Natalia Romero Herrera

Adaptive Experience Sampling: Addressing the Dynamic Nature of In-Situ User Studies

Experience sampling techniques can be used to study user experiences with products in a natural setting and over time. Nowadays, researchers can use selective sampling to link the timing and questions to relevant product events and contextual events. Existing research has focused on maximizing the quality and quantity of feedback, while at the same time minimizing interruptions and maintaining the motivation of the participants. In practice, however, the optimal timing and content of questions also depends on the changing interests of the researcher, a topic that has not yet been addressed. This position paper introduces ‘adaptive experience sampling’, i.e. a method that enables researchers and designers to change the focus of their experience sampling study on the fly. Using adaptive experience sampling, researchers and designers can better link the sampling to their gradually growing insights.

PMRI: development of a pictorial mood reporting instrument

Mood capturing techniques are being used in research settings (e.g., lab evaluation and experience sampling) and to facilitate mood communication in mediated interaction (e.g., instant messaging and blogging). Instruments currently available tend to be either limited in expression or overly demanding. In this paper we describe our work-in-progress on the development of PMRI, a rich and easy-to-use pictorial mood-reporting instrument.

The Emergence of Living Lab Methods

Innovative sustainable solutions in living and working setups need to embrace users’ appropriation of technologies in their daily life practices. Successful innovation scenarios implicate adaptability in technologies for users to engage in a process in which technology and practices are adapted, and even new practices are adopted as result of the appropriation. Sustainability Living Lab (SLL) offers a socio-technical infrastructure to support user-centric innovation processes for the development and adoption of sustainable solutions. It offers a collaborative platform where professionals from different disciplines work together with future users and public and private stakeholders to generate solutions that are rooted in the dynamics of daily life practices. Future users play an active role in generating and applying contextualized practice-based knowledge in the innovation process. Central in the process is the integration of users’ experiences and sustainability impact of their practices around technology appropriation. A new generation of in-situ and mixed methods is emerging to facilitate this process. This chapter introduces an integrated approach based on in-situ and mixed methods to systemize the integration of objective and subjective aspects of daily life practices at different stages of the innovation process. Three levels of integration are described with each addressing different needs and abilities of the professionals, clients and future users involved in such projects. Each level suggests specific involvement of monitoring and self-reporting activities with outcomes that varies from describing behaviours, explaining the factors that influence behaviours as well as their impact, and experimenting on alternative behaviours.

In-Situ and Mixed-Design Interventions

Sustainability in living and working contexts aims to design innovations that are appropriated by users in their daily life activities. Appropriation is a dynamic process that acknowledges the complexity of practices in the adoption of technologies. It involves adaptation of the technology and its intended use as well as the practices that are affected by it. In Living Lab settings the innovation process is user-centric, meaning that is driven by users, their practices and the process of appropriation. This requires an active involvement of users at all stages of the design process: for gathering insights, ideation, co-designing, experimentation and evaluation. When the focus is on active involvement of users, qualitative methods are central in the design process. Qualitative methods support a wide spectrum of user involvement, from been observed to actively self-report experiences and practices to inform the design process. The more active the involvement of users and the more complex their context, the more effort and skills are needed from them. If no clear incentives for participation, active involvement becomes a burden and does not sustain overtime. In-situ and mixed-designs interventions support user centric, situated and integrated design research practices. In-situ and mixed tools take the form of mixed data probes and in-situ interventions that facilitate user involvement in the activities of data collection and interpretation. In this chapter, the SusLab Toolkit is presented as an implementation of in-situ and mixed-designs interventions in the context of heating practices at home.

FoodSampler: engaging people to contextualise food behaviour: Mixed methods for monitoring choices and triggers of eating habits

Overweight and obesity affect the entire population. On a day-to-day basis, this problem relates to what people eat, why people eat what they eat and their day-to-day food choices. Towards e-health solutions that support self-management of (health) food related practices, a better understanding of eating habits is needed. Validated food measurement instruments are challenged to generate such holistic knowledge. Primarily due to their limited scope (mostly descriptive) and their long and time consuming demands. The FoodSampler research project aims to explore food informatics strategies to engage people in generating contextual knowledge of their food behaviour. It targets an increasing vulnerable group in prevention of overweight and obesity: older adults with a low Socio-Economical Status (SES). The approach combines Mixed Method Research (MMR), Research through Design (RtD) and Living Labs research. In this way a user-centric innovative process is implemented, involving end-users and experts in cycles of exploring, prototyping and testing mixed food informatics strategies. By means of contextual research in-the-wild, co-design sessions, and in-situ interventions the project seeks for direct benefits to involve the targeted group as collaborators of the design process. In FoodSampler end-users and experts will co-generate knowledge on best practices for mixed food informatics and the values of the generated knowledge to explain food behaviour.

Making Energy Feedback Understandable

In this chapter several aspects in the design of home energy feedback are discussed along with the presentation of energy feedback design examples. The examples include the Ampul interface that was tested in the SusLab Concept House. Ampul was designed to enable users to maximize the use of available solar energy. A second example referenced is an aquarium metaphor in which plant, water and fish qualities are coupled to energy consumption and climate sensor data, which was developed as a demonstration and thirdly Powercord is described as an interface able to translate energy consumption into auditory sounds.

Designing Ampul: Empowerment to Home Energy Prosumers

Ampul is a home energy management system (HEMS) designed for the emergent group of home energy prosumers (producers and consumers of energy at home). The innovative visualizations and interactions provided by Ampul offer prosumers timed, situated and appliance specific information on the energy that is produced and consumed. Ampul has been developed by applying in-situ interventions in real homes and Concept House Prototype 1, a home living lab facility located in a neighbourhood in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Residents of the same neighbourhoods were invited to actively collaborate in the design process. Ampul is presented in this section as an inspiring example of how Living Labs methods facilitate the role of future users as active collaborators in gathering insights and experimenting earlier concepts in homes and home living labs.