Mind mapping is a popular way to explore a design space in creative thinking exercises, allowing users to form associations between concepts. Yet, most existing digital tools for mind mapping focus on authoring and organization, with little support for addressing the challenges of mind mapping such as stagnation and design fixation. We present Spinneret, a functional approach to aid mind mapping by providing suggestions based on a knowledge graph. Spinneret uses biased random walks to explore the knowledge graph in the neighborhood of an existing concept node in the mind map, and provides "suggestions" for the user to add to the mind map. A comparative study with a baseline mind-mapping tool reveals that participants created more diverse and distinct concepts with Spinneret, and reported that the suggestions inspired them to think of ideas they would otherwise not have explored.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376746
While craft has had increasing influence on HCI research, HCI researchers tend to engage craft in limited capacities, often focusing on the juxtapositions of "traditional" craft and "innovative" computing. In this paper, we describe the structure and results of a six-week "experimental weaving residency" to show how HCI practitioners, engineers, and craftspeople perform similar work and can productively collaborate to envision new technological interfaces at early stages of development. We address both social and technical challenges of residencies and critically reflect on biases about technical and craft labor that we held prior to the residency. We share our experiences and lessons learned in the hopes of supporting future collaborations with craftspeople and broadening the techniques we use to address design challenges.
Gardening is an activity that involves a number of dimensions of increasing interest to HCI and CSCW researchers, including recreation, sustainability, and engagement with nature. This paper considers the garden setting in order to understand the role that collaborative and social computing technologies might play for practitioners engaging in outdoor skilled activities. We conducted participant observations with nine experienced gardeners aged 22-71 years. Through this process, we find that gardeners continuously configure their environments to accommodate their preferences for sociality. They share embodied skills and help others attune to sensory information in person, but also influence learning through the features in their garden that are observed by others. This paper provides an understanding of sociality in the garden, highlights skill sharing as a key domain for design in this space, and contributes design considerations for collaborative technologies in outdoor settings.
Design workshops are a popular means of including older adults in technology development. However, there are open questions around how to best scaffold this participation, particularly in supporting older adults to associate their designs with themselves, rather than designing for an "other older adult." By conducting workshops focusing on envisioning the future of internet of things (IoT) technologies at home, we provide an understanding of how older individuals participate in group activities to conceptualize technology for themselves. We find that at different stages of the design process, individuals shift in who they envision the end user of the technology: at first, they think about common older adult needs, then turn to designing for themselves. Individuals' attitudes towards technology also impact group dynamics along with final design ideas. Our discussion contributes to an understanding of how to support older adults in designing for themselves, new perspectives on aging-in-place technologies, and recommendations for configuring design workshops with older individuals.
Collaborative robots, or cobots, represent a breakthrough technology designed for high-level (e.g. collaborative) interactions between workers and robots with capabilities for flexible deployment in industries such as manufacturing. Understanding how workers and companies use and integrate cobots is important to inform the future design of cobot systems and educational technologies that facilitate effective worker-cobot interaction. Yet, little is known about typical training for collaboration and the application of cobots in manufacturing. To close this gap, we interviewed nine experts in manufacturing about their experience with cobots. Our thematic analysis revealed that, contrary to the envisioned use, experts described most cobot applications as only low-level (e.g. pressing start/stop buttons) interactions with little flexible deployment, and experts felt traditional robotics skills were needed for collaborative and flexible interaction with cobots. We conclude with design recommendations for improved future robots, including programming and interface designs, and educational technologies to support collaborative use.