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Over the past few decades, a small but growing group of people have worked remotely from their homes. With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people found themselves joining this group overnight. In this position paper, we examine the kinds of work that ‘went remote’ in response to the pandemic, and consider the ways in which this transition was influenced by (and in turn came to influence) contemporary trends in digital workplace measurement and evaluation. We see that employers appeared reluctant to let certain classes of employee work remotely. When the pandemic forced staff home, employers compensated by turning to digital surveillance tools, even though, as we argue, these tools seem unable to overcome the significant conceptual barriers to understanding how people are working. We also observed that, in the United Kingdom context, the pandemic didn’t mean remote work for a significant proportion of the population. We assert that, to maximize its impact, ‘future of work’ research in human-centred computing must be more inclusive and representative of work, rather than focusing on the experiences of knowledge workers and those involved in new forms of work.

This article reports the results of a repeated interview study with 15 knowledge workers in academia during the first COVID-19 lockdown (April–July 2020). The focus of these interviews was to understand how people adjusted to working from home and the impact this had on their planning routines, strategies, and use of tools. Common themes reveal that work was chaotic, participants lost focus, and felt overworked and tired. Many disengaged from their planning routines and were reluctant to plan work in detail. However, those who reflected on how efficiently they were spending their time, found two planning strategies—breaking down tasks and manual time tracking—effective at improving accuracy of plans and productivity. Participants did not start using any new planning tools instead they adapted their existing ones. Design implications for planning tools in the context of the future of work and prevention of planning disengagement are discussed.

Anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental health problem. The potential of apps to improve mental health has led to an increase in the number of anxiety apps available. Even though anxiety apps hold the potential to enhance mental health care for individuals, there is relatively little knowledge concerning users’ perspectives. This mixed-methods study aims to understand the nature of user burden and engagement with mental health apps (MHapps) targeting anxiety management, in order to identify ways to improve the design of these apps. Users’ perspectives on these apps were gathered by analyzing 600 reviews from 5 apps on the app stores (Study 1), and conducting 15 interviews with app users (Study 2). The results shed light on several barriers to adoption and sustained use. Users appreciate apps that offer content variation, customizability, and good interface design, and often requested an enhanced, personalized experience to improve engagement. We propose addressing the specific app quality issues identified through human-centered design, more personalized content delivery, and by improving features for social and therapeutic support.

Reliable and accurate planning is essential for modern knowledge workers. However, there is limited insight about when, how and why planning is inaccurate, and the circumstances in which those inaccuracies are troublesome. To investigate this, we asked 20 academics to keep a diary for a single work day. They estimated the duration of the tasks they wanted to achieve at the start of the day and noted down in detail the tasks they actually achieved during the day. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to complement this diary data. The diaries showed that some tasks, such as email and coding, were more susceptible to time underestimation bias while other tasks, such as writing and planning, were more susceptible to time overestimation bias in planning. Based on interviews, a typology of common reasons for delays in planned daily work is presented. It suggests that vague and optimistic planning leads to the observed discrepancy between planned and actual work. Finally, interviews suggested that participants adopted four planning strategies that vary in the frequency of planning, from minimal planning to daily, weekly and multi-level planning. We close by discussing ways support systems for accurate planning can be better designed for different use cases.

Although e-mail interfaces have not changed much in the past decade, how we manage our inbox has changed a lot, as a result of the growing number of messages we receive (The Radicati Group, 2015) a...

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematological malignancy of monoclonal plasma cells that remains incurable. Standard treatments for MM include myeloablative regimens and autologous cell transplantation for eligible patients. A major challenge of these treatments is the relapse of the disease due to residual MM in niches that become refractory to treatments. Therefore, novel therapies are needed in order to eliminate minimal residual disease (MRD). Recently, our laboratory reported that virotherapy with oncolytic myxoma virus (MYXV) improved MM-free survival in an allogeneic transplant mouse model. In this study, we demonstrate the capacity of donor autologous murine leukocytes, pre-armed with MYXV, to eliminate MRD in a BALB/c MM model. We report that MYXV-armed bone marrow (BM) carrier leukocytes are therapeutically superior to MYXV-armed peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) or free virus. Importantly, when cured survivor mice were re-challenged with fresh myeloma cells, they developed immunity to the same MM that had comprised MRD. In vivo imaging demonstrated that autologous carrier cells armed with MYXV were very efficient at delivery of MYXV into the recipient tumor microenvironment. Finally, we demonstrate that treatment with MYXV activates the secretion of pro-immune molecules from the tumor bed. These results highlight the utility of exploiting autologous leukocytes to enhance tumor delivery of MYXV to treat MRD in vivo., Graphical Abstract, McFadden and colleagues found that free MYXV, or in combination with murine autologous BM or PBMCs, has therapeutic effects against murine myeloma residual disease. Moreover, MYXV stimulates an immune response resulting in the activation of IFN-γ and TNF. Importantly, re-challenged survivor mice with fresh MM developed resistance to the disease.

Many computer tasks involve looking up information from different sources, and these self-interruptions can be disruptive. In this article, we investigate whether giving people feedback on how long they are away from their task influences their self-interruption behaviour. We conducted a contextual inquiry on self-interruption behaviour in an office workplace. Participants were observed to postpone physical interruptions until a convenient moment in the task if they were expected to take time. In contrast, observations revealed that digital interruptions were addressed immediately; participants reported these were presumed to be quick to deal with. To increase awareness of time spent on digital interruptions, we developed TimeToFocus, a notification tool showing people the duration of their interruptions while working on a task. A field study deployment of TimeToFocus in an office workplace found that feedback on the duration of interruptions made participants reflect on what they were doing during interruptions. They reported that they used this insight to avoid task-irrelevant activities. To confirm whether participants’ perceptions of the benefit of the tool could be measured, we conducted an online experiment, where participants had to retrieve information from an email sent to their personal email addresses and enter it into a spreadsheet. Participants who used our tool made shorter interruptions, completed the spreadsheet task faster and made fewer data entry errors. We conclude that feedback on the length of interruptions can assist users in focusing on their primary task and thus improve productivity.

Objective To increase clinician adherence to mammography screening guidelines. Design Quality improvement initiative. Setting/Local Problem At a nurse practitioner–led primary care practice, a chart audit of adherence to American Cancer Society mammography screening guidelines indicated a 12% adherence rate for clinicians writing mammography orders. Participants Nurse practitioners providing care to women ages 40 years and older. Intervention/Measurements The intervention was a screening checklist that was completed by the woman at registration and given to the clinician during the examination. The pre- and postintervention measurement was the percentage of mammogram orders. A Fisher exact test was used to examine changes from pre- to postintervention rates of adherence. Results After the intervention, the percentage of women for whom a mammogram was recommended and ordered was 69.6%, compared to 12% from the original chart audit. This change was statistically significant (p = .01). Conclusion Clinicians must find efficient approaches to improve processes within their practice settings to ensure that preventive care recommendations are made during visits. Although the screening checklist was deemed useful, improvement in adherence rates is still needed, and a paperless system should be initiated.

One impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns was a restriction on people's ability to engage in physical activity in previously routine ways. This paper presents a two-stage mixed-method study exploring how people used technology to stay physically active during this period. We found that activity trackers reminded people to be active, while virtual coaching (i.e., video tutorials and online classes) helped them stay connected. The lockdown increased people's awareness of their activity levels and removed barriers to exercise, for example by giving them greater control over their time. However, it also created new challenges, with lack of time and space, injuries due to sudden changes in activity, and anxiety around lockdown, putting limits on physical activity. We highlight future directions that must be addressed to maximise the benefits of physical activity technologies for people trying to stay active during major life disruptions.

The global pandemic and the uncertainty if and when life will return to normality have motivated a series of studies on human mental health. This research has elicited evidence for increasing numbers of anxiety, depression, and overall impaired mental well-being. But, the global COVID-19 pandemic has also created new opportunities for research into quantifying human emotions: remotely, contactless, in everyday life. The ubiquitous computing community has long been at the forefront of developing, testing, and building user-facing systems that aim at quantifying human emotion. However, rather than aiming at more accurate sensing algorithms, it is time to critically evaluate whether it is actually possible and in what ways it could be beneficial for technologies to be able to detect user emotions. In this workshop, we bring together experts from the fields of Ubiquitous Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, and Psychology to - long-overdue - merge their expertise and ask the fundamental questions: how do we make sense of emotion-sensing, can and should we quantify human emotions?

Message deletion in mobile messaging apps allows people to “unsay” things they have said. This paper explores how and why people use (or do not use) this feature within remediation strategies after a communication error is identified. We present findings from a multi-stage survey designed to explore people’s general experiences of the message deletion feature (N = 401), peoples’ experiences of using this feature during the remediation of an error (N = 70), and receivers’ perceptions around recent message deletions (N = 68). While people are typically aware of the deletion feature, it is infrequently used. When used, it is primarily done so to improve conversations by reducing confusion between conversation partners. We found people being aware of message deletions creating information-gaps which can provoke curiosity in recipients, causing them to develop narratives to help address the uncertainty. We found concerns amongst senders that these narratives would be of a negative nature, having an undesirable impact on how others perceive them. We use our findings to suggest ways in which mobile messaging apps could improve conversational experiences around erroneous and regrettable messages.

We live in a world of communication overload, where there is a wide range of platforms and devices to choose from, each providing massive content, offering different affordances, and fighting for our attention. Mobile technologies have contributed to expectations of anywhere anytime connectedness, making it hard for individuals to switch off. As a result, it can be hard to feel truly disconnected from work. A lack of control over work-home boundary cross-overs and interruptions can reduce post-work recovery, reducing productivity and increasing stress. Technology is not inherently good or bad, but rather, the way it is adopted and used can positively or negatively color one’s experience. As such, in this critical review we take a social constructionist approach to emphasize how communication technologies are challenging, as well as supporting, work-home boundary management. In doing so, we bring together work from occupational psychology (boundary theory) and human-computer interaction (computer-mediated communication and cross-device interaction). Understanding how these aspects interact and influence each other is important in order to support individuals appropriately, inform policies and guidelines, and ensure both social and digital interactions are designed carefully.

Previous research has found that people often make time estimation errors in their daily planning at work. However, there is limited insight on the types of estimation errors found in different knowledge work tasks. This one-day diary study with 20 academics compared the tasks people aimed to achieve in the morning with what they actually did during the day. Results showed that participants were good at estimating the duration of time-constrained tasks, such as meetings, however they were biased when estimating the time they would spend on less time-constrained tasks. Particularly, the time needed for email and coding tasks was underestimated, whereas the time needed for writing research and planning activities was overestimated. The findings extend previous research by measuring in situ whether some tasks are more prone to time estimation errors than others. Planning and scheduling (AI) tools could incorporate this knowledge to help people overcome these time estimation biases in their work.

Self-tracking is an important part of self-care. However, predefined self-tracking approaches can impede people’s agency in managing their health. We investigated a customisable and pictorial self-tracking approach in multiple sclerosis self-management by implementing and conducting a field study of Trackly: a prototype app that supports people in defining and colouring pictorial trackers, such as body shapes. We found that participants utilised the elements of Trackly designed to support agentive behaviour: they defined personally meaningful tracking parameters in their own words, and particularly valued being able to flexibly colour in and make sense of their pictorial trackers. Having been able to support their individual self-care intentions with Trackly, participants reported a spectrum of interrelated experiences of agency, including a sense of ownership, identity, self-awareness, mindfulness, and control. Our findings demonstrate the importance of supporting people’s individual needs and creative capacities to foster mindful and personally meaningful engagement with health and wellbeing data.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of error consequence, as reward or punishment, on individuals' checking behaviour following data entry. This study comprised two eye-tracking experiments that replicate and extend the investigation of Li et al. (2016) into the effect of monetary reward and punishment on data-entry performance. The first experiment adopted the same experimental setup as Li et al. (2016) but additionally used an eye tracker. The experiment validated Li et al. (2016) finding that, when compared to no error consequence, both reward and punishment led to improved data-entry performance in terms of reducing errors, and that no performance difference was found between reward and punishment. The second experiment extended the earlier study by associating error consequence to each individual trial by providing immediate performance feedback to participants. It was found that gradual increment (i.e. reward feedback) also led to significantly more accurate performance than no error consequence. It is unclear whether gradual increment is more effective than gradual decrement because of the small sample size tested. However, this study reasserts the effectiveness of reward on data-entry performance.

Designers commonly use gamification to improve the frequency of engagement with apps, but often fail to consider the impact of placement on reward value. As rewards tend to depreciate if delayed (termed temporal discounting), placing a reward further into the future can significantly affect its ability to motivate behaviour. We examine the most effective placement of gamified rewards so as to reduce discounting and to increase the frequency an application is used. In two online studies, users were asked to choose between fictional budget tracking applications that varied in the placement of either monetary (N=70) or gamified (N=70) rewards. In both experiments we found that people more frequently used the application that provided rewards before, rather than after, the task. As predicted by temporal discounting, our work suggests that placing rewards early in the interaction sequence leads to an improvement in the perceived value of that reward, motivating further selection. We discuss the findings in the context of designing effective reward structures to encourage more frequent app engagement.

Game jams, hackathons and similar group game creation events have become increasingly popular over the past decade (Fowler et al., 2015). They provide new and exciting opportunities for education and research. They foster creative thinking and innovation (Preston et al., 2012), and strengthen project management and communication skills (Smith & Bowers, 2016); all of which are essential skills for working in industry (Pirker et al., 2016).

Some regard the smartwatch as little more than an extra phone screen, but it can be a powerful tool that reduces the time we spend using other devices, enabling us to better manage our digital lives without missing out on important information.

Trust is a key component of high functioning virtual work teams. This study investigates the effectiveness of a commercial digital game in developing trust in virtual teams compared to a typical virtual team icebreaker. To achieve this, we outline important trust-building aspects that a game must have and identify the commercial digital game Spaceteam as a suitable candidate. Our results show that Spaceteam is more effective at developing trust in virtual teams compared to social icebreaker, indicated by differences in trusting behaviour. We did not find differences in perception of team trust or moderating effects of dispositional trust. Our findings suggest that digital games with trust-building aspects enable the verification of early trusting beliefs through gameplay, which in turn develops trust among team members. As these games are robust against individual differences in dispositional trust, it is applicable across any team composition. Our findings support the use of digital games as viable trust-building tools for virtual work teams.

Digital games are a hugely popular activity enjoyed for the diverse experiences and relationships that they offer players. In 2019, games are more accessible to an increasingly diverse audience of disabled players through both new gaming technology and in-game options that allow people to tune their experiences. As a significant cultural medium, it is also challenging perceptions of disability in how characters are depicted. In this workshop, we aim to understand better the research challenges in making games for and with disabled players. We explore opportunities in games and disability through the lens of the new Disability Interaction (DIX) manifesto.

Researchers and practitioners are keen to understand how new video viewing practices driven by technological developments impact viewers’ experiences. We detail the development of the Immersive Experience Questionnaire for Film and TV (Film IEQ). An exploratory factor analysis based on responses from 414 participants revealed a four-factor structure of (1) captivation, (2) real-world dissociation, (3) comprehension, and (4) transportation. We validated the Film IEQ in an experiment that replicated prior research into the effect of viewing on screens of varying size. Responses captured by the Film IEQ indicate that watching on a small phone screen reduces the viewer’s level of comprehension, and that this negatively impacts the viewing experience, compared to watching on a larger screen. The Film IEQ allows researchers and practitioners to assess video viewing experiences using a questionnaire that is easy to administer, and that has been empirically validated.

Crowdworkers receive no formal training for managing their tasks, time or working environment. To develop tools that support such workers, an understanding of their preferences and the constraints they are under is essential. We asked 317 experienced Amazon Mechanical Turk workers about factors that influence their task and time management. We found that a large number of the crowdworkers score highly on a measure of polychronicity; this means that they prefer to frequently switch tasks and happily accommodate regular work and non-work interruptions. While a preference for polychronicity might equip people well to deal with the structural demands of crowdworking platforms, we also know that multitasking negatively affects workers' productivity. This puts crowdworkers' working preferences into conflict with the desire of requesters to maximize workers' productivity. Combining the findings of prior research with the new knowledge obtained from our participants, we enumerate practical design options that could enable workers, requesters and platform developers to make adjustments that would improve crowdworkers' experiences.

In the context of citizen cyberscience, creativity is generally thought to be positive and should be encouraged. When volunteers think “outside of the box” they bring their own unique perspectives to scientific problems and generate new ideas. In some cases, creativity can even lead to new scientific discoveries. However there are still many unanswered questions about creativity. Is creativity in citizen science just about scientific discovery, or are there other kinds of creative products in citizen cyberscience? How does creativity compare across different kinds of citizen cyberscience, such as volunteer thinking and participatory sensing? In Citizen Cyberlab we explored creativity across four different pilot projects: GeoTag-X, Virtual Atom Smasher, Synthetic Biology, and Extreme Citzien Science. We conducted 96 interviews in total: 86 with volunteers (citizen scientists) and 10 with scientists. Based on our findings, we present several creative products that are a result of active involvement in citizen cyberscience: discussing ideas, suggesting improvements, development of new technologies, gamification, artwork, creative writing, outreach activities, and the development of new research projects. We also discuss factors that encourage creativity, such as having a supportive environment for volunteers and building a sense of community.

Obtaining high-quality data from crowds can be difficult if contributors do not give tasks sufficient attention. Attention checks are often used to mitigate this problem, but, because the roots of inattention are poorly understood, checks often compel attentive contributors to complete unnecessary work. We investigated a potential source of inattentiveness during crowdwork: multitasking. We found that workers switched to other tasks every 5 minutes, on average. There were indications that increasing switch frequency negatively affected performance. To address this, we tested an intervention that encouraged workers to stay focused on our task after multitasking was detected. We found that our intervention reduced the frequency of task switching. It also improves on existing attention checks because it does not place additional demands on workers who are already focused. Our approach shows that crowds can help to overcome some of the limitations of laboratory studies by affording access to naturalistic multitasking behavior.

Digital games are an engaging medium that have previously been used for communicating research to a variety of audiences. However, there is an opportunity for engaging people more deeply by involving them in creating games. This article reports on a game design competition, based on participatory design principles and game jam practices, which challenged university students to design games within the context of a research project. Based on their interpretations of research on human error in health care, teams created four games to be disseminated online to a wider public audience. We outline the competition format and reflect on the extent to which it was successful.

Smartphones are now ubiquitous and valuable in many professions and yet have also been blamed for creating an ‘always on' culture, blurring boundaries between work and home. Research has shown that checking e-mails out-of-hours via computer makes workers feel more overloaded with work but also increases their sense of coping. A total of 94 participants completed a survey exploring whether the same pattern would emerge for accessing e-mail on smartphones, showing that those who use smartphones for work e-mail experienced lower levels of overload, but not coping, and push notifications were associated with greater use of smartphones for e-mail. However, there were no significant correlations between coping or overload and e-mail use or quantity, suggesting that lower overload is not due to the ability to processes or read more e-mails outside of work.

Ubicomp/HCI researchers are increasingly using smartphones to collect human-labelled data 'in the wild'. While this allows for the collection of a wide range of interesting data in authentic settings and surroundings, humans are notoriously inconsistent in the quality of their contributions. Improving the quality of data collected with mobile devices is a largely unexplored, but highly relevant field. The primary objective of this workshop is to share insights, ideas, and discoveries on the quality of mobile human contributions. The work presented in the International Workshop on Mobile Human Contributions (MHC '18) explores methods, tools, and novel approaches towards increasing the reliability of human data submissions with mobile devices.

This chapter examines the potential for the Resilience Markers Framework (RMF) to provide guidance for development of an interview script aimed at uncovering resilience strategies used by anaesthetists. Anaesthetists work in a variety of areas of the hospitals which would make observations challenging. The chapter had two main aims: to see if the Resilience Markers Framework can be used to shape interviews to elicit the details of resilience strategies; and to explore resilience strategies in anaesthetists' work. Following data collection the individual resilience strategies were classified in terms of four main themes. These themes represent perceived vulnerabilities and opportunities in anaesthetists' work. Each grouping reflected the activities and goals of the anaesthetists. The groups of resilience strategies were then evaluated in terms of the RMF. The interviews were fairly straightforward to develop using the RMF, which suggests it's a strong framework for this purpose.

In recent years, on-demand video services, such as Netflix and Amazon Video, have become extremely popular. To understand how people use these services, we recruited 20 people from nine households to keep a viewing diary for 14 days. To better understand these household viewing diaries, in-depth interviews were conducted. We found that people took advantage of the freedom and choice that on-demand services offer, watching on different devices and in different locations, both in the home and outside. People often watched alone so they could watch what they wanted, rather than coming together to watch something of mutual interest. Despite this flexibility, the evening prime time continued to be the most popular time for people to watch on-demand content. Sometimes they watched for extended periods, and during interviews concerns were expressed about how on-demand services make it far too easy to watch too much and that this is often undesirable.

On-demand video services allow viewers to access media wherever and whenever they like, on a wide variety of devices. These services have become extremely popular in recent years, but exactly how people interact with these services has not been studied in detail. We conducted a diary study with nine households to investigate this, and present the preliminary results in this paper. Participants took advantage of the freedom and choice these services provided, watching on different devices, in different locations, and for extended periods of time. However, the majority of viewing conformed to traditional patterns, occurring in the evening on large screens, though viewing on a laptop was slightly more popular than the television. We found that usage of on-demand services was influenced by situational factors such as location and the devices that are available.

Data entry often involves looking up information from email. Task switching to email can be disruptive, and people can get distracted and forget to return to their primary task. In this paper, we investigate whether giving people feedback on how long they are away from their task has any effect on the duration and number of their switches. An online experiment was conducted in which participants had to enter numeric codes into an online spreadsheet. They had to look up these codes in an email sent to their personal email address upon starting the experiment. People who were shown how long they were away for made shorter switches, were faster to complete the task and made fewer data entry errors. This suggests feedback on switching duration may make people more aware of their switching behaviour, and assist users in maintaining focus on their main task.

Feelings of stress can have negative impacts on mental and physical health. In response, a significant number of stress management applications (apps) have been developed but little is known about their functionality. We conducted a feature analysis of 26 stress management and monitoring apps to identify required improvements. We found that the reviewed apps supported users with reflection, but did not include adequate functions to support action taking (i.e. initiating and maintaining behaviour change). This paper contributes a discussion of how to improve the design of stress management apps with examples of good practice and how healthcare providers can use this information to leverage such apps in clinical care.

Digital self-tracking technologies offer many potential benefits over self-tracking with paper notebooks. However, they are often too rigid to support people's practical and emotional needs in everyday settings. To inform the design of more flexible self-tracking tools, we examine bullet journaling: an analogue and customisable approach for logging and reflecting on everyday life. Analysing a corpus of paper bullet journal photos and related conversations on Instagram, we found that individuals extended and adapted bullet journaling systems to their changing practical and emotional needs through: (1) creating and combining personally meaningful visualisations of different types of trackers, such as habit, mood, and symptom trackers; (2) engaging in mindful reflective thinking through design practices and self-reflective strategies; and (3) posting photos of paper journals online to become part of a self-tracking culture of sharing and learning. We outline two interrelated design directions for flexible and mindful self-tracking: digitally extending analogue self-tracking and supporting digital self-tracking as a mindful design practice.

During data entry tasks, small errors can result in catastrophe, for instance adding an extra zero to a drug\ud dose when programming an infusion in a hospital. For this reason understanding users’ error checking\ud behavior is highly important. One aspect that can affect error checking is the interface that a user must\ud interact with to enter data. Often user interaction with interfaces is evaluated based on speed or error rate.\ud In this paper, in addition to this, we also explore how different types of interface can affect a user’s error\ud checking behavior in a multitasking environment. We show that a fast to use and familiar interface\ud discourages users from carrying out thorough visual checking in a number transcription task. We also\ud found that having participants perform an additional secondary task while doing the number entry task\ud made participants less likely to check the inputted numbers for errors.

Smartphones are now ubiquitous and valuable in many professions and yet have also been blamed for creating an ‘always on' culture, blurring boundaries between work and home. Research has shown that checking e-mails out-of-hours via computer makes workers feel more overloaded with work but also increases their sense of coping. A total of 94 participants completed a survey exploring whether the same pattern would emerge for accessing e-mail on smartphones, showing that those who use smartphones for work e-mail experienced lower levels of overload, but not coping, and push notifications were associated with greater use of smartphones for e-mail. However, there were no significant correlations between coping or overload and e-mail use or quantity, suggesting that lower overload is not due to the ability to processes or read more e-mails outside of work.

Crowdsourcing psychometric data is common in areas of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) such as information visualization, text entry, and interface design. In some of the social sciences, crowdsourcing data is now considered routine, and even standard. In this chapter, we explore the collection of data in this manner, beginning by describing the variety of approaches can be used to crowdsource data. Then, we evaluate past literature that has compared the results of these approaches to more traditional data-collection techniques. From this literature, we synthesize a set of design and implementation guidelines for crowdsourcing studies. Finally, we describe how particular analytic techniques can be recruited to aid the analysis of large-scale crowdsourced data. The goal of this chapter it to clearly enumerate the difficulties of crowdsourcing psychometric data and to explore how, with careful planning and execution, these limitations can be overcome.

Mobile devices are increasingly used while watching video, both as a secondary device and for dedicated viewing. However, devices frequently issue notifications that can interrupt viewing. This study investigated the effect of interruptions from notifications on viewer immersion. Participants watched 10 minutes of a movie without notifications, and 10 minutes while receiving message notifications. There were two participant groups: one watched video on a 30-inch monitor with messages sent to a separate smartphone; while another watched on a smartphone while also receiving messages on it. Viewer immersion was assessed after each condition via questionnaire. We also considered message response times. Results showed that immersion scores were lower when the video was interrupted with notifications, regardless of viewing device. Message response times were fastest when using the phone as a secondary device. Our results suggest that device-driven interruptions should be minimised for an immersive film experience.

Increasingly people interact with their mobile devices while watching television. We evolve an understanding of this kind of everyday media multitasking behaviour through an analysis of video data. In our study, four households were recorded watching television over three evenings. We analysed 55 hours of footage in which participants were watching the TV. We found that mobile device habits were highly variable between participants during this time, ranging from 0% to 23% of the time that the TV was on. To help us understand this variability, participants completed the Media Multitasking Index (MMI) questionnaire. Results showed that participants with a higher MMI score used their mobile device more while watching TV at home. We also saw evidence that the TV was being used as a hub in the home: multiple people were often present when the time the TV was on, providing a background for other household activities. We argue that video analysis can give valuable insights into media multitasking in the home.

This course will provide an introduction to methods used in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. An equal focus will be given to both the quantitative and qualitative research traditions used to understand people and interactional contexts. We shall discuss these major research traditions along with their contemporary framings (e.g., in-the-wild research and Interaction Science). By the end of the course attendees will have a detailed understanding of how to select and apply methods to address a range of problems that are of concern to contemporary HCI researchers.

Smartphone apps that enable workers to listen to nature soundscapes are increasingly popular. There is, however, little evidence that these soundscapes have the effects that they claim to have. Previous research exploring the effect of listening to background music during tasks has shown that while such music may have a positive effect on emotional state, it can disrupt reading and memory-based tasks. This paper explores the effects of nature soundscapes on mood and performance. A diary study of the use of soundscapes whilst studying suggests that students view such soundscapes as: aiding focus whilst studying; creating feelings of calm and peace; helping to manage stress and anxiety; and hiding distracting sounds. A second study -- an experiment -- investigated the effects of nature soundscapes on mood and performance. Whilst we found no effect of soundscapes on mood and arousal during the task, our results demonstrate that high acoustic variation in a soundscape may cause a disruption to serial recall tasks. The implications of our findings suggest that nature soundscapes with high acoustic variation may be detrimental to task performance compared to working in silence for serial based thinking tasks.

Virtual reality industries claim that 360 videos are a powerful tool for creating empathy because they are an immersive medium, and wearing headphones is encouraged for the full immersive experience. To investigate these claims, we carried out a 2x2 between subjects lab study (n=40) to explore whether 360 viewing platform (magic window / google cardboard) and headphone use (with / without) have an effect on Film-Immersion for the 360 video Fire Rescue. Our results reveal a significant interaction effect: headphones increased immersion for google cardboard, but decreased immersion for magic window. However, not all dimensions of the immersive experience were affected. This suggests that head-mounted displays increase presence, but do not necessarily lead to more empathy and greater interest in the 360 video. Thematic analysis of interview data suggests contributing factors such as fear of missing out (FOMO). These findings have implications for film makers and researchers of 360 videos.

Users have access to a growing ecosystem of devices (desktop, mobile and wearable) that can deliver notifications and help people to stay in contact. Smartwatches are gaining popularity, yet little is known about the user experience and their impact on our increasingly always online culture. We report on a qualitative study with existing users on their everyday use of smartwatches to understand both the added value and the challenges of being constantly connected at the wrist. Our findings show that users see a large benefit in receiving notifications on their wrist, especially in terms of helping manage expectations of availability. Moreover, we find that response rates after viewing a notification on a smartwatch change based on the other devices available: laptops prompt quicker replies than smartphones. Finally, there are still many costs associated with using smartwatches, thus we make a series of design recommendations to improve the user experience of smartwatches.

Consumer health technologies have an enormous potential to transform the self-management of chronic conditions. However, it is unclear how individuals use self-tracking technologies to manage them. This in-depth interview study explores self-tracking practices in multiple sclerosis (MS), a complex neurological disease that causes physical, cognitive, and psychological symptoms. Our findings illustrate that when faced the unpredictable and degenerative nature of MS, individuals regained a sense of control by intertwining self-care practices with different self-tracking technologies. They engaged in disease monitoring, fitness tracking, and life journaling to quantify the body and care for the mind. We focus attention on the role of emotional wellbeing and the experience of control in self-tracking and managing MS. Finally, we discuss in which ways self-tracking technologies could support the experiential nature of control and foster mindful experiences rather than focusing only on tracking primary disease indicators.

The majority of digital games available today offer a variety of multi-player settings including co-located and mediated play between opponents. Immersion, the sense of being ''in the game,'' is one of the key components of the gaming experience but existing literature suggests that social play provides more fun but less immersion. There is however little empirical support for this. This paper therefore addresses the question: how does playing digital games in a social situation alter the sense of immersion felt by the individuals playing? This paper presents three experiments that test the relationship between social setting and immersion. The three experiments aim to manipulate the social setting in which players play, be it against a computer, against a person online or against a co-located person. Overall the three experiments show that players are more immersed when playing against another person rather than playing against a computer but there is no significant difference in immersion whether the other person is online or in the same room. This refutes previous claims about social play reducing immersion and indeed that social play enhances the sense of being in the game where interaction is through the game.