Category Archives: About Innovation

Giving Back to the Participants: When You Can’t Leave a Working System

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My research depends on participants volunteering their time, energy, and personal stories. They are informants, co-designers, beta testers, and content experts who contribute so many insights and yet frequently remain anonymous in publications resulting from the work. Like many other researchers, I struggle with how I can give something back (beyond free pizza or gift cards for participation.

One of my favorite readings on the topic of “giving back” is the Le Dantec & Fox CSCW 2015 paper on community-based research, which really examined how institutions may exploit vulnerable communities (despite having the best intentions) without actually contributing back anything that is of value to the participants. University research may appear to promise things like policy and institutional change, increased access to resources, or (in the case of HCI) working technologies that address user needs. The truth is that these are almost never delivered in the form or at a time that can actually directly benefit study participants. I know for my research, I have no source of funding that would support developing and maintaining a production-quality system beyond the initial novel prototypes in constrained deployments. So is there a way to give back that doesn’t over-promise? Here are five strategies that I’ve tried in my work:

PARTNERING with an ORGANIZATION (which is willing to develop and maintain prototype ideas): If your research is done in collaboration with an existing technology company, your findings and prototypes can be directly integrated into their services without the researcher needing to coordinate long-term maintenance (in turn, the company gets a free research team and initial development of cool feature ideas). This is currently our approach in our collaboration with CaringBridge.org, as our findings  are directly driving new features and directions (this work is largely in progress, but here are some publications). Obviously, these partnerships can take a lot of time and effort to set up and manage, but I really think this is a great pathway to positive impact.

STUDY PARTICIPATION as BENEFIT: In many cases, being part of a participatory design process can tangibly benefit the co-designers. For some good reading, I love the way the KidsTeam at University of Maryland has reflected on the perceived benefits of and ethical considerations for co-design with children. It is certainly important to think about the possible benefits up-front and consider how they can be amplified and measured. If the benefits are pedagogical, this may mean thinking through the specific learning outcomes holistically and for each session. When planning my studies, I consider how being part of it may help participants identify new resources that may personally help them, develop actionable resilience skills, etc. This does typically mean that I can’t accomplish my studies as a single design workshop, instead requiring multiple sessions for the partnership to be able to yield benefits both to the researchers and to the participants.

LEAVING BEHIND STOP-GAP SOLUTIONS (with currently-available technologies): While you can’t usually leave behind and maintain a fully functional prototype system, there may be great opportunities to leave behind solutions that may be better than what the family had available in the past. For example, after running a study with a novel prototype that I had to remove, I left behind dedicated smartphones set up for easy videochat (just off-the-shelf phones with Skype installed). This wasn’t as good as my prototype, but it was much better than the previous audio-only setup that the family used. This did require additional resources (in this case, phones), but it’s worth it if it leaves the participants better off than before you got there.

AUTHORSHIP or ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: This one doesn’t apply if you’re working with communities that face stigma or want to remain anonymous, but there are cases where it may be ethical to credit creators or acknowledge co-designers. We are currently working on a project with Middle School co-designers, where all contributors will be able to choose to be listed as co-authors. After all, they spent a whole year with us learning how to be designers and coming up with ideas — they should get something that they can put on their resumes for college! This does require thinking through at study-planning time so that a special check box can be included on the consent form.

DISSEMINATING INFORMATION on BEST PRACTICES (with currently-available technologies): After doing a formative study, you may be in a really good position to share best practices for specific challenges. For example, after completing my research on parent-child communication in separated families, I wrote a blog post on practices, strategies, and tools that may help families make best use of currently-available systems. I distributed this to my participants directly, but also left it online for any other families who may be looking for ideas or advice. In another example, I led a webinar for medical practitioners to understand the technologies and practices that work well for people in recovery. Since the medical practitioners are often the first “line of defense” for people in recovery, this is a great way to disseminate potentially-helpful information. The good news is that this approach is also really consistent with and rewarded by the NSF expectations for Broader Impact.

Are there practices that you’ve tried in your research that have helped you give back to your participants? I’d love to hear other ideas, because I really think this is a fundamental tension and challenge in HCI research.

Note: This blog post started as a conversation at the CSCW 2018 Workshop on “Conducting Research with Stigmatized Populations.” Stigmatized participants have greater risks from participating in research, so thinking about ways of amplifying benefit using strategies above is particularly critical. However, there is no reason why we can’t think about amplifying benefit for all populations!

Sketching with Computer Science Students

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Last semester, as part of my Design Methods class (more here, if you want any of the materials), I attempted to teach Computer Science students how to sketch. Each student had to practice sketching and submit at least one of their own sketches as part of the project milestone. While initially, this prospect caused some anxiety for the students, most were able to find a style and an approach to creating visual content that worked for them.

We relied heavily on Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook (Saul Greenberg, Sheelagh Carpendale, Nicolai Marquardt, and Bill Buxton), which does a great job explaining the benefits of sketching to the overall design process and providing some strategies for those who are less artistically inclined. Particularly, the books tutorials on storyboarding, simplified figures (e.g., stick figures), and photo tracing were used by the students with great results.

Students successfully used storyboarding, simplified figures, and photo tracing in sketching their design ideas.

Students successfully used storyboarding, simplified figures, and photo tracing in sketching their design ideas.

We added another skill to our sketching repertoire that was not covered in the workbook, namely constructing two-point perspectives. I chose to add this to the curriculum because I’ve found the rule-based approach of this method is generally well-received by engineers and is particularly useful in sketching and considering physical computing prototypes.

Many students were very successful in constructing two-point perspective sketches, even if they were resistant to less structured sketching approaches.

Many students were very successful in constructing two-point perspective sketches, even if they were resistant to less structured sketching approaches.

I found that the process of sketching out ideas helped students think divergently. For the last milestone, the students were asked to develop two prototypes that they found to be most promising, with a special focus on diversity of modalities and ideas in the final prototypes they chose to pursue. I was very impressed with the results!

prototypes

Some of the physical prototypes students developed from their sketches for the final class milestone.

In final student evaluations of course content, sketching was the component that worried me most. This is so different from a standard Computer Science skill or activity that I had to wonder whether students would find it valuable in retrospect. Indeed, in their final ranking of the thirteen components and skills covered in the class, sketching came in at #4! It was one of the most valued components of the class, despite (or maybe because of?) any initial trepidation students expressed about their drawing skills. I’ll definitely continue including this unit in the course in the future!

(Note: Images are used with permission from each project group, asked and received after the submission of final grades.)

Better HCI Research in One Hour a Day: A Winter Break Guide for C.S. Students

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Like many other schools, University of Minnesota has a fairly long winter break (more than a month!). The break from classes provides an excellent opportunity to catch up with friends and family, sleep, and (most importantly, of course) focus on research. If you are a Computer Science student starting or thinking about a research program in Human-Computer Interaction, consider if you can dedicate an hour a day to becoming a better researcher. If you’re interested, here’s a short (and I think, fun!) program to fill some gaps between an undergraduate Computer Science program and a graduate program in HCI.

Build a Psychology Foundation (10-25 minutes per day): Computer Science students who come into HCI frequently have the “Computer” part of HCI down, but have less exposure to formal studies of human behavior. One of the best ways to catch up is to take a crash course in Psychology. For this, I recommend the CrashCourse Psychology YouTube series. There are 39 episodes which (I think) get more relevant to HCI and Social Computing as the show goes on. Watching one or two episodes a day will give you a good start and set up a solid foundation if you want to explore any of the topics discussed in more detail. Here’s one of my favorite episodes from the show:

Start a Design Collection (10 minutes per day): Design plays an important role in HCI, but good design is difficult to teach. A big part of becoming a good designer is developing a practice of being open to inspiration, learning from examples of others, and sharing/critiquing ideas. One action you can take today to build this practice is to start a collection of inspirations. Whether this is a physical sketchbook or a digital collection in Evernote or Pinterest, the important thing is that you add to it regularly, share it and discuss it with others, and browse through it when you need ideas. If you have a specific research area already, start collecting images, articles, videos, and examples that are relevant to it. If you don’t have a specific area yet, collect examples of particularly good design and anything else that inspires you. As you build your collection, share it with friends and family — soon you’ll get people sending you ideas and inspirations and it’s a great way to reflect. If you want more information about design and collections in HCI, I suggest you take a look at Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook and the slides associated with the collections chapter.

Immerse Yourself in Good Research (25 minutes per day): Lastly, being a good designer or builder is not enough to be a good HCI researcher. One way of starting to develop good research intuitions is to read examples of strong research. The best paper awards at your target conference are an easy place to start (e.g., Best of CHI 2014). Pick one paper and spend 20 minutes reading it (it’s important to learn to read quickly, which may mean skimming some sections). As you read, note how the authors designed, framed, and described their work. Add the paper to your bibliography manager and jot down some of those insights for later inspiration.

By spending just one hour a day during this winter break, you’ll return to school in a much better position to do strong HCI research. Research is about building a practice. Consistent effort will look very much like genius after some time.

Late-Breaking Addition: If you have another 30 minutes a day, Shaun Kane suggests brushing up on your statistics by taking Jacob Wobbrock’s Practical Statistics for HCI self-guided course. It’s a 10-unit course, so doing two units a week will get you just about done with it by the end of the break.