Lara Schibelsky G. Piccolo

Accessibility and interactive TV: design recommendations for the Brazilian scenario

TV can be regarded as the most far-reaching media in Brazil. Its presence is noticed in 90% of Brazilian homes and it is the main source of information for a major part of the population. The moment of definition and consolidation of the digital TV technology provides us with a unique opportunity for analyzing and discussing this media accessibility. Making sure that TV contents and devices are flexible enough so that people are able to perceive, understand and interact with them is a main asset for its use and an essential requirement for the democratization of information via TV broadcasting. This paper analyzes interactive digital TV accessibility in informal, formal, and technical levels, considering the Brazilian context. In addition, it presents recommendations to design accessible interfaces by referring to the W3C guidelines 2.0 for Web accessibility and specific recommendations for iDTV.

Desafios de design para a TV digital interativa

Taking in account the social relevance of the terrestrial TV in Brazil and the transition to the digital technology - meaning new opportunities for exploring interactivity on TV - this paper is a worldwide review of HCI studies applied to interactive TV. Organizational semiotics artifacts are used in order to identify the main questions related to the interactive TV in the Brazil scene. The main design challenges are also pointed out by this study.

Motivating online engagement and debates on energy consumption

Several studies and official reports argue that changing peoples behavior towards energy consumption is a vital part of our fight against climate change. Engaging people into this issue is the first step towards a social change. However, it has been shown that information campaigns and technology alone are insufficient to achieve such engagement. Understanding what motivate people, in which contexts and combinations, and for which individuals, is therefore key to engaging the public more successfully in such crucial debates. This work investigates the role and impact of motivational strategies on promoting engagement in online energy debates. We report our results from running an experiment in the workplace, in which 33 people contributed to an online discussion on reducing energy consumption. A public and tangible feedback of contributions to the online debate, as well as social comparison and competition were analyzed as motivational strategies. Our results point out that engagement goes beyond intrinsic motivation, and that a set of interplaying factors influenced by the social context was found to be the stronger motivational force of engagement.

Prospecting the appropriation of digital TV in a Brazilian project

A good practice for developers of new technology, which has great influence on the life of users (e.g., digital TV), would be to inform them about the benefits of the technology and the challenges to its appropriation. Usually, the focus of work that investigates the appropriation of digital TV has been on how to avoid user resistance based on usability and accessibility concerns. This work presents other risks related to user non-acceptance, influenced by the way the technology will be owned, by the infrastructure of the city, and by the life style of the population. Human and contextual factors help to overcome rejection by users and provide some recommendations useful for the developers of this technology in order to mitigate such risks.

Shedding lights on human values: an approach to engage families with energy conservation

Changing behaviour related to energy conservation is not an emotionally neutral task. People have to deal with individual and group interests, contextual constraints, eventually trading-off between their values and effective actions in terms of savings. This paper presents a set of dynamics and artefacts for families to raise and share their energy awareness, and transform it into sustainable behaviour. This method based on human values was applied with 7 families to identify critical factors that must be in play when promoting energy conservation within a social group. Preliminary results confirmed that bringing families’ values into discussion and establishing shared commitments and responsibilities are promising approaches for technology design with the purpose to raise awareness collectively and promote effective changes in behaviour towards protecting the natural environment.

Designing to Promote a New Social Affordance for Energy Consumption

The relation between energy consumption and its environmental impact is weak or even almost inexistent in the Brazilian scenario due to sociocultural reasons. This work takes advantage of an experimental smart grid deployment scenario to propose the concept of Social Eco-feedback Technology. It aims at establishing this relation by promoting a new social affordance (behavior pattern), favoring a new way of perceiving energy. The concept of affordance and artifacts of the Organizational Semiotics are extended to encompass both the analysis of actual and intended behavior through a new technology design.

Prospecting the Appropriation of the Digital TV in a Brazilian Project

A good practice for developers of a new technology, which has great influence on the life of interested users (as in the case of the Digital TV), would be to: inform them about the benefits of the technology and challenges for its appropriation. Usually the focus of works that investigate the appropriation of Digital TV has been on avoiding the non acceptance of users towards usability and accessibility issues. This work presents other risks related to the non acceptance, influenced by the way the technology will be owned, by the topology of the city and by the life style of the population. Human and contextual factors help to overcome the non acceptance of users and give rise to some recommendations useful for the developers of this technology to mitigate such risks.

A socially inspired energy feedback technology: challenges in a developing scenario

Raising awareness of the environmental impact of energy generation and consumption has been a recent concern of contemporary society worldwide. Underlying the awareness of energy consumption is an intricate network of perception and social interaction that can be mediated by technology. In this paper we argue that issues regarding energy, environment and technology are very much situated and involve tensions of sociocultural nature. This exploratory investigation addresses the subject by introducing the design of a Socially-inspired Energy Eco-Feedback Technology (SEET), which is composed of an interactive system to trigger and mediate collective savings and a tangible device as a public feedback. Results of an evaluation situated in the context of a school in a socially disadvantaged area in Brazil are discussed, shedding light on the sociocultural aspects related to the subject. The role of the SEET to motivate energy awareness collectively among the social group is assessed, as well as the design characteristics that contributed to that. Outcomes bring to light social aspects and dynamics that would hardly have been predicted, evidencing critical factors related to a socially inspired design approach in the energy awareness domain.

Talking climate change via social media: communication, engagement and behaviour

While individual behaviour change is considered a central strategy to mitigate climate change, public engagement is still limited. Aiming to raise awareness, and to promote behaviour change, governments and organisations are conducting multiple pro-environmental campaigns, particularly via social media. However, to the best of our knowledge, these campaigns are neither based on, nor do they take advantage of, the existing theories and studies of behaviour change, to better target and inform users. In this paper we propose an approach for analysing user behaviour towards climate change based on the 5 Doors Theory of behaviour change [19]. Our approach automatically identifies five behavioural stages in which users are based on their social media contributions. This approach has been applied to analyse the online behaviour of participants of the Earth Hour 2015 and COP21 Twitter movements. Results of our analysis are used to provide guidelines on how to improve communication via these campaigns.

EnergyUse - A Collective Semantic Platform for Monitoring and Discussing Energy Consumption

Conserving fossil-based energy to reduce carbon emissions is key to slowing down global warming. The 2015 Paris agreement on climate change emphasised the importance of raising public awareness and participation to address this societal challenge. In this paper we introduce EnergyUse; a collective platform for raising awareness on climate change, by enabling users to view and compare the actual energy consumption of various appliances, and to share and discuss energy conservation tips in an open and social environment. The platform collects data from smart plugs, and exports appliance consumption information and community generated energy tips as linked data. In this paper we report on the system design, data modelling, platform usage and early deployment with a set of 58 initial participants. We also discuss the challenges, lessons learnt, and future platform developments.