Frederica Gonçalves

You're the Voice: Evaluating User Interfaces for Encouraging Underserved Youths to express themselves through Creative Writing

Minority groups are the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. In addition, the poverty level in the U.S. is the highest it has been in the last 50 years. We argue that the community needs more research addressing this user segment, and we present a novel study about how underserved youths react when presented with different UI designs aimed at promoting creative writing. The act of creative writing per se can become the driver of change among underserved teenagers, and researchers should strive to discover novel UI designs that can effectively increase this target groups productivity, creativity and mental well-being. Using MS Word as baseline, our contribution analyzes the influence of a Zen-like tool (designed by the authors and called Haven), a nostalgic but realistic typewriting tool (Hanx Writer), and a stress-based tool that eliminates writers block by providing consequences for procrastination (Write or Die). Our results suggest that the Zen characteristics of our tool Haven were capable of conveying a sense of calm and concentration to the users, making them feel better and also write more. The nostalgic Hanx typewriter also fared very well with regard to mental well-being and productivity, as measured by average number of words written. Contrary to our initial expectations, the stress-based UI (Write or Die) had the lowest productivity levels.

Human Work Interaction Design: An Overview

In this paper, we review research in the emerging practice and research field of Human Work Interaction Design (HWID). We present a HWID framework, and a sample of 54 HWID related papers from workshops, conferences and journals from the period 2009–2014. We group the papers into six topical groups, and then attempt to map these groups to the framework to find research gaps for future research. We find that the groups of papers cover all areas of the framework well for a variety of work and leisure domains. The area in strongest need for more research papers is the development of the holistic framework itself. Furthermore, much focus has been on studying design sketching or implemented systems-in-use, while little attention has been paid to mature design (prototypes) or early implementation (content templates). In conclusion, we recommend an update to the framework so that it can be also useful for research in prototyping and early organizational implementation.

Towards Activity Theory - Preliminary Report: Ambient Intelligence applied to Smart Education

The limitations and work processes for how people work and interact are suffering changes due to the very fast development of technologies. The use of computers as daily instruments has a reflective effect on people’s activity and attitudes towards work. It is a challenge to take advantage of emergent technologies and also to overcome these technologies such as pervasive and smart places. We have changed the way we work shifting often our physical boundaries and how we operate. In this position paper we describe a simple activity analysis of a teacher’s class from a high school, based on activity theory, observations and semi-structured interviews. Specifically, we outline our perspective of ambient intelligence in smart education.

Emerging Opportunities for Ambient Intelligence in Creativity Support Tools

The fundamental challenge in developing and evaluating creativity support tools is that we are not able to detect when a person is being creative. In this position paper we described our perspective of ambient intelligence in creativity support tools specially in the use of creative writing environments. Starting with the activity theory, we describe a simple analysis of writing sessions involving 100 students from a higher school, and recorded using a keystroke logging program called Inputlog and the program iTALC to support it. Specifically, we outline the writing activity goals and the interaction design goals.

Human Work Interaction Design (HWID): Design for Challenging Work Environments

This one-day workshop aims to contribute to the goals of the IFIP 13.6 Human Work Interaction Design (HWID) working group, i.e., to establish relationships between empirical work-domain studies and recent developments in interaction design. This goal translates to the workshop by focusing on work environments that are challenging for research and design; from physically or spatially unusual workplaces (e.g., oil platforms), mentally demanding or specifically boring work (e.g., control rooms, academics) to challenging social situations at work (e.g., in hospitals). The workshop aims to discuss resulting constraints for research and design, e.g., restricted access for research, or difficulties in articulating the specifics of the workplaces to a wider audience that is not familiar with them. Some work environments may even impede forms of design research, e.g., critical or provocative design will be hard to carry out in safety- or efficiency-critical workplaces. Thus, ways to generate knowledge addressing the design of interactive artifacts for challenging workplaces will be discussed.