Elaine C. S. Hayashi

Designing Inclusive Social Networks: A Participatory Approach

The Brazilian society is characterized by vast differences with regard to socio-economics, culture as well as access to technology and knowledge. In this scenario, Information and Communication Technology, especially hypermedia systems, could benefit citizen, allowing access to knowledge, communication and collaboration. Current social networks systems were not conceived to address the challenges of an inclusive society. In this paper, we discuss some relevant design issues, elicited from a participatory approach, to the design of such systems. The exploratory design process starts with the elicitation of the different views among users, designers and developers, passes through design concepts definition and gets to a first approximation to a user interfaces design.

Identifying Interaction Barriers in the Use of Remote Controls

The constitution of a culture mediated by the new media of Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) will depend directly on the artifact for physical interaction available to the user. This work presents the results of an experiment whose objective was to observe users’ interactions with television using the remote control, in a scenario of diversity of access to technology. Based on in loco observation of barriers related to the use of remote control in the television setting, we identified project requirements that should be considered in the design of new physical artifacts of interaction with iDTV.

Facing the digital divide in a participatory way – an exploratory study

One of Brazilian’s grand challenges in computer science research concerns a “Participative and universal access to knowledge for the Brazilian citizen”. In order to develop design solutions to address this challenge, we first need to understand these citizen’s abilities and the context in which they are immersed. For that, we have been conducting practices actively involving a group of representatives of the diversity of users we have in the population. This paper presents the first results of this investigation, pointing out some lessons learned so far regarding the relationship they have with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and how they make sense of different models of interaction to accomplish a simple task related to the exercise of citizenship. Among other findings, we were able to notice how their previous experience reflects on their behavior and the benefits of using an avatar in future systems.

Communication and Expression in Social Networks: Getting the "Making Common" from People

In the context of socio-economic and cultural diversity of continental proportions lived by Brazilian citizens, the e-Cidadania project aims at the development of systems for the constitution of a digital culture among those that are not familiar with technology. One of the project’s main contributions is the Inclusive Social Network (ISN) Vila na Rede, which is being constructed based on methods and artifacts from Organizational Semiotics and on Participatory Design techniques. Within a challenging research scenario, this research is part of an ongoing work that studies the community’s natural social behaviors in order to understand how technological tools for communication and expression could make sense to less experienced users. The objective of this paper is to present the process that allowed us to understand the need of the concepts of meta-communication and transversal communication within ISNs, and that helped us to elicit requirements for the development of communication and expression tools to be used in the constitution of ISNs. As part of this process, activities involving target end users and researchers from different fields were conducted. This paper describes these activities and discusses the results extracted and analyzed in order to derive norms from which some system requirements were based.

Exploring new formats of the Self-Assessment Manikin in the design with children

Lang and Bradleys Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is an assessment tool that has been successfully used in different areas to elicit the affective responses in the three levels of valence, excitement and dominance. The pictographic format of this instrument makes it accessible for those with low literacy skills, including children and the elderly. In this article, we report and discuss our experiences using SAM and we present the adaptations made to SAM along a process that originated new formats of SAM, used in design practices with children.

On Feelings of Comfort, Motivation and Joy that GUI and TUI Evoke

New ways to interact with technology are gaining ground over the familiar Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). The Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) are one example of this. However, while it may seem intuitive that such interfaces should evoke rather positive responses from users – e.g. feelings associated with pleasure – little has been studied in this sense. In this challenge of understanding the feelings that GUI and TUI have the potential to evoke, we present our findings from a research that involved more than a hundred people. The research question that guided our endeavors was: What are the relations between the feelings of joy, motivation and comfort when using TUI and GUI? We analyze the results and discuss some hypotheses to explain the behavior observed.

Understanding meta-communication in an inclusive scenario

Meta-communication can be defined as all exchanges of information that are related to the conceptual model of the system, including the communication that takes place in order to clarify or overcome problems during the communication process. The scenario of having users with low levels of literacy and familiarity with technology has not yet been addressed in help systems. This paper examines previous literature on meta-communication and other support frameworks, and draws on semio-participatory practices conducted within an inclusive scenario to extend the concept of help systems, aiming at a broader scaffolding instrument to let users climb up in the process of learning with the use of inclusive systems. Preliminary findings of the investigation inform the design of support systems instantiated in the context of online social networks meant to be inclusive.

Designing for Affectibility: Principles and Guidelines

In analogy to the concept of usability, learnability and playability, the concept of Affectibility was conceived to inform the design process – in this case with affective aspects of interaction. In this paper we present a revised set of the Principles for the Design for Affectibility, together with practical examples of use and application. The objective is to support designers in the process of creating educational systems for children, considering aspects of affect.

Perspectives on the evaluation of affective quality in social software

Enormous changes in the computing field are being experienced, altering the way we relate ourselves with computational technology. If computers had at first limited function and presence in our lives, they are now being used everywhere, all the time, for a multitude of purposes and interaction means for interactivity, supporting even our social relations. This shift calls for new ways of evaluating systems, demanding attention not only to usability and accessibility issues but also to the emotional and affective ones. This paper presents a brief review on theory and methods for affective evaluation of computer systems, as a preliminary discussion on the suitability of existing methods for social software applications. The discussion is instantiated in inclusive social software - Vila na Rede, a system developed under a participatory design approach with the purpose of fostering a digital culture among the less favoured segment in the Brazilian society.

Introducing New Technology in Educational Contexts: Schools as Organizations

The school context offers many opportunities to explore the use of digital technologies. When designing for schools, systems designers usually tend to consider only the students or, at most, teachers and students. However, schools are complex social organizations that are composed by many other interested parties. When aiming at solutions that make sense to the users, the entire school, as an organization, should be considered. This paper, presents the activities we conducted at an elementary public school in Brazil, facing the challenge of constructing meaning for a new digital artifact. For the analysis of organization and context we used adapted practices from Organizational Semiotics (OS) and Participatory Design (PD). Our results suggest that both OS and PD are suitable for educational projects and they can anticipate problems and propose solutions for prospective use of technology in such contexts.