Tracee Wolf

Social translucence: designing social infrastructures that make collective activity visible

Making social cues visible and persistent helps online groups govern their activities.

Dispelling "design" as the black art of CHI

We discuss the legacy and processes of creative design, and differentiate it from the type of user-centered design commonly found in CHI. We provide an example of this process, and discuss how design practice constitutes an essential mode of inquiry. We argue the complementary nature of creative design and user-centered design practices. Syncretic disciplines shift and drift from their original practice. A key issue is how CHI is to respond to changes in acceptable design practice. A key contribution of this work is an illustrative example showing how designers can communicate their intellectual rigor to the CHI community.

Leveraging digital backchannels to enhance user experience in electronically mediated communication

Rendezvous is a conference call solution that leverages Voice over IP, enterprise calendaring, instant messaging, and rich client functionality to enhance the user experience and effectiveness of distributed meetings. We describe the service, and two of its user experience innovations -- the conference call proxy and iHelp -- which function as digital backchannels. We present results from a preliminary user evaluation, and discuss our notion of digital backchannels with respect to the social translucence framework.

An empirical study of the use of visually enhanced voip audio conferencing: the case of IEAC

IBM Enhanced Audio Conferencing (IEAC) is a VoIP-based audio conferencing system that, like several other systems, provides a visualization showing who is present and their states (e.g., speaking, muted). This paper presents the first study of the use of such a system. Drawing on log files collected over six weeks of use by over 1300 corporate employees, and interviews with 10 of them, we look at how and why various features of the system are used and what sorts of practices are supported. Our findings shed light on the factors that drive the use of visual enhancements to audio conferencing, and suggest further research topics.

Supporting design studio culture in HCI

The workshop considers the needs and possibilities for integrating design studio culture within the research, education, and practice of interaction design and HCI. The primary goals of the workshop are (i) to assess the current state of design studio culture within HCI in comparison with other design disciplines, (ii) to invite participants to collaborate on the design of the artifice required to support design studio culture within HCI, and (iii) to aggregate insights from these designs into strategies for the future.

Too Much Information

As mobile computing devices and a variety of sensors become ubiquitous, new resources for applications and services - often collectively referred to under the rubric of context-aware computing - are becoming available to designers and developers. In this article, we consider the potential benefits and issues that arise from leveraging context awareness in new communication services that include the convergence of VoIP (voice over IP) and traditional information technology.

PASTEL: pattern-driven adaptive simulations

We propose a new kind of learning environment called an adaptive simulation that more deeply explores and exploits the potential of simulations as pedagogical and explanatory tools. In an adaptive simulation, the simulation configuration is not fixed but rather can be modified by an instructional agent for optimal pedagogical effect. Types of adaptations include manipulations of simulation time and state, changes in representation to facilitate explanations and/or task performance, and adjustments in simulation complexity by the addition and/or removal of components. We briefly describe a system we are developing called PASTEL that is designed to enable these kinds of adaptations. Open research issues include precisely how to perform these adaptations and when to employ them for optimal effect.

In search of end-users

Learning from end-users is essential to participatory design, but before we can learn from them we must first find them. This search can be the hardest part of a project, however. What pro-active steps can be taken? In this paper we describe our search for end-users to work with on one particular design project. We reflect on why we were often unsuccessful, and how in the end we found end-users who were eager to collaborate with us to design a Risk and Compliance visualization.