Search

As computer interfaces spread across and even into our bodies, so we find ourselves engaged in ever more deeply connected bodily interactions. From the mouse and keyboard, to wearables and gestural...

Conversational search systems, such as Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana, provide a new search paradigm where users are allowed, via natural language dialogues, to communicate with search systems. Evaluating such systems is very challenging since search results are presented in the format of natural language sentences. Given the unlimited number of possible responses, collecting relevance assessments for all the possible responses is infeasible. In this paper, we propose POSSCORE, a simple yet effective automatic evaluation method for conversational search. The proposed embedding-based metric takes the influence of part of speech (POS) of the terms in the response into account. To the best knowledge, our work is the first to systematically demonstrate the importance of incorporating syntactic information, such as POS labels, for conversational search evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate that our metrics can correlate with human preference, achieving significant improvements over state-of-the-art baseline metrics., 11 pages

Transparency in process and its reporting is paramount for establishing the rigor of qualitative studies. However, the CHI conference receives submissions with varying levels of transparency and oftentimes, papers that are more transparent can be inadvertently subjected to more scrutiny in the review process, raising issues of fairness. In this panel, we bring together researchers with diverse qualitative work experiences to present examples of transparency-related initiatives and their corresponding review responses. We aim to work towards setting standards for transparent reporting in qualitative-work submissions and increasing fairness in the review process. We focus on the challenges in achieving transparency in qualitative research and current workarounds to overcome frictions in the reviewing process through engaging discussions involving panelists and the audience.

User-centred evaluation of brain-training and coaching applications is discussed, with a focus on dementia. A brief outline of outcomes measures used for cognitive training is presented. The design of a set of four patient and public involvement workshops is described which are intended to examine user aspects of relevance to brain-training, including motivation, attitudes to learning, trust in technology and cultural relationships to the playing of games and their content. The groups involved researchers, facilitators, three people living with dementia and three care-givers, two of these being dyads. Data was audio recorded and field notes were taken. Initial results are given from the ongoing qualitative study.

Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) has shown promise for being potentially more suitable (than e.g. EEG) for brain-based Human Computer Interaction (HCI). While some machine learning approaches have been used in prior HCI work, this paper explores different approaches and configurations for classifying Mental Workload (MWL) from a continuous HCI task, to identify and understand potential limitations and data processing decisions. In particular, we investigate three overall approaches: a logistic regression method, a supervised shallow method (SVM), and a supervised deep learning method (CNN). We examine personalised and generalised models, as well as consider different features and ways of labelling the data. Our initial explorations show that generalised models can perform as well as personalised ones and that deep learning can be a suitable approach for medium size datasets. To provide additional practical advice for future brain-computer interaction systems, we conclude by discussing the limitations and data-preparation needs of different machine learning approaches. We also make recommendations for avenues of future work that are most promising for the machine learning of fNIRS data.

Introducing interactivity to films has proven a longstanding and difficult challenge due to their narrative-driven, linear and theatre-based nature. Previous research has suggested that Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) may be a promising approach but also revealed a tension between being immersed in the film and thinking about control. We report a performance-led and in-the-wild study of a BCI film called The MOMENT covering its design rationale and how it was experienced by the public as controllers, non-controllers and repeat viewers. Our findings suggest that BCI movies should be designed to be credibly controllable, generate personal versions, be watchable as linear films, encourage repeat viewing and fit the medium of cinema. They also reveal how viewers appreciated the sense of editing their own personal cuts, suggesting a new stance on introducing interactivity into lean-back media in which filmmakers release editorial control to users to make their own versions.

Systematic reviews are a comprehensive and parameterised form of literature review, found in most disciplines, that involve exhaustive analyses and rigorous interpretation of prior literature. Performing systematic reviews, however, can involve repetitive and laborious work in order to reach reliable standards. Strict guidelines and availability of published reviews make the task amenable to computerised assistance and automation using text mining, information extraction, and machine learning techniques. However, it is unclear which aspects of this Work Task are best suited for such support. This paper describes a three-month ethnographic study and CognitiveWork Analysis of the systematic reviews performed by a medical research group. Our findings show that the IR aspects of systematic reviews involve many tasks at two separate levels: 1) taxonomic organisation of documents and sub-document elements in relation to topic queries and domain-specific resources, and 2) extraction methods for structured summaries from the classified resources. This provides the basis for future work designing search tools with localised optimization and subtask automation to support specific phases of the process.

Theoretical abstractions, of many different aspects of search, have played a crucial role in driving research into human information seeking and retrieval forward. From models of the Information Seeking Process, to how we perceive search systems, these models help us to 1) conceptually formalise and separate aspects of the model’s focus, 2) communicate more clearly about these aspects, 3) create hypotheses for subsequent research, and 4) produce implications for future systems. Implicit in these four aspects is that models and theories should have a focus and a purpose. After clarifying the relationships between models, theories, and meta-theories, this perspectives paper introduces the Tetris Model of Resolving Information Needs within the Information Seeking Process, the purpose of which is to better represent the behaviours around the Human Computer Interaction with Information Retrieval, which are often confounded within stage-based models of the Information Seeking Process. In particular, the possible sequence of actions performed by a searcher are typically linearly aligned from left-to-right, and thus imply a temporal progression. The differing focus of the Tetris model is to better capture the temporal experience of searching, by removing the implied progression of left-to-right. The aim of this perspectives paper, therefore, is to introduce this new Tetris Model, such that it can be used to formalise people’s interactive experiences in a new way, so that we can more clearly communicate about them, create hypotheses from the model, and consider novel design implications based upon it.

This paper explores the design space of bio-responsive entertainment, in this case using a film that responds to the brain and blink data of users. A film was created with four parallel channels of footage, where blinking and levels of attention and meditation, as recorded by a commercially available EEG device, affected which footage participants saw. As a performance-led piece of research in the wild, this experience, named #Scanners, was presented at a week long national exhibition in the UK. We examined the experiences of 35 viewers, and found that these forms of partially-involuntary control created engaging and enjoyable, but sometimes distracting, experiences. We translate our findings into a two-dimensional design space between the extent of voluntary control that a physiological measure can provide against the level of conscious awareness that the user has of that control. This highlights that novel design opportunities exist when deviating from these two-dimensions - when giving up conscious control and when abstracting the affect of control. Reflection on of how viewers negotiated this space during an experience reveals novel design tactics.

Amongst the many tasks in our lives, we encounter web forms on a regular basis, whether they are mundane like registering for a website, or complex and important like tax returns. There are many aspects of Usability, but one concern for user interfaces is to reduce mental workload and error rates. Whilst most assessment of mental workload is subjective and retrospective reporting by users, we examine the potential of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a tool for objectively and concurrently measuring mental workload during usability testing. We use this technology to evaluate the design of three different form layouts for a car insurance claim process, and show that a form divided into subforms increases mental workload, contrary to our expectations. We conclude that fNIRS is highly suitable for objectively examining mental workload during usability testing, and will therefore be able to provide more detailed insight than summative retrospective assessments. Further, for the fNIRS community, we show that the technology can easily move beyond typical psychology tasks, and be used for more natural study tasks.

This Tutorial+Workshop will discuss opportunities and challenges involved in using neuro-physiological tools/techniques (such as fMRI, fNIRS, EEG, eye-tracking, GSR, HR, and facial expressions) and theories in information retrieval. The hybrid format will engage researchers and students at different levels of expertise, from those who are active in this area to those who are interested and want to learn more. The workshop will combine presentations, discussions and tutorial elements and consist of four segments (tutorial, completed research, work-in-progress, closing panel).

Searching for online health information has been well studied in web search, but social media, such as public microblogging services, are well known for different types of tacit information: personal experience and shared information. Finding useful information in public microblogging platforms is an on-going hard problem and so to begin to develop a better model of what health information can be found, Twitter posts using the word “depression” were examined as a case study of a search for a prevalent mental health issue. 13,279 public tweets were analysed using a mixed methods approach and compared to a general sample of tweets. First, a linguistic analysis suggested that tweets mentioning depression were typically anxious but not angry, and were less likely to be in the first person, indicating that most were not from individuals discussing their own depression. Second, to un-derstand what types of tweets can be found, an inductive thematic analysis revealed three major themes: 1) dissemi-nating information or link of information, 2) self-disclosing, and 3) the sharing of overall opinion; each had significantly different linguistic patterns. We conclude with a discussion of how different types of posts about mental health may be retrieved from public social media like Twitter.

The Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) is a verbalisation technique widely employed in HCI user studies to give insight into user experience, yet little work has explored the impact that TAPs have on participants during user studies. This paper utilises a brain sensing technique, fNIRS, to observe the effect that TAPs have on participants. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a brain sensing technology that offers the potential to provide continuous, detailed insight into brain activity, enabling an objective view of cognitive processes during complex tasks. Participants were asked to perform a mathematical task under 4 conditions: nonsense verbalisations, passive concurrent think aloud protocol, invasive concurrent think aloud protocol, and a baseline of silence. Subjective ratings and performance measures were collected during the study. Our results provide a novel view into the effect that different forms of verbalisation have on workload during tasks. Further, the results provide a means for estimating the effect of spoken artefacts when measuring workload, which is another step towards our goal of proactively involving fNIRS analysis in ecologically valid user studies.

Neighbourhoods have been described by the UK Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government as the “building blocks of public service society”. Despite this, difficulties in data collection combined with the concept’s subjective nature have left most countries lacking official neighbourhood definitions. This issue has implications not only for policy, but for the field of computational social science as a whole (with many studies being forced to use administrative units as proxies despite the fact that these bear little connection to resident perceptions of social boundaries). In this paper we illustrate that the mass linguistic datasets now available on the internet need only be combined with relatively simple linguistic computational models to produce definitions that are not only probabilistic and dynamic, but do not require a priori knowledge of neighbourhood names.

Tag clouds are typically presented so that users can actively utilize community-generated metadata to query a collection. This research investigates whether such metadata representations also provide passive support for sensemaking without any direct interaction. Previous work reported potentially significant results from a pilot study of three variations of keyword cloud support (interactive, non-interactive, and absent), built from related query terms. Our full study, however, found no significant differences in learning across the three conditions. We concluded that the sensemaking and learning mainly occurred outside of the search engine, where the keyword cloud no longer provided support. Our future work will study the passive support that may be provided by keyword clouds in more integrated systems like digital libraries.

At CHI2011 we ran a panel on how the CHI community handles the replicability of research and the reproducibility of findings. Careful scientific scholarship should build on firm foundations, which includes re-examining old evidences in the face of new findings. Yet, as a community that strives for novelty, we have very little motivation to look back and reconsider the validity of previous work. Thus, for CHI2013 we are planning a new venue, where replicated studies can be submitted, presented, and discussed. For CHI2012, we propose a SIG to discuss the preparations for how RepliCHI will work in its first year. We invite participation from those interested in setting an agenda for facilitating replication in HCI, including those who have begun using replication as a teaching method since RepliCHI at CHI2011.

Ten years ago, we were on the verge of having cameras built into our mobile phones, but knew very little about what to expect or how they would be used. Now we are faced with the same unknowns with mobile projector phones. This research seeks to explore how people will want to use such technology, how they will feel when using it, and what social effects we can expect to see. This paper describes our two-phase field investigation that uses a combination of methods to investigate how, when, and why mobile projections may be used. The first study used an experience sampling method to investigate responses to a range of different media types, and, for example, the choice of surfaces used in each case. The second study asked users to create video diary entries showing when, where, and why they would have wanted to project information. Together these studies provide complementary insights into the future use of mobile projector phones. Our results cover detailed responses to a range of media types from the first study, while the second identified which of the known mobile information needs were commonly recorded by participants. Both studies provide insights that may help shape the hardware, software, and interaction design of mobile projector phones as they become increasingly available.

This workshop will provide a focal point for research and technology dedicated to supporting behaviour change through Persuasion, Influence, Nudge and Coercion (PINC). A particular focus is on pervasive and mobile technologies and the unique opportunities they present in this domain (e.g. in terms of data-capture and timely intervention). Although much isolated research takes place tackling particular aspects of this problem space (e.g. persuasion), this workshop will be the first venue to provide a forum that discusses meta-issues that apply to behaviour change and pervasive technology, irrespective of how it is achieved. These issues include: (a) What novel opportunities do pervasive technologies provide? (b) When is the appropriate time to begin, reduce or end intervention? (c) Are PINC methods ethical? and (d) How can we extend the scale of intervention?Participants are invited to contribute to the workshop with examples of PINC technologies, and the event will focus on mapping the conceptual space, creating novel ideas and interactive applications and discussing future opportunities. Ultimately, the workshop aspires to establish a community dedicated to this topic.

The aim of this workshop is to provide a focal point for research and technology dedicated to persuasion and influence on mobile platforms. We aspire to establish a scientific network and community dedicated to emerging technologies for persuasion using mobile devices. This workshop would be a unique opportunity for interaction designers and researchers in this area to share their latest research and technologies on 'nudge' methods with the scientific communities. Patterns of consumption such as drinking and smoking are shaped by the taken-for-granted practices of everyday life. However, these practices are not fixed and 'immensely malleable'. Consequently, it is important to understand how the habits of everyday life change and evolve. Our decisions are inevitably influenced by how the choices are presented. Therefore, it is legitimate to deliberately 'nudge' people's behaviour in order to improve their lives. Mobile devices can play a significant role in shaping normal practices in three distinct ways: (1) they facilitate the capture of information at the right time and place; (2) they provide non-invasive and cost effective methods for communicating personalised data that compare individual performance with relevant social group performance; and (3) social network sites running on the device facilitate communication of personalised data that relate to the participant's self-defined community. Among the issues the workshop will take on are:(a) What opportunities do mobile interventions provide? (b) How far the intervention should go? (c) Is persuasion ethical? and (d) How can we extend the scale of intervention in a society using mobile devices? Participants will contribute to the workshop with examples of nudge and persuasive technologies, and we will work together to create novel ideas, interactive applications on the phone, and discuss future opportunities.

Temporal events, while often discrete, also have interesting relationships within and across times: larger events are often collections of smaller more discrete events (battles within wars; artists' works within a form); events at one point also have correlations with events at other points (a play written in one period is related to its performance, or lack of performance, over a period of time). Most temporal visualisations, however, only represent discrete data points or single data types along a single timeline: this event started here and ended there; this work was published at this time; this tag was popular for this period. In order to represent richer, faceted attributes of temporal events, we present Continuum. Continuum enables hierarchical relationships in temporal data to be represented and explored; it enables relationships between events across periods to be expressed, and in particular it enables user-determined control over the level of detail of any facet of interest so that the person using the system can determine a focus point, no matter the level of zoom over the temporal space. We present the factors motivating our approach, our evaluation and implementation of this new visualisation which makes it easy for anyone to apply this interface to rich, large-scale datasets with temporal data.

In this paper we discuss potential developments to the design of pre-trip in-home journey planning services, to include support for additional user needs. These needs were identified through stakeholder interviews as contributing to actual decisions in route selection scenarios and include: safety, weather and even fitness. A journey planner was designed to allow users to articulate these constraints and a series of paper prototypes were evaluated through cognitive walkthroughs. An exploratory study compared three designs and provided rationale for the most effective interaction method and informed an implementation plan.

In the following paper we present a formative study comparing two Web application interfaces, mSpace Mobile and Google Local in supporting Web-based location discovery tasks on mobile devices while stationary and while on the move. While mSpace Mobile performed well in both stationary and mobile conditions, performance in Google Local dropped significantly in the mobile condition. We postulate that mSpace Mobile performed better because it breaks the paradigm of the page for delivering Web content, thereby enabling new and more powerful interfaces to be used to support mobility.

Vannevar Bush proposed the memex as a means to support building knowledge in the way he says the human brain works: by association. Achieving this vision has been a core motivation for hypertext research. In this paper, we suggest first that Bush's memex reflects an interaction paradigm rather than system design. Second, we propose that Semantic Web promises to provide the mechanisms to enable these interaction requirements. Third, we propose the mSpace framework and architecture as a platform to deploy lightweight Semantic Web applications which foreground associative interaction. We propose this lightweight approach as a means to evaluate both interaction needs and the cost/benefits of using Semantic Web technologies to support them.

Online walkthrough interviews were conducted via internet video-calling, which formed part of wider Patient and Public Involvement activities investigating perceptions of digital and gamified cognitive assessment and training/coaching applications. Participants were invited to play a series of mobile mini-games which have been developed for the purposes of training of executive functions and the assessment of memory, whilst verbalizing their thought processes, using a process based on the Think-Aloud Protocol and Cognitive Walkthrough principles, before concluding with a semi-structured interview. The enquiry was particularly interested in wider motivational aspects surrounding these technologies, including identifying potential barriers to engagement and facilitators of adoption. In general, there was broad acceptance of digital cognitive assessments and training, although issues of data handling and trust were raised by participants. Several usability issues were also captured.