Cecília Baranauskas

Motivating online engagement and debates on energy consumption

Several studies and official reports argue that changing peoples behavior towards energy consumption is a vital part of our fight against climate change. Engaging people into this issue is the first step towards a social change. However, it has been shown that information campaigns and technology alone are insufficient to achieve such engagement. Understanding what motivate people, in which contexts and combinations, and for which individuals, is therefore key to engaging the public more successfully in such crucial debates. This work investigates the role and impact of motivational strategies on promoting engagement in online energy debates. We report our results from running an experiment in the workplace, in which 33 people contributed to an online discussion on reducing energy consumption. A public and tangible feedback of contributions to the online debate, as well as social comparison and competition were analyzed as motivational strategies. Our results point out that engagement goes beyond intrinsic motivation, and that a set of interplaying factors influenced by the social context was found to be the stronger motivational force of engagement.

Embedding HCI in developing countries: localizing content, institutionalizing education and practice

This SIG will facilitate a debate concerning how best to support the development of indigenous HCI in developing countries, both as part of education and training systems and within industrial practice.

Designing to Promote a New Social Affordance for Energy Consumption

The relation between energy consumption and its environmental impact is weak or even almost inexistent in the Brazilian scenario due to sociocultural reasons. This work takes advantage of an experimental smart grid deployment scenario to propose the concept of Social Eco-feedback Technology. It aims at establishing this relation by promoting a new social affordance (behavior pattern), favoring a new way of perceiving energy. The concept of affordance and artifacts of the Organizational Semiotics are extended to encompass both the analysis of actual and intended behavior through a new technology design.

A socially inspired energy feedback technology: challenges in a developing scenario

Raising awareness of the environmental impact of energy generation and consumption has been a recent concern of contemporary society worldwide. Underlying the awareness of energy consumption is an intricate network of perception and social interaction that can be mediated by technology. In this paper we argue that issues regarding energy, environment and technology are very much situated and involve tensions of sociocultural nature. This exploratory investigation addresses the subject by introducing the design of a Socially-inspired Energy Eco-Feedback Technology (SEET), which is composed of an interactive system to trigger and mediate collective savings and a tangible device as a public feedback. Results of an evaluation situated in the context of a school in a socially disadvantaged area in Brazil are discussed, shedding light on the sociocultural aspects related to the subject. The role of the SEET to motivate energy awareness collectively among the social group is assessed, as well as the design characteristics that contributed to that. Outcomes bring to light social aspects and dynamics that would hardly have been predicted, evidencing critical factors related to a socially inspired design approach in the energy awareness domain.

Investigando sobre Requisitos para um Jogo de RPG com Professores de uma Escola Pública de Ensino Fundamental

A educacao a distancia tem ganhado significativa atencao tanto na academia quanto nas iniciativas governamentais. Neste contexto, cresce tambem a preocupacao com a avaliacao da qualidade dos diversos aspectos destes cursos mediados pelas tecnologias da informacao e comunicacao. Apesar de muitos trabalhos discutirem diversos aspectos da avaliacao em Ead, a literatura carece de relatos de experiencia que, especialmente, abordem os cursos tecnicos a distancia que possuem especificidades relevantes. Assim, este trabalho relata uma experiencia onde se avalia e adapta uma das propostas existentes na literatura de avaliacao mediada por foruns, ao contexto dos cursos tecnicos a distancia, constituindo-se esta adaptacao e sua discussao as principais contribuicoes do mesmo.Em Educacao a Distância mediada por meio de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem, foruns de discussao sao um instrumento importante e amplamente utilizado na articulacao de debates e discussoes entre os atores envolvidos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem. Com a ampla utilizacao dos foruns muitas mensagens sao trocadas e isso, por vezes, excede a capacidade de monitoramento por parte dos professores e tutores. O presente trabalho apresenta a concepcao de um classificador de mensagens de foruns que classifica as mensagens em positivas ou negativas, a fim de identificar mensagens que necessitam de maior atencao. Este trabalho aplica conceitos de mineracao de textos, com o algoritmo SVM obtendo taxas de acerto satisfatorias.Este artigo apresenta o framework Contagious, cujo proposito e estabelecer diretrizes que norteiem a construcao de redes sociais online orientadas a Difusao de Inovacoes. Compreendo-se o fenomeno das redes sociais online como consequencia natural do carater social do ser humano, vislumbrou-se esse meio tecnologico de comunicacao e interacao social como potencial ferramenta para a extensao de praticas educativas, com vistas a formacao do carater integral do cidadao. Para isso, foi adotada a teoria de Difusao de Inovacoes, propria das ciencias sociais. As contribuicoes deste trabalho, portanto, compreendem duas vertentes: a) o mapeamento de principios de uma teoria social na forma de recursos computacionais e; b) um enfoque orientado a educacao sobre as redes sociais online.A proposta do trabalho consiste em desenvolver um sistema para ser usado no celular como ferramenta de auxilio para alfabetizacao, utilizando-se de imagens e sons como forma de facilitar o aprendizado. Como metodo de desenvolvimento utiliza-se o processo P@PSEduc (Processo Agil para Software Educativo) e a ferramenta JME (Java Micro Edition).O crescente uso e difusao de tecnologias Web, a ubiquidade de ferramentas educacionais vem proporcionado verdadeiras revolucoes nos ambientes de ensino. Atualmente, sabe-se que nao mais se deve tratar alunos de forma homogenea, como se assim os fossem. Em face disso, este artigo apresenta um sistema adaptativo de apoio a aprendizagem colaborativa, cujo tema e a construcao e representacao do conhecimento por meio de mapas mentais multimidia. Tal sistema, baseia-se na Teoria da Carga Cognitiva, cuja preocupacao primaria e a facilidade com a qual as informacoes sao processadas pelos individuos.

A Semiotic-informed Approach to Interface Guidelines for Mobile Applications

Portable devices have been experimented for data acquisition in different domains, e.g., logistics and census data acquisition. Nevertheless, their large-scale adoption depends on the development of effective applications with a careful interaction design. In this paper, we revisit existing interface design strategies and propose a guideline composed of semiotic-informed rules and questions for mobile user interface design. We demonstrate the use of the guideline in the evaluation of mobile application interfaces proposed for phenological data acquisition in the field.

Guidelines for Evaluating Mobile Applications: A Semiotic-Informed Approach

Portable devices have been experimented for data acquisition in different domains, e.g., logistics and census data acquisition. Nevertheless, their large-scale adoption depends on the development of effective applications with a careful interaction design. In this work, we revisit existing strategies for mobile application design and evaluation and use the Semiotic Ladder from Organizational Semiotics as an artifact to organize a set of guidelines. We propose a set of semiotic-informed guidelines with questions for evaluation of mobile application interfaces. We also propose a methodology for the evaluation of mobile application interfaces based on the proposed guidelines set. We demonstrate the use of the proposed methodology in the evaluation of four mobile application interfaces designed for phenological data acquisition in the field.