Carolyn Pang

Technology preferences and routines for sharing health information during the treatment of a chronic illness

When a patient has a chronic illness, such as heart disease or cancer, it can be challenging for distributed family members to stay aware of the patients health status. A variety of technologies are available to support health information sharing (e.g., phone, video chat, social media), yet we still do not have a detailed understanding of which technologies are preferred and what challenges people still face when sharing information with them. To explore this, we conducted a mixed-method study-involving a survey and in-depth interviews--with people about their health information sharing routines and preferences for different technologies. Regardless of physical distance between distributed family members, synchronous methods of communication afforded the opportunity to provide affective support while asynchronous methods of communication were deemed to be the least intrusive. With family members adopting certain roles during the treatment of chronic illnesses, our findings suggest the need to design tools that mediate sharing health information across distance and age gaps, with consideration to respecting patient privacy while sharing health information.

How technology supports family communication in rural, suburban, and urban kenya

Much ICTD research for sub-Saharan Africa has focused on how technology related interventions have aimed to incorporate marginalized communities towards global economic growth. Our work builds on this. We present results from an exploratory qualitative study on the family communication practices of family members who communicate both within and between rural, suburban, and urban settings in Kenya. Our findings reveal that family communication focuses on economic support, well-being, life advice, and everyday coordination of activities. We also outline social factors that affect family communication, including being an eldest child, having a widowed sibling, and having reduced access to technology because of gender, literacy, or ones financial situation. Lastly, we discuss new opportunities for technology design and articulate the challenges that designers will face if creating or deploying family communication technologies in Kenya.

Sharing Domestic Life through Long-Term Video Connections

Video chat systems such as Skype, Google+ Hangouts, and FaceTime have been widely adopted by family members and friends to connect with one another over distance. We have conducted a corpus of studies that explore how various demographics make use of such video chat systems in which this usage moves beyond the paradigm of conversational support to one in which aspects of everyday life are shared over long periods of time, sometimes in an almost passive manner. We describe and reflect on studies of long-distance couples, teenagers, and major life events, along with design research focused on new video communication systems—the Family Window, Family Portals, and Perch—that explicitly support “always-on video” for awareness and communication. Overall, our findings show that people highly value long-term video connections and have appropriated them in a number of different ways. Designers of future video communication systems need to consider: ways of supporting the sharing of everyday life rather than just conversation, providing different design solutions for different locations and situations, providing appropriate audio control and feedback, and supporting expressions of intimacy over distance.

Shared geocaching over distance with mobile video streaming

Shared geocaching is an outdoor activity where pairs of individuals geocache together but in different locations. Video streaming allows two players to see each remote persons view and converse during the activity. This allows players to help each other out while searching for geocaches. We envision that shared geocaching will provide a way for family or friends to share experiences together over distance where they are both participating in the same activity at the same time, only in different locations.

Conducting Interviews with Remote Participants

Interviewing comes in many forms and is a valuable tool for collecting information from study participants. Yet, more frequently it seems difficult to find participants who live in close proximity to the researchers and match specific demographic requirements for a study. Moreover, research projects may focus on studying participants in different regions of the world such that it is challenging to travel to meet and interview them. Video communication technologies such as Skype, FaceTime, and Google+ Hangouts are now playing a pivotal role in user studies, and many researchers are turning to such technology to support remote interviewing. This chapter explores the challenges and lessons learned from performing interviews over video communication technologies by discussing studies from three areas: family communication between grandparents and grandchildren, family communication during cases of chronic illness, and mobile commerce shopping behaviors. Lessons include how to address ethical concerns, work with and view physical artifacts, empathize with participants, and deal with technical challenges.

Family communication in rural and slum regions of Kenya

We report the findings of a small scale exploratory qualitative study on 13 participants from rural and slum regions of Kenya communicated with remote family members using technology. We focus on communication practices that enabled family members to support economic sustenance activities and also investigate the social aspects of using technology to provide or receive moral, emotional or other forms of support from distributed family members.

Mobile payment systems in North America: user challenges & successes

As smartphones continue to increase in popularity in North America so too does the opportunity to expand their use and functionality. Our study looks at one of these new opportunities, Mobile Payment Services (MPS). This study investigates user behaviors, motivations and first impressions of MPS in Canada and the USA through interviews with veteran users and interviews and diaries with new users. Participants used a variety of MPS, including: Google Wallet, Amazon Payments, LevelUp, Square and company apps geared towards payments (e.g., Starbucks). Our preliminary findings are presented as user successes and challenges.

City Explorer: Gamifying Public Transit Trips While Exploring the City

Many people use public transit on a recurring basis to travel for work, school, or other activities. Yet rides can be isolating despite encountering the same people on a regular basis. We designed City Explorer, a city exploration transit game, to provide transit riders with a channel to strengthen the sense of community. In City Explorer, players collect points as they ride public transit. They can complete route-specific challenges and collaborate with other riders to multiply points by riding the same route. Players can also create geo-tagged posts to describe and share community-related information. We share our design requirements, followed by details of game features, and our implementation of City Explorer.

Mobile Video Conferencing for Sharing Outdoor Leisure Activities Over Distance

Video communication systems work relatively well for family members and friends when they want to converse with each other between their homes. Yet it is much more challenging to share activities using mobile video conferencing in outdoor settings. We explored the design of mobile video conferencing systems that focused on allowing family and friends to participate in outdoor leisure activities together over distance. We created and studied two technology probe setups: shared geocaching and shared bicycling. Both used mobile cameras and streamed audio and video between remote family members or friends as they participated in the activities. Through these design and study explorations, we explore how family and friends make use of mobile video during leisure activities, what elements are important for the design of such systems, and how mobile video for outdoor leisure activities compares and contrasts to video calling in the home and, more generally, while mobile. Our research points to design considerations around camera views, when and how audio and video should be presented, and the privacy concerns of users and how to balance them with the benefit of the technology.