Women use technology to mediate numerous aspects of their professional and personal lives. Yet, few design and create these technologies given that women, especially women of color, are grossly underrepresented in computer science and engineering courses. Decisions about participation in STEM are frequently made prior to high school, and these decisions are impacted by prior experience, interest, and sense of fit with community. Digital Youth Divas is an out-of-school program that uses narrative stories to launch the creation of digital artifacts and support non-dominant middle school girls’ STEM interests and identities through virtual and real-world community. In this article, we discuss the framework of the Digital Youth Divas environment, including our approach to blending narratives into project-based design challenges through on- and offline mechanisms. Results from our pilot year, including the co-design process with the middle school participants, suggest that our narrative-centered, blended learn...

Digital Youth Divas: Exploring Narrative-Driven Curriculum to Spark Middle School Girls’ Interest in Computational Activities

1983: The first CHI called CHI - computers just processed data and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) just supported users in their work tasks.Twenty years on, broadband servers and mobile devices now outnumber desktop office machines. With them come joy, persuasion, outrage, delight, faith, campaigns, satire, fun, learning, identity, communities, and passion. Now, increasingly, we interact to be, not just to do. Interaction no longer just changes things, it changes people. HCI is headed for New Horizons.CHI 2003 recognised this sea of change in HCI and addressed all forms of interactive digital communication, with a focus on three special areas: mass communication and interaction, e-learning, and emotion. Many presentations addressed these special areas. Still, CHI 2003 has not abandoned established HCI for New Horizons! Everything you'd expect to find in a CHI conference is still here.These Conference Proceedings contain the papers accepted for presentation at CHI 2003. Competition was fierce. 470 submissions were received, and 75 were accepted. Many of these accepted papers address the challenge of supportive effective and enjoyable communication via interactive digital media.A CD containing the extended abstracts for short talks, demonstrations, design and usability in practice papers, special interest group descriptions, interactive posters, student posters and doctoral consortiumpresentations accompanies these proceedings. Video figures and demonstrations are provided on an additional DVD. These complete the record of CHI 2003 as the meeting place for an inclusive community, The CHI conference is the annual gathering of the world's HCI community. There is something for everyone. Students, researchers, professionals, and educators are spoiled for choice.

CHI '03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Anthony Dunne’s Hertzian Tales is an exploration of the aesthetic and conceptual aspects of industrial design and its potential to bring about social change for the users of electronic objects. It is a provoking and – to first-time readers – positively alarming social commentary on the interrelationship between electronic product design and culture, and the powerful but largely under-explored potential of electronic innovation to trigger social awareness. Hertzian Tales proposes an innovative approach to critical design and therefore serves as a reflection on and a critique of the commercial design practices at large. In this second edition, Dunne reiterates the original rationale for his project: a concern that the majority of industrial designers have unwittingly joined a treadmill culture of post-industrial mass-production – turning out electronic goods that have long simply met the brief of an optimally functioning and eagerly consumable technology.

Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design

We introduce Wrigglo, a shape-changing smart phone peripheral that allows pairs of users to share wriggling movements with one another. Attached to a smart phone, Wrigglo captures the sender's motions and activates the receiver's Wrigglo which repeats the motion simultaneously. The result of our in-lab use observation with twelve couples showed that Wrigglo supported emotional and functional roles of body gestures and postures, creating vocabularies related to the motion of specific body parts and, to some extent, reflected the connected user's presence through the device's movement. Through its peripheral anthropomorphization, Wrigglo can deliver new forms of telepresence by embodied posturing and gesturing in mobile communication.

Wrigglo: shape-changing peripheral for interpersonal mobile communication

In an effort towards the democratization of Robotics, this article presents a novel End-User Development framework called Robot Interfaces From Zero Experience (RIZE). The framework provides a set of useful software tools for the creation of robot-oriented software architectures and programming interfaces, as well as the modeling and execution of robot behaviors, with a specific emphasis on social behaviors. Programming interfaces built on top of RIZE enable professionals with different backgrounds and interests to design, adapt, and scale-up robotics applications. As an example of a programming interface, we present Open RIZE, which exploits an End-User Programming paradigm combining blocks, tables, and forms-filling interfaces. Unlike previous approaches, robot behavioral code generated by Open RIZE is intrinsically modular, re-usable, scalable, neutral to the employed programming language, and platform-agnostic. In the article, we present the main design guidelines and features of Open RIZE. Additionally, we perform an initial usability evaluation of the Open RIZE interface in an online workshop. Preliminary results using the System Usability Scale with 10 novice end-users indicate that Open RIZE is easy-to-use and learn.

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Towards a Modular and Distributed End-User Development Framework for Human-Robot Interaction

Several design studies have looked at the potential of using narratives to enrich the design process or to create more engaging experiences with designed objects However, the concept of narrative is still fuzzy and open to interpretations, due to its use and meaning in different disciplines and approaches In order to deepen the knowledge of narrative use in design, this paper presents three categorizations that survey the what, where and why of narratives in design, respectively First, it discusses five definitions of narratives based on narrative theory Secondly, it proposes a typology that classifies the occurrences of narratives in design Thirdly, it analyses the roles and functions of narratives in designed products and the design process Finally, using the proposed categorizations, it shows strategies for a narrative approach to design richer experiences for products and discusses techniques for the design process To conclude, future developments of the project are described, including a call for design projects that involve narratives to be included in a database

Narratives in design: a study of the types, applications and functions of narratives in design practice

Purpose The aim of this study was to assess how cohabitation with a social robot for seven days night and day is perceived by elderly potential users and to suggest technological improvements for future home integration. Methods Fifteen participants were invited to interact with Pepper®, 24 h a day and 7 days a week. Perceived utility assessment was achieved using a dedicated questionnaire. Usability assessment was carried out by measuring satisfaction with the human-robot interaction and listing malfunctions. Results Seventy-eight tasks out of 115 tasks were reported respectively as very high and high. On day 1, satisfaction was at its higher level with a mean of 6.8. On day 8, it maintained at 6.0 despite technical malfunctions and failures, listed with details in this paper. Acceptability was positive. Pepper was mainly considered as an assistant and a link with family and friends and never as an enemy or intruder. Pepper has proven to be potentially able to meet five needs: making the person's environment safe by alerting contact persons, reminding the user of health-related tasks, enabling "doubt removal", maintaining social relationships and following the user. Conclusions Pepper is more than a "demonstration" device classified as level 6 of the nine-point Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale for the hard and software and level 5 in behavioural terms. Once the technological locks and malfunctions have been overcome, Pepper should be applicable in the home, allowing users to test it in a more familiar environment.Implications for RehabilitationPepper, a humanoid robot, has been perceived as rich in potentialities that can help and secure a fragile person.Following this experience of cohabitation with a humanoid robot, the participants were unanimous in thinking that assistive robotics is the future.To be useful, the robot's people tracking function must inevitably be improved.Pepper, the first humanoid robot ever marketed, is more than just a "demonstration"device, classified at level 6 of Technological Readiness Levels (TRL) for supporting hardware and software and level 5 in terms of behavior.

Perspectives on usability and accessibility of an autonomous humanoid robot living with elderly people.

Following the research field of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), we explore and expand upon the notion of media richness. We consider the term outside its ordinary domain of conventional communication mediums, such as email, phone or video calls. We focus on minimal communication, and the qualities of suggestive interactions that mediate communication. We introduce Knock-Knock as a novel, shape-changing communication medium, and use it as a rhetorical tool to reflect upon the notion of media richness. In doing so, we highlight the value of meaning and language creation that suggestive communication mediums make possible. Finally, we propose three directions for the future evaluation of the richness experienced in communication, mediated by suggestive communication artefacts.

I'll knock you when I'm ready...: reflecting on media richness beyond bandwidth and imitation

This paper describes a design method that was created and used in an international telecommunication company for the design of new technological applications. The value of this design method is its adaptation, as a research design method to an industrial context and the creation of a visual and tangible tool that optimizes the collaboration between the members of multidisciplinary teams.As designers working with technical specialists in the research laboratory of this company, we had to respond and combine two requirements that came from different perspectives: the Technology Push factors and the cultural and social users' behaviors and needs, the Pull factors. We had to understand the technological bricks that the project wanted to promote and use them in the design scenarios of a technical demonstrator. For this purpose and for the amelioration of the communication between designers, human centered specialists and technical specialists, we proposed an easy-to-understand illustration of the technology, the TechCards.These cards are intermediate representations that help a multidisciplinary team share a common knowledge of technology. Besides their role in the technology comprehension, the card format, its layout and its image, have proven to introduce a playful and engagement effect among the members of the project team. The TechCards were also used to stimulate the creative process and to validate the design scenarios. In the case of an international project, they have confirmed to be a useful tool for working with other teams from abroad.

Improvement of the industrial design process by the creation and usage of intermediate representations of technology, "TechCards"

Designing the right robotic solution for people in need is an important issue for the Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) community. This paper shows how design changes the research process in a robotic consortium, Romeo project. Romeo is a humanoid robot that aims to be a companion for disable and older people in hospitals and nursing homes. From field explorations, designers imagine another robot solution, build prototypes and invent new ways to address users’ needs and expectations: intention scenarios. These design interventions bring embodiment in early phases of SAR development, support the implementation of a comparative study on three robot representations, and open an in-situ discussion on the human-robot interaction.

Ioana Ocnarescu

Papers

Narratives in design: a study of the types, applications and functions of narratives in design practice

Perspectives on usability and accessibility of an autonomous humanoid robot living with elderly people.

I'll knock you when I'm ready...: reflecting on media richness beyond bandwidth and imitation

Improvement of the industrial design process by the creation and usage of intermediate representations of technology, "TechCards"

Rethinking the Why of Socially Assistive Robotics Through Design