Grace Eden

Embedded interaction: The accomplishment of actions in everyday and video-mediated environments

A concern with “embodied action” has informed both the analysis of everyday action through technologies and also suggested ways of designing innovative systems. In this article, we consider how these two programs, the analysis of everyday embodied interaction on the one hand, and the analysis of technically-mediated embodied interaction on the other, are interlinked. We draw on studies of everyday interaction to reveal how embodied conduct is embedded in the environment. We then consider a collaborative technology that attempts to provide a coherent way of presenting life-sized embodiments of participants alongside particular features of the environment. These analyses suggest that conceptions of embodied action should take account of the interactional accomplishment of activities and how these are embedded in the material environment.

Responsible research and innovation in the digital age

RRI requires doing the best science for the world, not only the best science in the world.

Digital Images of Medieval Music Documents: Transforming Research Processes and Knowledge Production in Musicology

Musicologists who study medieval music manuscripts were up until recently required to travel to the libraries and museums where these documents or their fragments are physically held. Increasingly however, digital image archives provide resources that allow scholars to conduct much of their research through both the inspection and manipulation of digital images. These images effectively serve as proxies for each physical document they display, and their use as research objects in their own right is bringing about transformative effects for the way research in medieval musicology is conducted. We discuss the results of a qualitative workplace study conducted to understand the transformative effects of digital images on research practice and to identify emerging requirements that might inform the design of more novel digital image archive systems. We show how qualitative fieldwork provides insight into how researchers actually use systems in order to inform incremental improvements to prototypes and novel designs.

Interpreting Digital Images Beyond Just the Visual: Crossmodal Practices in Medieval Musicology

Abstract We argue that high-resolution naturalistic digital images of physical objects are oriented to in a very different manner than other visual representations such as ‘inscriptions’ which are manufactured by black-box devices in order to transform phenomena into diagrams, or ‘rendering practices’ where scientists visually transform the meaning of objects and events using representational techniques to select information and simplify its presentation. We show that medieval music scholars engage with high-resolution images of physical objects through crossmodal practices relying upon the interconnected senses to examine a variety of properties held within physical objects when they are displayed within digital images.

Expectation and Experience: Passenger Acceptance of Autonomous Public Transportation Vehicles

Passenger acceptance is a key factor for the successful integration, uptake and use of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the domain of public transportation. Especially knowing opinions and attitudes around safety, comfort and convenience. We discuss a pilot study conducted as part of a larger research project where AVs are being tested to transport members of the general public on a specified route with designated stops. We present preliminary findings of fieldwork conducted where people were asked their opinions and attitudes both before and after riding on an AV shuttle as a passenger for the first time. This allows us to compare user expectation beforehand with actual experience afterwards.

The Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT: Identifying Problems and Sharing Good Practice

The implementation of responsible research and innovation (RRI) with the aim of ensuring socially acceptable and desirable outcomes of research and innovation activities requires coordinated action by numerous actors. RRI may be conceptualised as a network of interlinking responsibilities, some of which have long been established, others that will have to be defined. Actors in these networks of responsibilities will require knowledge about possible activities, normative foundations and good practice that they currently are unlikely to possess. In order to provide a platform for the exchange of knowledge and good practice that different actors can use, the UK EPSRC-funded project on a Framework for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT is developing an Observatory meant to be a community-based resource that can provide the resources required by stakeholders of ICT research. This chapter describes the way the system is developed and tested. In reflecting upon the development process of the observatory, the chapter provides insights into how the broader discourse on responsible innovation could benefit from this type of resource.