While various frameworks and heuristics exist within the HCI community to guide research and design for vulnerable populations, most are centered on the researcher's involvement. In this work, we developed a conceptual framework for supporting the participation of vulnerable populations in the research and design of technologies. Building upon Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we synthesized 84 research articles that focus on vulnerable populations and technology to develop our framework. This framework conceptualizes both the barriers, such as lack of technology access and digital literacy, and assets, like social relationships, that impact effective participation in research and design. Using our framework can guide researchers in identifying and fulfilling the technology-related needs of vulnerable populations, leading to more empowering research participation for these groups. The framework's guiding questions offer researchers the opportunity to reflect on their approach prior to and during their collaboration with vulnerable populations in technology research and design.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581221
School refusal is a complex issue which typically develops in adolescence, often in the context of anxiety and depressive disorders. While parents and educators play a critical role in supporting these adolescents, they need guidance to work together to overcome the problem. Our study explores how technology can be designed to help parents and educators work together in supporting adolescents who refuse school. We first conducted 14 interviews with parents which highlighted that empathic understanding and communication between parents and the educators is key to supporting adolescents with school refusal. Subsequently, we conducted co-design workshops with three parents, three adolescents and five educators. Our workshop findings show that reactive and problem-focused communication can undermine trust-building and progress towards supporting the adolescent. Drawing on these findings, we formulate design implications that can enable empathic parent-adolescent-educator partnerships, provide holistic support for parents, and facilitate individual tailoring for diverse parent-adolescent journeys.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581312
Challenges associated with ADHD affect children’s daily routines and response to environmental stimuli, and support from parents is helpful in managing and overcoming behavior regulation challenges. Positive reinforcement is increasingly integrated into family technologies for teaching regulation skills, but typically support specific co-located activities. To better understand how technology can support co-regulation within families with ADHD children, we deployed CoolTaco, a smartwatch and phone system to support collaboration in creating tasks, gaining points for achieving them, and redeeming rewards. Ten families with ADHD children used CoolTaco in their daily routines. By qualitatively analyzing family interviews and usage logs, we find that smartwatches can help provide pervasive regulation support to children, but the division across devices and parent-child roles interfere with developing independence. We discuss how technology should support co-regulation while also fostering future self-regulation, such as by guiding children in goal setting and helping them reflect on progress and achievements.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581316
We present the insights from participatory design work that explores notions of Diversity Computing (DivComp) and how HCI can meaningfully engage with designing technology around diversity without resorting to tokenistic approaches. A future goal overarching the initial findings in this paper is to design technologically mediated, physical spaces (DivComp Spaces) within a school context where children meet, experiment and learn the complex dynamics of othering. We report on a series of nine workshops with 48 children. Based on a thematic analysis, we present four themes --- Technology as Utility and Authority, Individual and Collective Place-Making, Staged and Emerging Conflicts, Belonging to the Group and Self-Expression --- which we use to inform three design directions for developing DivComp Spaces specifically in the context of school. Finally, we critically reflect on our design practice and the difficulties of designing not only for, but also with diversity meaningfully embedded into design processes.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581155
The practice of interactive documentary can provide participatory opportunities thanks to its capacity for making space for audiences to leave their marks in a film. However, participants’ inclusion has often been limited to an a-posteriori contribution of materials rather than a structural involvement in the film design. What happens when we treat participants as authors and let them imagine and design their own interactive film? This paper explores how design processes from participatory filmmaking can be adapted to achieve this goal by presenting the design process that led to the production of an interactive participatory film on mental health, Stepping Through Interactive. Five participants with lived experience of mental health problems explored, designed, and produced a non-linear film form to effectively represent their personal accounts of mental health. We review the challenges faced and the strategies deployed in the design process in view of supporting similar forms of production in other contexts.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581031
Mental health symptoms are commonly discovered in primary care. Yet, these settings are not set up to provide psychological treatment. Digital interventions can play a crucial role in stepped care management of patients' symptoms where patients are offered a low intensity intervention, and treatment evolves to incorporate providers if needed. Though digital interventions often use smartphone and wearable sensor data, little is known about patients' desires to use this data to manage mental health symptoms. In 10 interviews with patients with symptoms of depression and anxiety, we explored their: symptom self-management, current and desired use of sensor data, and comfort sharing such data with providers. Findings support the use digital interventions to manage mental health, yet they also highlight a misalignment in patient needs and current efforts to use sensors. We outline considerations for future research, including extending design thinking to wraparound services that may be necessary to truly reduce healthcare burden.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581209