Serena Hillman

How and why teenagers use video chat

Teenagers are increasingly using video chat systems to communicate with others, however, little research has been conducted to explore how and why they use the technology. To better understand this design space, we present the results of a study of twenty teenagers and their use of video chat systems such as Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts. Our results show that video chat plays an important role in helping teenagers socialize with their friends after school and on weekends where it allows them to see emotional reactions and participate in activities like shared homework sessions, show and tell, and performances over distance. Yet video chat is also used to engage in more private activities such as gossiping, flirting, and even the viewing of sexual acts. This presents an interesting design challenge of supporting teen use of video chat while mitigating privacy and parental concerns.

Technology preferences and routines for sharing health information during the treatment of a chronic illness

When a patient has a chronic illness, such as heart disease or cancer, it can be challenging for distributed family members to stay aware of the patients health status. A variety of technologies are available to support health information sharing (e.g., phone, video chat, social media), yet we still do not have a detailed understanding of which technologies are preferred and what challenges people still face when sharing information with them. To explore this, we conducted a mixed-method study-involving a survey and in-depth interviews--with people about their health information sharing routines and preferences for different technologies. Regardless of physical distance between distributed family members, synchronous methods of communication afforded the opportunity to provide affective support while asynchronous methods of communication were deemed to be the least intrusive. With family members adopting certain roles during the treatment of chronic illnesses, our findings suggest the need to design tools that mediate sharing health information across distance and age gaps, with consideration to respecting patient privacy while sharing health information.

How technology supports family communication in rural, suburban, and urban kenya

Much ICTD research for sub-Saharan Africa has focused on how technology related interventions have aimed to incorporate marginalized communities towards global economic growth. Our work builds on this. We present results from an exploratory qualitative study on the family communication practices of family members who communicate both within and between rural, suburban, and urban settings in Kenya. Our findings reveal that family communication focuses on economic support, well-being, life advice, and everyday coordination of activities. We also outline social factors that affect family communication, including being an eldest child, having a widowed sibling, and having reduced access to technology because of gender, literacy, or ones financial situation. Lastly, we discuss new opportunities for technology design and articulate the challenges that designers will face if creating or deploying family communication technologies in Kenya.

Sharing Domestic Life through Long-Term Video Connections

Video chat systems such as Skype, Google+ Hangouts, and FaceTime have been widely adopted by family members and friends to connect with one another over distance. We have conducted a corpus of studies that explore how various demographics make use of such video chat systems in which this usage moves beyond the paradigm of conversational support to one in which aspects of everyday life are shared over long periods of time, sometimes in an almost passive manner. We describe and reflect on studies of long-distance couples, teenagers, and major life events, along with design research focused on new video communication systems—the Family Window, Family Portals, and Perch—that explicitly support “always-on video” for awareness and communication. Overall, our findings show that people highly value long-term video connections and have appropriated them in a number of different ways. Designers of future video communication systems need to consider: ways of supporting the sharing of everyday life rather than just conversation, providing different design solutions for different locations and situations, providing appropriate audio control and feedback, and supporting expressions of intimacy over distance.

Soft trust and mCommerce shopping behaviours

Recently, there has been widespread growth of shopping and buying on mobile devices, termed mCommerce. With this comes a need to understand how to best design experiences for mobile shopping. To help address this, we conducted a diary and interview study with mCommerce shoppers who have already adopted the technology and shop on their mobile devices regularly. Our study explores typical mCommerce routines and behaviours along with issues of soft trust, given its long-term concern for eCommerce. Our results describe spontaneous purchasing and routine shopping behaviours where people gravitate to their mobile device even if a computer is nearby. We found that participants faced few trust issues because they had limited access to unknown companies. In addition, app marketplaces and recommendations from friends offered a form of brand protection. These findings suggest that companies can decrease trust issues by tying mCommerce designs to friend networks and known marketplaces. The caveat for shoppers, however, is that they can be easily lured into a potentially false sense of trust.

'alksjdf;Lksfd': tumblr and the fandom user experience

A growing trend is the participation in online fandom communities through the support of the blogging platform Tumblr. While past research has investigated backchannels-chatter related to live entertainment on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter-there is a lack of research on the behaviours and motivations of Tumblr users. In our study, we investigate why fandom users chose Tumblr over other social networking sites, their motivations behind participating in fandoms, and how they interact within the Tumblr community. Our findings show that users face many user interface challenges when participating in Tumblr fandoms, especially initially; yet, despite this, Tumblr fandom communities thrive with a common sense of social purpose and exclusivity where users feel they can present a more authentic reflection of themselves to those sharing similar experiences and interests. We describe how this suggests design directions for social networking and blogging sites in order to promote communities of users.

Conducting Interviews with Remote Participants

Interviewing comes in many forms and is a valuable tool for collecting information from study participants. Yet, more frequently it seems difficult to find participants who live in close proximity to the researchers and match specific demographic requirements for a study. Moreover, research projects may focus on studying participants in different regions of the world such that it is challenging to travel to meet and interview them. Video communication technologies such as Skype, FaceTime, and Google+ Hangouts are now playing a pivotal role in user studies, and many researchers are turning to such technology to support remote interviewing. This chapter explores the challenges and lessons learned from performing interviews over video communication technologies by discussing studies from three areas: family communication between grandparents and grandchildren, family communication during cases of chronic illness, and mobile commerce shopping behaviors. Lessons include how to address ethical concerns, work with and view physical artifacts, empathize with participants, and deal with technical challenges.

Family communication in rural and slum regions of Kenya

We report the findings of a small scale exploratory qualitative study on 13 participants from rural and slum regions of Kenya communicated with remote family members using technology. We focus on communication practices that enabled family members to support economic sustenance activities and also investigate the social aspects of using technology to provide or receive moral, emotional or other forms of support from distributed family members.

The informatics needs of amateur endurance athletic coaches

Personal informatics applications are increasingly available for amateur endurance athletes to record and monitor their performance and training. This information can be valuable for coaches who tailor training programs based on this data. Despite this, it is not clear if the information provided by such tools map to the real needs of the amateur athletic community. To address this, we conducted interviews with eight amateur athletic coaches of endurance athletes. Our results show that athlete-specific contextual factors can be important to track and monitor in relation to performance-based metrics. This information can be difficult to capture, analyze, and share. This suggests design opportunities for personal informatics applications for amateur athletes and coaches.

Mobile payment systems in North America: user challenges & successes

As smartphones continue to increase in popularity in North America so too does the opportunity to expand their use and functionality. Our study looks at one of these new opportunities, Mobile Payment Services (MPS). This study investigates user behaviors, motivations and first impressions of MPS in Canada and the USA through interviews with veteran users and interviews and diaries with new users. Participants used a variety of MPS, including: Google Wallet, Amazon Payments, LevelUp, Square and company apps geared towards payments (e.g., Starbucks). Our preliminary findings are presented as user successes and challenges.