Tag: design

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CSCW 2018 Recap

November 8, 2018 / kateringland / 0 Comments

This week was CSCW 2018 – the conference about Computer Supported Collaborative Work. While I was there I attended workshops, panels, and paper presentations. I heard about a lot of great work happening in this space. I thought I would take a moment to recap some* of the things I heard about and learned while I was there. *Note: As my work pertains largely to Digital Mental Health, I’m going to focus on that for this short blog.

e Hudson River and the skyline of New York City. — View from conference venue in Jersey City. New York City skyline and the Hudson River.

Day 1: Workshops

On the first day, I attended a workshop on Conducting Research with Stigmatized Populations. For more information, be sure to check out the website. The discussions we had were thought-provoking. We discussed the ethical and moral responsibilities of researchers who work with stigmatized populations. The range of work covered health, working with youth, working with refugees, international work, gender diversity, and more. The most intriguing part of the workshop – and most encouraging – was how our different research interests and communities intersected and aligned. Stay tuned for more about this workshop.

Day 2: Workshops

The second day, I attended the workshop on Social Issues in Personal Informatics. In this workshops we discussed the intersection of social computing and personal informatics. Concerns such as how to deal with the messiness and complexity of people at the same time people are engaged in self-tracking (and being tracked) behavior. Again, stay tuned for more details about this soon.

Presentations on Mental Health

I attended several interesting paper presentations related to mental health. These included a session of papers around social support and care, which I will highlight here. I highly recommending checking out the rest of the CSCW program for more awesome papers.

The first paper in this section that I wanted to highlight was work being done in substance use. This was also a hot topic in both the workshops that I attended. I particularly like that they are using participatory design methods – in a very careful way in order to protect the participants – to get at better ways to help people in recovery.

Zachary Schmitt and Svetlana Yarosh. 2018. Participatory Design of Technologies to Support Recovery from Substance Use Disorders. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 156 (November 2018), 27 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274425

This next paper is one that explores a model of social support for individuals with mental health concerns. This work really highlights the complexity of trying to design for individuals in this community.

Elizabeth L. Murnane, Tara G. Walker, Beck Tench, Stephen Voida, and Jaime Snyder. 2018. Personal Informatics in Interpersonal Contexts: Towards the Design of Technology that Supports the Social Ecologies of Long-Term Mental Health Management. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.2, CSCW, Article 127 (November 2018), 27 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274396

Finally, I wanted to highlight, this work being done in my own department here at Northwestern (before I arrived, of course). This work touches on how we as researchers interpret and understand content online. Sometimes we may see an image or a message and understand it to be one thing, when it is in fact another. This paper does a nice job of showing the relevance and importance of good, qualitative work.

Jessica L. Feuston and Anne Marie Piper. 2018. Beyond the Coded Gaze: Analyzing Expression of Mental Health and Illness on Instagram. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 51 (November 2018), 21 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274320

Paper Presentations on Health

There were some interesting health papers about fertility and pregnancy that I wanted to highlight. Even though they weren’t strictly about mental health, I found them compelling and easily related to a lot of the work I do.

Mayara Costa Figueiredo, Clara Caldeira, Elizabeth Victoria Eikey, Melissa Mazmanian, and Yunan Chen. 2018. Engaging with Health Data: The Interplay Between Self-Tracking Activities and Emotions in Fertility Struggles. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 40 (November 2018), 20 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274309

I also appreciated the push to shift how medical services are rendered to women – shifting from fetus-centered healthcare to women-centered. This moves women to the center of their own care, away from simply being a vessel that grows a baby.

Xinning Gui, Yu Chen, Yubo Kou, Katie Pine, and Yunan Chen. 2017. Investigating Support Seeking from Peers for Pregnancy in Online Health Communities. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 1, CSCW, Article 50 (December 2017), 19 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3134685

Presentations on Youth

There were also lots of great papers on children and teens this year. I will just mention a couple here.

This first one was an intervention for children using a furry alien. There is a great blog post about it, so I’ll leave the details to the authors.

Petr Slovák, Nikki Theofanopoulou, Alessia Cecchet, Peter Cottrell, Ferran Altarriba Bertran, Ella Dagan, Julian Childs, and Katherine Isbister. 2018. “I just let him cry…: Designing Socio-Technical Interventions in Families to Prevent Mental Health Disorders. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 160 (November 2018), 34 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274429

There was also a paper about risk to teens on the internet. The important take-away from this work is that the average teen will be exposed to risk on the internet, but instead of being overly-protective, we should be supporting their skill-building in coping. Our efforts should be focused on helping those teens who are more vulnerable to the risks (such as homeless youth or autistic teens).

Bridget Christine McHugh, Pamela J. Wisniewski, Mary Beth Rosson, Heng Xu, and John M. Carroll. 2017. Most Teens Bounce Back: Using Diary Methods to Examine How Quickly Teens Recover from Episodic Online Risk Exposure. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 1, CSCW, Article 76 (December 2017), 19 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3134711

Last but not least…

Finally, I don’t think I could conclude a blog of my recap of CSCW without a plug for the paper I helped co-author. Chris Wolf, who was first author of this work, presented. In this paper, we discuss the complexity of single-sign-on in dating applications. As data flows between multiple platforms, users must make judgments about what data is being put on social media platforms and how these choices are made even more complex when access to one application requires feeding in data from another (e.g., must give Facebook access to Tinder).

Christine T. Wolf, Kathryn E. Ringland, Isley Gao, and Paul Dourish. 2018. Participating Through Data: Charting Relational Tensions in Multiplatform Data Flows. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 184 (November 2018), 17 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274453

Conclusion

There were many other great papers presented, as well as panels, posters, and more! Of course, my favorite part of attending these conferences is meeting other researchers and geeking out about how work. I hope to see you at CSCW 2019!

A balcony rail in foreground, hudson river dark in middle, and night skyline of city in background. — New York City skyline at night from conference venue.

Making in Minecraft: A Means of Self-Expression for Youth with Autism

June 27, 2017 / kateringland / 1 Comment

Preview: Maker culture values fabrication and production in both the digital and physical realms as well as the sharing of resources. As such, maker culture provides an opportunity to be democratic and inclusive. Likewise, spaces that stem from maker culture, such as makerspaces, provide the same opportunity for inclusion, even for those with disabilities. In this paper, we explore design implications for the creation of inclusive spaces for making and self-expression in the future based on intensive fieldwork in the Autcraft community.

What if makerspaces could be made inclusive and accessible for children who prefer virtual interactions over physical interactions? Stemming from arts and crafts communities and originally focused on physical engagement with materials to be formed and “made” into products, prototypes, and projects, maker culture has evolved to include hacker culture which uses a wide variety of software, hardware, and craft materials. Present-day maker culture includes online and offline fabrication and production, sharing of resources, and social norms around the act of making. Communities of makers inhabit spaces that are built to have a low barrier to entry, support those interested in learning to be makers, and encourage sharing of resources.

In this paper, we explore how “mixed-ability maker culture” supports self-expression in children with autism through an online community centered around the popular game, Minecraft. Autcraft is a community that supports children with autism and is centered on a Minecraft virtual world that embodies maker culture. The Autcraft community’s unique form of maker culture supports self-expression, sociality, and learning for children with autism by providing structure in a virtual space, allowing for and enabling creating and sharing. Our results show how the “mixed-ability maker culture” found within the Autcraft community, supports children with autism in imaginative making and self-expression and we provide design implications for creating inclusive spaces for making and self-expression.

Autcraft is a Minecraft community for children with autism and their allies run by parent volunteers. The goal of the Autcraft community is to have a safe space for children with autism to play Minecraft free from harassment and bullying (for more information visit the Autcraft website). As part of our study, I have been conducting an on-going ethnography within the community (see our paper for details). This study included analysis of activity within the Minecraft server, forums, website, Twitter, Facebook group, YouTube, and Twitch.

Analysis of our data indicates that the constraints and affordances of this virtual environment provide structure for children to create and share in rich and varied ways without the barriers they would typically face in the physical world. By understanding the values in the Autcraft community through a lens of mixed-ability maker culture, we can see how these values encourage and support autistic children in their endeavors in self-expression.

A piston table with two chairs in Minecraft on a wooden floor.

Using a piston object in Minecraft as a table.

Making in Minecraft: Minecraft, at its core, is a game about building with blocks in a virtual world. In Autcraft, community members have created complex, expressive spaces within their virtual world. They have done this through using construction materials found within the world, both as they are meant to be used (e.g., using bricks to pave a walkway), but also in unexpected ways (e.g., using a piston as a table).

Creating to Share with Others: Community members share with other players through the virtual world (i.e., announcing in the chat) as well as through the community forums. Community members can provide advice and feedback in the comments of the forums and in-world when they are touring the creation. This practice allows others to learn from previous building projects, as well as giving builders a sense of pride in their own work. Community members also share with those outside the Autcraft community. Players build and show off their work through platforms such as forums, YouTube, and Twitch—such as through their YouTube “Let’s Play” videos. “Let’s Play” are edited videos of players playing through a video game, giving viewers a first-person experience of playing the game. It is against this cultural backdrop that members of the Autcraft community use their virtual world and the other existing social media to express themselves. This self-expression allows them to foster relationships within the Autcraft community, as well as to reach out to others beyond their community.

Through these results, we’ve found key issues for designing these types of “mixed-ability maker culture” imbued systems.

Accommodations for Access. The virtual world is not immune to the need for environmental accommodations. Modifications allow for those with disabilities to participate in a way that is suitable for them in a space where they might otherwise find themselves excluded.
Bounded Freedom. The boundaries found within Autcraft help enhance the creativity of the members. This includes the boundaries within the virtual world (the world and its resources are finite), the social boundaries imposed by the community, and the expectation that one member’s creative self-expression does not infringe upon another member’s self-expression.
Opportunity-Rich Environment. The Minecraft world is rich – full of objects, biomes, and creatures. This allows users to create narratives and even a mythos from these resources. The Minecraft game itself does not come with a history or backstory but allows players to create new history as the player explores and alters the world. It is this richness that sets the foundation for allowing for inclusivity. Disabilities, even those of the same diagnostic umbrella, are incredibly diverse and experiences occur in a myriad of ways.
Social Support. The presence of moderators, helpers, and peer mentors support expression for community members. More experienced members help the less experienced members learn how to build, where to get resources, and even give tips on how to create forum posts and videos. This social support also comes with the expectation that community members will be inclusive.
Social Conventions. The Minecraft community at large embraces creative players and the Autcraft community continues this trend by encouraging members to express themselves through building, roleplaying, storytelling, and sharing their created content through social media (g., through streaming on Twitch, recording YouTube videos, and posting screenshots in the forums).

These design features support children with autism as they learn skills to express themselves. Designers and researchers interested in creating other technical systems can infuse some of the maker culture to create spaces that foster learning, sharing, and self-expression.

For more details about our methods and findings, please see our paper that has been accepted to IDC 2017 (to appear in June 2017). Full citation and link to the pdf below:

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]

Acknowledgements: We thank the members of Autcraft for the warm welcome into their community. We also thank members of LUCI and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this paper, and Robert and Barbara Kleist for their support. This work is covered by human subjects protocol #2014-1079 at the University of California, Irvine.

New Video – Dance Craft Design Evolution

April 18, 2014 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Daily Log: CHI2013 Day 3

May 1, 2013 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Today I slept in and woke up in time to attend the Student Research Competition presentations. They were very good and gave me some good insight into how I should think about my own future presentations.

I then ate lunch from the grocery store at the bottom of the convention center. It is Labor Day and many of the restaurants are closed, along with most of the shops as well. Yesterday, Amy gave me some really great advice about how to choose sessions. So I looked over the schedule and tried to be more deliberate about the sessions I was choosing.

After lunch I attended two sessions. The first was on Mental Health. I really liked all of the papers presented there. These included a discussion about personhood in dementia, using a mobile app to track elements in Bipolar Disorder, supporting caregivers of patients with depression, and objects to help with Dialectical Behavioral Training for those with Borderline Personality Disorder. The first paper had interesting insights about the sense of self. People often talk about it as if it is something you can lose, but perhaps it is better to think of it as something that can be externalized by the people around you. The app for Bipolar Disorder was interesting, of course, because of my closeness to that particular topic. The paper about depression was interesting because the study was conducted in Japan. There caregivers are reluctant to tell their close friends and family about their loved one suffering from depression. I wonder if the same would be true in the US. And finally, the paper on DBT was great because it is another topic dear to my heart. The researchers actually created physical objects to help patients understand and go through their DBT training. For instance, they created a crystal ball that pulses with the heartbeat of whoever is holding it. The ball can be personalized by embedding meaningful objects into the crystal. The user can hold this ball while doing their mindfulness exercises. It’s really fantastic and I would love to have one of my own!

The second session I attended was Design for Children. These papers were also very good. I learned a lot about how researchers can use children in the design process (for things that will ultimately be used by children). I got a good glimpse of the idea of Participatory Design, which I hadn’t really formally encountered before.

After the sessions I walked back to the hotel in a torrential downpour. Seems like a good evening to stay in a take it easy. I am on vacation in Paris, after all!