Genovefa Kefalidou

The timestreams platform: artist mediated participatory sensing for environmental discourse

Ubiquitous and pervasive computing techniques have been used to inform discourses around climate change and energy insecurity, traditionally through data capture and representation for scientists, policy makers and the public. Research into re-engaging the public with sustainability and climate change issues reveals the significance of emotional and personal engagement alongside locally meaningful, globally-relevant and data-informed climate messaging for the public. New ubiquitous and pervasive computing techniques are emerging to support the next generation of climate change stakeholders, including artists, community practitioners, educators and data hackers, to create scientific data responsive artworks and performances. Grounded in our experiences of community based artistic interventions, we explore the design and deployments of the Timestreams platform, demonstrating usages of ubiquitous and pervasive computing within these new forms of discourse around climate change and energy insecurity.

The Role of Self-Reflection in Sustainability

Sustainability is a major call of all research and applied services. Mobile technology can offer innovative ways to address sustainability issues. Self-reflection -in interviews or surveys- is a well-applied data collection method within HCI and provides affordances to observe and transform human behavior by bringing new awareness. While sustainability and self-reflection have been researched and addressed widely within the HCI field, the potential links between them (and how one can influence the other via technology) has yet to be explored within MobileHCI settings. This workshop brings together a cross-domain group of individuals to explore and discuss the role of self-reflection in sustainability. We want to generate new insights regarding mobileHCI technologies, design and methods that have direct sustainable impact in the world.

Retroflection: Self-Reflection for Knowledge and Culture Sustainability

Self-Reflection constitutes a medium and a method for recording personal experiences and activities. It allows for both concurrent and retrospective reflections bringing awareness of processes, emotions and situations. Awareness can enhance experiential learning and knowledge acquisition. This is particularly important within the digital humanities field as self-reflection can reveal not only personal experiences while navigating within a cultural space but can also provide opportunities for acquiring new knowledge, built on the generated experiences, thus sustaining and developing socio-cultural knowledge. We call this process retroflection. This short paper discusses how self-reflection can facilitate sustainability of knowledge within a cultural setting and through a platform developed for sharing self-reflection experiences.

Identifying rail asset maintenance processes: a human-centric and sensemaking approach

Efficient asset maintenance is key for delivering services such as transport. Current rail maintenance processes have been mostly reactive with a recent shift towards exploring proactive modes. The introduction of new ubiquitous technologies and advanced data analytics facilitates the embedding of a ‘predict-and-prevent’ approach to managing assets. Successful, user-centred integration of such technology is still, however, a sparsely understood area. This study reports results from a set of interviews, based on critical decision method, with rail asset maintenance and management experts regarding current procedural aspects of asset management and maintenance. We analyse and present the results from a human-centric sensemaking timeline perspective. We found that within a complex socio-technical environment such as rail transport, asset maintenance processes apply not only just at local levels, but also at broader, strategic levels that involve different stakeholders and necessitate different levels of expertise. This is a particularly interesting aspect within maintenance that has not been discussed as of yet within a process-based and timeline-based models of asset maintenance. We argue that it is important to consider asset maintenance activities within both micro (local)- and macro (broader)-levels to ensure reliability and stability in transport services. We also propose that the traditionally distinct notions of individual, collaborative and artefact-based sensemaking are in fact all in evidence in this sensemaking context, and argue that a more holistic view of sensemaking is therefore appropriate by placing these results within an amended recognition-primed decision-making model.

Creativity Bento Box: A Physical Resource Pack to Support Interaction in Virtual Space

The Creativity Bento Box is a physical resource pack, designed to support casual social interaction and break taking in an intensive, computer-mediated social activity. It was developed within the Creativity Greenhouse project, which piloted a mechanism to create research proposals and distribute funding at a distance. This involved facilitated phases of collaboration and competition over multiple days of computer-mediated work, where participants communicate and interact through a virtual world. During the iterative development process, the lack of time for socializing, the intense focus on virtual resources, and a lack of time spent away from the screen were reported as negative issues in feedback from participants. This article reports on the development of the Creativity Bento Box and how it helped to address these issues. By providing physical resources that contrasted with the properties of the virtual world, it supported people to socialize and take breaks from their primary activity, allowed them to include physical space and artifacts in their interactions, and provoked moves away from the otherwise intense focus on the computer. The article reflects on the roles of the Bento Box as a gift, in bridging between physical and virtual contexts, its higher suitability during the earlier phases of ideation and group development, and its perception by participants as something “framed.” Through this, we highlight the underexplored potential of using physical, offline resources as a means to solve difficulties in distanced social interactions.