Computers, creativity and learning

Feed finder

[cross posted on the CACM. The new material for readers of this blog is in pink

Being a new mother is hard. While society celebrates the romantic idea that early motherhood is a joyous and scared time, the reality is not so straightforwardly positive.  It is physically demanding, but also emotionally challenging: new mothers report a spectrum of emotions including exhaustion, loneliness, fear, guilt and resentment [1]. HCI has recently begun to explore how technologies can assist women in this difficult period. We held a workshop at CHI 2013 on Motherhood and HCI to explore the opportunities in this space, listening to the experiences of (mostly) female researcher, discussing existing technology which is already supporting mothers and exploring new research prototypes.

A good example of using the capabilities of new technology to help new mums is FeedFinder, developed by Madeline Balaam and her team at Culture Lab, University of Newcastle. It’s a location based app which helps mothers to find suitable places to breastfeed their babies when they are not at home. Breastfeeding has positive health outcomes for babies, but a relatively low proportion exclusively breastfeed their children for the 6 month period recommended by the World Health Organisation. One contributing factor to this may be logistical; babies need fed when their mothers are out and about but finding a good spot for feeding can be hard. In an ideal world, babies would be able to suckle happily anywhere but in fact in some public places such as cafes, breastfeeding is not welcome. FeedFinder enables mothers to rate and review places where they live in terms of comfort, hygiene, privacy, baby facilities and affordability.  By using the app, women can get together to support each other as well as getting practical advice about locations and tracking their baby’s feeding habits. A particularly good aspect of the interface is that it can be used one handed by people holding a baby! On a personal note, I found many places to breastfeed my son where I live in Edinburgh – airports, park benches, primary schools, libraries, John Lewis baby change room, and a long list of cafes. The places I liked best were the ones with other mothers to chat to, with whom I could swap stories or trade advice or simply emphasise. FeedFinder would have been very useful then.  

It’s worth saying that the Motherhood and HCI workshop did attract some criticism, mostly from women. Some researchers were concerned by unintended implication that only women who are biological mothers can perform a nurturing role. This is clearly not true, and we never intended to imply this. Other researchers felt that we should not have excluded fathers, and that by focussing on mothers as a user group we were perpetuating the negative stereotype that childcare activities are “women’s work”.  I have argued strongly against this view here and here so I shall simply summarise my point: because in the real world, women do considerably more childcare than men [2],(regardless of our longing for equality)  HCI should be trying to help them out.

A workshop participant used the evocative phrase "blood, milk and tears" to refer to the challenging biological aspects of being a mother. In the political correctness of including more people with a wider definition of mothering, or telling fathers that nurturing is their joint responsibility, let's not forget the millions of women who mop up their blood, milk and tears every day. Let's design technology which assists in small ways, by helping mothers monitor the changes in their bodies, or find information or share experiences when they need to. Let's consult with mothers about the design of the technology they use, and invent new consultation methodologies to suit this user group if necessary.

Until we reach the wonderful era of gender equality, I say we should focus considerable design effort on women, on mothers and on mothering. If technology can make some of the more mundane tasks just a little easier, or some of the challenging experiences slightly more bearable then it will have been worth it. 

  

[1] Barclay, L., Everitt, L., Rogan, F., Schmied, V., Wyllie, A. Becoming a Mother — an Analysis of Women’s Experience of Early Motherhood. (1997) Journal of Advanced Nursing 25, pp. 719–728.

[2] Schober, P. (2013). Gender equality and outsourcing of domestic work, childbearing, and relationship stability among British couples. Journal of Family Issues.34(1). 25-52.

 Ps Did you notice that I managed to write this whole article without mention the Royal Baby?

 

Arguments against motherhood and HCI

[edited after a lunch argument with a friend]

Our workshop on Motherhood and HCI at the CHI 2013 conference seems to have angered some feminists. I wouldn't have predicted this, but then I don't devote much time to studying feminist theory. We didn't get any negative comments from men that I'm aware of. Maybe they were fearfully gathered in the corner of the men's toilets, worrying about being marginalised by powerful women.

[EDIT: I just recalled a criticism of the general area of Motherhood and HCI which emerged from a pre CHI event from a man. This memory was provoked at the weekend by a male doctor friend who was criticising a mum in a cafe for cuddling a very new baby while reading her phone. "Look at the perfect example of mother baby bonding", he said in his doctorly way. "The baby thinks her mum is wrapped up in cuddling her, but she's actually ignoring her". The comment from the male HCI academic was similar: "Isn't it a bit sad that all these new mums are using technology instead of spending time with their babies?" The baby in the cafe WAS ASLEEP! Newborns do that. A lot. They also feed for hours at a time. Mummy is meant to sit there enjoying the platonic ideal of motherhood and do nothing else? Mummy is meant to soley devote her cognitice capacity to watching a mini-person sleep? I realise this argument is presented as a bit of a straw man, but I find it too irritating to spell out that yes, of course, parents should attend to their children but there is a balance to be found between the well being of the mother and the needs of the child.]

The workshop was highly productive in terms of mapping out an emerging reseach area and it was also very helpful to hear about the participants' experiences as mothers, daughters, midwives, obsetricians and designers (and also from the two fathers and one baby who joined us).

For now, I want to focus on the criticisms to get the arguments clearer in my head. There were two main areas of contention which I came across.

1. Criticism of the unintended implication that only women who are mothers can perform a nurturing role. Something in the call for papers for the workshop seems to have given this impression although exactly what eludes me.  To be clear: I believe that people who are not biological mothers can and do nurture others. But being a literal minded computer scientist, I did initially baulk at the statement "You don't have to have a vagina to be a mother".  This is a question of semantics. The OED defines the noun "mother" as "a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth" (definition 1).  This clean cut definition does leave out adoptive mothers or step mothers, who obviously can have a nurturing role. "Mothering" as a verb is potentially more useful here (definition 2),  defined thus "bring up (a child) with care and affection: the art of mothering.  look after (someone) kindly and protectively, sometimes excessively so: she mothered her husband, insisting he should take cod liver oil in the winter". So from this point of view, dads (or anyone else) can mother people, regardless of their vagina-less state. It's maybe also worth noting that the object of the nurture is a child in the first definition, but is more generally a person in the second definition. So, as mentioned at the workshop, the mothering of students could potentially be included, but the mothering of cats would be out.  Maybe the workshop should have been entitled "Mothering and HCI" to encompass this broader notion.  

2. Criticism of the focus on mothers rather than parents, the (again unintended) implication being that it is only women's work. At the ACM Women's Breakfast, Kia Hook took a swipe at the workshop without really explaining what her problem with it is. But in response to a follow up email from me, she wrote:

"What I started from was the position that a feminist position that singles out women as having other traits and abilities than men is a problematic position. Your workshop of course makes sense when it comes to the biological  aspects of becoming a mother (pregnancy and breastfeeding is, for the most part, a female only experience). But monitoring sleep? Monitoring need for food? If we write this off as only being for women - what have we done to fathers? What have we done to the possibility of sharing maternity/paternity leave? The word for this in Swedish is "särartsfeminism" - in english it might be "specificity feminism"? To me, deeply problematic! CHI has had a range of papers on "mother's work", "soccer moms" etc. In essence telling fathers that this is not their work, their duty, their fun, their life. Problematic if we want to share responsibilities, share the work-life-balance, and move forwards with our equality strive. "

It is not the first time I have had this sort of comment from a person from Sweden, that world leader in gender equality . Here parental rather than maternity leave is enshrined in law: both parents may share the leave although in fact only 25% of it is actually taken by men. In the UK, men are entitled to two weeks paternity leave, and women one year of maternity leave. This may change to a more equal arrangement by 2015 but I am not holding my breath. Being a pragmatic computer scientist, I say we should help the users who are actually performing the tasks here and now. And the evidence base is that more women perform nurturing and domestic work than men. An Australian study found that children add (an alarming) thirty five hours of domestic chores a week to a couple’s household [1]. In childless couples in the UK, 62% of domestic chores are done by women; for couples with a child, this rises to 75% [2]. Furthermore, there is evidence that mothers and fathers have different expectations about fathers’ roles in parenting. A study in the US found that mothers have higher expectations of support from the father in housework and emotional support. Men have lower expectations of themselves in terms of emotional support and baby care. [3].

Focus on blood, milk and tears

I can't remember which workshop participant used this evocative phrase, but "blood, milk and tears" covers the challenging biological aspects of being a mother (definition 1 above) rather nicely. Let's not write off the biological aspects so glibly. In the political correctness of including more people with a wider definition of mothering, or telling fathers that nurturing is their joint responsbility, let's not forget the millions of women who mop up their blood, milk and tears every day. Let's design technology which assists in small ways, by helping mothers monitor the changes in their bodies, or find information or share experiences when they need to. Let's consult with mothers about the design of the technology they use, and invent new consultation methodologies to suit this user group if necessary.

Until we reach the wonderful era of gender equality, I say we should focus considerable design effort on women, on mothers and on mothering. If technology can make some of the more mundane tasks just a little easier, or some of the challenging experiences slightly more bearable then it will have been worth it. 

 

References

 [1] Craig, L., & Bittman, M. (2005). The effects of children on adults' time-use: Analysis of the incremental time costs of children in Australia. Social Policy Research Centre. Retrieved on 8/1/13 from http://education.arts.unsw.edu.au/media/File/DP143.pdf

[2] Schober, P. (2013). Gender equality and outsourcing of domestic work, childbearing, and relationship stability among British couples. Journal of Family Issues.34(1). 25-52.

[3] Fox, G. L., Bruce, C., & CombsâOrme, T. (2000). Parenting Expectations and Concerns of Fathers and Mothers of Newborn Infants. Family relations. 49(2). 123-131

 

How to get a paper accepted for Interaction Design and Children

[edited after doing another review!]

You may have read my last post and concluded that a) I am on some kind of crazy power trip b) I have just served on a Programme Committee as an associate chair or c) that it is Friday afternoon. All three are true, and as I have been doing nothing but reviewing and marking all week, I feel like writing instead of reading. Here are my thoughts on how to get a paper accepted in IDC which I hope might be useful to authors for future year. [IDC notifications and reviews will be out on Monday and this post does not contain spoilers!]

Interaction Design and Children is a conference series entering its second decade, a fact which makes me feel old as I attended the first one as a post doc. As the years have gone by, the conference has become increasingly popular and standards have improved. This year we moved to a system where Associate Chairs are responsible for checking review quality and writing meta reviews. This is another step towards being all grown up and scientifically mature.  This year 28 papers were accepted (some with shepherding), which is about 30% acceptance rate. (For comparison, CHI 2012 had an acceptance rate of 22% in 2012, but started out 20 years ago with 45%.) Having reviewed papers almost every year for IDC, papers co-chaired in 2007 and acted as AC this year for 10 papers I feel like I have a handle on what is expected. Here are some thoughts to help new authors planning a submission in the future.

1. More than cute systems.  The days when you could get published at IDC for developing a cute system for cute children are hopefully gone. You'll need some kind of evaluation with kids, and more than just testing it on your neighbours' children and reporting that they thought it was "awesome".  If you just have a cute system, a demo might be more appropriate.
2. More than involving kids with the design. In my view, we should also be past the stage where a paper gets accepted simply because the paper used kids as design partners. There is certainly a place for critically evaluating design methodologies or introducing new methods for working with challenging user groups. But the paper needs more of a contribution than finding that the kids provided useful suggestions for the design.
3. Describe the design of the software/technology. I want a screenshot!It ddn't occur to me to include this one the first time, because it seems obvious to me as a computer scientist. But I have now reviewed several papers, possibly written by psychologists, which report results extensively but not the technology which was used. For the results to be interpretable we need to know about the design features of the software which was used in the study.
4. Methodology is important. Choose your methodology carefully, and execute it well. In my experience, IDC doesn't particularly value quantitative over qualitative methodologies. I don't think reviewers really have physics envy and want to see lots of numbers. So you don't need to put stats in just because you think they are expected. What matters is whether the method matches the research questions,and whether the conclusions can be supported by the evidence the methods produced. Pick a well estblished and documented methodology and a set of of commonly used measures. If you are going to include stats then please make sure you get them right! You can see my previous rants about this here and here.  In short: don't bother with stats on small sample sizes, don't use t-tests or ANOVAs on likert data, report effect sizes, be careful about drawing conclusions when you have low power. Don't do multiple comparisons without applying post-hoc corrections, and don't throw in co-variates without good reason. (See also Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological science, 22(11), 1359–66. doi:10.1177/0956797611417632)
5. Rich description is more convincing than weak stats. As a more specific version of the above point, if you have access to only a small number of participants, but feel there are still valuable points to be drawn from your study, consider a rigorous qualitative methodology instead of statistics. In some sub fields, it is difficult to find large numbers of participants (such as when working with children with autism or those with particular medical conditions). Rigor is the point here: don't just informally describe what the participants did, but use a well known approach such as case study analysis or grounded theory to systematically draw a picture of the participants' experiences in some depth.
6. Try to use well known measures such as questionnaires rather than making up your own questions or tests.
7. Let the kids speak for themselves. It's generally frowned on to have teachers or parents' views to be used a proxy for kids. Gather data directly from the kids unless there is very good reason not to.
8. If using quantitiative methods, state your hypotheses clearly and base them in the literature. I'm looking for a match between the findings of previous studies reported in the literature, and clearly stated directional hypotheses (ideally with effect size predictions). Instead of "There will be a difference in children's attitudes to geography after playing with the Amazing Jupiter Robot", go for "The geography scores of children who played with the Amazing Jupiter Robot will be 10% higher than the control group". Where did you get that prediction of 10%? You got it from Robertson (2012)'s work on the Amazing Mars Robot which reported similar effect sizes.You didn't pluck it out of the air. For a set of prompts for critically evaluating your article, see p79 of Dienes, Z. (2008). Understanding Psychology as a Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Statistical Inference (1st ed., p. 150). Palgrave Macmillan. To be completely honest, I have never reviewed or read a paper in CHI or IDC which does give effect size predictions. I would like to, though. Please make my day! If you can't do that, at least specify the direction of the hypothesis: "Users who play with the Amazing Jupiter Robot will perform better on standardized geography scores than control users". Don't sit on the fence. The more specific the hypothesis, the more informative it is to have to supported (or disconfirmed). Also, don't introduce new variables into the experimental design without having a good reason from the literature. Gender or social class might be easy to get data on but please have a good theoretical reason for believing there are likely to be differences according to such groupings.

I'm sure there are many more tips which other IDC bods could suggest, but that seems enough to be going on with for now.

Motherhood and HCI - call for papers

I am excited because we got a workshop proposal accepted for CHI 2013 on Motherhood and HCI.Write a position paper! Come along! It'll be fun!

Here's a previous post of mine about interface design issues for breastfeeding mothers, written, as I recall, while feeding a sleeping and very heavy baby.

 Call for Participation: CHI 2013 Workshop on Motherhood and HCI Important Dates 11 January 2013: Workshop Submission Deadline 8 February 2013: Notification of Acceptance 27/ 28 April 2013: Workshop held in Paris, France Website: http://motherhoodandhci.wordpress.com/ *********************************** Becoming a mother and the experience of being a mother are increasingly influenced, mediated and invaded by technology and digital interactions. We invite the CHI community to grow and nurture the emerging topic of motherhood and HCI and explore how the lens of “motherhood” changes implications for design, development, and notions of care through participation in the CHI 2013 workshop “Motherhood and HCI” (http://motherhoodandhci.wordpress.com/). This one-day workshop will address research and design issues relating to technology use associated with the processes and experiences of conception, pregnancy and infertility, labour, childcare and the mother’s work in the family and home. Topics include (but are not limited to) the experience of motherhood, technologies for supporting mothers, and perspectives on the role of the mother, as well as everyday practices relating to technology and motherhood. We invite non-mothers,mothers and mothers-to-be to participate in our workshop through the submission of a 2-page position paper in CHI Extended Abstracts format that describes the authors experience engaging with a specific theme, or challenge involved with designing, using, or evaluating technologies that relate to the concept or experience of “motherhood”. We positively encourage submissions from a diverse range of participants, perspectives and disciplines. We also encourage active participation from industries already engaged in the design and development of technologies for motherhood. Submissions will be selected based on their originality, quality and ability to promote discussion amongst the community. Submissions and questions should be directed to [email protected]. More details can be found at: http://motherhoodandhci.wordpress.com/. At least one author of each accepted paper must attend the workshop. Please submit your position paper by Friday 11th January 2013. *********************************** Workshop Organisers Madeline Balaam, Newcastle University Judy Robertson, Heriot-Watt University Rebecca Say, Newcastle University Geraldine Fitzpatrick, Vienna University of Technology Gillian Hayes, UC Irvine Melissa Mazmanian, UC Irvine Belinda Parmar, ladygeek.com

When is user centred design selfish?

In 2005 Don Norman wrote: “Human-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. That’s a dangerous state — when things are treated as accepted wisdom.” . I find this statement refreshing, because I am beginning to find the juxtaposition of user centred design (UCD) with recent trends in HCI towards sensitive application areas a little worrying. The benefits of UCD are well accepted: better appreciation of user’s needs resulting in better designed products which are more suitable usable and satisfying, empowerment of users, in depth understanding of the needs of specific demographic groups built up within a research community. I have seen criticism of UCD on cost or resource grounds (often in the form of a straw man), but never on ethical grounds.

Who benefits from user centred design according to standard wisdom? Designers and their employers benefit, because they end up with better products. End users (that amorphous generalised group) benefit, because their software-using lives are more satisfactory. Researchers benefit, because they get papers published about their thoughtful and inclusive design methodologies. What I want to know is whether particular users who contribute to the design process actually get anything out of it? And do they stand to lose anything?

Previous authors have argued that Scandinavian employees benefit as participant designers because they get to participate in work place decisions . Druin has claimed that children reap the benefits of being in intergenerational design teams . It’s quite easy to argue that contributing to redesigning the fiendish technology inflicted on us by our employers is satisfying, or that participating in a design activity has educational value. But let’s face it, for ordinary users, taking part in a design task is time consuming and may intrude into an already crowded schedule. Some people might find it tedious (“not another packet of post-it notes and a blank wall!”). Others may find it threatening (“I don’t want to show how little I know about technology”). In the end, it might be disappointing for those whose ideas don’t make it into the final product (“I wasted an hour of my life to have these jokers ignore my genius ideas?”), or those who are underwhelmed by the rough edges of a research prototype (“you realise this smart phone is made of paper?”).  These are mere irritations, presented cynically and not entirely seriously. However, in cases of user centred design work in sensitive areas involving vulnerable users there are some genuine ethical concerns which I think we need to talk about.

CHI has been expanding into new domains recently, with the laudable goal of using technology and design to improve people’s lives. But as we move from research about productivity systems in the work place to technology to improve the quality of users’ lives - in domains such as farming assistance in the developing world, health care, environmental disaster management, reminiscence, homelessness and end of life care- we must tread lightly.

We know from well established ethical principles that researchers should adhere to the general ethical principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence: by taking part in our design processes, users should benefit and should not be at risk of harm. We should not stray from our area of professional competency. We should not disrupt the lives of our participants unless we believe that the benefits outweigh the costs of the intrusion. But within the current set of user centred design practices, some of these ethical principles are compromised when working with vulnerable users.

Imagine a fictitious research project which aims to develop technology to help the bereaved share memories of those they have loved and lost. This is an academic project suffering from underfunding (as many do) and the designers can only afford to make a rough prototype which never makes it to market. The designers, realising that this is a very emotionally sensitive area, seek to consult users in order that the technology is appropriate, comforting and respectful of grief.  They interview a new widow on several occasions, and ask her to try a pilot application. They find this to be useful exercise and believe that their design is much improved because of it. They publish a paper about it, and other researchers are interested in the findings and it generates much discussion at a conference. Unfortunately, the user herself does not benefit from her contribution to the design because she finds that the software doesn’t run on her computer due to glitches she doesn’t understand. The researchers tell her that there may be a proper product developed in a few years, but she is finding it hard enough to get through each day just now, and doesn’t want to think that she will still feel this way in the future.  During the consultations, she finds it painful to talk about her loss, and tiring to keep concentrating on the design activity as she is distracted by worries about her financial circumstances. Originally she felt she ought to contribute to the project because she wanted to help other people in the future, but she is now increasingly upset by having relative strangers in her own home.

In this story we have well intentioned, respectful practitioners following best practices for design who nonetheless departed from ethical principles. They have unintentionally caused emotional distress without providing the benefits of a working system. They have intruded into the life of the user at a time when she was particularly vulnerable. They have been operating out-with their area of professional competency, as they were trained as designers and programmers rather than therapists. It is possible to imagine scenarios in other sensitive domains where similar ethical transgressions occur. What if physical rehabilitation technology trials aggravate injuries? What if involvement in a design project disrupts the participants’ social standing in a community in an unforeseen way? What if the time spent on design activities diverts vulnerable participants’ attention from addressing the key issues which are of important to them? I believe it is time to reconsider the best practices for design in sensitive areas from the point of view of the participant. Why should they help a design project? We cannot expect altruism on their part, nor a desire to further research knowledge. We must be careful that our own motivations for user centred design activities are not selfish.

We needn't be malevolent grumps in 2012

[cross posted from my CACM blog]

A few months back, Bertrand Meyer wrote about the nastiness problem in computer science, questioning whether we as reviewers are “malevolent grumps”. Judging by the user comments on the page, this hit a nerve with readers who were the victims of such grumpiness!  Jeanette Wing then followed up on this with some numbers from NSF grant rejections which did indeed indicate that computer scientists are hyper-critical. Much as I enjoy the colourful phrasing, I feel that a field full of malevolent grumps is not something we should simply accept. In fact, even if there are only a few grumps out there, it’s in all our interests to civilise them.

So what can computer scientists do to reduce the nastiness problem when reviewing? Reviewers, authors, programme committee members, conference chairs and journal editors can all do their bit by simply refusing to tolerate discourtesy. Let’s embrace the “no asshole” rule: we no longer ignore bad behaviour. As reviewers, we can aim to be polite (yet stringent) ourselves but also to point out to co-reviewers if we find their impoliteness unacceptable. As authors, we don’t have to accept a rude review and just lie down to lick our wounds. We can (politely!) raise the issue of rudeness with the programme chair or editor so it is less likely to occur in the future. As editors, chairs and programme committee members we can include the issue of courtesy in the reviewing guidelines and be firm about requesting reviewers to moderate their tone if we notice inappropriate remarks.

One of the first steps is to separate intellectual rigour from discourtesy. It is possible to be critical without being rude or dismissive.  We can maintain standards in the field without resorting to ill-natured comments. (Believe it or not, it is also possible to ask genuine questions at a conference without seeking to show off one’s own intellectual chops, but that is another matter). The purpose of reviewing, in my view, is to help an author improve their work, not to crush them under the weight of your own cleverness. It’s not the author’s fault that you had a bad day, or that some other reviewer just rejected your own paper. 

Of course, there are some pockets of good reviewing practice within the field which we can draw on. I am sure there are many, but I have chosen CHI because I have been writing for it recently. The CHI conference is one of the biggest well respected annual human computer interaction conferences. Last year there were 2000 attendees from 38 countries. This year there were 1577 paper submissions with a 23% acceptance rate.  This was the first year I submitted papers to it, and I have been impressed by the quality of the reviews in terms of their fairness, constructiveness and level of detail. They contained greater insight and intellectual oomph than the reviews I had from a high impact journal recently. For one of my CHI submissions, the reviewers did not agree with the paper on some points – it is on a controversial topic- but they still offered suggestions for how to resolve these issues rather than simply rejecting the paper. Was I just lucky in the reviewers I was allocated? Possibly, but the CHI reviewing process has some interesting features built in to maintain review quality*.

1. In the guidelines for reviewers, courtesy is explicitly mentioned: “please be polite to authors. Even if you rate a paper poorly, you can critique it in a positive voice. As part of polite reviewing practice, you should always state what is good about a paper first, followed by your criticisms. If possible, you should offer suggestions for improvement along with your criticism.” 

2. Authors can select both the sub-committee and the contribution type for a paper, which maximises the chance that the paper will end up with reviewers with appropriate expertise , and that the reviewers will use criteria appropriate to the paper when assessing its suitability (e.g. not insisting on empirical evidence for a theoretical contribution).
3.  The reviewing process is thorough and has several opportunities for unfairness or discourtesy to be weeded out. Each paper is blind reviewed by three or more experts, and then an associate chair writes a meta-review to summarise the assessment of the paper, and what action (if any) should be taken to improve it. In this way, individual grumpiness is moderated. A variant of this good practice from other conferences is when reviewers of the same paper can see each other’s reviews (once they have submitted their own), thus introducing peer pressure not to be awful.
4.  Authors have a right to reply by writing a rebuttal of the review. The rebuttal is taken into account along with a revised meta-review (and potentially revised individual reviews) at a two day committee meeting when final accept/reject decisions are made.
5. All submitting authors are surveyed about their opinions of the reviewing process – yet another chance to raise issues about unfairness or discourtesy which have not been addressed in a rebuttal.
6. This point is more about the nature of the conference itself, rather than the reviewing procedures. Because CHI is so interdisciplinary, participants have a wide range of backgrounds from art and design to hard core engineering. They are therefore exposed to – and may in fact seek out- different perspectives which may make them open to different paradigms as reviewers. Could colleagues from the arts and social sciences be having a civilising influence on the grumpy computer scientists?

Ts This is a fairly heavy weight process, but if conference organisers adopted even just one more of the practices from points 1-5, or if journal editors added a courtesy clause to their review instructions the world would be a slightly better place. Make it your New Year's resolution to stop tolerating malevolvent grumps in 2012!

 

*Thanks to Tom Erickson – the person who runs the CHI author survey – for kindly raising some of these points.

 

Interspecies interaction

[cross posted from CACM blog]

Human companions of felines will be relieved to know that the HCI community are looking out for them. As revealed in Noz and Jinsoo's 2011 CHI paper, cats can now be included in digital gaming experiences. If your cat has an iPad, and you have an iPhone, you're all set. Just download an app and a little mouse darts about the iPad screen for your cat to chase. In multi-player mode you can control where the mouse runs on the iPad using your iPhone. (see here  for a video demo ) Naturally accessibility is considered – the researchers have “designed the interface to support cat's colour acuity” in order to cater for colour blind cats (i.e. the entire species).

The CHI community have a noble history of supporting interspecies interaction. In 2006 Teh, Lee and Cheok unleashed Poultry.Internet on the world. As the authors put it: “In order to bridge the ever-increasing divide between human and pet, we propose a remote multi-modal interaction system between poultry pet and human. This system allows humans to provide affection and interact with their poultry friends anytime, anywhere through the Internet.” This paper has my favourite caption of all time: “user touching doll and chicken remotely”. I will leave you to imagine the photo for yourself, based on the information that it involves a blue harness for the chicken and a man fondling a motorised yellow squeezy blob. It plays out like this. Man is at work. Chicken is at home. Man misses chicken. Chicken misses man. Man fondles yellow blob, blue chicken jacket vibrates on chicken. Chicken feels less lonely. Chicken moves around yard at home. Yellow blob motors around man's desk. Man is much comforted. Readers who are wishing that they too had a poultry friend may be interested to learn that the researchers went on to develop a similar system called Huggy Pajamas for parents who miss their children.

Laudable as these pioneering projects are, I feel that the field needs to develop species appropriate interaction design methodologies. The cat researchers did naturalistic observations of cat owners at play with their pets using the iPad app. They interviewed the owners, but not the cats. Surely we need to hear from both users, regardless of species? I propose the Purr-o-meter by which cat satisfaction is assumed to be proportional to the volume and frequency of throat vibration in the feline. And it appears to me that the cats were not equal design partners in this game. According to Druin's methodology for working with children, users can be equal design partners, informants or testers. Here the cats (and chickens)for that matter were merely testers, doomed to merely use products but have no input into their design. At the next CHI conference I will be looking out for a paper describing the design process of an intergenerational AND interspecies design team.

 

In the mean time, here is a picture of one of my cats playing an iPad cat game.

 

Frank Noz and Jinsoo An. 2011. Cat cat revolution: an interspecies gaming experience. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2661-2664. DOI=10.1145/1978942.1979331 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1978942.1979331

James Keng Soon Teh, Adrian David Cheok, Roshan L. Peiris, Yongsoon Choi, Vuong Thuong, and Sha Lai. 2008. Huggy Pajama: a mobile parent and child hugging communication system. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Interaction design and children (IDC '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 250-257. DOI=10.1145/1463689.1463763 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1463689.1463763

 

Keng Soon Teh, Shang Ping Lee, and Adrian David Cheok. 2006. Poultry.Internet: a remote human-pet interaction system. In CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 251-254. DOI=10.1145/1125451.1125505 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1125451.1125505