Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Erik Eriksen is a remarkable individual. He has no college degrees yet is Professor of Human Development at Harvard University. He came to psychology via art, which explains why the reader will find him painting contexts and backgrounds rather than stating dull facts and concepts. He has been a training psychoanalyst for many years as well as a perceptive observer of cultural and social settings and their effect on growing up. This is not just a book on childhood. It is a panorama of our society. Anxiety in young children, apathy in American Indians, confusion in veterans of war, and arrogance in young Nazis are scrutinized under the psychoanalytic magnifying glass. The material is well written and devoid of technical jargon. The theme of the volume is that it is human to have a long childhood which will leave a lifelong residue of emotional immaturity in man. Primitive groups and

Childhood and Society.

How we Think

The theory of affordances

Intimacy is a crucial element of domestic life, and many interactive technologies designed for other purposes have been appropriated for use within intimate relationships. However, there is a deficit in current understandings of how technologies are used within intimate relationships, and how to design technologies to support intimate acts. In this paper we report on work that has addressed these deficits. We used cultural probes and contextual interviews and other ethnographically informed techniques to investigate how interactive technologies are used within intimate relationships. From this empirical work we generated a thematic understanding of intimacy and the use of interactional technologies to support intimate acts. We used this understanding to inform the design of intimate technologies. A selection of our design concepts is also presented.

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Mediating intimacy: designing technologies to support strong-tie relationships

Exertion games require investing physical effort. The fact that such games can support physical health is tempered by our limited understanding of how to design for engaging exertion experiences. This paper introduces the Exertion Framework as a way to think and talk about Exertion Games, both for their formative design and summative analysis. Our Exertion Framework is based on the ways in which we can conceive of the body investing in game-directed exertion, supported by four perspectives on the body (the Responding Body, Moving Body, Sensing Body and Relating Body) and three perspectives on gaming (rules, play and context). The paper illustrates how this framework was derived from prior systems and theory, and presents a case study of how it has been used to inspire novel exertion interactions.

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Designing sports: a framework for exertion games

What do young people want from information and communication technology? Why do they adopt some technologies but reject others? What roles do mobile technologies play in their lives as they move from childhood toward the adult world? Working from a social constructionist perspective, and on the basis of an extensive empirical research process, we are gaining insight into the variables heeded by young people during the earliest stages of technology use, stages we call 'appropriation'. We propose a model that discusses appropriation in terms of the interplay between what young people desire, the capabilities and implications of technology and the situations of use that young people inhabit. Depending on the balance between these factors, we are able to observe three outcomes: non-appropriation, appropriation and disappropriation. Conceptually, we describe technology use as a process of 'personal construction', which is quite different to the 'construction' processes followed by the designer, but nevertheless equally important.

/pdf/just-what-do-the-youth-of-today-want-technology-nuvixtpplb.pdf

Just what do the youth of today want? Technology appropriation by young people

People in close relationships, who are separated by distance, often have difficulty expressing intimacy adequately. Based on the results of an ethnographic study with couples, a prototype was developed to test the feasibility of technology in the domain of intimacy. Hug Over a Distance is an air-inflatable vest that can be remotely triggered to create a sensation resembling a hug. Although the couples did not consider the vest to be useful in their daily lives, the prototype served to provoke and stimulate design ideas from the couples during participative design workshops. An additional and unexpected benefit was also found: the prototype enhanced the couples' understanding of the researchers' methods, suggesting that prototypes can serve as tools to make participatory design volunteers aware of their importance in academic research.

Hug over a distance

Prominent theories in cognitive science propose that humans understand and represent the knowledge of the world through causal relationships. In making sense of the world, we build causal models in our mind to encode cause-effect relations of events and use these to explain why new events happen by referring to counterfactuals — things that did not happen. In this paper, we use causal models to derive causal explanations of the behaviour of model-free reinforcement learning agents. We present an approach that learns a structural causal model during reinforcement learning and encodes causal relationships between variables of interest. This model is then used to generate explanations of behaviour based on counterfactual analysis of the causal model. We computationally evaluate the model in 6 domains and measure performance and task prediction accuracy. We report on a study with 120 participants who observe agents playing a real-time strategy game (Starcraft II) and then receive explanations of the agents' behaviour. We investigate: 1) participants' understanding gained by explanations through task prediction; 2) explanation satisfaction and 3) trust. Our results show that causal model explanations perform better on these measures compared to two other baseline explanation models.

/pdf/explainable-reinforcement-learning-through-a-causal-lens-5f54ko5ldi.pdf

Frank Vetere

Papers

Mediating intimacy: designing technologies to support strong-tie relationships

Designing sports: a framework for exertion games

Just what do the youth of today want? Technology appropriation by young people

Hug over a distance

Explainable Reinforcement Learning through a Causal Lens