Özge Subasi

Think globally, act locally: a case study of a free food sharing community and social networking

Social networking has a long history of supporting communities online. In this paper we are concerned with a specific community that has formed around free food sharing to save food from being wasted. Specifically, Foodsharing.de is a platform that enables consumers, farmers, organizations and retailers to offer and collect food. Associated with this is the Foodsharing Facebook group where broader community discussions take place. We report on a qualitative analysis of the Foodsharing Facebook group to understand its role in emerging and sustaining the community. The Facebook group is a place where the individual values and motives, socio-political discussions and mass media interrelate and create new social patterns through narratives and local community building. We present our findings as interplay between individual, community, organisational levels, public relations and media, the operational platform Foodsharing.de that enables local communities and the Facebook group where global ideological framing of the community takes place.

Reframing design culture and aging

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. ---Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor

User requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal with emphasis on semantic accessibility for older users

In this paper, we present the results from a survey on user requirements for older users of online ticketing services of a nationwide railway ticket and travel information portal. Our survey shows that older users differentiate in their attitude towards internet according to their experience with internet services and the service provided, not only according to their age. Further, our study indicates that in contrary to common belief advertisement or interactive elements are not perceived as negative all the time. The results of a questionnaire with 1200 responses, focus groups, interviews and qualitative analysis of user feedback also indicate that in order to improve and optimize the usage of the online system for older adults, it is needed to supply the system not only with technical accessibility requirements but also with an understanding of universal accessibility requirements. Universal requirements are defined by real user and usage cases and they consider standardization on not only coding but also predictability of usage and same patterns of interaction for similar websites.

Designing accessible experiences for older users: user requirement analysis for a railway ticketing portal

This article presents the results of a survey that shows that older users differ in their attitude and experience towards the Internet not only according to their age or to their previous knowledge with Internet services, but also according to what they are expecting from this media. The aim of this study was to collect information about barriers on usage and perception of an online ticketing service for a nationwide public railway company, in order to enhance the notion of “accessibility” toward a broader understanding including non-technical accessibility factors as semantic accessibility and/or procedural accessibility. The results of the survey with 1,208 participants and additionally focus groups, interviews and qualitative analysis of user feedback indicate that in order to improve and optimize the usage of the online system for older adults, it is necessary to develop a system which is not only universally accessible, but also satisfies the specific expectations of senior users. This article concentrates on designing accessible user experiences and presents several recommendations to the area and for WCAG 2.0 according to the results.

Needs & motivations of senior travelers for AAL

In this paper, we present the results of two focus groups (9 seniors) from a European Project (STIMULATE), in the area of mobility and travel planning support for older people and people with special needs. The overall user studies were conducted in two countries (Austria and France), included 51 individuals (including experts), of which 31 were older adults (age between 55-92), other 8 were experts working with people with special needs. The findings from the first two focus groups (include 9 seniors) show four extended categories of requirements for the adoption of such travel assistance systems among older people, that are not yet fully addressed in the area of travel assistance and ambient assisted living. These can be summarized as non-reductive, personalised-in-context, aligned with non-functional, accompanying.

HODI: habitus of design inspiration

Despite the need of involving users in design decisions, participants cannot always easily follow and contribute to design. Democratizing design decisions is not easy due to the missing connections between the background information and how this is reflected to design practice. Habitus of design inspiration (HODI) is a design presentation technique, presented with an example use process that deals with this issue. It visually connects design rationale to design artefact. HODI is useful to for both designer - designer and designer - non-designer communications. Making the sources visible and available for reflection can help better communication and co-design of the solutions and support documentation practices in design practices. It can be used for opening up ideas to both designer and non-designer communities, negotiating and debating design decisions and structuring and focussing discussions.

HODI: a technique for visually capturing and preserving design rationale

Design idea generation techniques motivate users, but it is hard to reflect back to co-design partners the motivating relationship between background information and different design decisions. This paper presents a four-layer technique (HODI) for associating background data with design iterations. An exploratory user study shows how participants used the information in different layouts to both generate and iterate on design ideas, and its effect on the trajectories of ideas. This paper contributes to knowledge on design processes for the purpose of presenting background data and its relation to idea creation as part of a co-design process.

Towards fast and interactive prototypes of mobile apps

With the advent of modern mobile phones and tablet devices unprecedented opportunities arise to create rich user experiences that incorporate the context in which the interaction is situated. Sensors and other built-in technologies provide designers with a variety of possibilities for new and exciting applications. Since building such applications requires specialists there is an increasing demand for tools supporting people without programming skills to access, explore and design for the opportunities of mobile devices. In this paper we present a novel prototyping system named FamOz that combines the ease of paper prototyping with the efficiency of Wizard of Oz while exploiting the interactivity offered by new mobile devices. FamOz allows designers and researchers to evaluate mobile prototypes in situated real-world settings in an early stage of development.

Design culture for ageing well : Designing for 'situated elderliness'

The “Design Culture for Ageing Well: Designing for ‘Situated Elderliness’ ” special track focuses on everyday practices and notions of ageing that can be relevant to Human Computer Interaction (HCI). In collaboration with senior associations, designers and theoreticians we elaborate on how newer notions of ageing might inform HCI design. With this track, we concentrate on bottom-up practices of ageing in everyday life, such as used language (visual and verbal) and diverse practices of senior communities (e.g: in different cultures). Our ambition is to go beyond framing support for ageing through a disability-support assistive lens and explore new approaches to designing through ageing well and life experiences as sources for innovations.

Design sketching for assistive travel services

This paper outlines some important qualities of sketching as a design technique for assistive technologies. During the design process of a collaborative project, we studied four different types of sketches with seniors. Through these sketches we discussed ideas around tourism, human values and interaction issues with special regards to the context of aging. The design process, insights and results from studies with fifty senior travelers showed that, design sketching has different impacts based on the sketch type. This further impacts the nature of data gathered from multi-faceted design space of AAL for future products. As visual and corporate design of AAL products are becoming increasingly important for the adoption of such products, the detailed understanding of related design techniques such as sketching is equally important for the development of such products.