Stacy M. Branham

Sharing is Caring: Assistive Technology Designs on Thingiverse

An increasing number of online communities support the open-source sharing of designs that can be built using rapid prototyping to construct physical objects. In this paper, we examine the designs and motivations for assistive technology found on Thingiverse.com, the largest of these communities at the time of this writing. We present results from a survey of all assistive technology that has been posted to Thingiverse since 2008 and a questionnaire distributed to the designers exploring their relationship with assistive technology and the motivation for creating these designs. The majority of these designs are intended to be manufactured on a 3D printer and include assistive devices and modifications for individuals with disabilities, older adults, and medication management. Many of these designs are created by the end-users themselves or on behalf of friends and loved ones. These designers frequently have no formal training or expertise in the creation of assistive technology. This paper discusses trends within this community as well as future opportunities and challenges.

Let's go from the whiteboard: supporting transitions in work through whiteboard capture and reuse

The use of whiteboards is pervasive across a wide range of work domains. But some of the qualities that make them successful--an intuitive interface, physical working space, and easy erasure--inherently make them poor tools for archival and reuse. If whiteboard content could be made available in times and spaces beyond those supported by the whiteboard alone, how might it be appropriated? We explore this question via ReBoard, a system that automatically captures whiteboard images and makes them accessible through a novel set of user-centered access tools. Through the lens of a seven week workplace field study, we found that by enabling new workflows, ReBoard increased the value of whiteboard content for collaboration.

Collaborative Accessibility: How Blind and Sighted Companions Co-Create Accessible Home Spaces

In recent decades, great technological strides have been made toward enabling people who are blind to live independent, successful lives. However, there has been relatively little progress towards understanding the social, collaborative needs of this population, particularly in the domestic setting. We conducted semi-structured interviews in the homes of 10 pairs of close companions in which one partner was blind and one was not. We found that partners engaged in collaborative accessibility by taking active roles in co-creating an accessible environment. Due to their different visual abilities, however, partners sometimes encountered difficulties managing divergent needs and engaging in shared experiences. We describe outstanding challenges to creating accessible shared home spaces and outline new research and technology opportunities for supporting collaborative accessibility in the home.

The Invisible Work of Accessibility: How Blind Employees Manage Accessibility in Mixed-Ability Workplaces

Over the past century, people who are blind and their allies have developed successful public policies and technologies in support of creating more accessible workplaces. However, simply creating accessible technologies does not guarantee that these will be available or adopted. Because much work occurs within shared workspaces, decisions about assistive technology use may be mediated by social interactions with, and expectations of, sighted coworkers. We present findings from a qualitative field study of five workplaces from the perspective of blind employees. Although all participants were effective employees, they expressed that working in a predominantly sighted office environment produces impediments to a blind persons independence and to their integration as an equal coworker. We describe strategies employed by our participants to create and maintain an accessible workplace and present suggestions for future technology that better supports blind workers as equal peers in the workplace.

Ethical Encounters in HCI: Research in Sensitive Settings

With HCI researchers conducting studies in increasingly sensitive and difficult settings, ethics is emerging as a key concern for the HCI community. New technologies are now being designed and evaluated in settings that involve vulnerable or marginalized participants and that can be emotionally challenging for researchers. Research in these settings can produce complex ethical dilemmas that are often emergent, diverse, and highly contextualized. In addition, there may be discrepancies between the realities of HCI fieldwork and the formal and often rigid processes of obtaining ethics approval in research institutions. Given these issues, it is important for researchers to communally reflect on ethical encounters in HCI research. This workshop will provide a forum for researchers to share experiences about ethical challenges they have faced. These discussions will be used to develop a handbook of practical lessons representing the breadth and depth of ethical issues emerging in HCI research in sensitive settings.

Picking Up Artifacts: Storyboarding as a Gateway to Reuse

Storyboarding offers designers the opportunity to illustrate a visual narrative of use. Because designers often refer to past ideas, we argue storyboards can be constructed by reusing shared artifacts. We present a study in which we explore how designers reuse artifacts consisting of images and rationale during storyboard construction. We find images can aid in accessing rationale and that connections among features aid in deciding what to reuse, creating new artifacts, and constructing. Based on requirements derived from our findings, we present a storyboarding tool, PIC-UP, to facilitate artifact sharing and reuse and evaluate its use in an exploratory study. We conclude with remarks on facilitating reuse and future work.

Co-creating & identity-making in CSCW: revisiting ethics in design research

The evolving philosophies, methods, and products of CSCW design research are more collaborative and value-active than ever. Researchers and participants may co-construct designs, thus sharing power; they may share intimate life stories over design probes, thus pushing socio-cultural boundaries; they may seek personal fulfillment through the products or the process. How do these experiences affect researcher and co-creator identity in the moment of co-work? How do these changes reconfigure other relationships and encounters? This workshop invites discussants from across disciplines to consider phenomenological aspects of identity-making and to unpack ethical dilemmas that arise when we appreciate the potential for design research itself to significantly harm or help participants. At stake are CSCW policies, best practices, and collective understandings of what it means to be a design researcher.

Expanding the design space for intimacy: supporting mutual reflection for local partners

The design space for intimate partners has largely been populated with technologies that support distant partners via abstracted presence. We seek to expand the design space to include a wider range of potential users and designs. To this end, we present findings from qualitative interviews with Family Studies experts in the form of a stage-based model of couple connection---Re-pattern, Reflect, Re-story, Reconnect. From this analysis, we identify two new regions in the couples design space, local partners and deep interpersonal sharing. Finally, we share the design of a technology that sits at the intersection of these regions. These findings present new opportunities for designers of intimate collaborative technologies.

Designing for Collocated Couples

Though the design of technologies for couples has been thriving for well over a decade now, the products made for and the needs of couples examined in HCI research are surprisingly narrow. Overwhelmingly they are for partners at a distance and lightweight interactions that can best be described as abstracted presence. Towards moving couples technologies into broader waters and guiding exploration of the many other facets of couplehood, we propose an expanded couples design space that includes technologies for local partners and deep interpersonal sharing—hitherto underexplored design concerns. We then show that the creation of these new spaces can be motivated by the needs of couples as characterized by couples experts and present an example of a new technology that embodies these. Finally, we draw from experience with couples in the field to identify research and design considerations regarding gender, power, values, and ethics.

Achieving Both Creativity and Rationale: Reuse in Design with Images and Claims

Although designers often try to create novel designs, many designs are based on previous work. In this paper we argue for the reuse of rationale, in the form of claims, as a central activity in design, and explore how this can be used to inspire creativity. We present a design activity in which images and claims are reused to create a storyboard and illustrate how creativity and rationale complement each other. Our work serves to demonstrate that an appropriate design activity can be used to leverage creativity with the use of rationale.