UBISS 2018: Workshops & Instructors

Workshop A: HUMANISTIC HCI

Although it has influenced the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) since its origins, humanistic HCI has come into its own since the early 2000s. In that time, it has made substantial contributions to HCI theory and methodologies and also had major influence in user experience (UX) design, aesthetic interaction, and emancipatory/social change-oriented approaches to HCI.

In this workshop, we first survey humanistic epistemologies and methods as well as their contributions to HCI. For the majority of the course, students will practice humanistic approaches to HCI. Students will individually identify a design research domain. They will engage in a series of critical-interpretative activities helping them to progressively and generatively frame and re-frame their research domain. They will choose a critical or humanistic theoretical reading (from a collection we provide) and develop an account of how it might apply to their domain. They will identify a collection of design artifacts relevant to their research domain critique them from both aesthetic and emancipatory/political perspectives. And they will develop a proposal for a research project to be conducted after the workshop, reflecting humanistic standards of research processes (e.g., theoretical stances and methodological approaches) and research products (e.g., contributions to theory, critiques of prevailing research methods/framings).

Maximum number of participants to be enrolled to the workshop: 20 (full)

Instructors:
Prof. Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University, USA
Prof. Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University, USA

Jeffrey Bardzell is a Professor of Informatics and Director of the HCI/Design program in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University–Bloomington. His research examines both design theory and emerging social computing practices. His work on design theory has focused on critical design, research through design, and design criticism. His research on emerging social computing practices includes critical-empirical studies on maker communities in the United States and Asia, intimate and sexual interaction, and online creative communities. A common thread throughout this work is the use of aesthetics—including the history of criticism, critical theory, and analytic aesthetics—to understand how concepts, materials, forms, ideologies, experiential qualities, and creative processes achieve coherence in design objects. He is co-editor of Critical Theory and Interaction Design (MIT Press, in press) and co-author of Humanistic HCI (Synthesis Lectures in Human-Centered Informatics). He is working on a monograph, tentatively titled, Design as Research. Bardzell’s work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing.

Shaowen Bardzell is a Professor of Informatics in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University and the Affiliated Faculty of the Kinsey Institute. Bardzell holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University and pursues a humanistic research agenda within the research and practice of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). A common thread throughout her work is the exploration of the contributions of feminism, design, and social science to support technology’s role in social change. Recent research foci have included care ethics and feminist utopian perspectives on IT, research through design, women’s health, and posthumanist approaches to sustainable design. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation, Intel Corporation, and the Mellon Foundation among others. She is the co-editor of Critical Theory and Interaction Design (MIT Press, forthcoming) and co-author of Humanistic HCI (Morgan & Claypool, 2015). She co-directs the Cultural Research in Technology (CRIT) Lab at Indiana University.

Workshop B: WEARABLE AND MOBILE HEALTH AND BEHAVIOR TRACKING

Thanks to the rapid technological development, wearable and mobile technologies, smartphones allow people to be reachable anywhere and anytime. In addition to the benefits for end users, researchers and developers can benefit from the powerful devices for tracking behavior and health. This workshop brings together researchers with an interest on using mobile and wearable devices as instruments to collect data and conduct mobile user studies, with a focus on understanding human behavior and health. Topics covered by this workshop include: mobile-enabled health technologies, quantified-self movement, mobile sensing and strategies for data collection in user studies to understand human behavior, context-aware mobile platforms, multimodal interaction, and end-user applications.

The workshop will be conducted as mini-track lectures and hands-on prototyping sessions, brainstorming, and development hackathon for the final mobile health application. Participants must have Android Studio installed on their laptops and an Android smartphone running Android 4.4 or higher (do not forget the USB cable for debugging your applications). We will provide the sample-code for the prototyping session, development slides and one-to-one tutorials during this workshop. Participants should have experience in Java programming, and have a basic knowledge on Android programming by e.g. following some of the online tutorials.

Maximum number of participants to be enrolled to the workshop: 24 (full)

Instructors:
Prof. Jakob E. Bardram, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Adj. Prof. Denzil Ferreira, University of Oulu, Finland

Jakob E. Bardram is Professor in computer science at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (DTU Compute). Adjunct professor in public health at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen (KU SUND). Director of the Copenhagen Center for Health Technology (CACHET). His research interests include Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Mobile and Embedded Sensing, and Software Architecture. Currently, the main application areas of this research is within healthcare, ranging from interactive displays for clinical logistics to personal health technology for mental health. Based on the research done in the MONARCA project, Bardram co-founded Monsenso, which provides mHealth technology for mental disorders. Based on the research done in the AWARE project, I co-founded Cetrea developing pervasive computing technology for hospitals, which was acquired by the Geting Group in 2014. I also helped start up CLC Bio developing bioinformatics software, which was acquired by Qiagen in 2013. Prof. Bardram is a senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and member of the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences (ATV). He is an associate editor on the ACM Proceedings on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (PACM IMWUT) and the Journal of Human–Computer Interaction and serves on numerous program and organizing committees for both ACM and IEEE conferences. In 2012, he was awarded the Informatics Europe Curriculum Award for the ‘Pervasive Computing Curriculum’ that he has been developing and teaching both at the University of Aarhus and at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Denzil Ferreira is Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oulu, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE), the Deputy Director of the Center for Ubiquitous Computing and the Principal Investigator of the Community Instrumentation and Awareness (CIA) research group. His main research interest is on technology-driven human behavior sensing and modeling, where he juxtapose methods from large-scale data analysis, sensor instrumentation, applied machine learning, mobile and ubiquitous computing to understand and study a variety of human behavioral and social phenomena in naturalistic settings. Combined, they enable a better understanding of how people use technology and most importantly, why they may use such technology. He believes technology should be imagined, developed and shared to tackle the most challenging societal issues. To facilitate this venture, he created AWARE (http://awareframework.com) during his PhD. AWARE is an interdisciplinary and collaborative mobile context and sensors’ data collection tool. By supporting and encouraging multidisciplinary collaboration from the ground up, AWARE is today one of his major academic accomplishments. Engaged in research efforts worldwide, AWARE is open-source and it is widely adopted by researchers and engineers in different domains. He is a Review Editor for Frontiers in Human-Media Interaction, IEEE Communications Society Magazine. He acts as an expert Proposal Reviewer in the Flanders Research Foundation, and the Icelandic Research Fund. He is an Associate Editor at the PACM IMWUT and participates in multiple program committees from ACM and IEEE conferences. He organises the Ubiquitous Mobile Instrumentation workshop, collocated with ACM UbiComp since 2012.

Workshop C: DESIGNING FOR THE MARGINS (EXTRA-URBAN INTERACTIONS)

The opportunities for ubiquitous computing in urban environments are clear and smart cities have taken this from lab to street. Many larger cities also have open data initiatives so that sensor data can be collected and analysed using big data techniques, and the resulting large data sets combined with moment-to-moment sensing and user interaction to enable public displays and visualisations.

However, what happens beyond the margins of the urban heart?

At the geographic extremes, connectivity may be patchy or slow; however, closer to centres of cities those at the social margins, the poor, elderly, disabled often have limited access to digital technology due to cost or accessibility. Even at the very centre there are liminal places, below the railway bridges where the homeless sleep, or the backstreets where sex workers wait.

For some, the walker, the cyclist, the climber, the runner, the margins are chosen for their inaccessibility and even disconnection, and yet connectivity can be important for navigation or emergencies. For others, their marginality is not chosen.

Designing for the margins is often more challenging than for the connected centre. Mobile connectivity may be limited or absent; fixed networks patchy or slow; users may be widely distributed or inaccessible for other reasons; instead of small numbers of large homogeneous datasets, you will encounter large numbers of small heterogeneous data items; hardware needs to be cheap and easy to maintain; and systems have to continue to have relevance and currency without dedicated support or curation.

In this workshop we will explore the potential for digital technology in these marginal places: for those who are there by choice, and those by necessity. This will include ways to understand the needs and these different environments and cultures within a culture, seeing the strengths in communities as well as fragility of infrastructure. You will seek out available data for selected communities, and examine ways in which they can also be data creators through sensing or stories. By the end of the week, you will have worked together to create a number of prototypes for interventions to inform and empower those at the edge.

We are aiming for applicants from a range of backgrounds including some more adept at understanding contexts and people and some with technical skills (e.g. programming, prototyping, design).

Maximum number of participants to be enrolled to the workshop: 24 (few seats left)

Instructors:
Prof. Alan Dix, Swansea University, UK
Adj. Prof. Simo Hosio, University of Oulu, Finland

Alan Dix is the Director for the new Computational Foundry at Swansea University, UK and part-time independent consultant, researcher and educator. He has worked in human–computer interaction research since the mid 1980s, and is the author of one of the major international textbooks on HCI as well as of over 450 research publications covering topics from formal methods to creativity including some of the earliest papers in HCI on topics including privacy and mobile interaction. In 2013 he produced an HCI MOOC that is now hosted at InteractionDesign.org and in the same year he walked 1000 miles round the coast of Wales. The data from the latter is available in the public domain as an ‘open science’ resource. Many recent projects have a data theme including an analysis of the UK REF public domain data and working with musicologists on re-imagining digital archives for the humanities. He organises a twice yearly workshop, Tiree Tech Wave, on the small Scottish island where he lives, and where he has been engaged in a number of projects relating to heritage, communications, energy use and open data.

Simo Hosio is an Adjunct Professor (social computing) at the University of Oulu, Finland. Hosio obtained his PhD with a 3-year scholarship from Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK and is currently funded by the Academy of Finland. He has won several best paper/presentation awards and other independent research grants from a number of foundations. Hosio has worked extensively with public urban technologies, and he was one of the original team that designed, created, installed and maintained the decade-long long public field trial with public multipurpose displays (the UBI-hotspots) in Oulu. Hosio has over 80 publications and has lately been focusing on crowdsourcing. He has created and actively develops a crowd-powered personal decision-support system (https://ab3000.net) that has been used together with domain expert collaborators in the context of wicked problems, such as low back pain, obesity and racism. Most importantly, he is a seasoned UBI Summer School organizer and can therefore ensure that workshop C will be a memorable experience for all the lucky participants!

Workshop D: MAKE. WEAR. MATTER: EXPLORATIONS IN DESIGN, MAKING & CREATIVITY

The elaboration of low cost sensing, actuated materials with programmable properties, and light and long-lasting batteries opens the door to creative combinations of computing, making and craft. In this workshop, students will design, develop, debug, and demonstrate wearable technologies: gadgets, clothing, jewelry, and other adornments that embed and embody computational media for various and sundry purposes that matter in our lives—from fun, play and fashion to health and well-being. Students will explore synergies between computing, design and state-of-the art fabrication technologies to expand their gadget creation skills. We will investigate possibilities that arise from the new paradigm of ubiquitous computing and digital manufacturing, tackling the inventive and engaging essence of making wearables that matter in our lives.

The workshop builds upon physical, computational and conceptual tools of making to expand students’ skills and creative confidence in prototyping wearable technologies. Students will gain an overview of the state of the art in making and creativity in the context of wearable technology. Reviewing a broad spectrum of inspirational examples will place students’ projects at the forefront of wearable technology development, focusing on creative exploration as well as on inventive, emotional and engaging interactions.

After outlining the design space of wearable technologies, surveying materials and supplies for designing, and implementing wearable technologies, students will imagine and create project prototypes using hardware, software tools and resources at FabLab Oulu. In the final workshop session, each student or team of students will present and demonstrate their work, along with an explanation of the context, realization and importance.

As for learning outcomes: Each student will have opportunities to expand skills and creative confidence in prototyping wearable technology with scope in explorations of novel grounds. Developing an inventive, engaging (and fun) atmosphere of collaboration and reflection are crucial to individuals’ personal growth.

We seek participants from a variety of backgrounds and professional experience in order to maximize the mix of ideas. Each will be inquisitive and excited to explore the possibilities of the tools and machinery in the Oulu FabLab. There are no specific prerequisites, but participants will need to perform basic programming tasks and develop 2D and 3D models to create physical parts on the FabLab machines.

Maximum number of participants to be enrolled to the workshop: 20 (few seats left)

Instructors:
Prof. Mark D. Gross, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Prof. Ellen Yi-Luen Do, University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Adj. Prof. Georgi V. Georgiev, University of Oulu, Finland

Mark D. Gross is director of the ATLAS Institute and professor of computer science at University of Colorado Boulder. He also co-founder of Modular Robotics Incorporated and Blank Slate Systems with former PhD students. Previously he was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington Seattle; before that, he worked at Atari Cambridge Research, Logo Computer Systems, Kurzweil Computer Systems, the MIT Logo Lab and the Architecture Machine Group. Once upon a time, he studied architecture at MIT, where he became fascinated with how design works, and how computational tools could support designing. He still is. He have worked on many different things: intelligent computer aided design, virtual environments and design simulation, modular robotics and computationally enhanced construction kits and craft, tangible interaction design, sketch and diagram recognition, digital fabrication and more.

Ellen Yi-Luen Do invents at the intersections of people, design and technology. She works on computational tools for design, especially sketching, creativity and design cognition, including creativity support tools and design studies, tangible and embedded interaction and, most recently, computing for health and wellness. She holds a PhD in Design Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a bachelor’s from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. She has served on the faculties of University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Institute of Technology. From 2013 to 2016, she co-directed the Keio-NUS CUTE Center in Singapore, a research unit investigating Connected Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments. She enjoys playing the Djembe and performs at festivals and other venues with The Sensua Players.

Georgi V. Georgiev is an adjunct professor of design research and a senior research fellow at the Center for Ubiquitous Computing, University of Oulu. His research interests are in design creativity, digital fabrication and prototyping, design cognition, user interaction and experience, and design thinking. Georgi’s research is focusing both on early stage of design process, when the new and innovative ideas are generated, and user’s perspective on the design outcome, that is essential for understanding challenges for success of digital technologies. He is actively involved in foundation, organization and development of the Special Interest Group Design Creativity (SIG DC) at the Design Society, six International Conferences on Design Creativity (ICDC), as well as in the editorial team of International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation since its inception. Georgi was previously with Kobe University, Japan and Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST). He has experience from university-industry collaborative research projects in Japan and holds PhD in knowledge science for his research in the area of design creativity from JAIST.