Tag: social

CHI 2019 Recap Part 2: Importance of Self-Care and Community Care

This is a continuation of my series of blogs recapping CHI 2019. You can catch up with the first blog, if you missed it. For this week’s blog, I am focusing on the importance of care. This takes many forms, but for this short blog, I’ll be honing in on self-care and community care. Both of these are about taking care of the individual, but one (self-care) implies the individual is taking care of themselves and the other (community care) implies that the group as a whole is making space and watching out for the individuals.

a row of people sitting writing with notebooks in their laps, their heads are cropped out of the photo

Self-Care

Conferences are hard. They are taxing on the body both physically and emotionally. CHI 2019 took place in Glasgow, Scotland. This means that many of the community experienced some kind of jet lag. And this is the case for every conference. Some people will be experiencing jet lag and the other effects of having to travel long distances. Then when you get to the conference, there are thousands of people. Rooms are crowded, halls are noisy, many people are consuming alcohol at evening functions. Through all of this, early career scholars are expected to show up, be engaging, and network like mad. Conferences are hard.

My advisor, Gillian Hayes, gave the best advice before my first conference. It’s okay to not go to every session. It’s okay to skip certain events. Quality over quantity. Take care of yourself. Save your energy for those key interactions that you need to further your career, your research, or your learning. As is the case with all of academia, learn to say no to things. To that end, I’ve learned that I would rather save a bit more money at home in order to be able to stay at a hotel closer to the conference or to be able to order in room service for a night when I just can’t face going out to eat one more time. I realize that that is steeped in privilege. Conferences are not only hard, but they are expensive – CHI especially so. My only rationale is that my moments at CHI, having quality interactions with people, will help further my career in incalculable ways. I’m banking on it, and whether this will actually pay off in a tenure track job in the long run remains to be seen.

a steaming cup of coffee on a table top

In summary: Take care of yourself before, during, and after a big (or small) conference. Listen to your body. Focus on quality interactions over quantity.

Bonus tip for students: Make a list of 5-10 people you would really like to meet or touch-base with while at the conference. Focus on that list and make those your quality interactions. You’ll thank your tired self later.

Community Care

This one is a little trickier. As I’ve said, conferences are hard. We can all help make each other’s conference experience better. I will get into the larger, organizational issues of these big conferences like CHI in my next blog post, but for now I will focus on the community-on-the-ground. This could be simple things like, if you’re chatting with people, try to get out of the way so you can all hear each other and you aren’t in the way of those trying to get through. Maybe this looks like simply not guilting people into going to the late parties or finding safe spaces for women and other marginalized community members. This also means accepting help when others offer it (an important part of self-care!). I’ve seen a lot of positive movement in this area, especially at CHI. But, of course, there is always room for improvement and we should strive to find ways to help each other out.

dark leafy background with pink neon letters that spell breathe

CHI can be a wonderful experience if done right. I have had conference experiences where I’ve just felt ill the entire time and ended up not getting much out of it. I then I have to ask myself why I spent money to even go in the first place (because let’s be real, as a student or postdoc, you’re losing money even if you’re getting reimbursed).  But I’m happy to say that prioritizing my own self-care and looking out for others has really improved my overall CHI experience. I hope these tips are helpful for you as you plan your next conference trip!

CHI 2016 Paper on Sociality in Minecraft Getting Some Great Press!

I was recently interviewed by a reporter from the New Scientist who wrote a piece on our paper, “Will I always be not social?”: Re-Conceptualizing Sociality in the Context of a Minecraft Community for Autism, that I will be presenting on May 9 for CHI 2016.

We were also covered by “Don’t Hate the Geek” in their article Minecraft Server for Autistic Gamers on May 2, 2016!

Want to find out more? Please see our full paper that has been accepted to CHI 2016. Full citation and link to the pdf below:

Ringland, K.E., Wolf, C.T., Faucett, H., Dombrowski, L., and Hayes, G.R. “’Will I always not be social?’: Re-Conceptualizing Sociality in the Context of a Minecraft Community for Autism”. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM (2016). To Appear. [Acceptance Rate: 23.4%]

POST LAST UPDATED: May 2, 2016.

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Minecraft

Social media, including virtual worlds, has the potential to support children with autism in making friendships, learning pro-social behavior, and engaging in collaborative play with their peers.  However, currently, little is known about how children with autism interact socially in online spaces. Furthermore, there is much more to learn about how technology can support these collaborative interactions. In this study, I propose investigating how a virtual world can be intentionally run alongside other complementary social media (e.g., website, forum, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+) specifically for children with autism. The contribution of this work is to create design guidelines for creating social media systems (including virtual worlds) to support social interactions of children with autism.

Current Publications:

Kathryn E. Ringland. 2019. “Do you work for Aperture Science?”: Researching and Finding the Gamer Identity in a Minecraft Community for Autistic Children. In FDG 2019. [PDF] [BLOG]

Kathryn E. Ringland. 2019. A Place to Play: The (Dis)Abled Embodied Experience for Autistic Children in Online Spaces. In CHI 2019. [PDF] [BLOG]

Kathryn E. Ringland. 2019. “Autsome”: Fostering an Autistic Identity in an Online Minecraft Community for Youth with Autism. In iConference 2019 Proceedings. [PDF] [BLOG]

Kathryn E. Ringland, LouAnne Boyd, Heather Faucett, Amanda L.L. Cullen, Gillian R. Hayes. Making in Minecraft: A Means of Self-Expression for Youth with Autism. In IDC 2017. [PDF] [BLOG]

Kathryn E. Ringland, Christine T. Wolf, LouAnne E. Boyd, Mark Baldwin, and Gillian R. Hayes. 2016. Would You Be Mine: Appropriating Minecraft as an Assistive Technology for Youth with Autism. In ASSETS 2016. [Acceptance Rate: 25%]. Best Paper. [PDF][BLOG]

Ringland, K. E., Wolf, C. T., Faucett, H., Dombrowski, L., & Hayes, G. R. (2016). “‘Will I always be not social?’: Re-Conceptualizing Sociality in the Context of a Minecraft Community for Autism”. In Proceedings of ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016. [Acceptance Rate: 23.4%]. [PDF][BLOG]

Ringland, K.E., Wolf, C.T., Dombrowski, L., and Hayes, G.R. “Making ‘Safe’: Community-Centered Practices in a Virtual World Dedicated to Children with Autism”. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work, ACM (2015). [Acceptance Rate: 28.3%]. [PDF][BLOG]

Ringland, K.E., Wolf, C.T., Hayes, G.R. (2015, May 15). “The Benefits of Online Play: An Investigation of Virtual Worlds for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”. International Meeting for Autism Research Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ringland, K.E., Hayes, G.R. (2014, April 27). “Virtual Worlds: An Alternative Method for Communication for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”. Workshop: Supporting Children with Complex Communication Needs. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Toronto, Canada. [PDF]

Last Updated: September 16, 2019

Related Posts:

finding access to playful online communities, partial image of a phone with social media app icons

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This is a summary of the work presented at SCMS 2022. This is cross-posted on Medium: https://medium.com/p/d8ebbe436fa2 Play happens everywhere ...

Interview on ABC News (Australia)

Watch my interview with the ABC News about Minecraft for autistic kids ...
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Minecraft Study Blog Week 1

My intention with these blog posts is to have a sort of informal record of my time spent in Autcraft. They will be my beginnings, in a way, of creating my overall narrative of my experience. I will be creating much more formal documentation in the form of conference papers and journal articles, but here I want to create a space that is more open to dialogue and discussion. I also want the community to know that I am completely open and willing to share my thoughts and findings as much as I want to hear the thoughts of those in the community. My hope is to be able to tell the story of Autcraft and to be able to, through technology, expand on what it has given the autism community if I can.

My first week in the Autcraft community has been an extremely humbling experience. As I made my first timid steps into the unknown, I was greeted with open arms. A good number of people have given me encouragement, offered to help, welcomed me and offered friendship, and thanked me. I feel like I should be the one thanking every single member of the Autcraft community for allowing me to be among them.

I feel like I have accomplished a lot in the few hours I have played over the last week: I’ve built a modest office, explored many different areas, gone mining, died in lava, played Hide and Seek with other players, marveled at all the amazing things other players have built, played Paint Ball with other players, and died falling from a giant pink pony. All and all, a very busy, but successful week.

a pink pony statue in minecraft

Fell off from the top of a giant pink pony and died. Admittedly a first for me.

I have been struck by the many different ways in which players communicate in Autcraft. There is text chat, but there is so much more. Players also communicate via their characters (how they look and through their movements), via their constructions, via signs littered throughout the world, and more. I am sure those that have a limited understanding of autism would be very surprised to hear that these players are communicating at all. And while I am still in the very early stages of my research, I can assure anyone reading this that these players are communicating- in a varied and rich format.

I will close with that for this week. Please stay tuned and feel free to email me at kringlan [at] uci [dot] edu with any questions about my work. Thanks and keep on building!

Competitive Edge 2013, Week 3- Figuring this Whole Grad School Thing Out

As I slowly settle into the area, a lot of exciting things are happening with my summer project. The biggest excitement being I actually picked a research project. I’ll give you a hint: it’s something to do with this cool system called SensoryPaint. Now comes the fun/hard part where I actually have to get all the work done!

This last week I visited the Autism Center that is affiliated with our school. I heard a great lecture on another project called MOSOCO. I met some fantastic folks and I’m slowly but surely getting oriented with my landscape.

I also went to a housewarming party out in Long Beach. I hadn’t been there (at least as far as I can remember) and it was cool to see a different area for a bit. I’ve been pretty limited in my range of movement here in Irvine. I have been spending most of my time between my apartment and the campus and haven’t explored much beyond that. I am feeling like this is okay though, because there is lots of time in the future for more exploration. I will admit though, there is a yarn shop about 10 minutes’ drive from my place that I am very tempted to go check out.

Now I will discuss my Week 3 takeaway message: Grad school is a very socially intensive environment. If you are anything like me and are used to just chilling in front of your computer getting your work done, minding your own business, then grad school is going to be a shock. Don’t get me wrong, I have always been a little social with friends and outings. But I am not used to be “on” all the time. It’s very exhausting. Everyone you meet is potentially an important future resource or contact. As a brand new student, you feel the overwhelming need to impress everyone or at least try not to fall flat on your face where possible. So, on top of trying to figure out projects, apply to fellowships, learn a whole new town, there is the stress of being a happy, easy going personality.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually enjoying the entire process. I actually don’t mind this kind of stress too much and I’m loving all my lab mates- they are awesome, helpful people (we even all go to the gym together). I feel really lucky in a lot of ways. But I do have to remember to allow myself downtime and “off” days where I can relax.

I just mention all this because I was not warned. I think that if I had someone giving me advice and information about grad school, I would have liked to know about this. It wouldn’t have deterred me, but I possibly could have been a little more prepared.

This coming week is going to be hard. I am planning out my summer project, working on the IRB form (more on that later), presenting my project to the group, and also planning a proposal for NSF GRFP for Competitive Edge. Even if I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed, I’m actually in a really happy place. I’m doing what I want to be doing and, more than anything else, I am feeling fortunate to be here.

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