Jennifer A. Rode

Dispelling "design" as the black art of CHI

We discuss the legacy and processes of creative design, and differentiate it from the type of user-centered design commonly found in CHI. We provide an example of this process, and discuss how design practice constitutes an essential mode of inquiry. We argue the complementary nature of creative design and user-centered design practices. Syncretic disciplines shift and drift from their original practice. A key issue is how CHI is to respond to changes in acceptable design practice. A key contribution of this work is an illustrative example showing how designers can communicate their intellectual rigor to the CHI community.

Using a large projection screen as an alternative to head-mounted displays for virtual environments

Head-mounted displays for virtual environments facilitate an immersive experience that seems more real than an experience provided by a desk-top monitor [18]; however, the cost of head-mounted displays can prohibit their use. An empirical study was conducted investigating differences in spatial knowledge learned for a virtual environment presented in three viewing conditions: head-mounted display, large projection screen, and desk-top monitor. Participants in each condition were asked to reproduce their cognitive map of a virtual environment, which had been developed during individual exploration of the environment along a predetermined course. Error scores were calculated, indicating the degree to which each participants map differed from the actual layout of the virtual environment. No statistically significant difference was found between the head-mounted display and large projection screen conditions. An implication of this result is that a large projection screen may be an effective, inexpensive substitute for a head-mounted display.

From Mice to Men - 24 Years of Evaluation in CHI

This paper analyzes trends in the approach to evaluation taken by CHI papers in the last 24 years. A set of papers was analyzed according to our schema for classifying type of evaluation. Our analysis traces papers’ trend in type and scope of evaluation. Findings include an increase in the proportion of papers that include evaluation, and a decrease in the median number of subjects in quantitative studies. We also critique the types of subjects, in particular an over reliance on students, and lack of appropriately gender balanced samples. We contextualize these findings in historical trends as we move from machines intended for the technical elite in laboratories to computers integrated into the daily life of everyone.

The fuzzy felt ethnography--understanding the programming patterns of domestic appliances

In this paper, we discuss domestic appliance use based on an ethnographic study of nine households. Specifically, we look at which domestic appliances users choose to “program”, and break them into two categories for analysis; those that allow users to program actions for the future and those that allow for macro creation to make repeated tasks easier. We also look at domestic programming habits based on gender.

A theoretical agenda for feminist HCI

HCI has a complex and often ambivalent attitude towards the issue of gender and interactive systems. Here I discuss three dominant paradigms for treating gender in HCI, and discuss their limitations. Next, I will present the theoretical perspectives on gender which are on the fringes of HCI -Technology as Masculine Culture, Gender Positionality, and Lived Body Experience - and discuss their possible contributions. I will show how this supports a reassessment of the use of gender theory in technological settings and its relevance for framing questions of gender in HCI. My goal in doing so is to argue for the importance of a more direct treatment of gender in HCI and move towards a feminist theory for HCI.

In the eye of the beholder: a visualization-based approach to information system security

Computer system security is traditionally regarded as a primarily technological concern; the fundamental questions to which security researchers address themselves are those of the mathematical guarantees that can be made for the performance of various communication and computational challenges. However, in our research, we focus on a different question. For us, the fundamental security question is one that end-users routinely encounter and resolve for themselves many times a day--the question of whether a system is secure enough for their immediate needs.In this paper, we will describe our explorations of this issue. In particular, we will draw on three major elements of our research to date. The first is empirical investigation into everyday security practices, looking at how people manage security as a practical, day-to-day concern, and exploring the context in which security decisions are made. This empirical work provides a foundation for our reconsideration of the problems of security to a large degree as an interactional problem. The second is our systems approach, based on visualization and event-based architectures. This technical approach provides a broad platform for investigating security and interaction, based on a set of general principles. The third is our initial experiences in a prototype deployment of these mechanisms in an application for peer-to-peer file sharing in face-to-face collaborative settings. We have been using this application as the basis of an initial evaluation of our technology in support of everyday security practices in collaborative workgroups.

The domestic economy: a broader unit of analysis for end user programming

Domestic ubicomp applications often assume individual users will program and configure their technology in isolation, decoupled from complex domestic environments in which they are situated. To investigate this assumption, we conducted a two week study of VCR use by eight families. Each household member old enough to write completed a diary, interviews were conducted before and after, and information on demographics and appliance ownership was collected. Our key finding supports the notion of the domestic economy and the trading of programming expertise. We use the Attention Investment paradigm, and discuss how the model fits with multi-user programming situations. We discuss the importance of the parent v/s child roles in VCR use, as well as, the tension between direct manipulation (e.g. pressing record) and programming ahead of time. We propose that future work on end user programming must focus on the household as a domestic system rather than on the individual.

Reflexivity in digital anthropology

There are a variety of forms of ethnography inside and outside HCI each with valid complementary contributions. This paper looks at the practices of digital anthropology and how it contributes to reflexive design in HCI. The paper overviews key aspects its use in HCI, as well as in the anthropological approach. In doing so it relates these practices to participatory design and the socio-technical gap, and the ways ethnography can address them.

Seeing further: extending visualization as a basis for usable security

The focus of our approach to the usability considerations of privacy and security has been on providing people with information they can use to understand the implications of their interactions with a system, as well as, to assess whether or not a system is secure enough for their immediate needs. To this end, we have been exploring two design principles for secure interaction: visualizing system activity and integrating configuration and action. Here we discuss the results of a user study designed as a broad formative examination of the successes and failures of an initial prototype based around these principles. Our response to the results of this study has been twofold. First, we have fixed a number of implementation and usability problems. Second, we have extended our visualizations to incorporate new considerations regarding the temporal and structural organization of interactions.

Tangible interface for collaborative information retrieval

Most information retrieval (IR) interfaces are designed for a single user working with a dedicated interface. We present a system in which the IR interface has been fully integrated into a collaborative context of discussion or debate relating to the query topic. By using a tangible user interface, we support multiple users interacting simultaneously to refine the query. Integration with more powerful back-end query processing is still in progress, but we have already been able to evaluate the prototype interface in a real context of use, and confirmed that it can improve relevance rankings compared to single-user dedicated search engines such as Google.