Call for Abstracts – CHI 2039: Research Visions and Speculative Futures

What will be published at CHI 25 years from now?

Visions of the future profoundly influence current research. From the inspirational role of science fiction, to narratives about development and progress, to utopian as well as dystopian predictions about the impacts of technology on society, the tomorrows toward which we work, consciously or unconsciously, significantly shape what counts as an important contribution in today’s research. However, despite their importance, relatively limited discussion occurs about the details of what such futures might entail.

This call offers an opportunity to speculate about what those potential futures might hold. Submissions are invited of abstracts for fictional papers that might appear, will appear, should appear, or perhaps should not appear in the proceedings of the 2039 ACM CHI Conference. What will have changed? What will remain the same? Visionary calls, critical reflections, and prophetic warnings are all encouraged. Abstracts are welcome both from regular CHI attendees and from those at the periphery of the community and beyond. A selection of these abstracts will be curated into a submission to the CHI Conference’s alt.chi track.

Abstracts should be ~150 words long, provide a title for the fictional future paper, and may optionally include an image as well as authors’ affiliations. Abstracts will be selected for inclusion based on their ability to represent a diversity of guiding research visions, their excitatory or provocative potential, the space allotted by the CHI extended abstracts format, and the likelihood of engendering conversations about the future of HCI.

Abstracts should be submitted via email to Eric P. S. Baumer (ericpsb cornell edu) with “[CHI 2039]” in the subject line.

Important Dates:
Abstract Submission Deadline – December 8, 2013
Curatorial Decision Notification – December 16, 2013
Collection Submitted to alt.chi – December 20, 2013

See further details and dates on the alt.chi track.

Forthcoming HCI Paper

My co-authors and I recently had a paper accepted to a special issue of the journal Human-Computer Interaction on Design Thinking. It describes our lab’s use of various visual approaches to HCI design, as well as both the potential and the challenges posed to HCI by such visual approaches. I’ll post a pre-print copy soon, but for now here’s the partial citation and abstract.

Snyder, J., Baumer, E.P.S., Voida, S., Adams, P., Halpern, M., Choudhury, T., and Gay, G. (to appear). Making Things Visible: Opportunities and Tensions in Visual Approaches for Design Research. Human-Computer Interaction.

Visual approaches for conducting research during the design process often give voice to people and ideas that might otherwise remain obscured. Recent and increasing interest in visual research techniques has coincided with technological advances such as camera phones and visually oriented mobile applications. As a result of this close association between digital technologies and image-based research techniques, there are multiple opportunities and challenges within HCI design practice to employ these strategies to improve user experiences. This paper provides an overview of current visual approaches to research highlighting the role technology has played in facilitating and inspiring these techniques. A series of case studies are presented that provide a basis for understanding a breadth of visual approaches in HCI design practices, as well as serve as a point of entry to a critical and reflective discussion about the use of these approaches in different circumstances. Based on these reflections, three value statements are offered as a means to encourage the use of these visual approaches more broadly and critically in HCI design studies.

Update (2013-12-13): Our article is now available here.

At CHI (and not at CHI)

I’m really excited that I’ll have two papers being presented this week at CHI.

The first is a study exploring both the prevalence of, and motivations for, not using Facebook.

Baumer, E.P.S., Adams, P., Khovanskya, V., Liao, T., Smith, M.E., Sosik, V.S., Williams, K. (2013). Limiting, Leaving, and (re)Lapsing: A Survey of Facebook Non-use Practices and Experiences. in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). (Paris, France).

The second represents a portion of an honors thesis I supervised.

Khovanskaya, V., Baumer, E.P.S., Cosley, D., Voida, S., and Gay, G.K. (2013). “Everybody Knows What You’re Doing”: A Critical Design Approach to Personal Informatics. in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). (Paris, France).

While you’ll find my papers in Paris this week, you won’t find me. For personal reasons, I decided not to attend CHI this year, so both of these will be presented by my fantastic co-authors. For those who are interested, I’ve written a short blurb about this decision, which was difficult to say the least.

I’d still love to hear from anyone who’s interested in chatting about either of these papers–feel free to drop me a note.

Limiting, Leaving, and (re)Lapsing: A Survey of Facebook Non-use Practices and Experiences

Status

Eric P. S. Baumer, Phil Adams, Vera Khovanskya, Tony Liao, Madeline E. Smith, Victoria Schwanda Sosik, Kaiton Williams. (2013). Limiting, Leaving, and (re)Lapsing: A Survey of Facebook Non-use Practices and Experiences. in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). (Paris, France). [20% acceptance rate]

Abstract

Despite the abundance of research on social networking sites, relatively little research has studied those who choose not to use such sites. This paper presents results from a questionnaire of over 400 Internet users, focusing specifically on Facebook and those users who have left the service. Results show the lack of a clear, binary distinction between use and non-use, that various practices enable diverse ways and degrees of engagement with and disengagement from Facebook. Furthermore, qualitative analysis reveals numerous complex and interrelated motivations and justifications, both for leaving and for maintaining some type of connection. These motivations include: privacy, data misuse, productivity, banality, addiction, and external pressures. These results not only contribute to our understanding of online sociality by examining this under-explored area, but they also build on previous work to help advance how we conceptually account for the sociological processes of non-use.

ACM | pdf

Data

A full description of the questionnaire instrument and anonymized response data can be found here.

Developing Computational Supports for Frame Reflection

Status

Eric P. S. Baumer, Francesca Polletta, Nicole Pierski, Christopher Celaya, Karen Rosenblatt, and Geri K. Gay. (2013). Developing Computational Supports for Frame Reflection. in Proceedings of the iConference. (Fort Worth, TX). [36% acceptance rate]

Abstract

As the number and variety of sources for political information increase, it can become difficult to attend to the complexities of political issues. This difficulty lies not only in understanding what is being said, i.e. the content of an issue, but also how it is being said, i.e., the framing of the issue. This paper presents a prototype visualization tool designed to encourage attention to, and critical reflection about, the ways in which a political issue is framed. The tool visually presents linguistic analysis of documents about the issue of cap and trade. Results show that tool use interacted with participants’ prior views in affecting their ability to suggest novel framings of the issue, one potential indicator of frame reflection. Tool use also mediated participants’ exposure to different viewpoints. These findings help provide insights on how the design of tools for civic participation can help promote thoughtful, reflective political engagement.

HDL

iConference Paper Accepted

I’m pleased to announce that my collaborators and I have just received notification that a paper we submitted has been accepted to the iConference.

Baumer, E.P.S., Polletta, F., Pierski, N., Celaya, C., Rosenblatt, K., and Gay, G.K. (to appear 2013). Developing Computational Supports for Frame Reflection. in Proceedings of the iConference. (Fort Worth, TX).

This paper presents a controlled study of a tool designed to support critical thinking and reflection about framing in political coverage, that is, a Computational Support for Frame Reflection.

Call for Study Participants

I’m running a field study with a tool our group has built. If you or anyone you know might be interested, please drop me an email.

Are you a political junkie? Addicted to the news? Is your browser’s homepage the New York Times or Wall Street Journal? Or maybe it’s the National Review Online or the Huffington Post? Ever wanted a deeper look at what’s being said between the lines?

Or does the news bother you? Does politics turn you off? Do you find yourself ignoring any kind of discussion of political issues or news coverage? Do you feel like there’s a level of depth that is lacking in most political discussions?

If you fit either of these descriptions, this study is for you. We’ve developed an online tool that helps you understand political news and discussions by visualizing patterns of language in them. We’re currently looking for people who want to try out the tool and wouldn’t mind talking with us about it. Plus, you’ll be entered in a drawing for a $200 Amazon gift card.

If you’re interested, please contact Eric Baumer: ericpsb [at] cornell [dot] edu

Upcoming Travel – SoCS and CSST

Next month, I’ll be attending the PI meeting for NSF SoCS (Social Computational Systems) grant recipients in Ann Arbor, MI, from June 17 through June 19.

Also, I just received notification that I’ve been accepted to attend CSST (the summer consortium for the science of sociotechnical systems), which is in Santa Fe, NM, from July 29 through August 2.

I’m really excited about and eagerly looking forward to both of these.

When the Implication Is Not to Design (Technology) – Discussion

Last month, I presented a paper at CHI titled When the Implication Is Not to Design (Technology). This paper was intended primarily to facilitate a conversation, so my co-author and I are organizing a discussion on the sustainable-chi mailing list. We’d like to invite you to join the discussion. Below is a copy of the post starting the discussion.

Last month at CHI, there was a paper by myself and Six Silberman titled When the Implication Is Not to Design (Technology). The basic premise is that there are some situations where a technological intervention may not be the most appropriate. The paper provides specific ways of articulating when this may be the case, as well as practical recommendations for applying this perspective. Copies are available at http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1978942.1979275 or http://ericbaumer.com/publications/impl9-rev.pdf.
We would like to take this opportunity to solicit comments and critiques. This paper was intended first and foremost to be part of a conversation, and we believe that some of that conversation should happen here on the sustainable-chi list. We hope that members of the general HCI community will join us in this discussion.
~Eric and Six