Jane Gruning

Things We Own Together: Sharing Possessions at Home

Sharing is an important facet of human relationships, yet there is a lack of research on how people share ownership of possessions. This paper reports on a study that investi-gates shared ownership of physical and digital possessions through interviews with couples and families in 13 house-holds. We offer a more nuanced definition of shared owner-ship and show that certain practices, which are central to sharing physical objects, are not supported in the sharing of digital content. We suggest potential approaches to address this, focusing in particular on how the sharing of posses-sions plays a role in the building of relationships and is done against a backdrop of trust.

What Influences CS Faculty to Adopt Teaching Practices

Despite widespread development, research, and dissemination of teaching and curricular practices that improve student retention and learning, faculty often do not adopt them. This paper describes the first findings of a two-part study to improve understanding of adoption of teaching practices and curriculum by computer science faculty. The paper closes with recommendations for designers and developers of teaching innovations hoping to increase their chance of adoption.

Models for Ownership: Implications for Long-term Relationships to Objects

Recent HCI research has shown that there are important differences in the ways that people interact with physical and digital objects, and that these differences have negative implications for how people value digital objects. This work in progress explores one finding from a study comparing uses of paper and e-books that suggests that not only are there important differences in the ways people perceive their ownership of physical and digital objects, but that the context of digital ownership (e.g. through an account vs. files stored on a personal computer) also introduces variations in how people value their digital possessions.

Paper Books, Digital Books: How the Medium of an Object Affects its Use

Understanding differences between digital and physical objects, and peoples perceptions of those objects, is a matter of foundational importance to CHI. These differences affect how people interact with digital objects and what roles those objects are able to take on in daily life. The goal of my research is to investigate these differences in the case of books, and to investigate how the affordances and limitations of paper books and e-books affect the possibilities for their use in high-level activities.

Primacy of paper: The importance of the medium in records management

This poster presents findings from a group ethnographic study of records managers at four different sites. At the site that is the focus of this analysis, research participants’ tasks primarily consisted of examining individual case files to determine if the files should be kept or destroyed under the relevant rules set by records managers. Close observation of work practices showed that application of records management rules varied depending on the medium of the records. This study begins the work of bridging a gap between archival and records management policies for interactions with records across varying media, and empirical research on how people interact with objects on varying media.