Showing papers by "Richard Harper published in 2016"

The Tyranny of the Everyday in Mobile Video Messaging

Abstract: This paper reports on how asynchronous mobile video messaging presents users with a challenge to doing 'being ordinary' 53 participants from three countries were recruited to try Skype Qik at launch for two weeks Some participants embraced Skype Qik as a gift economy, emphasizing a special relationship enacted through crafted self-presentation However, gift exchange makes up only a small proportion of conversation Many participants struggled with the self-presentation obligations of video when attempting more everyday conversation Faced with the 'tyranny of the everyday', many participants reverted to other systems where content forms reflected more lightweight exchange We argue that designing for fluid control of the obligations of turn exchange is key to mobile applications intended to support everyday messaging

Icon set selection via human computation

Abstract: Picking the best icons for a graphical user interface is difficult. We present a new method which, given several icon candidates representing functionality, selects a complete icon set optimized for comprehensibility and identifiability. These two properties are measured using human computation. We apply our method to a domain with a less established iconography and produce several icon sets. To evaluate our method, we conduct a user study comparing these icon sets and a designer-picked set. Our estimated comprehensibility score correlate with the percentage of correctly understood icons, and our method produces an icon set with a higher comprehensibility score than the set picked by an involved icon designer. The estimated identifiability score and related tests did not yield significant findings. Our method is easy to integrate in traditional icon design workflow and is intended for use by both icon designers, and clients of icon designers.

Choice: The Sciences of Reason in the 21st Century: A Critical Assessment

Abstract: We make decisions every day. Yet we are sometimes perplexed by the decisions we make, and all the more by the decisions of others. To make things more complicated, we live in an age where there are more things to choose from than ever before – the Internet is transforming what we choose and how we choose. It’s also making us more accountable for our choices: what we choose is recorded, analysed, modelled and used to predict our future behaviour. So are we in a position to make better choices today than we were a decade or two ago? Do we know more about how people choose? Are there sciences that might help us understand? Certainly there are some who believe so. Psychologists claim we are subject to hidden mental processes that lead us to one thing rather than another; economists offer predictions about what people will buy; and some philosophers claim that what we choose echoes our evolutionary past. Are these claims merited? Do they reflect the beginnings of a new science of choice? This book offers a critical overview of the claims about choice and human reasoning, showing where they are justified and where they are exaggerated, whilst explaining how these claims are often driven by powerful perspectives that frame the topic. This book will be an essential reference for anyone interested in how, and to what extent, science can help us to understand the ways people make choices in their everyday lives and how their ways of making choices may be changing today.

Designing for Active Place Presence at Home: The Hole in Space Design Experiment

Abstract: Technological support for augmenting the relationship that people establish with remote places has been studied fairly little as the primary focus in telepresence studies is the connection between people. This paper addresses the design challenge for supporting "active place presence" at home. A prototype, Hole in Space, was created to explore the design challenge. A longitudinal study of how an urban couple appropriated the prototype was conducted over the duration of seven months. The paper elaborates on how the Web-mediated design influenced place presence and outlines several aspects that need to be considered when designing for active place presence at home.

From I-Awareness to We-Awareness in CSCW: a Review Essay

Abstract: This paper considers the shared awareness perspective put forward by Tenenberg, Roth and Socha. Seeking to treat this view from its philosophical background in Quine, Davidson and Bratman, this paper offers a different approach to shared phenomena, one derived from Wittgenstein and Garfinkel. It explains how this view motivated one of my own study's of work, in particular the work of economists at the International Monetary Fund, and demonstrates how these individuals operated in a shared knowledge space constituted by and reflexively organised through documents, most especially Staff Reports. This perspective on shared phenomena focuses, thus, on cultural practice and its reasoning forms. It thus also eschews the `mental phenomena' central to Tenenberg, Roth and Socha's perspective. The consequences of the Wittgenstein/Garfinkel view for systems design and CSCW are remarked upon.

The Many Faces of Computational Artifacts

Abstract: Building on data from fieldwork at a medical department, this paper focuses on the varied nature of computational artifacts in practice. It shows that medical practice relies on multiple heterogeneous computational artifacts that form complex constellations. In the hospital studied the computational artifacts are both coordinative, image-generating, and intended for the control of nuclear-physical and chemical processes. Furthermore, the paper entails a critique of the notion of ‘computer support’, for not capturing the diverse constitutive powers of computer technology; its types if you will. The paper is a step towards establishing a lexicon of computational artifacts in practice. It is a call for a wider effort to systematically conceptualise the multiple and specifiable ways in which computational artifacts may be part of work activities. This is for the benefit of design and our understanding of work practice.