Arminda Lopes

Human Work Interaction Design. Work Analysis and Interaction Design Methods for Pervasive and Smart Workplaces

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 4th IFIP WG 13.6 Working Conference on Human Work Interaction Design, HWID 2015, held in London, UK, in June 2015. The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in this volume. The papers reflect many different areas and address many complex and diverse work domains,focusing on the integration of work analysis and interaction design methods for pervasive and smart workplaces. They are organized in the following sections: methodologies; environment, and specific contexts.

CHI 2013 human work interaction design (HWID) SIG: past history and future challenges

In this SIG we aim to introduce the IFIP 13.6 Human Work Interaction Design (HWID) approach to the CHI audience. The HWID working group aims at establishing relationships between extensive empirical work-domain studies and HCI design. We invite participants from industry and academia with an interest on empirical work analysis, HCI, interaction design and usability and user experience in work situations and in the workplace. This SIG is a vital step towards creating a CHI2014 workshop on this topic.

Work Analysis Methods in Practice: The Context of Collaborative Review of CAD Models

Human work interaction design is an emerging discipline that aims to encourage empirical studies and conceptualizations of the interaction among humans, their variegated social contexts and the technology they use both within and across these contexts. In this paper the authors present a virtual reality system for visualization, navigation and reviewing of 3D CAD models within the oil industry domain. This system combines a large-screen interaction environment with remote mobile devices, thus allowing engineers in the field and teams in a control center to work in collaboration. To navigate through models the system uses the mobile devices camera and inertial sensors and takes advantage of recent natural interaction techniques on large-screen environments. The authors describe and elaborate around the usage of different work analysis methods in this complex, real world work domain. The analysis is based on i input from experts in the oil platform engineering field, ii previous and related work and iii application of different methods considering the recent advances in technology. The authors conclude that hierarchical task analysis was not effective in obtaining a clear, common vision about the work domain. Storyboarding was the most useful technique as it promoted the discovery of novelty factors that differentiate the solution, while simultaneously supporting the human work at offshore engineering design and review sessions.

Using Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction to Design Technology for Resilience

Research in human computer interaction (HCI) covers both technological and human behavioural concerns. As a consequence, the contributions made in HCI research tend to be aware to either engineering or the social sciences. In HCI the purpose of practical research contributions is to reveal unknown insights about human behaviour and its relationship to technology. Practical research methods normally used in HCI include formal experiments, field experiments, field studies, interviews, focus groups, surveys, usability tests, case studies, diary studies, ethnography, contextual inquiry, experience sampling, and automated data collection. In this paper, we report on our experience using the evaluation methods focus groups, surveys and interviews and how we adopted these methods to develop artefacts: either interface’s design or information and technological systems. Four projects are examples of the different methods application to gather information about user’s wants, habits, practices, concerns and preferences. The goal was to build an understanding of the attitudes and satisfaction of the people who might interact with a technological artefact or information system. Conversely, we intended to design for information systems and technological applications, to promote resilience in organisations (a set of routines that allow to recover from obstacles) and user’s experiences. Organisations can here also be viewed within a system approach, which means that the system perturbations even failures could be characterized and improved. The term resilience has been applied to everything from the real estate, to the economy, sports, events, business, psychology, and more. In this study, we highlight that resilience is also made up of a number of different skills and abilities (self-awareness, creating meaning from other experiences, self-efficacy, optimism, and building strong relationships) that are a few foundational ingredients, which people should use along with the process of enhancing an organisation’s resilience. Resilience enhances knowledge of resources available to people confronting existing problems.

Design as Dialogue

Design is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary activity; it requires rigour, but also collaboration. Design teams have conversations during the design process. They use dialogue as a tool to allow ideas exchange, to find connections, meaning, and interests in a true collaborative environment. The dialogue that occurs is the same as that which occurs in normal negotiation in other practices of design. This book offers a new characterization of the design process with clear implications for design practice. It presents a detailed theoretical analysis of authors’ definitions of design and stages of the design process, and an analysis and review of data gathered from 5 case studies observed within two networks: the Leonardo-network and the White Rose Network, following Grounded Theory methodology. The model proposed, based on dialogue, is a set of good practices with a common language, which facilitates the multidisciplinary design of artefact and provides indications that can be applied to facilitate effective design collaborations and to enhance design quality. This book, aimed at design students, researchers in design and designers in general.

Design as Dialogue — a New Design Framework

In this paper, we examine some traditional ways of designing and we present some guidelines for a different perspective on design: design understood as a process of dialogue and explicit knowledge sharing. There is no standard definition of design it will vary according to perspective. Traditionally, the term design referred to industrial design. This argument is based on Walker (1989) consideration: “(As far as many scholars are concerned, design is industrial design.)” Industrial design concentrates on the product’s functionality and its appearance as an object. Design as dialogue requires an emphasis on the process of communication between multidisciplinary teams. We will provide a framework based on dialogue which will improve the process of design associated with the development of flexible design objects.

Spark: Promoting Well-Being by Social Media-Triggered Routine Breaks

The Mental well-being is an intangible, subjective perception of our own emotions and cognitive capabilities. With the rise of social networks, connectivity and media consumption have seen dramatic changes. In this work we focus on understanding how mental well-being relates to people’s routines, what dangers and recommendations we should be aware of, and what opportunities exist to leverage current technologies in order to improve people’s lives. As a contribution to HCI based on our research insights, we designed a solution that promotes daily mental well-being. Spark is a mobile application where everyone in the world participates in a single challenge every 25 h. Each challenge asks the user to perform an activity, capturing that moment with a photo, and then sharing it. As the user participates in different challenges over time, a record of his activities is always accessible. This encourages the user to relive positive past experiences, and take note of his accomplishments.

#LookWhatIDidNotBuy: Mitigating Excessive Consumption Through Mobile Social Media

Excessively consuming essentially futile or unnecessary assets has turned into a true epidemic, at least in the richest and more developed countries in the world. These consuming habits, when excessive, can really lead to serious problems, of psychological nature, therefore converting excessive consumption into an effective public (mental) health problem. We studied the factors that drive people to consume more or less, and the psychologists in our team conducted an empirical study in order to inform the design of novel interactive technologies for mitigating this problem. #LookWhatIDidNotBuy is a new psychological counseling app that promotes the social media sharing of the photos of goods that the user managed not to buy, thus resisting the temptation. The app also provides advice using positive reinforcement, daily challenges, and tips. Our design goes against the dominant narrative of goal-setting apps and goal-setting theory, advocating that sharing the media of goods not bought can induce positive behavior change.

Mobile Phone – Offers Exchanged as Cultural Practice

Mobile technologies are already modifying well-established communication patterns, amplifying and substituting them. Participating in the mobile information society is not only a matter of getting a phone call or a phone, but how it is used in everyday life. The use of mobile phone is a question of culture since they allow new habits, postures, communication, and behaviors that contribute to society transformation. The paper focuses on a study about mobile phones’ use among young people. Particularly, we were interested in the text messages, treated as offers, sent by mobile phones. The paper concludes by presenting the design of an engagement conceptual framework, which can be a reflection point to consider within the design process of future interfaces. Conversely, this framework can also be a learning tool either for understanding the usability principles of an interactive interface or as an instrument to teach and motivate students in a knowledge exchange situation of collaborative work.

Creative Activity Mediated by Technology – Artifacts, Technology and Ideas that Could Shape Our Lives

This paper attempts to associate creativity and design thinking with the mediated technology. It represents the results from creative thinking experiences of human computer interaction (HCI) students within the design of interactive artifacts. The objective is to demonstrate how to engage students in learning by doing and to link theoretical concepts with design practices during the process of producing artifacts. Our findings suggested that creativity is not taught and students when they are not provided with the work statement, they get the opportunity to be more creative and engaged during the learning process by discovering the idea and planning its execution.