HCI 2011

People tend to respond realistically to situations and events in immersive Virtual Reality (VR). Our research exploits this finding to test the hypothesis that the psychology underlying moral judgement is distinct from the psychology that drives moral action.

This paper draws on both theoretical perspectives and a design framing, using the problem of designing a social mobile agile ridesharing system, in order to reflect upon and call for broader design approaches for context-aware computing and human-computer Interaction research in general.

Our research investigated whether the presence of an interface agent - or virtual assistant (VA) - in a self-service checkout context has behavioural effects on the transaction process during particular tasks. While many participants claimed to have not noticed a VA within the self-service interface, behaviour was still affected, i.e. fewer people made errors with the VA present than in the voice-only and control conditions. The results are explained as reflective of an unconscious observation of non-verbal cues exhibited by the VA. The results are discussed in relation to possible behavioural outcomes of VA presence.

An eighty year old today is expected on average to live well beyond the year 2020. However the needs of the older old are seldom considered in relation to current and future banking services. This paper documents a qualitative study investigating the meaning of money to a group of eighty somethings (people aged over 80).

Group brainstorming is widely adopted as a design method in the domain of software development. However, existing brainstorming literature has consistently proven group brainstorming to be ineffective under the controlled laboratory settings. Yet, electronic brainstorming systems informed by the results of these prior laboratory studies have failed to gain adoption in the field because of the lack of support for group well-being and member support. Therefore, there is a need to better understand brainstorming in the field. In this work, we seek to understand why and how brainstorming is actually practiced, rather than how brainstorming practices deviate from formal brainstorming rules, by observing brainstorming meetings at Microsoft.

Users are increasingly willing to disclose sensitive personal information online, seemingly without great regard for privacy protection. We surveyed over 1200 people to measure user attitudes and behaviours in terms of: (i) the type and perceived sensitivity of information they regularly disclosed, and (ii) who the recipients of different types of information were. In our initial analysis of the data we have observed an interesting age-related trend: a U shaped curve whereby the youngest and oldest members of society are less protective of their privacy than the middle-aged cohort.

This paper explores how field and indoor based students can be connected so that their contrasting circumstances and capabilities are used as a basis for learning. We describe the design of the ‘Out There and In Here’ system and activity. Using naturalistic evaluations in the context of higher education earth science, we find evidence that this approach can be beneficial in developing essential skills, by supporting dialogue and collaboration across diverse contexts.

While a calendar is generally thought of as a visual representation of a day, week, month or year; in its simplest form, a calendar consists of scheduled events with associated dates, times, locations and descriptions. In this paper we describe the design and evaluation of a web-based calendar prototype for blind individuals who use screen readers to access their computers and the Internet.

This study used existing digital technologies as probes to explore teenager’s use of exercise-related technology, their usage contexts, and their ideas for the design of ubiquitous technology that would persuade their peers to be more active in their daily lives.

Despite the offline reluctance of individuals to talk openly about weight issues, there is an abundance of personal weblogs about weight loss with remarkably open accounts of everything to do with overweight. While the widespread use of personal blogs offer opportunities for interaction and communication they also raise privacy concerns. There are both potential positive and negative consequences for stigmatized individuals of online (self-) disclosure. Why are people willing to disclose information which has a social stigma offline? And can the Internet function as an empowering technology for those who are being stigmatized?