedback from users at each stage. The time to complete a recall using INTAKE24 almost halved from the initial prototype to the end system, while the agreement with an interviewer led recall improved. Further developments include testing the use of INTAKE24 with older adults and translation into other languages for international use. Our future aim is to validate the system with recovery biomarkers. © 2017 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Background: Physical activity has not been objectively measured in prospective cohorts with sufficiently large numbers to reliably detect associations with multiple health outcomes. Technological advances now make this possible. We describe the methods used to collect and analyse accelerometer measured physical activity in over 100,000 participants of the UK Biobank study, and report variation by age, sex, day, time of day, and season. Methods: Participants were approached by email to wear a wrist-worn accelerometer for seven days that was posted to them. Physical activity information was extracted from 100Hz raw triaxial acceleration data after calibration, removal of gravity and sensor noise, and identification of wear/non-wear episodes. We report age- and sex-specific wear-time compliance and accelerometer measured physical activity, overall and by hour-of-day, week-weekend day and season. Results: 103,712 datasets were received (44.8% response), with a median wear-time of 6.9 days (IQR:6.5-7.0). 96,600 participants (93.3%) provided valid data for physical activity analyses. Vector magnitude, a proxy for overall physical activity, was 7.5% (2.35mg) lower per decade of age (Cohen's d = 0.9). Women had a higher vector magnitude than men, apart from those aged 45-54yrs. There were major differences in vector magnitude by time of day (d = 0.66). Vector magnitude differences between week and weekend days (d = 0.12 for men, d = 0.09 for women) and between seasons (d = 0.27 for men, d = 0.15 for women) were small. Conclusions: It is feasible to collect and analyse objective physical activity data in large studies. The summary measure of overall physical activity is lower in older participants and age-related differences in activity are most prominent in the afternoon and evening. This work lays the foundation for studies of physical activity and its health consequences. Our summary variables are part of the UK Biobank dataset and can be used by researchers as exposures, confounding factors or outcome variables in future analyses. © 2017 Doherty et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The Healthcare system of India provides outreach services to the rural population with a key focus on the maternal and child health through its flagship program of Community Health Workers (CHWs). The program since its launch has reached a scale of over 900000 health workers across the country and observed significant benefits on the health indicators. However, traditional face to face training mechanisms face persistent challenge in providing adequate training and capacity building opportunities to CHWs which leads to their sub-optimal knowledge and skill sets. In this paper, we propose Sangoshthi, a low-cost mobile based training and learning platform that fits well into the environment of low-Internet access. Sangoshthi leverages the architecture that combines Internet and IVR technology to host real time training sessions with the CHWs having access to basic phones only. We present our findings of a four week long field deployment with 40 CHWs using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Sangoshthi offers a lively environment of peer learning that was well received by the CHW community and resulted into their knowledge gains (16%) and increased confidence levels to handle the cases. Our study highlights the potential of complementary training platforms that can empower CHWs in-situ without the need of additional infrastructure. © 2017 International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2).

Care provision in many nations increasingly relies on the work of informal, or non-professional, carers. Often these carers experience substantial disruptions and reductions to their own sociality, weakened social support networks and, ultimately, a heightened risk of social isolation. We describe a qualitative study, comprised of interviews, design workshops and probes, that investigated the social and community support practices of carers. Our findings highlight issues related to becoming and recognising being a carer, and feelings of being ignored by, and isolated from, others. We also note the benefits that sharing between carers can bring, and routes to coping and relaxing from the burdens of care. We conclude with design considerations for facilitating new forms of digitally mediated support that connect those that care, emphasising design qualities related to transitioning, talking, belonging and escaping. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening allergic reaction which is rapid in onset. Adolescents living with anaphylaxis risk often lack the knowledge and skills required to safely manage their condition or talk to friends about it. We designed an educational intervention comprising group discussion around videos of simulated anaphylaxis scenarios and a mobile application containing video-based branching anaphylaxis narratives. We trialed the intervention with 36 nut allergic adolescents. At 1-year follow-up participants had improved adrenaline auto-injector skills and carriage, disease- and age-specific Quality of Life and confidence in anaphylaxis management. At 3-year follow-up adrenaline carriage improved further and confidence remained higher. Participants expressed how the education session was a turning point in taking control of their allergy and how the app facilitated sharing about anaphylaxis with others. We contribute insights regarding design of mobile self-care and peer-support applications for health in adolescence, and discuss strengths and limitations of video-based mobile health interventions.

This paper discusses Citizen Tagger (CT), a mobile application for tagging audio-based chat-show content. The application allows users to create audio and text tags (annotations). Through an iterative design process, CT was designed and deployed with 16 members of a faith-based community who tagged a panel discussion about ‘faith and vocation’. Based on usage statistics, analysis of created tags, and other qualitative data, the user experiences of tag creation were assessed. Questions around how to configure tagging-related parameters were investigated, and diverse user motivations for creating tags were also explored. Tagging was discovered to be a subjective experience, with participants expressing a desire to customise their tagging setup. Furthermore, despite being instructed to tag for content organisation and retrieval, users utilised tagging as a tool for self-reflection. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2017.

In this paper, we reflect upon the ethical dilemmas faced during our research exploring the potential of Google Glass as a self-care technology for people with Parkinson's. Our project involved two stages of research: an initial study that explored the overall acceptability and responses of people with Parkinson's to the technology; and a follow-up study that examined participants' experiences of the technology in more depth through further trials and a series of co-design activities. While our first trials were successful, leading to publication and subsequent local and national publicity, our follow-up trials were hampered by technical problems that were often out of our control. We highlight how participants' heightened expectations prior to the second trial, as a result of public discourse around the project, were difficult to meet. This led to our participants articulating their frustrations, feelings of lowered self-confidence, and in some cases a reduced sense of self-worth. We reflect on how the decisions and actions taken during the project led to these dilemmas, and how these relate to contemporary challenges in human-computer interaction research where there is increased focus on in the wild studies of technology use and a pressure to publicly disseminate the findings of research. In doing so, we offer an open and honest account of how a set of ethical dilemmas emerged while conducting technology field trials with a potentially vulnerable group, and offer guidance to future researchers finding themselves in similar circumstances. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Computer Society.

Background. Late-life depression (LLD) is associated with a decline in physical activity. Typically this is assessed by self-report questionnaires and, more recently, with actigraphy. We sought to explore the utility of a bespoke activity monitor to characterize activity profiles in LLD more precisely. Method. The activity monitor was worn for 7 days by 29 adults with LLD and 30 healthy controls. Subjects underwent neuropsychological assessment and quality of life (QoL) (36-item Short-Form Health Survey) and activities of daily living (ADL) scales (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale) were administered. Results. Physical activity was significantly reduced in LLD compared with controls (t = 3.63, p < 0.001), primarily in the morning. LLD subjects showed slower fine motor movements (t = 3.49, p < 0.001). In LLD patients, activity reductions were related to reduced ADL (r = 0.61, p < 0.001), lower QoL (r = 0.65, p < 0.001), associative learning (r = 0.40, p = 0.036), and higher Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale score (r = -0.37, p < 0.05). Conclusions. Patients with LLD had a significant reduction in general physical activity compared with healthy controls. Assessment of specific activity parameters further revealed the correlates of impairments associated with LLD. Our study suggests that novel wearable technology has the potential to provide an objective way of monitoring real-world function. © 2016 Cambridge University Press.

Online dietary assessment tools offer a convenient, low cost alternative to traditional dietary assessment methods such as weighed records and face-to-face interviewer-led 24-h recalls. INTAKE24 is an online multiple pass 24-h recall tool developed for use with 11–24 year-old. The aim of the study was to undertake a comparison of INTAKE24 (the test method) with interviewer-led multiple pass 24-h recalls (the comparison method) in 180 people aged 11–24 years. Each participant completed both an INTAKE24 24-h recall and an interviewer-led 24-h recall on the same day on four occasions over a one-month period. The daily energy and nutrient intakes reported in INTAKE24 were compared to those reported in the interviewer-led recall. Mean intakes reported using INTAKE24 were similar to the intakes reported in the interviewer-led recall for energy and macronutrients. INTAKE24 was found to underestimate energy intake by 1% on average compared to the interviewer-led recall with the limits of agreement ranging from minus 49% to plus 93%. Mean intakes of all macronutrients and micronutrients (except non-milk extrinsic sugars) were within 4% of the interviewer-led recall. Dietary assessment that utilises technology may offer a viable alternative and be more engaging than paper based methods, particularly for children and young adults. © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

We present the design, deployment and evaluation of three configurations of an online learning activity for would-be social innovators and activists, with the aim of understanding the factors that are critical to the design of an infrastructure to support such communities of learners. Our research was inspired and motivated by the example of SOLEs (self-organised learning environments) and builds upon the experiences of early connectivist MOOCs (massive open online courses). Our configurations were used to deliver three pilot courses on the topic of Sustainable Development, in partnership with United World Colleges (an organisation of international schools). Our work is distinctive in putting a focus on civic engagement and the autonomy of student learners throughout the course. Our primary design goals were to enable activist empowerment, self-organized learning, and the creation of social bonds to facilitate a lasting and self-sufficient international activist community. We base our analysis on a sample of 114 active learners and 33 mentors; including data from 223 applications, 705 Facebook posts, 48 participant survey responses and a variety of quantitative metrics.

Aiming at the low accuracy rate of the generalized sequence pattern (GSP) algorithm on product feature extraction from Chinese online reviews, a secondary pruning algorithm is proposed. In this algorithm, based on the candidate collection of the output of the GSP algorithm, the term pair co-occurrence weight (TPCW) is used as the threshold for further filtering to improve the accuracy rate. The customized tools are used to crawl the product Chinese reviews of cameras from Jingdong website. 1 000 reviews are selected as the experimental data and the segmentation tool ICTCLAS is used on the word segmentation and data preprocessing. The proposed algorithm is compared with the GSP algorithm, the cross language model (CLM), and the likelihood ratio test (LRT). The results show that the accuracy rate of the proposed algorithm on product feature extraction from Chinese online reviews is 76.37%, which is higher than those of the GSP algorithm, CLM and LRT by 2.94%, 5.77% and 7.57%, respectively. © 2016, Editorial Department of Journal of Southeast University. All right reserved.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platforms have been widely deployed in resource-limited settings. These systems tend to afford asynchronous push interactions, and within the context of health, provide medication reminders, descriptions of symptoms and tips on self-management. Here, we present the development of an IVR system for resource-limited settings that enables real-time, synchronous interaction. Inspired by community radio, and calls for health systems that are truly local, we developed 'Sehat ki Vaani'. Sehat ki Vaani is a real-time IVR platform that enables hosting and participation in radio chat shows on community-led topics. We deployed Sehat ki Vaani with two communities in North India on topics related to the management of Type 2 diabetes and maternal health. Our deployments highlight the potential for synchronous IVR systems to offer community connection and localised sharing of experience, while also highlighting the complexity of producing, hosting and participating in radio shows in real time through IVR. We discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of synchronous IVR systems, and highlight lessons learnt for interaction design in this area.

We present Speeching, a mobile application that uses crowdsourcing to support the self-monitoring and management of speech and voice issues for people with Parkinson's (PwP). The application allows participants to audio record short voice tasks, which are then rated and assessed by crowd workers. Speeching then feeds these results back to provide users with examples of how they were perceived by listeners unconnected to them (thus not used to their speech patterns). We conducted our study in two phases. First we assessed the feasibility of utilising the crowd to provide ratings of speech and voice that are comparable to those of experts. We then conducted a trial to evaluate how the provision of feedback, using Speeching, was valued by PwP. Our study highlights how applications like Speeching open up new opportunities for selfmonitoring in digital health and wellbeing, and provide a means for those without regular access to clinical assessment services to practice- and get meaningful feedback on-their speech.

This paper describes the challenges and lessons learned in the experience-centered design (ECD) of the Spheres of Wellbeing, a technology to promote the mental health and wellbeing of a group of women, suffering from significant mental health problems and living in a medium secure hospital unit. First, we describe how our relationship with mental health professionals at the hospital and the aspirations for person-centric care that we shared with them enabled us, in the design of the Spheres, to innovate outside traditional healthcare procedures. We then provide insights into the challenges presented by the particular care culture and existing services and practices in the secure hospital unit that were revealed through our technology deployment. In discussing these challenges, our design enquiry opens up a space to make sense of experience living with complex mental health conditions in highly constrained contexts within which the deployment of the Spheres becomes an opportunity to think about wellbeing in similar contexts.

Crowdsourced video is now a viable tool with which broadcasters and communities alike can produce authentic, high quality video content. However, the literacy, language, skills and tools to produce a documentary through commissioning content are currently difficult to acquire. We explore opening up the documentary film commissioning process to community contributors by developing a framework which instructs, guides and informs nonprofessional contributors in capturing the content required for making videos. Through the results of an in-the-wild deployment we discuss how our framework scaffolds content creation, the capture of high quality footage and coordination amongst teams of contributors. We then discuss how this can inform community media creation in the future.

There is an increasing demand to encourage inclusivity in the design of digital services. In response to this issue we have created App Movement, a platform that enables the promotion, collaborative design, and deployment of community-commissioned mobile applications. The platform facilitates collaborative customization of a common app template, for which the development and deployment of the app is fully automated. We describe the motivation, design and implementation of App Movement, and report the findings from an 8 month deployment wherein 27 campaigns were created, 11 of which have been successful, and over 1,600 users pledged their support using the platform. We present three case studies to demonstrate its use and adoption in successful and unsuccessful campaigns. We discuss the implications of these studies, including questions of governance (ownership of content, liability of user generated content and moderation), sustainability and the potential to extend App Movement beyond location-based review apps.

The use of data and metrics on a professional and personal level has led to considerable discourse around the performative power and politics of 'big data' and data visualization, with academia being no exception. We have developed a university system, ResViz, which publicly visualizes the externally funded research projects of academics, and their internal collaborations. We present an interview study that engages 20 key stakeholders, academics and administrators who are part of the pilot release for the first version of this system. In doing so, we describe and problematize our design space, considering the implications of making metrics visible and their social use within a large organization. Our findings cut across the way people communicate, review and manage performance with metrics. We raise seven design issues in this space - practical considerations that expose the tensions in making metrics available for public contestation.

Surveillance, literally the 'close watching over' of a person or a group, was historically carried out to monitor adversaries and criminals. The digital era of sensor-rich, connected devices means that new forms of everyday surveillance - what some are calling 'dataveillance' - are emerging. These are changing the power structures that link people, businesses and governments. In this multidisciplinary, one day workshop, we seek to rethink and understand everyday surveillance practices, asking: what are new forms of surveillance that accompany developments in Big Data and the emerging Internet of Things; what are the anticipated and unanticipated effects of a surveillance culture; how does surveillance need to be (re)configured in order to empower the citizen or contribute to social good? We will ask who 'owns' the data that arises from these everyday acts of surveillance and what can result from rethinking these ownership models. We will consider the role and place of research in surveillance data collection and analysis. © 2016 Authors.

In the HCI community, there is growing recognition that a reflective and empathetic approach is needed to conduct ethical research in sensitive settings with people who might be considered vulnerable or marginalized. At our CHI 2015 workshop on ethical encounters, researchers shared personal stories of the challenges and tensions they have faced when conducting HCI research in complex settings such as hospitals, with young mental health patients, in schools for children with disabilities, and with homeless people. These research contexts can present significant challenges for HCI researchers who would not typically receive the training that other professionals working in these environments would normally receive. From our discussions with attendees at the CHI 2015 workshop, we identified a number of ethical issues that researchers are grappling with. In this follow-up workshop we aim to build on the lessons learned and to generate pragmatic but sensitive solutions to manage complex ethical issues for HCI researchers working in challenging settings. © 2016 Authors.

We present an interactivity demonstration of Expressy. A system that augments existing touchscreen devices with a variety of continuous expressive interaction capabilities, using movement data from a wrist-worn IMU. Our demonstration comprises a set of applications that show how the expressive touch interaction capabilities, offered by Expressy, can enable intuitive and meaningful interactions, in contexts including productivity, entertainment and lifestyle apps. This demo submission accompanies a full paper, describing a conceptual model of expressive touch interaction and the implementation and evaluation of Expressy. © 2016 Authors.

There are currently over 1.1 million Syrian refugees in need of healthcare services from an already overstretched Lebanese healthcare system. Access to antenatal care (ANC) services presents a particular challenge. We conducted focus groups with 59 refugees in rural Lebanon to identify contextual and cultural factors that can inform the design of digital technologies to support refugee ANC. Previously identified high utilization of smartphones by the refugee population offers a particular opportunity for using digital technology to support access to ANC as well as health advocacy. Our findings revealed a number of considerations that should be taken into account in the design of refugee ANC technologies, including: refugee health beliefs and experiences, literacy levels, refugee perceptions of negative attitudes of healthcare providers, and hierarchal and familial structures.

The recent refugee crisis has escalated and expanded in to a global challenge. In their flight from hostility, refugee populations face challenges in accessing services that are often compounded by political and social tensions. The urgency and complexity of the situation calls for HCI researchers to contribute to the management of this crisis. This SIG aims to bring to the surface the challenges faced by refugees and elicit the experiences of the authors. It also calls for forming a collaborative network of researchers that have an interest in innovatively addressing issues surrounding refugee populations. © 2016 Authors.

Expressiveness, which we define as the extent to which rich and complex intent can be conveyed through action, is a vital aspect of many human interactions. For instance, paint on canvas is said to be an expressive medium, because it affords the artist the ability to convey multifaceted emotional intent through intricate manipulations of a brush. To date, touch devices have failed to offer users a level of expressiveness in their interactions that rivals that experienced by the painter and those completing other skilled physical tasks. We investigate how data about hand movement - provided by a motion sensor, similar to those found in many smart watches or fitness trackers - can be used to expand the expressiveness of touch interactions. We begin by introducing a conceptual model that formalizes a design space of possible expressive touch interactions. We then describe and evaluate Expressy, an approach that uses a wrist-worn inertial measurement unit to detect and classify qualities of touch interaction that extend beyond those offered by today's typical sensing hardware. We conclude by describing a number of sample applications, which demonstrate the enhanced expressive interaction capabilities made possible by Expressy.

The current economic crisis has thrown the relationship between citizens, communities and the state into sharp relief. Digital Civics is an emerging cross-disciplinary area of research that seeking to understand the role that digital technologies can play in supporting relational models of service provision, organization and citizen empowerment. In particular, how digital technologies can scaffold a move from transactional to relational service models, and the potential of such models to reconfigure power relations between citizens, communities and the state. Through examples of Digital Civics systems. that question conventional models of service provision, this SIG aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to critically discuss and explore the theoretical underpinnings, development and deployment of digital tools, platforms and processes within a Digital Civics research agenda. © 2016 Authors.

We consider the findings of a study of the experiences of Postgraduate Researchers with Disabilities and explore how this relates to academic freedom. Drawing upon the provisions of the Public Sector Equality Duty and Indirect Discrimination within the Equality Act (2010), we note that a range of existing public policy practices, such as the operation of the REF, are likely to be in breach of these obligations. We recommend revisions to existing practice that speak more widely to the general concern of academic freedom, suggesting that a consideration of anti-discrimination law - rather than a purely intellectually focussed agenda - represents a pragmatic means towards shaping the inclusivity of higher education policy going forwards. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The emergence of participatory, on-demand and interactive media is changing the media production landscape. Producing interactive media is often more complex than creating traditional linear films, resulting in increased pressure for production teams. In this paper we explore what implications this has for cast and crew who participate in the production of such new media. We explore how collaborative technologies can support creative practitioners, within these challenging settings. We present TryFilm, a collaborative editing system, designed by the authors and deployed during an interactive film shoot by a small film company featuring a cast of early career actors. © 2016 ACM.

Digital technology is increasingly used in humanitarian action and promises to improve the health and social well-being of populations affected by both acute and protracted crises. We set out to (1) review the current landscape of digital technologies used by humanitarian actors and affected populations, (2) examine their impact on health and well-being of affected populations, and (3) consider the opportunities for and challenges faced by users of these technologies. Through a systematic search of academic databases and reports,weidentified 50digital technologies used by humanitarian actors, and/or populations affected by crises. We organized them according to the stage of the humanitarian cycle that they were used in, and the health outcomes or determinants of health they affected. Digital technologies were found to facilitate communication, coordination, and collection and analysis of data, enabling timely responses in humanitarian contexts.A lack of evaluation of these technologies, a paternalistic approach to their development, and issues of privacy and equity constitutedmajor challenges.Wehighlight the need to create a space for dialogue between technology designers and populations affected by humanitarian crises. © 2016 The Authors.

Background: Effective weight loss interventions are widely available but, after weight loss, most individuals regain weight. This article describes the protocol for the NULevel trial evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a systematically developed, inexpensive, scalable, technology-assisted, behavioural intervention for weight loss maintenance (WLM) in obese adults after initial weight loss. Methods/Design: A 12-month single-centre, two-armed parallel group, participant randomised controlled superiority trial is underway, recruiting a total of 288 previously obese adults after weight loss of >5 % within the previous 12 months. Participants are randomly assigned to intervention or control arms, with a 1:1 allocation, stratified by sex and percentage of body weight lost (<10 % vs >10 %). Change in weight (kg) from baseline to 12 months is the primary outcome. Weight, other anthropometric variables and 7-day physical activity (assessed via accelerometer) measures are taken at 0 and 12 months. Questionnaires at 0, 6 and 12 months assess psychological process variables, health service use and participant costs. Participants in the intervention arm initially attend an individual face-to-face WLM consultation with an intervention facilitator and then use a mobile internet platform to self-monitor and report their diet, daily activity (via pedometer) and weight through daily weighing on wirelessly connected scales. Automated feedback via mobile phone, tailored to participants' weight regain and goal progress is provided. Participants in the control arm receive quarterly newsletters (via links embedded in text messages) and wirelessly connected scales. Qualitative process evaluation interviews are conducted with a subsample of up to 40 randomly chosen participants. Acceptability and feasibility of procedures, cost-effectiveness, and relationships among socioeconomic variables and WLM will also be assessed. Discussion: It is hypothesised that participants allocated to the intervention arm will show significantly lower levels of weight regain from baseline than those in the control arm. To date, this is the first WLM trial using remote real-time weight monitoring and mobile internet platforms to deliver a flexible, efficient and scalable intervention, tailored to the individual. This trial addresses a key research need and has the potential to make a vital contribution to the evidence base to inform future WLM policy and provision © 2015 Evans et al.

The sport of dressage has become very popular not only amongst professional athletes but increasingly also for private horse owners. In well-defined tests, rider and horse execute movements, which demonstrate the strength, endurance, and dexterity of the animal as well as the quality of the interaction between rider and horse. Whilst at a professional level intensive expert coaching to refine the skill set of horse and rider is standard, such an approach to progression is not usually viable for the large amateur population. In this paper we present a framework for automated generation of quality feedback in dressage tests. Using on-body sensing and automated measurement of key performance attributes we are able to monitor the quality of horse movements in an objective way. We validated the developed framework in a large-scale deployment study and report on the practical usefulness of automatically generated quality feedback in amateur dressage. © 2015 ACM.

The next generation of human activity recognition applications in ubiquitous computing scenarios focuses on assessing the quality of activities, which goes beyond mere identification of activities of interest. Objective quality assessments are often difficult to achieve, hard to quantify, and typically require domain specific background information that bias the overall judgement and limit generalisation. In this paper we propose a framework for skill assessment in activity recognition that enables automatic quality analysis of human activities. Our approach is based on a hierarchical rule induction technique that effectively abstracts from noise-prone activity data and assesses activity data at different temporal contexts. Our approach requires minimal domain specific knowledge about the activities of interest, which makes it largely generalisable. By means of an extensive case study we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework in the context of dexterity training of 15 medical students engaging in 50 attempts of surgical activities. © ACM 978-1-4503-3574-4/15/09..15.00.

Live television production remains driven by platforms which are modelled on systems developed before digitised technology, with specialised components and systems which were designed and developed entirely for a non-disabled plurality. The effect of this is that skilled production staff who become disabled are unable to continue within their roles, in many cases becoming forced into leaving the television industry entirely. This investigation explores the possibility of using bespoke ubiquitous computing systems to circumvent existing practical and strategic restrictions upon reasonable adjustments in production roles. To make our findings, we draw upon twelve criticality-informed interviews with both production specialists and assistive technology experts, and an ethnographic study conducted in a television production environment. This investigation had a particular emphasis upon what practices are (legally) reasonable to adjust in a production environment, and thus allow the realistic targeting of adjustments to particular combinations of roles and disabilities. Through doing so, we describe a space for re-configuring existing user interfaces, practices and workflows in the production environment, introducing a new paradigm of bespoke assistive technologies. We also discuss the novel implications for both disability discrimination law and ubiquitous computing that arise from our investigation. © 2015, Springer-Verlag London.

Cultural organisations are increasingly looking towards using digital technologies to supplement, augment and extend visitors' experiences of exhibits and museums. In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of MyRun, a 'participatory platform' for a museum. Our goal with MyRun was to use experience-centered design principles of reflecting, recounting and openness as a basis for engaging visitors in sharing stories about experiences related to a nationally significant cultural event. We undertook a qualitative evaluation of the system based upon observations of its use, the contributions visitors made to the platform, and interviews with 10 visitors. We discuss how visitors approached MyRun, contributed and browsed stories, and the challenges associated with the expectations visitors and curators placed on cultural exhibits. We close by identifying a series of design opportunities for future participatory platforms in museum settings. © 2015 ACM.

Upper limb weakness is one of the most distressing, long-term consequences of stroke and can be difficult to rehabilitate due to an overreliance on the opposing limb in everyday life. Previous studies have shown potential for cueing to improve upper limb rehabilitation, although these have been conducted in clinical settings. In this paper we describe CueS, a wrist worn cueing device which prompts the wearer to move their upper limb more frequently in their day to day lives. We conducted two, week-long 'in the wild' deployments of CueS with seven participants to obtain reflections and experiences around using the device. All participants reported increased general activity levels from wearing CueS and objective data showed increased levels of activity following cue provision. We reflect upon the potential of wearable cueing devices for upper limb rehabilitation after stroke.

We present BlobSnake, a casual game designed to help generate new feature representations in the context of Human Activity Recognition. Feature selection is an essential task to be completed in the context of developing any non-trivial activity recognition system for a new set of activities. Presently, using anything other than a set of standard features requires a considerable amount of effort to be expended upon expert driven algorithm development. BlobSnake is an alternative approach which uses direct interaction with real sensor data by non-experts in order to develop additional features, thus lowering the cost and expertise otherwise required to produce more effective recognition performance. Our experiments demonstrate that our method improves upon the state of the art performance of standard features in a challenging recognition scenario. © 2015 ACM.

Typically, Wearable Computing has raised a wide range of negative legal concerns, ranging from complaints about its potential misuse by car drivers, onto concerns around privacy, confidentiality, and copyright. The result has been that Wearable Computing systems ' most notably Google Glass ' have been banned from being used in a wide range of public spaces. This presentation will explore the overlap between Wearable Computing and Disability Discrimination Law. Through the mechanism of proportionality, Disability Discrimination Law presents a positive case for permitting and actually supporting wearable computing in wider society, creating the scenario where someone with a disability would be entitled to use such technology (regardless of opposition). The Mental Capacity aspects of Disability Discrimination Law also raise novel legal questions around the limits upon who might be able to use Wearable Assistive Technologies, and some significant wider implications for wearable computing more generally. © 2015 ACM.

To date, HCI for mental health has primarily responded to challenges in the treatment of mental illness, with a focus on therapy access and engagement. However, approaches to improving and protecting people's mental wellbeing have received less attention. Prompted by recent discussions in Western Healthcare and Psychology, we argue for a more holistic approach to promoting mental health that expands the field's focus to include strategies for enhancing mental wellbeing. A closer consideration of mental wellbeing can increase the effectiveness of mental health interventions, help in preventing mental illness and relapse, and extend our knowledge as to how we can support people to flourish as individuals and enhance their quality of life more generally. Our aim is to encourage more research on positive aspects of mental health in the treatment and care provision of people with mental health problems, and to support preventive approaches. To this end, the paper provides a comprehensive definition of mental wellbeing as positive emotional, psychological and social health; presents a review of HCI literature illustrating how the field is beginning to respond to the mental wellbeing agenda; and proposes avenues for future design and research in this area. © 2015 ACM.

Newcastle is a flourishing research-focused university. The university?s success comes at a time of economic crisis and austerity in the UK, with local councils being required to make drastic cuts to public services. have explored areas including dementia care, chronic disease, mental health, primary and secondary education, social and community care, and local democracy. Its human-centered and participatory approaches have helped us connect with individuals and communities, providing a rich understanding of the challenges its participants face, while at the same time returning to them systems and services that researchers at the university hoped were meaningful and helpful to them. In 2014, the U.K.?s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council awarded us funding to establish the Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics.

An exploration of current discrimination law reveals new opportunities for promoting the public use of wearable assistive technologies, which can be a powerful impetus for both wearable advocates and researchers exploring design alternatives. © 1970-2012 IEEE.

Participation levels of people with disabilities in the SIGCHI community reflect a general inadequacy in how they are supported, and their interests promoted, within the ACM, the wider computing industry and academia itself. In response, we propose a manifesto for overhauling existing SIGCHI practices to increase the opportunities for including a wide range of disabled people in our research community through dissemination venues such as CHI. We set out the moral case for change, before providing a summary of UK disability discrimination law which we use identify sources of direct and indirect discrimination. Our goal has been to go beyond just accessibility: instead we emphasize disability inclusion in a much broader sense, and articulate a range of steps that can be conducted in order to meet this.

There is currently a widespread uncertainty regarding the ability of citizens to control privacy online in the face of ubiquitous surveillance. This is a huge and complex societal problem. Despite the multi-faceted nature of the problem, we propose that HCI researchers can still make a positive contribution in this space through the design of technologies that support citizens to engage with issues of surveillance. In this paper we describe the design of a messaging application called Captchat. Captchat enables people to send everyday messages embedded into images, with the added ability to apply visual distortions to the message to resemble an online CAPTCHA. We propose the chief benefit would be that Captchat messages (with potentially "one-time" distortions) can increase the difficulty for algorithms to index private messages and necessitate the involvement of much more costly human labor in the surveillance process. We developed a prototype and conducted a user study; the results suggest that people were likely to create Captchat messages that were difficult to index for an OCR package but still easy to understand by humans, even without explicit instructions to interact 'securely' with the application. While more work is still required to understand the limitations of Captchat, we hope it can open discussion on how HCI researchers can respond to the challenges faced from ubiquitous surveillance. Copyright 2015 ACM.

Bootlegger is a system for creating multi-camera films of live music events using mobile devices. Using readily available technology and a synthesis of film-making conventions, the system coordinates music fans at live shows into an improvised film crew, suggesting shots, collating footage and generating rich metadata in real time. Bootlegger is part of a research project exploring adapting professional media workflows to amateur contexts in order to lower the bar to entry for media production. By enabling concert-goers to contribute to high-quality concert films, the system leverages mobile phone 'bootlegging' practices to support emerging musicians. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

As digital payments become increasingly important features of economic exchange, traditional forms of payment such as cash are becoming phased out in certain settings. We study one such context-the elimination of cash payment on London buses in July 2014. We conducted ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with drivers and collected online and social media comments before, during and shortly after the introduction of cashless fares. We explore how drivers and passengers were fearful of the change due in part to a lack of information and communication, the anticipation of negative effects on vulnerable passengers and a compromise in freedom, flexibility and surveillance. We highlight the ways cashless payments can alter the social function of money, create new forms of work for drivers and passengers, and if not carefully introduced can cause emotional stress and fears of state surveillance and control. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

Much of the knowing employed in skilled craft practice is difficult to communicate solely through written or verbal description. Consequently, the reflection and development of a craft practice in this manner may miss important nuances of practitioners' skills and experiences. We created digital technologies to sonify (using audio to perceptualize data) a group of craft practitioners' gestures to explore how we can aid their reflection in and on their craft, and consequently develop it. Over a number of workshops, the design of these sonifications were iterated based on how the practitioners responded to them. We found that direct sonification of gesture (sounds generated directly from motion sensor data) helped practitioners understand and reflect upon their own and each other's practice, encouraged discussion and enabled modification of craft technique. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

This paper examines how London bus drivers have responded to performance monitoring via a telematics device called Drivewell. This device calculates a score based on various recordable driving-related events like abrupt braking or irregular turning actions. Our qualitative methodology incorporated semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in order to explore drivers' attitudes towards the system and its effect on driving behaviour and working conditions. Our findings illustrate how bus operators simultaneously accommodate and resist the demands Drivewell places upon them. Our work also demonstrates how this digital intervention acts in conjunction with other driver-related technologies, creating a unique digital ecosystem on the modern London bus. Our research contributes to HCI understandings of digital surveillance and performance monitoring in the modern workplace. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

We present a method for the situated discovery and articulation of issues at the intersection between the politics of place making and city planning. We describe the construction and use of designed tools, such as historical political archives; counterfactual maps; and cards to invite situated dialogue between the social and institutional practices and mechanisms that produce our cities. Grounded in an account of the political as vernacular and embodied, our analysis advance understandings on the politics of design, and on the complex interrelationship between places and political spaces. We outline how HCI can adopt methods and develop sensitivities to support democratic practices and publics envisioning their urban futures. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

We conducted a study to explore the values and qualities of 'grassroots documentaries', framed around the production of two parallel documentary films with a London-based opera company. A team of professional filmmakers produced one film and the other was an exploratory form of grassroots documentary. We studied the different production activities through observations, interviews and a reflective workshop at the end of the study and evaluated the resulting films. Our analysis reveals critical insights that could inform the next generation of technological systems to support user-generated video content (UGVC) production, particularly in collaborative contexts such as grassroots communities. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

Parkinson's is a complex and multifaceted condition with a myriad of symptoms, thus, designing for and with this user group requires careful consideration. We reflect upon two studies, employing different design methodologies, relating to the design of rehabilitative exergames in Parkinson's. The first explored the concept of designing 'for' People with Parkinson's (PwP) and focused on specifications outlined by clinical stakeholders. The second used a designing 'with' approach and modified a pre-established participatory design method for use with PwP. We call attention to the importance of carrying out design work with PwP and contribute; an empathic understanding of living with Parkinson's, a set of recommendations for how to design with PwP and a set of wider considerations for developing rehabilitative exergames for PwP. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

Reduced vocal volume in Parkinson's is extremely common and can have significant social and emotional impact. We describe the development and evaluation of LApp-an application for Google Glass to help people with Parkinson's (PwP) monitor their speech volume and cue themselves to speak louder when necessary. Our findings highlight enthusiasm for using the application both at home as a volume training tool and in public social settings as a situated cueing device. We contribute insights to the literature on how eyewear technologies can provide assistance to people with health conditions and offer insights for the design of future self-monitoring and management applications on Google Glass. © Copyright 2015 ACM.

Health and care providers are increasingly looking to online and peer-To-peer services to supplement existing channels of assistive living technology (ALTs) provision and assessment. We describe the findings from 12 codesign workshops with 28 people from the UK representing a range of older people with and without health conditions, users of ALT and carers for people using such devices. The workshops were conducted to explore issues related to finding reliable information about ALT with the goal of gathering requirements for the design of a peer-To-peer knowledge sharing platform. Our analysis highlights how a current reliance on peers and informal networks relates to a desire to establish the authenticity and relatability of another person's experience to one's own circumstances. This connects to a perceived mistrust in information where provenance and authenticity is not clear. We use these to critique the wisdom of taking an e-marketplace and recommendation service approach to ALT provision and assessment, and offer alternatives based on our findings. © 2015 ACM.

Well-developed interpersonal skills are crucial for all social interactions. However, understanding how interpersonal skills are taught or learned, and how technology can play a part in this, is yet an under-researched area in CSCW and HCI research. To start addressing this gap, our research explores the learning processes of counselling students, for whom developing interpersonal skills forms a fundamental part of their university education. We followed an iterative process to gain an in-depth understanding of a specific counselling program in the UK, combining interviews and low-fidelity technology prompts. Overall, 26 participants comprising tutors, students and expert counsellors took part. Our findings first provide insights into the highly collaborative and social learning process of the students. We highlight the complexity of interpersonal reflection as a crucial process for developing counselling skills, and identify the challenges to learning that students face. Second, we build on this understanding to draw out empirically grounded design considerations around opportunities for technology innovation in this setting. © 2015 ACM.

In addition to their popularity as personal devices, tablets, are becoming increasingly prevalent in work and public settings. In many of these application domains a supervisor user–such as the teacher in a classroom–oversees the function of one or more devices. Access to supervisory functions is typically controlled through the use of a passcode, but experience shows that keeping this passcode secret can be problematic. We introduce SwipeID, a method of identifying supervisor users across a set of touch-based devices by correlating data from a wrist-worn inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a corresponding touchscreen interaction. This approach naturally supports access at the time and point of contact and does not require any additional hardware on the client devices. We describe the design of our system and the challenge-response protocols we have considered. We then present an evaluation study to demonstrate feasibility. Finally we highlight the potential for our scheme to extend to different application domains and input devices. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2015.

We present an evaluation of an “in the wild” classroom deployment of Co-located Collaborative Writing (CCW), an application for digital tabletops. CCW was adapted to the classroom setting across 8 SMART tables. Here, we describe the outcomes of the 6 week deployment with students aged 13–14, focussing on how CCW operated as a tool for learning within a classroom environment. We analyse video data and interaction logs to provide a group specific analysis in the classroom context. Using the group as the unit of analysis allows detailed tracking of the group’s development over time as part of scheme of work planned by a teacher for the classroom. Through successful integration of multiple tabletops into the classroom, we show how the design of CCW supports students in learning how to collaboratively plan a piece of persuasive writing, and allows teachers to monitor progress and process of students. The study shows how the nature and quality of collaborative interactions changed over time, with decision points bringing students together to collaborate, and how the role of CCW matured from a scaffolding mechanism for planning, to a tool for implementing planning. The study also showed how the teacher’s relationship with CCW changed, due to the designed visibility of groups’ activities, and how lesson plans became more integrated utilizing the flexibility of the technology. These are key aspects that can enhance the adoption of such technologies by both students and teachers in the classroom. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2015.

We report on a user study that compared muscle fatigue experienced when using a large multi-touch display in horizontal and vertical configurations over a one-hour period. Muscle fatigue is recognized as the reduction in a muscle’s capacity to generate force or power output and was measured objectively and subjectively before and after a puzzle-solving task. While subjective measures showed a significant level of overall arm muscle fatigue after the task for both configurations, objective measures showed a significant level of muscle fatigue on the middle deltoids and the non-dominant extensor digitorum for the vertical configuration only. We discuss the design implications of these findings and suggest relevant future areas of investigation. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2015.

This research proposes a solution to establish an effective chronic disease prevention and control mechanism to strengthening public health management in China. This approach is to change from passive medication to active healthcare, which aims to prevent chronic diseases at early stage. The practice in developing one key subsystem of the proposed solution is demonstrated. It provides an intelligent medical platform that links hospitals, patients and community healthcare centers via the Internet to effectively achieve self-monitoring of health conditions and personalized medical treatment of hypertension. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.

Experts share their views on the increasing importance of online video and interactive TV experiences. Four key areas of research in interactive television are content, recommendations, device ecosystems, and user feedback. Research has shown that mixing broadcast content with Internet content is a promising new possibility, with emerging standards such as Hybrid Broadcast Broadband Television (HbbTV) providing frameworks that enable these links for producers. This creates exciting opportunities for enriching TV programs with content from the Web and creating completely new media experiences.

In order to realize automated detection of the effectiveness of Chinese online reviews in the context of e-commerce and social networks, a spam detection model based on logistic regression to solve single topic classification problem is proposed. The detection of effectiveness of Chinese online reviews can be regarded as a classification problem. According to the characteristics of Chinese online reviews, nine features are extracted to build the classification model. In order to extract the core feature-topic relevance, an association rule based review term mode is utilized to optimize the topics identification in ICTCLAS(Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Lexical Analysis System). The cross language model is then used to retrieve relevancy between online review topics. In the experiment, a sample of 1 000 human-labeled reviews is used, and the support vector machine (SVM) classification model is adopted as a comparison. The calculation results of the data mining tool Weka demonstrate that the accuracy rate of the proposed logistic regression classification model based on the optimized review term classification mode is 83.54%, which is 2.10% higher than that of the SVM classification model. ©, 2015, Southeast University. All right reserved.

Ageing has become a significant area of interest in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in recent years. In this article we provide a critical analysis of 30 years of ageing research published across the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) community. Discourse analysis of the content of 644 archival papers highlights how ageing is typically framed as a "problem" that can be managed by technology. We highlight how ageing is typically defined through an emphasis on the economic and societal impact of health and care needs of older people, concerns around socialisation as people age, and declines in abilities and associated reductions in performance when using technology. We draw from research within the fields of social and critical gerontology to highlight how these discourses in SIGCHI literature represent common stereotypes around old age that have also prevailed in the wider literature in gerontology. We conclude by proposing strategies for future research at the intersection of ageing and HCI. © 2015 ACM.

People with high-functioning autism face challenges in communication and social interaction. This article considers the possibility, and perhaps inevitability, of wearable devices such as Google Glass being used as real-time assistive technologies for this group, with the intent of enabling them to better access our complex social world. Social impairments, by their very nature, highlight issues of communication, personal information, and social judgment. In considering such assistive technology in this context, the authors explore new tensions between privacy issues and assistive technologies, especially those of a do-it-yourself nature, which are not immediately solvable within our current privacy frameworks. This article is part of a special issue on privacy and security. © 2015 IEEE.

The joint study of computer security, privacy and humancomputer interaction (HCI) over the last two decades has shaped a research agenda focused upon usable privacy & security. However, in HCI research more generally there has long been an awareness of the need to understand and design for user experience, in recognition of the complex and multi-faceted role that technology now plays in our lives. In this paper we add to the growing discussion by introducing the notion of experiencecentered privacy and security. We argue that in order to engage users of technology around issues related to experiences of privacy and security, research methods are required that may be outside of the normal repertoire of methods that we typically call upon. We describe three projects that developed non-typical research methods to reveal experiential insights into user interactions with privacy and security-related technologies. We conclude by proposing a research agenda that begins to illustrate how the discourse and methods of experience-centered design might serve to provide valuable alternative perspectives on new and enduring user-facing privacy and security problems. Copyright 2014 ACM.

The assessment of surgical skills is an essential part of medical training. The prevalent manual evaluations by expert surgeons are time consuming and often their outcomes vary substantially from one observer to another. We present a video-based framework for automated evaluation of surgical skills based on the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS) criteria. We encode the motion dynamics via frame kernel matrices, and represent the motion granularity by texture features. Linear discriminant analysis is used to derive a reduced dimensionality feature space followed by linear regression to predict OSATS skill scores. We achieve statistically significant correlation (p-value <0.01) between the ground-truth (given by domain experts) and the OSATS scores predicted by our framework. © 2014 IEEE.

This paper reports on the French Digital Kitchen, a design-based project which drew on digital sensor technology to take the principles of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) out of the classroom and into the real-world environment of a kitchen. The project aimed to produce a situated language learning environment where learners could learn aspects of French language and cuisine whilst performing a real-world task. The article describes the blend of TBLT, human-computer interaction (HCI) and usercentred design (UCD) principles the authors adopted in constructing and trialling the kitchen, using multiple data sources. An example of a task cycle is then presented to illustrate (by using CA analysis of transcripts) how learners have used the resources of the kitchen to accomplish the task. The authors' findings show how the integration of the pedagogical and technological design enabled learners to notice and manipulate new vocabulary items. © 2014 by IGI Global. All rights reserved.

Background: Computer based gaming systems, such as the Microsoft Kinect (Kinect), can facilitate complex task practice, enhance sensory feedback and action observation in novel, relevant and motivating modes of exercise which can be difficult to achieve with standard physiotherapy for people with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, there is a current need for safe, feasible and effective exercise games that are appropriate for PD rehabilitation. The aims of this study were to i) develop a computer game to rehabilitate dynamic postural control for people with PD using the Kinect; and ii) pilot test the game's safety and feasibility in a group of people with PD. Methods. A rehabilitation game aimed at training dynamic postural control was developed through an iterative process with input from a design workshop of people with PD. The game trains dynamic postural control through multi-directional reaching and stepping tasks, with increasing complexity across 12 levels of difficulty. Nine people with PD pilot tested the game for one session. Participant feedback to identify issues relating to safety and feasibility were collected using semi-structured interviews. Results: Participants reported that they felt safe whilst playing the game. In addition, there were no adverse events whilst playing. In general, the participants stated that they enjoyed the game and seven of the nine participants said they could imagine themselves using the game at home, especially if they felt it would improve their balance. The Flow State Scale indicated participants were immersed in the gameplay and enjoyed the experience. However, some participants reported that they found it difficult to discriminate between different types and orientations of visual objects in the game and some also had difficulty with the stepping tasks, especially when performed at the same time as the reaching tasks. Conclusion: Computer-based rehabilitation games using the Kinect are safe and feasible for people with PD although intervention trials are needed to test their safety, feasibility and efficacy in the home. © 2014 Galna et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Digital voting is used to support group decision-making in a variety of contexts ranging from politics to mundane everyday collaboration, and the rise in popularity of digital voting has provided an opportunity to re-envision voting as a social tool that better serves democracy. A key design goal for any group decision-making system is the promotion of participation, yet there is little research that explores how the features of digital voting systems themselves can be shaped to configure participation appropriately. In this paper we propose a framework that explores the design space of digital voting from the perspective of participation. We ground our discussion in the design of a social media polling tool called BallotShare; a first instantiation of our proposed framework designed to facilitate the study of decision-making practices in a workplace environment. Across five weeks, participants created and took part in non-standard polls relating to events and other spontaneous group decisions. Following interviews with participants we identified significant drivers and limitations of individual and collective participation in the voting process: social visibility, social inclusion, commitment and delegation, accountability, influence and privacy. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper describes our Experience-Centered Design (ECD) enquiry into the current and potential role of digital photography to support interpersonal expression in a class of children (aged 11-15 years) at a mixed special education needs school. Presented as a case study, we describe five classroom-based creative workshops that engaged pupils with a broad range of complex special needs, and classroom staff. From these workshops, we generated a set of qualitative considerations for the design of digital photographic tools to support interpersonal expression in this setting. Additionally, we present the evaluation of a photo-sorting system we developed in response to our workshop findings and evaluated in the school over a period of 12 months. Our case study demonstrates how an ECD approach can guide a creative interaction design process in a special education needs setting, supporting interaction designers in empathising and responding pragmatically to the complex and dynamic interactions at play between the stakeholders. We further discuss design research approaches to user groups in such settings, and consolidate our insights about conducting research through design for social inclusion. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

We describe the design of an interactive shop window created and installed for use in an independent teahouse. Using cameras to track the gestures of customers on the street front, the system allowed visitors to interact with an animatronic character who helped them choose a 'brew' from over 80 unusual tea varieties. In this paper we describe how we worked with the business owners, observing their practices to develop an understanding of how they helped customers choose one tea out of a large array of appealing possibilities. We describe the design process we undertook when creating the window, and examine the functional, aesthetic, technical and commercial factors that pose challenges when creating a bespoke piece of interactive art for a functioning real-world business.

The Nightingallery project encouraged participants to converse, sing, and perform with a musically responsive animatronic bird, playfully interacting with the character while members of the public could look on and observe. We used Nightingallery to frame an HCI investigation into how people would engage with one another when confronted with unfamiliar technologies in conspicuously public, social spaces. Structuring performances as improvisational street theatre, we styled our method of exhibiting the bird character. We cast ourselves in supporting roles as carnival barkers and minders of the bird, presenting him as if he were a fantastical creature in a fairground sideshow display, allowing him the agency to shape and maintain dialogues with participants, and positioning him as the focal character upon which the encounter was centred. We explored how the anthropomorphic nature of the bird itself, along with the cultural connotations associated with the carnival/sideshow tradition helped signpost and entice participants through the trajectory of their encounters with the exhibit. Situating ourselves as secondary characters within the narrative defining the performance/use context, our methods of mediation, observation, and evaluation were integrated into the performance frame. In this paper, we explore recent HCI theories in mixed reality performance to reflect upon how genre-based cultural connotations can be used to frame trajectories of experience, and how manipulation of roles and agency in participatory performance can facilitate HCI investigation of social encounters with playful technologies. © 2014, Springer-Verlag London.

This article describes the new ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video (ACM TVX) and provides a recap of the 1st ACM TVX, which took place in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, from 25-27 June 2014. © 2014 IEEE.

We describe a qualitative study of delegate engagement with technology in academic conferences through a largescale deployment of prototype technologies. These deployments represent current themes in conference technologies, such as providing access to content and opportunities for socialising between delegates. We consider not just the use of individual technologies, but also the overall impact of an assemblage of interfaces, ranging from ambient to interactive and mobile to situated. Based on a two-week deployment followed by interviews and surveys of attendees, we discuss the ways in which delegates engaged with the prototypes and the implications this had for their experience of the conferences. From our findings, we draw three new themes to inform the development of future conference technologies. Copyright © 2014 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM).

A significant amount wearable computing research is directed towards the development of systems which may help people with disabilities. These systems are increasingly likely to be developed by end users, and at the same time be inherently disruptive. Whether (or not) a system which is developed under such a regime counts as a reasonable adjustment is an unexplored question, yet very significant if disabled people are to fully benefit from wearable assistive technologies. At the same time, there is also the theme of whether a wearable computing system could also be used to enforce accessibility, by offering a convenient measure of whether this concern is being appropriately met. This project is therefore aimed at bringing together the domains of wearable computing and disability discrimination law, to the mutual benefit of both fields.

Delegation is the practice of sharing authority with another individual to enable them to complete a specific task as a proxy. Practices to permit delegation can range from formal to informal arrangements and can involve spontaneous yet finely balanced notions of trust between people. This paper argues that delegation is a ubiquitous yet an unsupported feature of socio-technical computer systems and that this lack of support illustrates a particular neglect to the everyday financial practices of the more vulnerable people in society. Our contribution is to provide a first exploration of the domain of person-to-person delegation in digital payments, a particularly pressing context. We first report qualitative data collected across several studies concerning banking practices of individuals over 80 years of age. We then use analytical techniques centred upon identification of stakeholders, their concerns and interactions, to characterize the delegation practices we observed. We propose a Concerns Matrix as a suitable representation to capture conflicts in the needs of individuals in such complex socio-technical systems, and finally propose a putative design response in the form of a Helper Card. © The Author 2013.

Intimate care is integral to the lifecourse, and it includes care tasks that are linked to personal hygiene, bodily functions and products. In this paper, we explore the potential of eTextiles as catalysts for conversations around intimate care. We designed a kit that integrates eTextiles as the core material to teach and learn about intimate parts of the self and to support body literacy. We deployed this design kit in an educational context, with a group of six female participants aged 15-16. We suggest avenues for future research within health and wellbeing, in combination with smart, wearable materials.

The term Do It Yourself Assistive Technology (DIY-AT) refers to the creation and adaptation of AT by nonprofessionals, including people with disabilities and their families, friends and caregivers. Previous research has argued that the development of technologies and services that enable people to make their own DIY-AT will lead to the rapid and low cost development of assistive devices that are tailored to meet the complex needs of individual people with disabilities. We present the results of a qualitative study that explored challenges related to the process of making DIY-AT for children with disabilities. A series of eleven semi-structured interviews with a broad range of stakeholders involved in the current use, provision and adaptation of AT for children with disabilities revealed a number of challenges relating to the prevalence and scope of ongoing DIY-AT practice, barriers to participation, and the challenges faced by makers and users of DIY-AT. Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Online and digital technologies support and extend the action repertoires of localized social movements. In this paper we examine the ways by which digital technologies can support 'on-the-ground' activist communities in the development of social movements. After identifying some of the challenges of deploying conventional voting and consultation technologies for activism, we examine situated political action in local communities through the design and deployment of a low-cost community voting prototype, PosterVote. We deploy PosterVote in two case studies with two local community organizations identifying the features that supported or hindered grassroots democratic practices. Through interviews with these communities, we explore the design of situated voting systems to support participation within an ecology of social action. Copyright © 2014 ACM.

We present Cinejack, a system for directing narrative video through live musical performance. Cinejack interprets highlevel musical content from live instruments and translates it into cinematographic actions such as edits, framings and simulated camera movements. We describe Cinejack's technical development in terms of a novel and highly pragmatic approach to interface design, where the affordances of users' own musical instruments are used as controllers through an interpretive interaction scheme. Copyright © 2014 ACM.

We explore the possibility of converting computational models of real-world phenomena into computer games. Fusing the fields of computer games and complexity science enables us to not only directly educate the public about science, but also perform valuable scientific research through crowdsourcing whilst introducing genuinely innovative gaming experiences. We highlight the natural overlap between these concerns, before offering our vision as to how to take this forwards as a cohesive research agenda.

We present an approach that allows designers and others to quickly and easily make 3D printed objects interactive, without the need for hardware or software expertise and with little modification to an object's physical design. With our approach, a designer simply attaches or embeds small three-axis wireless accelerometer modules into the moving parts of a 3D printed object. A simple graphical user interface is then used to configure the system to interpret the movements of these accelerometers as if they were common physical controls such as buttons or dials. The designer can then associate events generated by these controls with a range of interactive behavior, including web browser and media player control.

The increase of social media and web blogs has enabled a new generation of citizen journalism to provide new perspectives into local communities. However traditional news organisations are currently struggling to incorporate this new form of journalism into their existing organisational workflow. We present an analysis from 10 interviews with professional journalists and explore the current issues faced by professional journalists when searching for reliable and reputable local news sources as well as the perceived role of citizen journalists within a large news organisation. From this analysis we present a set of design implications for building systems that support interaction between citizen and professional journalists in order to encourage participatory news production and diversify national news perspectives.

In this paper we present insights from an empirical analysis of data from an emergent social movement primarily located on a Facebook page to contribute understanding of the conduct of everyday politics in social media and through this open up research agendas for HCI. The analysis focuses on how interactions and contributions facilitated the emergence of a collective with political will. We lay out an exploration of the intrinsic relationship between cultural memories, cultural expression and everyday politics and show how diverging voices coconstructed dynamic collectives capable of political action. We look at how interactions through the Facebook page challenge traditional ways for conceiving politics and the political. We outline possible research agendas in the field of everyday politics, which are sensitive to the everyday acts of resistance enclosed in the ordinary.

We describe a qualitative study investigating the acceptability of the Google Glass eyewear computer to people with Parkinson's disease (PD). We held a workshop with 5 PD patients and 2 carers exploring perceptions of Glass. This was followed by 5-day field trials of Glass with 4 PD patients, where participants wore the device during everyday activities at home and in public. We report generally positive responses to Glass as a device to instil confidence and safety for this potentially vulnerable group. We also raise concerns related to the potential for Glass to reaffirm dependency on others and stigmatise wearers.

We present an evaluation of Panopticon, a video surrogate system, as an online eLearning support search tool for finding information within video lectures. A comparison was made with a standard video player (YouTube) in two scenarios with two classes of users: Revision students and independent learners. Results showed that users of Panopticon were significantly faster at finding information within the lecture videos than users of the YouTube player. It was also found that videos predominantly featuring a talking lecturer took longest to navigate, presenting design implications for lectures to be uploaded to open eLearning platforms.

We describe the process of insight journalism, in which local amateur journalists were used to generate unique insights into the digital needs of a community. We position this as a means for communities to represent themselves to designers, both as a method of designing community technologies and as a first step towards supporting innovation at a local level. To demonstrate insight journalism, we present two case studies of community technologies that were directly inspired, informed and evaluated by journalistic content. Based on this experience, we evaluate the role that insight journalism can play in designing for communities, the particular characteristics that it lends to the design process and how it might be employed to support sustainable community innovation.

This paper examines how an occupational group has adapted to the demands of working with a Location Based Service (LBS). Instead of following a rigid timetable, London's bus drivers are now required to maintain an equal distance between the bus in front and the one behind. Our qualitative study employs ethnographic fieldwork and indepth semi-structured interviews to elicit drivers' perspectives of the new system and show how it has modified their driving and general work conditions. We explore how passengers influence the movement of the bus and how the technology frames bus drivers' relationships to their managers and commuters. This work contributes to our understanding of the impact of LBS in the workplace and shows how technological imperatives can be established that cause unanticipated consequences and gradually undermine human relationships.

While theatre has been used in HCI as a tool for engaging participants in design processes, the specific benefits of using live theatre over other communicative mediums, remains underexplored. In this paper we introduce Experience Design Theatre (EDT) as an approach to undertaking experience-centered design with multiple parties in the early stages of design. EDT was motivated by a need to involve several diverse groups of people in the design of a digitally coordinated care service- NetCarers. We used live theatre as a way to engage small groups of participants in dialogues around the design of NetCarers, to qualify their contributions in a refined performance, and to communicate their concerns and aspirations to domain experts. We highlight key benefits to using live theatre in experience-centered design and offer insights for researchers undertaking similar work in the future.

The evolving philosophies, methods, and products of CSCW design research are more collaborative and value-active than ever. Researchers and participants may co-construct designs, thus sharing power; they may share intimate life stories over design probes, thus pushing socio-cultural boundaries; they may seek personal fulfillment through the products or the process. How do these experiences affect researcher and co-creator identity in the moment of co-work? How do these changes reconfigure other relationships and encounters? This workshop invites discussants from across disciplines to consider phenomenological aspects of identity-making and to unpack ethical dilemmas that arise when we appreciate the potential for design research itself to significantly harm or help participants. At stake are CSCW policies, best practices, and collective understandings of what it means to be a design researcher.

Background: The Microsoft Kinect sensor (Kinect) is potentially a low-cost solution for clinical and home-based assessment of movement symptoms in people with Parkinson's disease (PD). The purpose of this study was to establish the accuracy of the Kinect in measuring clinically relevant movements in people with PD. Methods: Nine people with PD and 10 controls performed a series of movements which were measured concurrently with a Vicon three-dimensional motion analysis system (gold-standard) and the Kinect. The movements included quiet standing, multidirectional reaching and stepping and walking on the spot, and the following items from the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale: hand clasping, finger tapping, foot, leg agility, chair rising and hand pronation. Outcomes included mean timing and range of motion across movement repetitions. Results: The Kinect measured timing of movement repetitions very accurately (low bias, 95% limits of agreement <10% of the group mean, ICCs >0.9 and Pearson's r>. 0.9). However, the Kinect had varied success measuring spatial characteristics, ranging from excellent for gross movements such as sit-to-stand (ICC. = .989) to very poor for fine movement such as hand clasping (ICC. = .012). Despite this, results from the Kinect related strongly to those obtained with the Vicon system (Pearson's r>. 0.8) for most movements. Conclusions: The Kinect can accurately measure timing and gross spatial characteristics of clinically relevant movements but not with the same spatial accuracy for smaller movements, such as hand clasping. © 2014 The Authors.

HCI has started to explore the positive roles that technology can play in improving the lives of people facing cognitive, emotional, physical, and socioeconomic challenges. Despite this encompassing a large percentage of the population, an overarching characteristic that people facing such challenges likely share is that society considers them vulnerable in one way or another. Workshop participants represented a broad range of disciplines, including HCI, psychology, social science, psychiatry, and participatory design. Researchers aimed to develop a shared understanding of who we considered to be vulnerable and why, and how this enabled or required a sensitive and appropriate way of working with these people in research contexts. Examples discussed at the workshop included working with individuals experiencing Asperger's, dementia, homelessness, cerebral palsy, and grief. Despite the variety of people and conditions, many common themes were apparent.

Panopticon is a video surrogate system that displays multiple sub-sequences in parallel to present a rapid overview of the entire sequence to the user. A novel, precisely animated arrangement slides thumbnails to provide a consistent spatiotemporal layout while allowing any sub-sequence of the original video to be watched without interruption. Furthermore, this output can be generated offline as a highly efficient repeated animation loop, making it suitable for resource-constrained environments, such as web-based interaction. Two versions of Panopticon were evaluated using three different types of video footage with the aim of determining the usability of the proposed system. Results demonstrated an advantage over another surrogate with surveillance footage in terms of search times and this advantage was further improved with Panopticon 2. Eye tracking data suggests that Panopticon's advantage stems from the animated timeline that users heavily rely on. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Supporting independent living for the ageing population in later life is an often-cited application area for ubiquitous computing. Telecare services such as remote monitoring systems are now coming onto the consumer market but there is little knowledge of the impact these technologies may have on relationships between family members and older relatives. We present findings from a live field trial of SHel-a telecare system that allows nominated caregivers to remotely monitor activities-in 17 older adult's homes. Interviews were conducted with the 17 older participants and 11 of their nominated caregivers before, during and after using the system. We establish that such technologies transform existing hidden care routines between family members into care work, and the impact they have upon the sense of independence and privacy of those who are being monitored in their home. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

The majority of activity recognition systems in wearable computing rely on a set of statistical measures, such as means and moments, extracted from short frames of continuous sensor measurements to perform recognition. These features implicitly quantify the distribution of data observed in each frame. However, feature selection remains challenging and labour intensive, rendering a more generic method to quantify distributions in accelerometer data much desired. In this paper we present the ECDF representation, a novel approach to preserve characteristics of arbitrary distributions for feature extraction, which is particularly suitable for embedded applications. In extensive experiments on six publicly available datasets we demonstrate that it outperforms common approaches to feature extraction across a wide variety of tasks.

It is challenging to precisely identify the boundary of activities in order to annotate the activity datasets required to train activity recognition systems. This is the case for experts, as well as non-experts who may be recruited for crowd-sourcing paradigms to reduce the annotation effort or speed up the process by distributing the task over multiple annotators. We present a method to automatically adjust annotation boundaries, presuming a correct annotation label, but imprecise boundaries, otherwise known as \label jitter". The approach maximizes the Fukunaga Class-Separability, applied to time series. Evaluations on a standard benchmark dataset showed statistically significant improvements from the initial jittery annotations. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

In recent years the sport of climbing has seen consistent increase in popularity. Climbing requires a complex skill set for successful and safe exercising. While elite climbers receive intensive expert coaching to refine this skill set, this progression approach is not viable for the amateur population. We have developed ClimbAX - a climbing performance analysis system that aims for replicating expert assessments and thus represents a first step towards an automatic coaching system for climbing enthusiasts. Through an accelerometer based wearable sensing platform, climber's movements are captured. An automatic analysis procedure detects climbing sessions and moves, which form the basis for subsequent performance assessment. The assessment parameters are derived from sports science literature and include: power, control, stability, speed. ClimbAX was evaluated in a large case study with 53 climbers under competition settings. We report a strong correlation between predicted scores and official competition results, which demonstrate the effectiveness of our automatic skill assessment system.

Health and well-being of dogs, either domesticated pets or service animals, are major concerns that are taken seriously for ethical, emotional, and financial reasons. Welfare assessments in dogs rely on objective observations of both frequency and variability of individual behaviour traits, which is often difficult to obtain in a dog's everyday life. In this paper we have identified a set of activities, which are linked to behaviour traits that are relevant for a dog's wellbeing. We developed a collar-worn accelerometry platform that records dog behaviours in naturalistic environments. A statistical classification framework is used for recognising dog activities. In an experimental evaluation we analysed the naturalistic behaviour of 18 dogs and were able to recognise a total of 17 different activities with approximately 70% classification accuracy. The presented system is the first of its kind that allows for robust and detailed analysis of dog activities in naturalistic environments. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

The Break-Time Barometer is a social awareness system, which was developed as part of an exploratory study of the use of situated sensing and displays to promote cohesion in a newly-dispersed workplace. The Break-Time Barometer specifically aims to use an ambient persuasion approach in order to encourage people to join existing breaks, which take place within this community. Drawing upon a privacy sensitive ubiquitous sensing infrastructure, the system offers information about potentially break-related activity in social spaces within this workplace, including alerts when specific events are detected. The system was developed using a user-centered iterative design approach. A qualitative mixed methods evaluation of a full deployment identified a diverse set of reactions to both the system and the design goal, and further elaborated the challenges of designing for social connectedness in this complex workplace context.

We describe FoodBoard, an instrumented chopping board that uses optical fibers and embedded camera imaging to identify unpackaged ingredients during food preparation on its surface. By embedding the sensing directly, and robustly, in the surface of a chopping board we also demonstrate how surface contact optical sensing can be used to realize the portability and privacy required of technology used in a setting such as a domestic kitchen. FoodBoard was subjected to a close to real-world evaluation in which 12 users prepared actual meals. FoodBoard compared favourably with existing unpackaged food recognition systems, classifying a larger number of distinct food ingredients (12 incl. meat, fruit, vegetables) with an average accuracy of 82.8%. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

The ReflecTable is a digital learning environment that explores how design games and video-led reflection might be combined to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical components of design education. The concept seeks to leverage the qualities of exploratory design games and video to inspire design students to critically reflect upon the relationship between their evolving design practices and the theories and techniques they are taught in lectures, by allowing them to capture, review and reflect upon short videos of a design game. In this paper, we present the ReflecTable design and nine studies conducted during the course of its development. The studies suggest that the ReflecTable has the potential to support design students in understanding how theoretical concepts and methods relate to different design situations and their own evolving design practices. © 2013 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

In this paper we continue work to investigate how we can engage young adults in behaviors of recycling and the prevention of food waste through social media and persuasive and ubiquitous computing systems. Our previous work with BinCam, a two-part design combining a system for the collection of waste-related behaviors with a Facebook application, suggested that although this ubiquitous system could raise awareness of recycling behavior, engagement with social media remained low. In this paper we reconsider our design in terms of engagement, examining both the theoretical and practical ways in which engagement can be designed for. This paper presents findings from a new user study exploring the re-design of the social media interface following this analysis. By incorporating elements of gamification, social support and improved data visualization, we contribute insights on the relative potential of these techniques to engage individuals across the lifespan of a system's deployment. © 2013 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

This paper describes our Experience-centered Design (ECD) inquiry into the current and potential role of digital photography to support interpersonal communication and expression in a class at a mixed special education needs school. Presented as a case study, we describe five classroom-based Creative Photography workshops that engaged pupils with a broad range of complex special needs, along with classroom staff. We further describe how, from these workshops, we generated a set of qualitative considerations for the design of digital photographic tools to support interpersonal communication and expression in this setting. Additionally, we present the preliminary evaluation of a photo-sorting tool that we developed in response. Our case study demonstrates how an ECD approach can guide an interaction design process in a special education needs setting, supporting interaction designers in understanding and responding pragmatically to the complex and dynamic interactions at play between the stakeholders. Copyright 2013 ACM.

We describe the learner-centered design of an application for collocated collaborative writing on digital tabletops. Learning writing is an activity that is traditionally undertaken as a non-collaborative, non-visuospatial activity. We demonstrate how framing writing as a visuospatial manipulation of elements of writing sub-tasks can promote collaboration. While collaborative visuospatial activities lend themselves to digital tabletops in particular, not all activities naturally translate into such tasks. Our application allows for (or supports) writing as a collaborative task, as well as providing a platform for students to learn extended writing. We describe the mapping between the design principles used, and the pedagogical and thinking theories that are incorporated into the design. The design is described at each iteration, including the associated user studies, and we conclude with a discussion of more widely applicable design implications. This research shows how traditional non-collaborative learning activities can, using visuospatial representations, be reconfigured as collocated collaborative learning activities. Copyright 2013 ACM.

Interaction design methodologies have become increasingly popular in the design and development of technologies for children with special needs. However, designing within this area remains fraught with difficulties. This workshop aims to explore the issues that occur when working with children with special needs and seeks to establish a set of guidelines for interaction design researchers who are working with such a diverse group. This will be achieved through the discussion of a number of themes that have highlighted as important when designing within this complicated area.

As research increasingly turns to work 'in the wild' to design and evaluate technologies under real-world conditions, little consideration has been given to what happens when research ends. In many cases, users are heavily involved in the design process and encouraged to integrate the resulting technologies into their lives before they are withdrawn, while in some cases technologies are being left in place after research concludes. Often, little is done to assess the impact and legacy of these deployments. In this paper, we return to two examples in which we designed technologies with the involvement of communities and examine what steps were taken to ensure their long-term viability and what happened following the departure of researchers. From these examples, we provide guidelines for planning and executing technology handovers when conducting research with communities. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Household food practices are complex. Many people are unable to effectively respond to challenges in their food environment to maintain diets considered to be in line with national and international standards for healthy eating. We argue that recognizing food practices as situated action affords opportunities to identify and design for practiced, local and achievable solutions to such food problems. Interviews and shop-a-longs were carried as part of a contextual inquiry with ten households. From this, we identify food practices, such as fitting food, stocking up, food value transitions, and having fun with others and how these practices are enacted in different ways with varied outcomes. We explore how HCI might respond to these practices through issues of social fooding, the presence of others, conceptions about food practices and food routines. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

We explore whether idiographic design, a category of interaction design that focuses upon responding to detailed personal accounts of individuals' practices, can be used to support interaction designers in responding to the complex and multifaceted design space posed by live performance. We describe and reflect upon the application of an idiographic approach during the design of Waves, an interface for live VJ performance. This approach involved a close and dialogical engagement with the practices and experiences of an individual live performer, during a series of semi-structured interviews and then the discussion and iteration of an evolving prototypical design. Reflection on the experience of applying this approach highlights idiographic design as a practical means to support interaction designers in proposing innovative designs that respond sensitively to the kinds of subtle and complex issues that underpin people's lived and felt experiences of live performance and, potentially, many other domains. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

The term 'participation' is traditionally used in HCI to describe the involvement of users and stakeholders in design processes, with a pretext of distributing control to participants to shape their technological future. In this paper we ask whether these values can hold up in practice, particularly as participation takes on new meanings and incorporates new perspectives. We argue that much HCI research leans towards configuring participation. In discussing this claim we explore three questions that we consider important for understanding how HCI configures participation; Who initiates, directs and benefits from user participation in design? In what forms does user participation occur? How is control shared with users in design? In answering these questions we consider the conceptual, ethical and pragmatic problems this raises for current participatory HCI research. Finally, we offer directions for future work explicitly dealing with the configuration of participation. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

This paper presents the results and experiences of a six-week deployment of multiple digital tabletops in a school. Dillenbourg's orchestration framework was used both to guide the design and analysis of the study. Four themes, which directly relate to the design of the technology for the classroom, out of the 15 orchestration factors are considered. For each theme, we present our design choices, the relevant observations, feedback from teachers and students, and we conclude with a number of lessons learned in the form of design recommendations. The distinguishing factors of our study are its scale (in terms of duration, number of classes, subjects, and teachers), and its 'in-the-wild'character, with the entire study being conducted in a school, led by the teachers, and using teacher-prepared, curriculum-based tasks. Our primary contributions are the analysis of our observations and design recommendations for future multi-tabletop applications designed for and deployed within the classroom. Our analyses and recommendations meaningfully extend HCI's current design understandings of such settings. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

The paper reflects on three approaches to the dissemination and display of digital art. "s[edition]" is a novel, web-based service that offers limited editions of "digital prints".Analysis of user comments suggests that the metaphor of a "limited digital edition" raises issues and to some extent is resisted. The second approach is the Flickr Brushes Gallery, where digital painters post images and comment on one another's work. Analysis of comment boards indicates that the shared art and comments are a form of gift exchange. Finally, the paper discusses a field study in which artists exhibited their work as it develops over time in digital frames and also in an immersive digital projection room. Analysis of field notes and interviews indicate that the digital frame approach was unsuccessful because of aesthetic and environmental concerns. The immersive projection suggested that more experiential approaches may be more interesting. It is argued that there is an inherent resistance in digital media to previous models of art commoditization. None of the approaches discussed here resolve the dilemma but rather indicate the scope and complexity of the issues. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Writers and practitioners in dementia care have invoked personhood to offer potential for preserving the agency of people living with dementia. In this context we use personhood to explore how relationships bring agentive potential to experience-centered design through a cocreative, design-led inquiry with Gillian, a woman living with dementia, and John her husband. We designed bespoke probes to empathically engage the couple in the design of both jewellery and digital jewellery to support Gillian's personhood. Our design activity addressed the relationships involved in the context of Gillian's family life and the progression of her illness and how they could be mediated technologically. Reminiscence became, through Gillian and John's own hands, acts of sense making and legacy. The process of design became the way of conducting the inquiry and the designed artifacts became ways of posing questions to make sense of our experiences together. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

In the field of mental health care technologies, very limited attention has been given to the design of interventions for individuals who undergo treatment for severe mental health problems in intense care contexts. Exploring novel designs to engage vulnerable psychiatric patients in therapeutic skills practice and expanding on the potential of technology to promote mental health, the paper introduces the design concept of the Spheres of Wellbeing. A set of interactive artifacts is developed specifically for women with a dual diagnosis of a Learning Disability and Borderline Personality Disorder, living in the medium secure services of a forensic hospital in the UK. The women present a difficult to treat group due to extremely challenging behaviors and a fundamental lack of motivation to engage in therapy. The Spheres are designed to assist the women in practices of mindfulness, to help them tolerate emotional distress and to strengthen their sense of self, all of which are vital components of their specialist treatment Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). The Spheres are intended to supplement the therapy of the women and to contribute to our understanding of designing technology to enhance mental wellbeing and quality of life more generally. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

We present a novel approach to graspable interfaces using Touchbugs, actuated physical objects for interacting with interactive surface computing applications. Touchbugs are active tangibles that are able to move across surfaces by employing vibrating motors and can communicate with camera-based multi-touch surfaces using infrared LEDs. Touchbug's embedded inertial sensors and computational capabilities open a new interaction space by providing autonomous capabilities for tangibles that allow goal directed behavior. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

HCI researchers working in publically funded institutions are increasingly encouraged to engage the public in their research. Mass media is often seen as an effective medium with which to communicate research to large parts of the population. We present an account of three HCI projects that have used engagements with mass media in order to communicate research to the public. We describe the motivations for working with mass media and the mechanics of writing press releases. A grounded theory analysis of online public responses to the projects in the mass media leads us to identify a number of concerns about how research is portrayed by news outlets and thus interpreted by the public. Tensions about technologies and wider societal issues were revealed that might normally be hidden when using traditional user-centred methods. We critically reflect on the efficacy of using the mass media in research and provide guidance for HCI researchers wishing to engage in dialogues with the public in the future. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Probes have been adopted with great enthusiasm in both Design and HCI. The heterogeneity with which they have been used in practice reflects how the method has proved elusive for many. Originators and commentators of probes have discussed misinterpretations of the method, highlighting the lack of accounts that describe in detail the design of probes and their use with participants. This paper discusses our particular use of Design Probes as directed craft objects that are both tools for design and tools for exploration across a number of projects, spanning a decade, centered on self-identity and personal significance. In offering an example of what a framework for probe design and use might look like, we attempt to address the identified lacuna, providing a synthetic account of probe design and use over an extended period and conceptualizing the relationship between the properties of probes and their use in design projects. Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Increasingly ubiquitous technology coupled with a surge in empirical research on people who face cognitive, emotional, physical and social challenges increases the potential for HCI to enrich the lives of vulnerable people. Designing for people with vulnerabilities requires an approach to participation that is sensitive to the risks of possible stigmatization and an awareness of the challenges for participant involvement. This workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners to explore the critical issues surrounding designing with and for vulnerable individuals. We aim to provoke discussion about how ‘vulnerability’ is defined in HCI, what methodological and ethical concerns are raised when working with specific cases, and ways of designing for future technologies that support vulnerable people in novel and sensitive ways.

This paper reports on experience design work currently in progress. “Wet Pixels” is intended to stimulate discussion around the notion of reproducing original digital images in a physical medium. The prototype's design is informed by mechanical reproduction devices (e.g. relief press, large format camera) and retrospective print processes (halftone, dot matrix). The original conceptual design (Figure 1) constitutes a miniature camera encased in a wooden viewing frame that would enable viewers to select and capture photographs. This image could subsequently be printed onto Japanese paper using an Arduino-controlled matrix of stepper motors topped with paint-tipped sponges. When presented in a gallery, Wet Pixels provides users with greater sensory feedback (physical, visual, auditory) than entirely digital processes through tangible creative mark-making on to paper.

Repentir is a mobile application that employs marker-less tracking and augmented reality to enable gallery visitors to explore the under drawing and successive stages of pigment beneath an oil painting's surface. Repentir recognises the position and orientation of a specific painting within a photograph and precisely overlays images that were captured during that painting's creation. The viewer may then browse through the work's multiple states and closely examine its painted surface in one of two ways: sliding or rubbing. Our current prototype recognises realist painter Nathan Walsh's most recent work, “Transamerica”. Repentir enables the viewer to explore intermediary stages in the painting’s development and see what is usually lost within the materially additive painting process. The prototype offers an innovative approach to digital reproduction and provides users with unique insights into the painter's working method.

ThorDMX is a lightweight prototyping toolkit for rapid and easy design of new stage lighting controllers. The toolkit provides a framework, code samples and tutorials for quickly developing new controller interfaces using familiar prototyping tools and software. Aimed at prototyping interaction designs for stage lighting control it facilitates the exploration of expressive, collaborative and flexible new interfaces.

TimelyPresent is a single purpose information appliance for asynchronous messaging to connect three-generation families whose members need to keep in touch across large distances and in different time zones. The touch screen devices are used in pairs situated in the homes of family members. A user at one end can create a short video clip that is represented as a gift-wrapped present to be sent to the home of another family member. To reinforce the present metaphor the design deliberately confounds common assumptions made about electronic devices in that the present having been sent is no longer accessible to the sender and is delayed so that it arrives at the local time that it was recorded. The paper first describes the process by which this design was derived from the qualitative data in the form of quotes from an open-ended probe study. This process served to preserve the richness of the information in the quotes, while at the same time providing 'requirements' for design. The main part of the paper describes the results from a 2-month, four-family field study of the device. Logs recording the behaviour of users of TimelyPresent, transcripts of 15 interviews, and 133 presents created by the participants were analysed. Analysis of the logs showed that the families needed to preview presents before sending them and repeatedly revisit them after receipt. The analysis of the content of the presents demonstrated the need for the 'forward' and 'backward' facing cameras, now commonly provided in tablets and phones. A forward facing camera is needed because 70% of the presents featured a recording of someone doing something. Other categories of topic were simple "I am thinking of you" messages (15%), "things I've done" (8%), and requests for action (7%). Analysis of the interviews confirmed many of the social needs identified in previous work in this area as well as the value of the present metaphor and its ability to support playful use that enhances subsequent conversations using synchronous media. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

While a number of guidelines exist for the design of learning applications that target a single group working around an interactive tabletop, the same cannot be said for the design of applications intended for use in multi-tabletops deployments in the classroom. Accordingly, a number of these guidelines for single-tabletop settings need to be extended to take account of both the distinctive qualities of the classroom and the particular challenges of having various groups using the same application on multiple tables simultaneously. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the effectiveness of designs for small-group multi-tabletop collaborative learning activities in the wild. We use distributed cognition as a framework to analyze the small number of authentic multi-tabletop deployments and help characterize the technological and educational ecology of these classroom settings. Based on previous research on single-tabletop collaboration, the concept of orchestration, and both first-hand experience and second-hand accounts of the few existing multiple-tabletop deployments to date, we develop a three-dimensional framework of design recommendations for multi-tabletop learning settings. © 2013 ACM.

We report on our extended research on GymSkill, a smartphone system for comprehensive physical exercising support, from sensor data logging, activity recognition to on-top skill assessment, using the phone's built-in sensors. In two iterations, we used principal component breakdown analysis (PCBA) and criteria-based scores for individualized and personalized automated feedback on the phone, with the goal to track training quality and success and give feedback to the user, as well as to engage and motivate regular exercising. Qualitative feedback on the system was collected in a user study, and the system showed good evaluation results in an evaluation against manual expert assessments of video-recorded trainings. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of a group of artists in the North of England. It focuses on the impact of digital technology on their printmaking and wider art practice. Four major themes emerge: apprenticeship, networks, authenticity and commodification. Each of the artists describes a long process of educational and professional apprenticeship. They reflect in detail on the value of networks of support not only in generating contacts for potential professional development but also in affirming their identity as an artist. Current practices around the production of Giclée prints are considered in detail and related to more general problems of what constitutes authentic work and the problems of commodification. After reporting findings from the qualitative study the paper presents initial concept design work around the notion of a "slow print". It also discusses an experience prototype that reveals rather than conceals digital practice. It considers the notion of an original as a social practice and positions reproduction as a space for design. Copyright © 2012 ACM.

In this case study, the authors revisit the benefits of reflection for learning and classify three different types of reflection support as evident in the pedagogy literature: post-activity, inter-activity and part-of-activity. They present their design of a collaborative learning application (Digital Mysteries) as implemented on the emerging digital tabletop technology. The design of Digital Mysteries aims at demonstrating the potential of technology for providing support for all the identified types of reflection. The application was evaluated through 12 trials with 6 groups of students 11-14 years old in a school environment. Two of the six groups carried out repeated trials with the goal of evaluating benefits from repeated use and to overcome effects resulting from the novelty of the technology. The trials showed clear evidence of reflective interactions, caused by the application's design, which positively affected subsequent trials. The authors conclude with a number of generalized recommendations for designers of collaborative learning environments. © 2013, IGI Global.

In this position paper we outline some of the key themes and background research which may help form a better understanding of the relationship between technology and political activity. The paper is written in an attempt to articulate a better understanding of the relationship between political processes, urban environments and situated technologies. The paper is written from a UK perspective, although the ideas have a broader relevance for relatively developed western democracies. To this end we analyse the political and digital divides which are present in western society focusing on local politics in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK as a case study. Following a brief description of the problem domain we briefly give an outline of an ongoing project Viewpoint which has created a mobile voting system which we are currently deploying in various locations in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Digits is a wrist-worn sensor that recovers the full 3D pose of the user's hand. This enables a variety of freehand interactions on the move. The system targets mobile settings, and is specifically designed to be low-power and easily reproducible using only off-the-shelf hardware. The electronics are self-contained on the user's wrist, but optically image the entirety of the user's hand. This data is processed using a new pipeline that robustly samples key parts of the hand, such as the tips and lower regions of each finger. These sparse samples are fed into new kinematic models that leverage the biomechanical constraints of the hand to recover the 3D pose of the user's hand. The proposed system works without the need for full instrumentation of the hand (for example using data gloves), additional sensors in the environment, or depth cameras which are currently prohibitive for mobile scenarios due to power and form-factor considerations. We demonstrate the utility of Digits for a variety of application scenarios, including 3D spatial interaction with mobile devices, eyes-free interaction on-the-move, and gaming. We conclude with a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of our system, and discussion of strengths, limitations and future work. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Ubiquitous computing technologies have traditionally striven to augment objects and the environment with sensing capabilities to enable them to respond appropriately to the needs of the individuals in the environment. This paper considers how such technologies might be harnessed to support language learning, and specifically Task-Based Learning (TBL). Task-Based Learning (TBL) involves doing meaningful tasks in a foreign language, emphasising the language's use in practice. TBL is seen as a highly engaging and motivating approach to learning a language, but is difficult to do in the classroom. Here, learners typically engage in activities that only simulate 'real-world' tasks, and as such only rehearse language use, rather than applying the language in practice. In this paper, we explore how an instrumented, context-aware environment whose design is grounded in pedagogical principles can support TBL. We present the French Kitchen, an instrumented kitchen for English speakers who are learning French, and describe a 46- participant evaluation of the kitchen. Based on the evaluation, we provide a set of design recommendations for those building instrumented systems for TBL. Copyright 2012 ACM.

The effect of weather on social interactions has been explored through the analysis of a large mobile phone use dataset. Time spent on phone calls, numbers of connected social ties, and tie strength were used as proxies for social interactions; while weather conditions were characterized in terms of temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, and wind speed. Our results are based on the analysis of a full calendar year of data for 22,696 mobile phone users (53.2 million call logs) in Lisbon, Portugal. The results suggest that different weather parameters have correlations to the level and character of social interactions. We found that although weather did not show much influence upon people's average call duration, the likelihood of longer calls was found to increase during periods of colder weather. During periods of weather that were generally considered to be uncomfortable (i.e., very cold/warm, very low/high air pressure, and windy), people were found to be more likely to communicate with fewer social ties. Despite this tendency, we found that people are more likely to maintain their connections with those they have strong ties with much more than those of weak ties. This study sheds new light on the influence of weather conditions on social relationships and how mobile phone data can be used to investigate the influence of environmental factors on social dynamics. © 2012 Phithakkitnukoon et al.

Meals have traditionally been a site for togetherness. We explore the opportunities to design a technology platform that supports remote guests in experiencing togetherness and playfulness within the practices of a traditional dinner party. Through both visual, aural channels and remote agency, the guests shared a holistic telematic dining experience comparable to a traditional co-presence dinner. Based on the findings, we propose that one must consider the social structure and cultural background of users to inform the design of technological intervention that supports a sense of togetherness. © 2012 ACM.

Invisible Design is a technique for generating insights and ideas with workshop participants in the early stages of concept development. It involves the creation of ambiguous films in which characters discuss a technology that is not directly shown. The technique builds on previous work in HCI on scenarios, persona, theatre, film and ambiguity. The Invisible Design approach is illustrated with three examples from unrelated projects; Biometric Daemon, Panini and Smart Money. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of data from a series of workshops where these Invisible Designs were discussed. The analysis outlines responses to the films in terms of; existing problems, concerns with imagined technologies and design speculation. It is argued that Invisible Design can help to create a space for critical and creative dialogue during participatory concept development. © 2012 ACM.

There is an increasing desire to remain connected when physically distant and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is one means of satisfying this desire. In particular, there is a growing trend for individuals to use commercially available technology to connect with friends and family in social and leisure settings. Drawing on this trend, performative arts and existing telecommunications research, we identify the social practice of sharing a meal together as ripe for reinterpretation within CMC. We explore the opportunities to design a technology platform that supports remote guests in experiencing togetherness and playfulness within the practices of a traditional dinner party. Through both visual and aural channels as well as remote agency, the dinner guests were able to share a holistic telematic dining experience comparable to a traditional co-presence dinner. Based on the findings, we propose that one must consider the social structure and cultural background of users to inform the design of a technological intervention. © 2012 ACM.

We consider the role and design of digital technologies in play therapy settings with young children. Through an aggregation of the researcher and practitioner literature, and results of discussions with therapists and counselors, we propose a set of design requirements for digital technologies that support non-directive play within a play therapy context. We explore how to design for these complex requirements through the development and evaluation of Magic Land, a set of four play therapy applications for an interactive tabletop. Based on our experiences we recommend that designers create digital interactive toys, which create opportunities for play that would not normally be possible within the traditional play therapy environment. © 2012 ACM.

Maintaining the visibility of target objects is a fundamental problem in automatic camera control for 3D graphics applications. Practical real-time camera control algorithms generally only incorporate mechanisms for the evaluation of the visibility of target objects from a single viewpoint, and idealize the geometric complexity of target objects. Drawing on work in soft shadow generation, we perform low resolution projections, from target objects to rapidly compute their visibility for a sample of locations around the current camera position. This computation is extended to aggregate visibility in a temporal window to improve camera stability in the face of partial and sudden onset occlusion. To capture the full spatial extent of target objects we use a stochastic approximation of their surface area. Our implementation is the first practical occlusion-free real-time camera control framework for multiple target objects. The result is a robust component that can be integrated to any virtual camera control system that requires the precise computation of visibility for multiple targets. © The Eurographics Association 2012.

A relationship between people's mobility and their social networks is presented based on an analysis of calling and mobility traces for one year of anonymized call detail records of over one million mobile phone users in Portugal. We find that about 80% of places visited are within just 20 km of their nearest (geographical) social ties' locations. This figure rises to 90% at a 'geo-social radius' of 45 km. In terms of their travel scope, people are geographically closer to their weak ties than strong ties. Specifically, they are 15% more likely to be at some distance away from their weak ties than strong ties. The likelihood of being at some distance from social ties increases with the population density, and the rates of increase are higher for shorter geo-social radii. In addition, we find that area population density is indicative of geo-social radius where denser areas imply shorter radii. For example, in urban areas such as Lisbon and Porto, the geo-social radius is approximately 7 km and this increases to approximately 15 km for less densely populated areas such as Parades and Santa Maria da Feira. © 2012 Phithakkitnukoon et al.

Liveness has long been a valued quality of mass media presentation in areas such as music, sports and debate. The rapid development of new digital media, and the interpenetration of these media and staged performance, places liveness center stage in attempts to understand emerging human-computer configurations. This workshop will bring together insights from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to explore how HCI can benefit from critical engagement with theoretical and practical treatment of liveness. To seed discussion and action, participants will engage reflectively with the liveness of an authentic performance, experienced firsthand and at one-remove through a mediating technology, using an innovative video-based methodology. © 2012 Authors.

Participation is of high relevance to the CHI Design community. Participatory work has been performed with very different intentions: to democratize the design process; to better inform the design of new systems; to engage the public in the construction of their own futures; or simply to appease funding commitments. Whilst this increased attention has lead to a large amount of methodological innovation, very little effort has been spent reflecting on why various participatory approaches should, or should not be, used and how we can assess their impacts on the design process and products. This invited SIG will bring together invited experts who have explored participation to different degrees within their past work to provoke group and plenary audience discussion. The aim of this SIG is to provide an opportunity for discussion and reflection on how and why participative methods are used in HCI research and practice. © 2012 Authors.

We present GymSkill, a personal trainer for ubiquitous monitoring and assessment of physical activity using standard fitness equipment. The system records and analyzes exercises using the sensors of a personal smartphone attached to the gym equipment. Novel fine-grained activity recognition techniques based on pyramidal Principal Component Breakdown Analysis (PCBA) provide a quantitative analysis of the quality of human movements. In addition to overall quality judgments, GymSkill identifies interesting portions of the recorded sensor data and provides suggestions for improving the individual performance, thereby extending existing work. The system was evaluated in a case study where 6 participants performed a variety of exercises on balance boards. GymSkill successfully assessed the quality of the exercises, in agreement with the professional judgment provided by a physician. User feedback suggests that GymSkill has the potential to serve as an effective tool for motivating and supporting lay people to overcome sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles. GymSkill is available in the Android Market as VMI Fit. © 2012 IEEE.

BinCam is a social persuasive system to motivate reflection and behavioral change in the food waste and recycling habits of young adults. The system replaces an existing kitchen refuse bin and automatically logs disposed of items through digital images captured by a smart phone installed on the underside of the bin lid. Captured images are uploaded to a BinCam application on Facebook where they can be explored by all users of the BinCam system. Engagement with BinCam is designed to fit into the existing structure of users' everyday life, with the intention that reflection on waste and recycling becomes a playful and shared group activity. Results of a user study reveal an increase in both users' awareness of, and reflection about, their waste management and their motivation to improve their waste-related skills. With BinCam, we also explore informational and normative social influences as a source of change (e.g., socially evoked feelings of 'guilt' for non-recycling or food disposal), which has to date been underexplored in persuasive HCI. Design implications for reflection and social persuasion are proposed. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Design and digital technologies to support a sense of self and human relationships for people living with dementia are both urgently needed. We present an enquiry into design for dementia facilitated by a public art commission for an adult mental health unit in a hospital in the UK. The interactive art piece was informed by the notion of personhood in dementia that foregrounds the person's social being and interpersonal relationships as sites where self is maintained and constructed. How clients, clients' family members and staff used the piece is reported and insights related to the notions of home, intimacy, possessions and self are presented. The art piece served as window on both dementia and the institution leading to a number of insights and implications for design. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Creating film content for broadcast is a high pressure and complex activity involving multiple experts and highly specialized equipment. Production teams are under continuous pressure to produce ever more creative and groundbreaking content while reducing the budgets and human resources required. While technologies are being developed for digitizing and streamlining sections of the production workflow, a gap remains between creative decisions made on location, and those made during digital editing and post-production. We describe a prototype tangible, tabletop interface to be deployed on a film shoot, which uses a storyboard as a shared data representation to drive team creativity. We define creativity in terms of team production, discuss our implementation and describe a deployment in which the prototype was used by a professional production team during a film shoot. Finally we describe a number of interesting interactions that were observed and consider the implications of our design decisions on the creative process of film making and the benefits of tangible, tabletop collaborative interactive displays in live film production. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Monitoring nutritional intake is an important aspect of the care of older people, particularly for those at risk of malnutrition. Current practice for monitoring food intake relies on hand written food charts that have several inadequacies. We describe the design and validation of a tool for computer-assisted visual assessment of patient food and nutrient intake. To estimate food consumption, the application compares the pixels the user rubbed out against predefined graphical masks. Weight of food consumed is calculated as a percentage of pixels rubbed out against pixels in the mask. Results suggest that the application may be a useful tool for the conservative assessment of nutritional intake in hospitals. Copyright 2012 ACM.

This paper reports findings from a series of participatory design workshops with ten people over eighty years old. The focus of the workshops was new banking technologies for the older old. Participants were asked to discuss their current experiences of banking and given packs of concept cards which contained design sketches and brief outlines of concepts for new financial services. The designs on the cards were deliberately provocative and aimed to encourage criticism and debate. Participants wrote and drew on the cards and the workshops were recorded and transcribed. The participants were extremely critical of current banking practices and most of the new concepts we presented to them. Their questions and comments led to a number of insights and further iterations. The paper argues that critique is an essential resource for design, both in terms of identifying problems and iterating ideas. Copyright 2012 ACM.

This paper describes a project exploring the design of digital payment services in collaboration with 16 people aged over 80. Many older people find cheques valuable as a means of payment but the UK Payments Council recently proposed their abolition. We describe two designs that simultaneously aimed to preserve and augment the paper cheque as a means of making electronic payments. These were devised during participatory design workshops through critical dialogues with our eighty something participants. Workshop discussions resulted in the creation of a real world cheque system where we issued pre-paid cheques without the involvement of banks. This work informed the development of a digital cheque book based on Anoto digital pen technology. The work illustrates the value of participatory design with 'extraordinary' users, such as the eighty somethings, in HCI. Copyright 2012 ACM.

The use of digital technologies is increasingly proposed in health and social care to address the aging population phenomenon but, in practice, the designers of these technologies are ill equipped to design for older people. We suggest participatory design as an approach to improving the quality of design for older people but, based on previous work and our own experiences, identify four central issues that participatory design approaches need to address. We describe an approach to early engagement in design with older people that address each of these issues and some of our experiences applying the approach in a variety of different design projects. We conclude by discussing some of the issues that have been highlighted when attempting to apply this approach in different design contexts and the issues that have been raised when working with partners who are less committed to the idea of engaging with older adults in participatory design. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Viewpoint is a public voting device developed to allow residents in a disadvantaged community to make their voices heard through a simple, lightweight interaction. This was intended to open a new channel of communication within the community and increase community members' perception of their own efficacy. Local elected officials and community groups were able to post questions on devices located in public spaces, where residents could vote for one of two responses. Question authors were subsequently required to post a response indicating any actions to be taken. Following a two-month trial, we present our experiences and contribute guidelines for the design of public democracy tools and dimensions impacting their effectiveness, including credibility, efficacy and format. Copyright 2012 ACM.

We describe the development, application and evaluation of a design method tailored for working with people with mild to moderate dementia. Our experiences with the approach highlighted areas where designers and participants held radically different views. The tenet of our approach was that to overcome these differences we needed to create an empathic relationship between participants and designers. To achieve this we modified participatory design techniques to foster respectful engagement with participants in the development of a digital aid to facilitate 'safe walking'. The process begins with broad qualitative scoping and design work then moves to developing personally tailored, individual designs to further exploration of the experiential elements of the domain while reducing the need for the participants to engage in abstract thought. Reflection highlights a number of important areas that demand consideration when undertaking research in this area and, more generally, when performing design work with people with dementia. Copyright 2012 ACM.

A cheque is a paper document that orders the transfer of money between bank accounts. Whilst an eighty-year-old in the UK is predicted on average to live at least another ten years, cheques may not. Despite many older peoples extensive use of cheques, UK banks are eager to abolish them and design electronic alternatives that are less costly to process and less vulnerable to fraud. This paper reports on two qualitative studies that explored the banking experiences of 23 people over eighty years old. Cheques support financial collaboration with others in ways that digital payment systems do not. We argue that whilst it might be possible to improve the design of digital payment systems to better support financial collaboration, the case for retaining and enhancing cheques is stronger. Rather than replace cheques, we must design ways of making them less costly to process and better linked to electronic payment methods. © 2012 ACM.

The ratio of healthcare professionals to care recipients is dropping at an alarming rate, particularly for the older population. It is estimated that the number of persons with Alzheimers disease, for example, will top 100 million worldwide by the year 2050 [Alzheimers Disease International 2009]. It will become harder and harder to provide needed health services to this population of older adults. Further, patients are becoming more aware and involved in their own healthcare decisions. This is creating a void in which technology has an increasingly important role to play as a tool to connect providers with recipients. Examples of interactive technologies range from telecare for remote regions to computer games promoting fitness in the home. Currently, such technologies are developed for specific applications and are difficult to modify to suit individual user needs. The future potential economic and social impact of technology in the healthcare field therefore lies in our ability to make intelligent devices that are customizable by healthcare professionals and their clients, that are adaptive to users over time, and that generalize across tasks and environments. A wide application area for technology in healthcare is for assistance and monitoring in the home. As the population ages, it becomes increasingly dependent on chronic healthcare, such as assistance for tasks of everyday life (washing, cooking, dressing), medication taking, nutrition, and fitness. This article will present a summary of work over the past decade on the development of intelligent systems that provide assistance to persons with cognitive disabilities. These systems are unique in that they are all built using a common framework, a decision-theoretic model for general-purpose assistance in the home. In this article, we will show how this type of general model can be applied to a range of assistance tasks, including prompting for activities of daily living, assistance for art therapists, and stroke rehabilitation. This model is a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) that can be customized by end-users, that can integrate complex sensor information, and that can adapt over time. These three characteristics of the POMDP model will allow for increasing uptake and long-term efficiency and robustness of technology for assistance. © 2012 ACM.

The usability of graphical passwords based upon recognition of images is widely explored. However, it is likely that their observed high memorability is contingent on certain attributes of the image sets presented to users. Characterizing this relationship remains an open problem; for example, there is no systematic (and empirically verified) method to determine how similarity between the elements of an image set impacts the usability of the login challenge. Strategies to assemble suitable images are usually carried out by hand, which represents a significant barrier to uptake as the process has usability and security implications. In this paper, we explore the role of simple image processing techniques to provide automated assembly of usable login challenges in the context of recognition-based graphical passwords. We firstly carry out a user study to obtain a similarity ranked image set, and use the results to select an optimal per-pixel image similarity metric. Then we conduct a short-term image recall test using Amazon Mechanical Turk with 343 subjects where we manipulated the similarity present in image grids. In the most significant case, we found that our automated methods to choose decoy images could impact the login success rate by 40%, and the median login duration by 35 seconds. Copyright 2012 ACM.

Feature extraction for activity recognition in context-aware ubiquitous computing applications is usually a heuristic process, informed by underlying domain knowledge. Relying on such explicit knowledge is problematic when aiming to generalize across different application domains. We investigate the potential of recent machine learning methods for discovering universal features for context-aware applications of activity recognition. We also describe an alternative data representation based on the empirical cumulative distribution function of the raw data, which effectively abstracts from absolute values. Experiments on accelerometer data from four publicly available activity recognition datasets demonstrate the significant potential of our approach to address both contemporary activity recognition tasks and next generation problems such as skill assessment and the detection of novel activities.

The development of digital tabletops that support user identification has opened the door for investigating users' achievement in groupware based face-to-face Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) settings. When students collaborate around the tabletop, teachers need to be aware of the steps undertaken by the students in order to reflect their achievements.We focused on exploring patterns of interaction between students and the objects of an educational application called 'Digital Mysteries', used as a basis for distinguishing the work of higher achieving groups from lower achieving ones. Teachers' analysis of trial videos were informative in analysing data which aimed at automatically generating visualization log based dataset that reflect on students' achievements. Our approach on users' assessment, based on the interaction patterns in co-located CSCL setting, can be generalised to cover other collaborative application domains. The usefulness of such patterns can be applied in new designs of collaborative applications. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

Growing pool of public-generated bits like online social networking data provides possibility to sense social dynamics in the urban space. In this position paper, we use a location-based online social networking data to sense geo-social activity and analyze the underlying social activity distribution of three different cities: London, Paris, and New York. We find a non-linear distribution of social activity, which follows the Power Law decay function. We perform inter-urban analysis based on social activity distribution and clustering. We believe that our study sheds new light on context-aware urban computing and social sensing. Copyright © 2011, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.

Research has demonstrated that a lack of cooking competence can be a significant barrier to healthier eating. We present two studies from which we develop a set of requirements for a pervasive sensor infrastructure that will enable our Ambient Kitchen environment to measure cooking competence in an unobtrusive manner. From the first study we derive key characteristics and potentially measurable aspects of cooking competence. This study also led to the specification and design of a pervasive sensor infrastructure comprising of a set of kitchen utensils equipped with custom-made wireless accelerometers. The second study reports our initial findings from the use of the sensor infrastructure and demonstrates its potential to measure key indicators of cooking competence. Our studies provide initial evidence that cooking competence can be measured automatically using our proposed pervasive kitchen infrastructure. © 2011 ICST.

We present further developments of our system that allows direction interaction between a camera-equipped hand-held device and a remote display. The essence of this system is the ability to estimate a planar projectivity between the remote display and the displayed image of that display on the handheld device. We describe how to achieve this by matching scale invariant SURF features across the two displays (remote and hand-held). We implement a prototype system and a drawing application and conduct both performance and usability evaluations. The feedback given indicates that our system is responsive, accurate and easy to use.

The n-back task is commonly used to load working memory (WM) in dual-task and neuroimaging experiments. However, it typically involves visual presentation and buttonpress responses, making it unsuitable for combination with primary tasks that involve vision and action, such as sequential object use and other tasks of daily living. The N-backer software presented here will automatically present and score auditory-verbal n-back sequences utilising the standard speech synthesis and recognition facilities that come with Microsoft Windows. Data are presented from an experiment in which 12 student participants carried out three tasks from the Naturalistic Action Test (NAT) while their attention was divided between the primary task and a continuous auditory-verbal 2-back secondary task. The participants' 2-back performance was scored in two ways: by hand, from video recordings, and automatically, using the software, allowing us to evaluate the accuracy of N-backer. There was an extremely high correlation between these scores (. 933). The videos were also used to obtain a comprehensive error score for the NAT. Significantly more errors were made in the more complex NAT tasks when participants were 2-backing, as compared with when they were not, showing that the auditory-verbal n-back task can be used to disrupt sequential object use. This dual-task method may simulate the attentional deficits of patients with brain injury, providing insights into the difficulties they face in tasks of daily living. © 2011 Psychonomic Society, Inc.

Stream-processing systems inevitably face unpredictable variations in incoming event loads. One way of handling this without affecting end-to-end performance metrics, will be to dynamically distribute event-processing on multiple computers and thus avail compute power for optimal performance. More precisely, data streams are processed in part or in parallel on multiple computers connected by a high bandwidth network. The number of computers being used is to be varied dynamically to cope with input load fluctuations. This paper uses data from ambient kitchen to make a preliminary assessment of performance advantages by distribution of real-time data stream processing. The motivation is to leverage cloud computing for optimal realtime event processing. © 2011 Authors.

Rapid increase in the quality of 3D content coupled with the evolution of hardware rendering techniques urges the development of camera control systems that enable the application of aesthetic rules and conventions from visual media such as film and television. One of the most important problems in cinematography is that of composition, the precise placement of elements in shot. Researchers already considered this problem, but mainly focused on basic compositional properties like size and framing. In this paper, we present a camera system that automatically configures the camera in order to satisfy advanced compositional rules. We have selected a number of those rules and specified rating functions for them, then using optimisation we find the best possible camera configuration. Finally, for better results, we use image processing methods to rate the satisfaction of rules in shot. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

We present an experience-based approach to designing a collaborative interactive performance, humanaquarium. Our research explores public interaction with digital technology through the practice-based inquiry of an interdisciplinary team of interaction designers and musicians. We present a method of designing experience from within, literally situating ourselves within the performance/use space and assuming the roles both of performers and of designers as we develop and refine the humanaquarium project over the course of a year's worth of public performances. Copyright 2011 ACM.

We present the development of a socially acceptable cueing device for drooling in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sialorrhea, or drooling, is a significant problem associated with PD and has a strong negative emotional impact on those who experience it. Previous studies have shown the potential for managing drooling by using a cueing device. However, the devices used in these studies were deemed unacceptable by their users due to factors such as hearing impairment and social embarrassment. We conducted exploratory scoping work and high fidelity iterative prototyping with people with PD to get their input on the design of a cueing aid and this has given us an insight into challenges that confront users with PD and limit device usability and acceptability. The key finding from working with people with PD was the need for the device to be socially acceptable. Copyright 2011 ACM.

This paper identifies key themes of expressive interaction for VJs. VJs are visual artists who use digital media to express themselves to an audience during a live audiovisual performance. Those designing for the expressive use of technology can gain insight from an articulation of expressive interaction from the perspective of VJ practice. This is developed using a novel qualitative methodology designed to be sensitive to the subtle and tacit nature of expression. We detail our methodology, present the results of its application to a group of VJs and conclude with a discussion of the implications our findings may have for those wishing to design for VJs, or those in related domains that involve expressive interaction with technology. Copyright 2011 ACM.

We describe an interactive museum installation designed to extend visitor participation through personal reflection and contribution. The case study describes design approaches, which focused on multiple individual simultaneous use, which we describe as multi-user design. These approaches were deployed to support the visitor moving from viewer to contributor in a temporary museum exhibition. We present the anticipated use and early analysis of some of the data from actual use of the system. We outline our initial findings for the opportunities and limits in designing for personalised user-generated content through such approaches within museums and suggest areas of future work on qualities of participation and visitor contribution.

Humanaquarium is a movable performance space designed to explore the dialogical relationship between artist and audience. Two musicians perform inside the cube-shaped box, collaborating with participants to co-create an aesthetic audio-visual experience. The front wall of the humanaquarium is a touch-sensitive FTIR window. Max/MSP is used to translate the locations of touches on the window into control data, manipulating the tracking of software synthesizers and audio effects generated in Ableton Live, and influencing a Jitter visualization projected upon the rear wall of the cube.

We present the Lovers box, a digital artefact designed to engage romantic couples in reflections on their relationship. By adopting perspectives from social psychology and interaction design, the work examines the role of reflection through the use of a non-traditional digital artefact that acts as a site for enduring attachments of personal emotional significance. To this end, we respond to previous research work on reflection through design, in the development of four Lovers boxes whose purposes and meanings are completed through reflections both by romantic couples and their integration in everyday lives. A field study was conducted involving five couples in new relationships who were asked to exchange video messages (co-created with a digital media artist) using the Lovers box over a period of five weeks. Our findings demonstrated: (1) that the creation, exchange and display of messages embedded in the digital artefact served as both mirrors and sources for reflection concerning couples relationships; (2) the rich manner in which the Lovers box became meaningful to participants, as they perceived it as keepsake or digital storybook of their meaningful experiences, experienced it as an enjoyable shared hobby with their partner and saw it as providing them a snapshot into the beloved persons mind and thoughts; and (3) how the potential for new castings of digital artefacts might support our personal and emotional lives. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pervasive computing platforms present a major new opportunity for retailers to lower costs and build a deeper relationship with customers. © 2006 IEEE.

We present SurfaceMouse, a virtual mouse for multi-touch surface computing. Although moving away from the direct touch manipulation paradigm, our system brings many significant benefits seen in absolute clutched devices to surface computing. Features include high and variable control device gains, several degrees of freedom in a single hand gesture, ability to target small GUI items, and a familiar method for reaching far areas of large displays. Importantly, this benefit is realized by leveraging what users already know and have tremendous experience with - physical mice. Results from our proof-of-concept evaluation reflect this; users were able to use and recognize our system without training or prompts. Being entirely virtual, Surface-Mouse can be implemented in existing systems with little more than a software update. © 2011 ACM.

Labor-intensity of resource quality assessment is a bottleneck for content management in metadata-driven health information portals. This research proposes an adaptive attribute-based approach to assist informed judgments when assessing the quality of online information resources. It employs intelligent learning techniques to predict values of resource quality attributes based on previous value judgments encoded in resource metadata descriptions. The proposed approach is implemented as an intelligent quality attribute learning component of a portal’s content management system. This paper introduces the required machine learning procedures for the implementation of the component. Its prediction performance was evaluated via a series of machine learning experiments, which demonstrated the feasibility and the potential usefulness of the proposed approach. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.

Activity recognition in intelligent environments could play a key role for supporting people in their activities of daily life. Partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) models have been used successfully, for example, to assist people with dementia when carrying out small multistep tasks such as hand washing. POMDP models are a powerful, yet flexible framework for modeling assistance that can deal with uncertainty and utility in a theoretically well-justified manner. Unfortunately, POMDPs usually require a very labor-intensive, manual set-up procedure. This paper describes a knowledge-driven method for automatically generating POMDP activity recognition and context-sensitive prompting systems for complex tasks. It starts with a psychologically justified description of the task and the particular environment in which it is to be carried out that can be generated from empirical data. This is then combined with a specification of the available sensors and effectors to build a working prompting system. The method is illustrated by building a system that prompts through the task of making a cup of tea in a real-world kitchen. The case is made that, with further development and tool support, the method could feasibly be used in a clinical or industrial setting. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We present a dynamic time warping based activity recognition system for the analysis of low-level food preparation activities. Accelerometers embedded into kitchen utensils provide continuous sensor data streams while people are using them for cooking. The recognition framework analyzes frames of contiguous sensor readings in real-time with low latency. It thereby adapts to the idiosyncrasies of utensil use by automatically maintaining a template database. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the classification approach by a number of real-world practical experiments on a publically available dataset. The adaptive system shows superior performance compared to a static recognizer. Furthermore, we demonstrate the generalization capabilities of the system by gradually reducing the amount of training samples. The system achieves excellent classification results even if only a small number of training samples is available, which is especially relevant for real-world scenarios. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

humanaquarium is a mobile performance space which draws upon the traditions of busking and street performance to engage audiences in collaborative, creative play.We describe how the conceptual and physical nature of the performance space affected the way we composed the audio/visual performance content in Phantasmagoria, an interactive art piece built for the humanaquarium environment. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Lighting design in computer graphics is essentially not a random process but one driven by both a technical and aesthetic appreciation of lighting. In some applications, the result of the lighting design process is a 2D image derived by rendering a 3D scene. Users with limited understandings of manipulation of lighting parameters may have difficulties in properly modifying the lighting parameters in order to achieve desired lighting effects. We present and demonstrate an approach to lighting design in applications where the expected result of the lighting design process is a 2D image. In this approach, the lighting-by-example method using perception-based objective function is used in combination with an interactive interface in order to optimize lighting parameters for an object or a group of objects individually, and the visual results of these separate processes are combined (utilizing 3D depth information) in the seamless generation of a final 2D image. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

OverWatch is an audio/visual performance for two musicians, involving the production of narrative visuals on-the-fly. Presented in a theatrical context, with the musicians playing beneath a large projection screen, the piece references early silent movies, specifically the expressionist films of the 1920s. However, rather than responding to the formal and narrative content of the images onscreen, the musicians in OverWatch have a direct impact upon the content and structure of the movie. The improvised musical score, translated into MIDI and audio data is used to provide camera, lighting and animation cues for a 3D engine, allowing the musicians to effectively direct a Computer Graphic film in real-time. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

We present the iterative design, implementation, and validation of a collaborative learning application for school children designed for a digital tabletop. Digital mysteries, is based on the mysteries paper-based learning technique. Our work is distinctive in that the design process, the design choices, and the implementation framework are all grounded in theories of both collaborative interaction and learning. Our hypothesis was that, if well utilized, the digital table-top's unique affordances would allow for the creation of collaborative learning tools that were better than traditional paper-or computer-based tools. The two main design goals for the digital version are supporting externalization of thinking and higher-level thinking skills. The evaluation of the final version provided evidence that use of the application increases the probability that effective learning mechanisms will occur and encourages higher-level thinking through reflection. We conclude the paper with design guidelines for tabletop collaborative learning applications. © 2010 ACM.

The augmentation of tabletop multi-touch surfaces with physical objects is a well visited approach for the realisation of tangible user interfaces. Interaction with objects on a multi-touch surface is often limited to spatial manipulation and common marker-based techniques for object tracking typically provide little more than position and orientation information for the objects. We present a novel, low-cost, approach for tracking objects on a camera-based multi-touch surface. Our approach utilises modulated Infrared light to provide a bi-directional communication channel between objects and the surface and thereby presents the opportunity for much richer forms of interaction with physical objects. © 2010 ACM.

Developers of interactive 3D applications, such as computer games, are expending increasing levels of effort on the challenge of creating more narrative experiences in virtual worlds. As a result, there is a pressing requirement to automate an essential component of a narrative - the cinematography - and develop camera control techniques that can be utilized within the context of interactive environments in which actions are not known in advance. Such camera control algorithms should be capable of enforcing both low-level geometric constraints, such as the visibility of key subjects, and more elaborate properties related to cinematic conventions such as characteristic viewpoints and continuity editing. In this paper, we present a fully automated real-time cinematography system that constructs a movie from a sequence of low-level narrative elements (events, key subjects actions and key subject motions). Our system computes appropriate viewpoints on these narrative elements, plans paths between viewpoints and performs cuts following cinematic conventions. Additionally, it offers an expressive framework which delivers notable variations in directorial style. Our process relies on a viewpoint space partitioning technique in 2D that identifies characteristic viewpoints of relevant actions for which we compute the partial and full visibility. These partitions, to which we refer as Director Volumes, provide a full characterization over the space of viewpoints. We build upon this spatial characterization to select the most appropriate director volumes, reason over the volumes to perform appropriate camera cuts and rely on traditional path-planning techniques to perform transitions. Our system represents a novel and expressive approach to cinematic camera control which stands in contrast to existing techniques that are mostly procedural, only concentrate on isolated aspects (visibility, transitions, editing, framing) or do not encounter for variations in directorial style. © The Eurographics Association 2010.

The introduction of tabletop interfaces has given rise to the need for the development of secure and usable authentication techniques that are appropriate for the co-located collaborative settings for which they have been designed. Most commonly, user authentication is based on something you know, but this is a particular problem for tabletop interfaces, as they are particularly vulnerable to shoulder surfing given their remit to foster co-located collaboration. In other words, tabletop users would typically authenticate in full view of a number of observers. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a number of novel tabletop authentication schemes that exploit the features of multi-touch interaction in order to inhibit shoulder surfing. In our pilot work with users, and in our formal user-evaluation, one authentication scheme - Pressure-Grid - stood out, significantly enhancing shoulder surfing resistance when participants used it to enter both PINs and graphical passwords. © 2010 ACM.

This paper describes the design and initial evaluation of Tag-liatelle, a collaborative tagging application for encouraging healthier eating. Users photograph their own meals and upload these photos to a website, where fellow users anonymously tag them for content. Initial results suggest that tagging of food content is a popular activity. However, further work must be done to automate the extraction of valid nutritional information from the tags generated. © 2010 Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

The IRIS Network of Excellence started its work in January 2009. In this paper we highlight some new research directions developing within the network: one is revisiting narrative formalisation through the use of Linear Logic and the other is challenging the conventional framework of basing Interactive Storytelling on computer graphics to explore the content-based recombination of video sequences. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.

Information portals are quality-controlled intermediaries, through which consumers can access online information of high relevance and quality. Developing and maintaining a portal's content repository involves resource identification, selection and description processes undertaken by domain experts. Among these processes, the less standardised, manual quality assessment procedures are highlighted, where new solutions are imperative to solve its scalability and sustainability issues. Results of a qualitative analysis implicate that quality assessment is fundamentally a subjective issue that needs human intervention. For this reason, this research proposes a semi-automated quality assessment approach, in which a user-centred quality framework, an indicator-based quality model and a decision support tool are devised to address the identified domain expert needs for intelligent support. The system development methodology within design science framework is adopted by this research and the tool prototyping within the context of health information portals is underway to evaluate the feasibility and usefulness of the proposed approach. © (2009) by the AIS/ICIS Administrative Office All rights reserved.

Within the context of an endeavor to provide situated support for people with cognitive impairments in the kitchen, we developed and evaluated classifiers for recognizing 11 actions involved in food preparation. Data was collected from 20 lay subjects using four specially designed kitchen utensils incorporating embedded 3-axis accelerometers. Subjects were asked to prepare a mixed salad in our laboratory-based instrumented kitchen environment. Video of each subject's food preparation activities were independently annotated by three different coders. Several classifiers were trained and tested using these features. With an overall accuracy of 82.9% our investigation demonstrated that a broad set of food preparation actions can be reliably recognized using sensors embedded in kitchen utensils. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.

We present a method for identifying the order of stacked items on interactive surfaces. This is achieved using conventional, passive fiducial markers, which in addition to reflective regions, also incorporate structured areas of transparency. This allows particular orderings to appear as unique marker patterns. We discuss how such markers are encoded and fabricated, and include relevant mathematics. To motivate our approach, we comment on various scenarios where stacking could be especially useful. We conclude with details from our proof-of-concept implementation, built on Microsoft Surface.

Multi-touch displays based on infrared (IR) light offer many advantages over alternative technologies. Existing IR multi-touch devices either use complex custom electronic sensor arrays, or a camera that must be placed relatively distant from the display. FiberBoard is an easily constructed compact IR-sensing multi-touch display. Using an array of optical fibers, reflected IR light is channeled to a camera. As the fibers are flexible the camera is free to be positioned so as to minimize the depth of the device. The resulting display is around one tenth of the depth of a conventional camera-based multi-touch display. We describe our prototype, its novel calibration process, and virtual camera software based on existing multi-touch image processing tools.

This course summarizes the motivations and requirements for camera control, presents an overview of the state of the art, and examines promising avenues and hot topics for future research. It classifies the various techniques and identifies the representational limits and commitments of each. Approaches range from completely interactive techniques based on the possible mappings between a user's input and the camera parameters to completely automated paradigms in which the camera moves and jumps according to high-level, scenario-oriented goals. Between these extremes lie approaches with more limited expressiveness that use a range of algebraic and constraint-based optimization techniques. The course includes a number of live examples from both commercial systems and research prototypes, and it emphasizes the tough issues facing application developers, such as real-time handling of visibility for complex multiple targets in dynamic environments (multi-object tracking).

The Ambient Kitchen is a high fidelity prototype for exploring the design of pervasive computing algorithms and applications for everyday environments. The environment integrates data projectors, cameras, RFID tags and readers, object mounted accelerometers, and under-floor pressure sensing using a combination of wired and wireless networks. The Ambient Kitchen is a lab-based replication of a real kitchen where careful design has hidden the additional technology, and allows both the evaluation of pervasive computing prototypes and the simultaneous capture of the multiple synchronized streams of sensor data. Previous work exploring the requirements for situated support for people with cognitive impairments motivated the design of the physical and technical infrastructure and we describe both our motivations and previous work on interaction design in kitchen environments. Finally, we describe how our lab-based prototype has been put to use as: a design tool for designers; a design tool for users; an observatory to collect sensor data for activity recognition algorithm development, and an evaluation test bed. The limitations and advantages of lab-based, as opposed to in situ home-based testing, are discussed Copyright 2009 ACM.

We investigate technological solutions for arts therapists who work with older adults with cognitive disabilities, such as Alzheimer's disease. We present ethnographic analysis of a survey of arts therapists in the UK and Canada, and show how there is a need for devices that can be used to promote autonomy and independence through engagement with creative visual arts. We then demonstrate a novel device that uses a touch-screen interface, and artificial intelligence software to monitor and interact with a user. Using a probabilistic model, the device monitors the behaviours of a user as well as aspects of their affective or internal state, including their responsiveness and engagement with the device. The device then uses decision theoretic reasoning to take situated actions that promote engagement from the user. We show how the device fits with the ethnographic design, and we give a laboratory demonstration of the functionality of the device. We present and discuss our next steps with this device, including end user testing. Copyright 2009 ACM.

In a lucid dream, a dreamer becomes conscious that she can interact with and control events in the dream environment. Using gestural control devices and responsive video visualization of vocal interaction, our interactive performance, dream.Medusa, invites four participants selected from the observing audience to experience a simulated lucid dream. The participatory nature of the dream.Medusa performance facilitates a dialogical exchange between performer and participants in order to collaboratively create an aesthetic experience. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

We describe a new application of interactive participatory performance in interaction design. Our pragmatic strategy permits us to use performance as an investigatory tool in the exploration of user behavior. By taking a holistic view of the evaluation of the interplay between the designed artifact (the performance content) and the people who interact and relate to it, we can extract insights from the performance with the intention of informing the process of designing interaction mechanisms for more conventional public interfaces.

With the recent developments in ePaper technology, consumer eBook readers have display qualities and form factors that are approaching that of traditional books. These eBook readers are already replacing paper in some commercial domains, but the potential of eBooks to extend forms of writing and storytelling has not been significantly explored. Using the digital and dynamic characteristics afforded by eBook readers, we are developing iBookmark, a GPS-enabled eBook reader. In iBookmark, writers can create stories that change in response to the location of the eBook itself. By setting context variables based on current and past locations of the eBook reader and using these in the rule-based generation of text and illustrations. We are developing new rhetorical device for writers that extend the expressive range of eBook delivered stories.

Live media production - the presentation of audio-visual content at events such as conferences and concerts - is a high intensity task where a small production team must interact with an amalgamation of separate hardware tools to transform and direct a variety of media sources to outputs such as large screens, preview monitors, and web-casts. We present Media Crate, a tangible tabletop interface crafted in response to the key actions and needs of live media producers. Using tangibles, previously complex and ambiguous actions can now become collaborative and easy to learn, whilst providing expressive features not present in traditional interfaces. In this paper we give a description of the Media Crate's interface, discuss how knowledge and experience of live media production impacts on the design, and finally present the results of an initial deployment of the system at a live event. Copyright 2009 ACM.

The AMUC (Associated Motion capture User Categories) project consisted of building a prototype sketch retrieval client for exploring motion capture archives. High-dimensional datasets reflect the dynamic process of motion capture and comprise high-rate sampled data of a performer's joint angles; in response to multiple query criteria, these data can potentially yield different kinds of information. The AMUC prototype harnesses graphic input via an electronic tablet as a query mechanism, time and position signals obtained from the sketch being mapped to the properties of data streams stored in the motion capture repository. As well as proposing a pragmatic solution for exploring motion capture datasets, the project demonstrates the conceptual value of iterative prototyping in innovative interdisciplinary design. The AMUC team was composed of live performance practitioners and theorists conversant with a variety of movement techniques, bioengineers who recorded and processed motion data for integration into the retrieval tool, and computer scientists who designed and implemented the retrieval system and server architecture, scoped for Grid-based applications. Creative input on information system design and navigation, and digital image processing, underpinned implementation of the prototype, which has undergone preliminary trials with diverse users, allowing identification of rich potential development areas. © 2009 The Royal Society.

Background: The role of technology to facilitate independent living for people with dementia is not fully realized, with initial attempts (e.g. tracking devices) being considered unacceptable from a practical and ethical perspective. The aim of this study is to create acceptable and effective prototype technologies to facilitate independence for people with dementia through a user-centered design process involving them and their carers. Method: The study comprised a three-stage participatory design process: scoping stage (five focus groups, 10 people with dementia and 11 carers); participatory design stage (five workshops, 22 participants) and prototype development stage (four meetings with two people with dementia and one carer). Focus groups and workshops were digitally recorded, fully transcribed and subjected to constant comparative analysis. Results: People with mild to moderate dementia enjoy a variety of activities both on their own and with their families; however, concerns included getting lost, a loss of confidence with curtailment of usual activities, and carer anxiety. Existing technologies (mobile phones) were used intermittently. Participants felt strongly that future devices should be disguised and be integrated easily into their daily routines. Suggested areas for functional improvement included two-way communications, flexibility of function as the illness progresses, and something to "guide" them home when out walking or driving. Attention should also be focused on minimizing the size, weight and visibility of devices to reduce stigmatization. Conclusion: Prototypes for two devices (armband and electronic notepad) were developed. The study showed that involving people with dementia in the process of participatory design is feasible and could lead to devices which are more acceptable and relevant to their needs. © 2009 International Psychogeriatric Association.

The provision of consumer health information portals acting as gateways to online resources is one strategy for enabling patients to be better informed and engaged in healthcare decision making and support. These portals need to be both smart and user sensitive, able to identify and select resources of relevance to a user community, describe them in ways that facilitate user assessments of quality and relevance, and provide efficient and effective search functionality that can be tailored to individual information needs. The domain expertise required to select and describe resources in this manner is a key to the efficacy of such portals, with their viability dependent on the sustainability and scalability of their resource identification, selection and description processes. This paper reports on a study of the domain expertise involved with the provision of an information portal for a breast cancer community undertaken as part of the Smart Information Portal Project. © 2009 IEEE.

Display registration allows the composition of a camera-equipped smart phone and a public display. By tracking dynamic markers on a public display, researchers can compute the mapping between the pixels on the smart phone's screen and those on the display. Display registration allows interaction through the smart phone image, facilitating both conventional direct-manipulation interaction techniques and the use of the smart phone as a tangible tool. This article describes the theory and practice of display registration with smart phones, findings in initial user studies, and the opportunities for developing markerless display registration schemes. © 2006 IEEE.

We present an alternative view of family communication that foregrounds both the emotional lives of family members and that which is of personal significance to them. Through the reflections of our participants, and our design response to these, we have used the design of digital jewellery as a window on the family as an emotional entity. In doing so we escape conventional assumptions as to how technology might support family life, and instead propose alternative forms of technology that serve as acceptable sites for highly personalised and personally significant emotional statements. Two designs are presented, Traces and Blossom, which are both responses to the lives and personal accounts of our participants, and a challenge to the conventions of interaction design. By reflecting on our designs we identify and unpick assumptions as to the nature of the digital technology with a view to opening up a design space that places an emphasis on both the individual and the authentic character of our emotional lives. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A method is proposed to facilitate visually-driven interactions between two devices, which we call the client, such as a mobile phone or personal digital assistant (PDA), which must be equipped with a camera, and the server, such as a personal computer (PC) or intelligent display. The technique that we describe here requires a camera on the client to view the display on the server, such that either the client or the server (or both) can compute exactly which part of the server display is being viewed. The server display and the clients image of the server display, which can be written onto (part of) the client's display are then registered. This basic principle, which we call "display registration" supports a very broad range of interactions (depending on the context in which the system is operating) and it will make these interactions significantly quicker, easier and more intuitive for the user to initiate and control. In addition, either the client or the server (or both) can compute the six degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) position of the client camera with respect to the server display. We have built a prototype which proves the principle and usefulness of display registration. This system employs markers on the server display for fast registration and it has been used to demonstrate a variety of operations, such as selecting and zooming into images.

A well-known security and identification problem involves the creation of secure but usable identification and authentication tools that the user is fully motivated to adopt. We describe an innovative solution to this problem: The Biometrie Daemon, which takes its inspiration from two sources. It is firstly conceived as a biometric device which is initially imprinted with the fixed biometric properties of its owner, and is then regularly updated with the fluid biometric properties of its owner. However it also acts as an electronic pet which (i) part-shares identity with its owner, (ii) needs nurturing and (iii) effectively dies when separated from its owner for any length of time. Our proposal was inspired by the literary daemons described by Philip Pullman. Our Biometric Daemon synthesizes the properties of biometric token and daemon and we argue that it offers the basis for secure, usable and engaging identification and authentication.

One common practice in relation to alphanumeric passwords is to write them down or share them with a trusted friend or colleague. Graphical password schemes often claim the advantage that they are significantly more secure with respect to both verbal disclosure and writing down. We investigated the reality of this claim in relation to the Passfaces graphical password scheme. By collecting a corpus of naturalistic descriptions of a set of 45 faces, we explored participants' ability to associate descriptions with faces across three conditions in which the decoy faces were selected: (1) at random; (2) on the basis of their visual similarity to the target face; and (3) on the basis of the similarity of the verbal descriptions of the decoy faces to the target face. Participants were found to perform significantly worse when presented with visual and verbally grouped decoys, suggesting that Passfaces can be further secured for description. Subtle differences in both the nature of male and female descriptions, and male and female performance were also observed.

Attribute gates are a new user interface element designed to address the problem of concurrently setting attributes and moving objects between territories on a digital tabletop. Motivated by the notion of task levels in activity theory, and crossing interfaces, attribute gates allow users to operationalize multiple subtasks in one smooth movement. We present two configurations of attribute gates; (1) grid gates which spatially distribute attribute values in a regular grid, and require users to draw trajectories through the attributes; (2) polar gates which distribute attribute values on segments of concentric rings, and require users to align segments when setting attribute combinations. The layout of both configurations was optimised based on targeting and steering laws derived from Fitts' Law. A study compared the use of attribute gates with traditional contextual menus. Users of attribute gates demonstrated both increased performance and higher mutual awareness.

Interactive Storytelling is a major endeavour to develop new media which could offer a radically new user experience, with a potential to revolutionise digital entertainment. European research in Interactive Storytelling has played a leading role in the development of the field, and this creates a unique opportunity to strengthen its position even further by structuring collaboration between some of its main actors. IRIS (Integrating Research in Interactive Storytelling) aims at creating a virtual centre of excellence that will be able to progress the understanding of fundamental aspects of Interactive Storytelling and the development of corresponding technologies. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

We describe a system which allows several audience members to participate in a performance of an interactive media piece. The performance is created using Max/MSP and Jitter, and is controlled by live voice as well as by participant-operated manipulated objects. The performance was created as part of an interactive art exhibit exploring a night of dreaming and was devised in order to explore the experience of lucid dreaming. We discuss our experiences with the performance and the potential use of participatory performance as a vehicle for exploring wider issues in interaction design. ©Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.

This paper gives an overview of a reminder system, based on digital television technology, which can present rich multi-media prompting messages in order to help maintain a regular daily schedule for people with mild to moderate dementia. The ongoing development of this application has the aim of supporting busy carers by making it easy to create, adapt and maintain a schedule of reminders to help keep a regular daily routine, relieving some of the burden of care and freeing more time for better human contact and interaction. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.

An immersive video system that has been developed for the purpose of evaluating future traveller information system (F-TIS), in particular, F-TIS scenarios that rely on a pervasive computing infrastructure is presented. Immersive video uses multiple video streams captured from a first person perspective at key locations in a scenario. By dynamically reconstructing a user's visual and aural experiences, the immersive video system creates a lab-based framework that captures a number of contextual factors of real-world mobile information system use. Graphical user interfaces, displayed on a wearable display and a personal digital assistant, are used in the evaluation. Both the technical basis of the immersive video system and its application to the study of user perceptions and reactions to pervasive information services are presented. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008.

The authors introduce the notion of a crossmodal display as a proposal for enhancing the privacy of public information displays. The selection of appropriate display technology and interaction techniques relies on an understanding of the public-private nature of information and the spaces from which it is accessed. The crossmodal display framework supports multiple users simultaneously accessing information that contains public and personal elements. Crossmodal displays are multiuser interfaces that facilitate the efficient public access of personalized information, while maintaining the anonymity of each user in physical public spaces. Based on psychological theories of crossmodal attention that characterize human capabilities for matching information received through different modalities, the framework takes advantage of public displays and mobile devices through the use of peripheral cues and allows information personalization in public space. Two example systems are presented, in the first individuals access situated ambient displays of directions to destinations, and in the second a structured combination of cues is used to provide access to information board displays. The configuration and implications for privacy of both systems is introduced and analyzed within the wider context of access to public information displays in pervasive computing. © 2008 Sage Publications.

A well-known security and identification problem involves the creation of secure but usable identification and authentication tools that the user is fully motivated to adopt. We describe an innovative solution to this problem: The Biometric Daemon, which takes its inspiration from two sources. It is firstly conceived as a biometric device which is initially imprinted with the fixed biometric properties of its owner, and is then regularly updated with the fluid biometric properties of its owner. However it also acts as an electronic pet which (i) part-shares identity with its owner, (ii) needs nurturing and (iii) effectively dies when separated from its owner for any length of time. Our proposal was inspired by the literary daemons described by Philip Pullman. Our Biometric Daemon synthesizes the properties of biometric token and daemon and we argue that it offers the basis for secure, usable and engaging identification and authentication. © Usability, Psychology, and Security, UPSEC 2008. All rights reserved.

Evaluating ubiquitous systems with users can be a challenge, and the goal of this workshop was to take stock of current issues and novel approaches to address this challenge. In this paper, we report on the discussions we had during several plenary and small-group sessions. We first briefly review those evaluation methods that we identified as being used in ubiquitous computing, and then discuss several issues and research questions that emerged during the discussion. These issues include: data sources used for evaluation, comparing ubiquitous systems, interdisciplinary evaluation, multi-method evaluation, factoring in context and disengaged users. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008.

Recent progress in modelling, animation and rendering means that rich, high fidelity virtual worlds are found in many interactive graphics applications. However, the viewer's experience of a 3D world is dependent on the nature of the virtual cinematography, in particular, the camera position, orientation and motion in relation to the elements of the scene and the action. Camera control encompasses viewpoint computation, motion planning and editing. We present a range of computer graphics applications and draw on insights from cinematographic practice in identifying their different requirements with regard to camera control. The nature of the camera control problem varies depending on these requirements, which range from augmented manual control (semi-automatic) in interactive applications, to fully automated approaches. We review the full range of solution techniques from constraint-based to optimization-based approaches, and conclude with an examination of occlusion management and expressiveness in the context of declarative approaches to camera control. © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

A potential drawback of graphical password schemes is that they are more vulnerable to shoulder surfing than conventional alphanumeric text passwords. We present a variation of the Drawa-Secret scheme originally proposed by Jermyn et al [1] that is more resistant to shoulder surfing through the use of a qualitative mapping between user strokes and the password, and the use of dynamic grids to both obfuscate attributes of the user secret and encourage them to use different surface realizations of the secret. The use of qualitative spatial relations relaxes the tight constraints on the reconstruction of a secret; allowing a range of deviations from the original. We describe QDAS (Qualitative Draw-ASecret), an initial implementation of this graphical password scheme, and the results of an empirical study in which we examined the memorability of secrets, and their susceptibility to shoulder-surfing attacks, for both Draw-A-Secret and QDAS.

We present an immersive video system that has been developed for the purpose of evaluating future traveller information system (FTIS), in particular, FTIS scenarios that rely on a pervasive computing infrastructure. Immersive video uses multiple video streams captured from a first person perspective at key locations in a scenario. By dynamically reconstructing a user's visual and aural experiences, the immersive video system creates a lab-based framework that captures a number of the contextual factors of real-world mobile information system use. Graphical user interfaces, displayed on a PDA and a wearable display, are used inthe evaluation. We present both the technical basis of the immersive video system and its application to the study of user perceptions and reactions to pervasive information services.

In computer graphics, easy-to-use tools for configuring lighting for 3D scenes are required by users. Following a perception-based lighting design framework, which models image quality using cognitively inspired objective functions, we present a new approach to lighting design which both: (1) allows the declarative specification of lighting; and (2) uses target scenes and images to facilitate intuitive and natural interactive control of the scene lighting. The LightOPex system enables users to select the desired lighting for a scene using exemplars in the form of 3D scenes and 2D images and uses the perceptual properties of these exemplars as target values in an initial optimization step. © The Eurographics Association 2007.

Development of virtual humans has focused mainly in two broad areas - conversational agents and computer game characters. Computer game characters have traditionally been action-oriented - focused on the game-play - and conversational agents have been focused on sensible/intelligent conversation. While virtual humans have incorporated some form of non-verbal behaviour, this has been quite limited and more importantly not connected or connected very loosely with the behaviour of a real human interacting with the virtual human - due to a lack of sensor data and no system to respond to that data. The interactional aspect of non-verbal behaviour is highly important in human-human interactions and previous research has demonstrated that people treat media (and therefore virtual humans) as real people, and so interactive non-verbal behaviour is also important in the development of virtual humans. This paper presents the challenges in creating virtual humans that are non-verbally interactive and drawing corollaries with the development history of control systems in robotics presents some approaches to solving these challenges - specifically using behaviour based systems - and shows how an order of magnitude increase in response time of virtual humans in conversation can be obtained and that the development of rapidly responding non-verbal behaviours can start with just a few behaviours with more behaviours added without difficulty later in development.

Automatic lighting design aims to provide users with semi-automated approaches, and easy-to-use tools, to configure lighting for 3D scenes. We present LIGHTOPEX the first fully automatic example-based local illumination lighting design system. Utilizing a wavelet-based lighting design framework, by which image quality is modeled using a cognitively inspired objective function, this approach to lighting design both: (1) allows the declarative specification of lighting; and (2) facilitates intuitive and natural specification of scene lighting. LIGHTOPEX enables users to select the desired lighting for a scene using exemplar 2D images and uses the spatial distribution of the luminance in these images as the target values of an optimization step. We demonstrate the utility of LIGHTOPEX through a range of examples, and conduct a preliminary investigation of the performance of a number of different of optimization schemes. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.

This study presents synthetic embodied conversational agents, and how they can be used to explore the persuasive potential of real embodied conversational agents. Utilizing a novel Wizard-of-Oz style approach and a direct measure of behavior change we explore whether 'ideal' embodied conversational agents have a similar persuasive impact as real people, and demonstrate the importance of visually perceiving for embodied conversational agents to be persuasive. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.

Perception-based lighting design approaches model image quality using a cognitively grounded objective function which is in turn optimised through manipulation of the lighting parameters of a scene. We present, and demonstrate, a detailed implementation of perception-based lighting design, including the application and evaluation of stochastic optimisation using genetic algorithms. © The Eurographics Association 2006.

Realism for synthetic characters, both in computer games and conversational agent mediated applications, requires both visual and behavioural fidelity. One significant area of synthetic character behaviour, that has to date received little attention, is non-verbal communication. In identifying the scope and participants of non-verbal communication in computer games we first review the range of spatial and task scenarios that are relevant. We then select four principal categories of non-verbal behaviour: gesture; gaze; proxemics; self-adaptors; and both summarise their role in communication and propose their incorporation in the design of non-player characters. In conclusion we review the question of how to capture the non-verbal behaviour of players or provide them with interaction techniques that might facilitate non-verbal communication with players and non-player characters alike.

Striking a balance between the public visibility of a display, and the ease with which individuals have access to information, is a key challenge for the developers of interfaces to pervasive services. In this paper we utilize the cognitive phenomenon of crossmodal attention as a means of providing users with personalized cues to content on public displays. We describe two prototype applications that use crossmodal cues to temporally multiplex publicly visible information: CROSSFLOW, an ambient navigation system; and CROSSBOARD, a dense multi-user public information display. We outline the results of pilot preliminary user studies and describe the infrastructure required to support crossmodal displays. ©2006 IEEE.

Future traveller information systems (FTIS) supported by pervasive computing are being considered as the next generation of traveller information systems. However, large scale deployments of pervasive computing environments do not yet exist. Building models or mock-ups of FTIS is expensive and time-consuming. This paper introduces current research at Newcastle University which is investigating the impacts of FTIS scenarios on modal shift away from the car to public transport. The adopted methodology is a combination of conventional research methods incorporating textual descriptions of the hypothetical FTIS scenario and an innovative approach involving rapid prototyping using immersive video and a simulated infrastructure to create a realistic environment to explore user experience of FTIS scenarios.

Declarative approaches to lighting design model image quality using an objective function that captures the desired visual properties of an object or scene. The value of the objective function is optimized for a particular camera configuration through the manipulation of the lighting parameters of a scene. We review the notion of declarative lighting design, and introduce LIGHTOP, a tool by which the design of objective functions (the components and settings) and the application of different optimization techniques can be explored. We show how LIGHTOP can be used to explore declarative lighting design through the realization of a number of extensions to existing approaches, including the application and evaluation of stochastic optimization; the use of backlighting to maximize edge enhancement; contrast modeling; and the use of a perceptually uniform color space. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.

In summary, we would like to reiterate the relevance of virtual reality not only as a technology in itself, but for the application and development of other research disciplines. Despite the ongoing challenges of computer vision and natural language processing, we hope this special issue makes some small inroad into the problems of integrating speech, language and gesture in virtual reality and other graphics based systems. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2005.

Modelling, animation and rendering has dominated research computer graphics yielding increasingly rich and realistic virtual worlds. The complexity, richness and quality of the virtual worlds are viewed through a single media that is a virtual camera. In order to properly convey information, whether related to the characters in a scene, the aesthetics of the composition or the emotional impact of the lighting, particular attention must be given to how the camera is positioned and moved. This paper presents an overview of automated camera planning techniques. After analyzing the requirements with respect to shot properties, we review the solution techniques and present a broad classification of existing approaches. We identify the principal shortcomings of existing techniques and propose a set of objectives for research into automated camera planning. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.

We address the issue of spontaneous gesture synthesis for embodied conversation agents (ECAs), that is, the generation of appropriate gestures and their coordination with spoken utterances. After a characterization of the application constraints we establish the principal requirements of the gesture generation framework. We demonstrate how these requirements can be met by formulating the gesture generation as real-time search through gesture space (actually gesture and facial expression) under the constraints arising from the graphical model of the character and the linguistic properties of the utterance. © 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Current models of component architectures require extensions to support compositional reasoning about extra-functional properties such as worst-case time. Studying such properties in architectures is complicated since actual components may not yet be chosen during architectural design, and different choices may have significant and hard to predict effects on the system properties. In this paper we show how finite state automata and Petri nets may be extended to provide compositionality of extra-functional properties. We focus on worst-case time and safety. We illustrate the use of these techniques on the well-known production cell case study. In collaboration with industry we are currently applying a prototype analysis system for predicting critical properties of real-time industrial control systems. © 2003 IEEE.

Static camera, planning is a fundamental problem for both interactive and non-interactive computer graphics. We examine the nature or the problem, contrasting procedural and declarative specifications of camera position. In establishing the desirability of the declarative approach, we identify the a number of components: an image description language; an object ontology; and a framework for performing constrained optimization. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.

A common motivation for developing computational frameworks for diagrammatic reasoning is the hope that they might serve as re-configurable tools for studying human problem solving performance. Despite the ongoing debate as to the precise mechanisms by which diagrams, or any other external representation, are used in human problem solving, there is little doubt that diagrammatic representations considerably help humans solve certain classes of problems. In fact, there are a host of applications of diagrams and diagrammatic representations in computing, from data presentation to visual programming languages. In contrast to both the use of diagrams in human problem solving and the ubiquitous use of diagrams in the computing industry, the topic of this review is the use of diagrammatic representations in automated problem solving. We therefore investigate the common, and often implicit, assumption that if diagrams are so useful for human problem solving and are so apparent in human endeavour, then there must be analogous computational devices of similar utility.

This paper examines the application of hierarchical discrete spatial representations to the kinematic analysis and synthesis of the higher pairs. Two instances of hierarchical representation are investigated, a global decomposition in the form of quadtrees, and an object-centered, multi-level molecular decomposition. Kinematic reasoning with both representations relies upon the rapid evaluation of the single occupancy constraint. For both representations we present algorithms that allow the rapid detection of intersection between two objects, the analysis of higher pair mechanisms, and a restricted class of kinematic synthesis.

We present KAP a computer program that solves planar higher-pair kinematic problems. KAP is a direct attempt to mirror human capacities to reason about kinematic problems using mental imagery. We implement the spatial and multi-scale nature of the visual buffer as a pyramid of occupancy arrays, and also present computational realisations of the attention window, cued attention shifts, the shape shift subsystem and the visual routines underlying the process of reasoning about object interactions. We contrast this approach to mainstream AI approaches to kinematic reasoning to demonstrate KAP's utility not only as a successful cognitive model, but also as an embodiment of a promising paradigm for a problematic class of spatial reasoning problems.

This paper presents a technique for kinematic reasoning that is based on the use of occupancy arrays. A description is presented of the algorithm used and a prototype implementation which can reason about the behaviour of higher pairs, that is, parts such as cams and gears, with rotational or translational degrees of freedom. It is shown that by representing the spatial occupancy of objects using appropriately high-resolution occupancy arrays it is possible to reason about higher pair kinematic interactions between objects. Both free and blocked motion can be inferred, and an implementation, KAP, is reported that demonstrates the utility of this approach. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.

This paper argues that model-based techniques, in particular those dealing with electromechanical systems in engineering applications, will benefit considerably by incorporating multiple perspectives. This can be achieved by integrating different representations from engineering notations, e.g. structural and functional knowledge, and different domain attributes, e.g. mechanical and electrical aspects. An example case study is used to illustrate and evaluate the approach.

A novel combination of ideas from cognitive linguistics and spatial occupancy models in robotics has led to the WIP (Words Into Pictures) system. WIP automatically generates depictions of natural language descriptions of indoor scenes. A qualitative layer in the conceptual representation of objects underlies a mechanism by which alternative depictions arise for qualitatively distinct interpretations, as often occurs as a result of deictic/intrinsic reference frame ambiguity. At the same time, a quantitative layer, in conjunction with a potential field model of the semantics of projective prepositions, is used in the process of capturing the inherently fuzzy character of the meaning of natural language spatial predications.

In this paper we concentrate on spatial prepositions, more specifically we are interested here in projective prepositions (eg. "in front of", "to the left of") which have in the past been treated as semantically uninteresting. We demonstrate that projective prepositions are in fact problematic and demand more attention than they have so far been afforded; after summarising the important components of their meaning, we review the deficiencies of past and current approaches to the decoding problem; that is, predicting what a locative expression used in a particular situation conveys. Finally we present our own approach. Motivated by the shortcomings of contemporary work, we integrate elements of Lang's conceptual representation of objects' perceptual and dimensional characteristics, and the potential field model of object proximity that originated in manipulator and mobile robot path-finding. © 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers.