José Abdelnour Nocera

So, Who Exactly IS The HCI Professional?

Little is known about the cognitive profile of the HCI practitioner or educator, or how their individual differences impact upon practice in the field or the classroom. To address this, we conducted surveys to collect the cognitive style of practitioners, educators, and those with both roles, followed these up by interviews. It was found that practitioners are more comfortable employing both analytical and intuitive approaches than the general population, and that the educator is able to suppress intuitive tendencies when performing analytical tasks. The profile of the educator who practices is different from the educator who does not practice, and the educator who does not practice is more evangelical about the subject. Recognising and accepting these differences is essential if we are to design a curriculum that supports the needs of the field.

Open-source platform: exploring the opportunities for offline mobile learning

The mobile technology field is rapidly expanding and the focus on how it can be incorporated to support learning is also growing. However, the barriers to inclusion of information communication technologies in the public schools of Nepal are still significant and the widespread access to digital content remains a key obstacle. Nepal has a poor communication infrastructure and where available, telecommunication and electricity are poorly maintained or too costly to use. The aim of this exploratory research study is to highlight how an offline mobile learning solution may address some of the technical challenges to support one of the current and most urgent requirements to provide an access to digital content. It will investigate the deployment of previously unexplored low-spec sub US

How WEIRD is HCI?: Extending HCI Principles to other Countries and Cultures

100 open-source mobile devices to facilitate English language learning and address the knowledge requirements of teachers in government funded public schools of Nepal.

Addressing sociotechnical gaps in the design and deployment of digital resources in rural Kenya

A large majority of articles published at prominent HCI venues such as CHI and CSCW reports on studies with WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) participants, ignoring that the results might not apply to other subject populations. This workshop aims to have the following two main outcomes: (1) A list of major principles that HCI researchers often build on and that are unlikely to apply to users in other countries and cultures. (2) An action plan that describes how we can extend these previous findings, such as by collaborating across countries and cultures, conducting large-scale online experiments, or creating a culture of replications and extensions with more diverse subject populations. Furthermore, the workshop aims to establish an interest group with the goal to improve the external validity of HCI research and to inform the design of further research studies in this area.

Spark: Promoting Well-Being by Social Media-Triggered Routine Breaks

We argue that designing any aspect of information technology requires an understanding of sociotechnical gaps. These gaps are inherent issues deriving from the difference between what is required socially, or culturally, and what can be done technically. In the context of a British-Kenyan project, we introduce an approach for addressing sociotechnical gaps in the design and deployment of digital resources in resource-constrained and culturally different environments. We illustrate how despite having an online, asynchronous tool to visualise sociotechnical gaps among different stakeholders in a design team, we had to complement it with a pen and paper design metaphor elucidation exercise to elicit and visualise locally meaningful user interface elements.

An Approach to the Evaluation of Usefulness as a Social Construct Using Technological Frames

The Mental well-being is an intangible, subjective perception of our own emotions and cognitive capabilities. With the rise of social networks, connectivity and media consumption have seen dramatic changes. In this work we focus on understanding how mental well-being relates to people’s routines, what dangers and recommendations we should be aware of, and what opportunities exist to leverage current technologies in order to improve people’s lives. As a contribution to HCI based on our research insights, we designed a solution that promotes daily mental well-being. Spark is a mobile application where everyone in the world participates in a single challenge every 25 h. Each challenge asks the user to perform an activity, capturing that moment with a photo, and then sharing it. As the user participates in different challenges over time, a record of his activities is always accessible. This encourages the user to relive positive past experiences, and take note of his accomplishments.