Children today are deeply immersed in the online world, where their activities are routinely tracked, analysed, and monetised. This exposes them to various datafication risks, including harmful profiling, micro-targeting and behavioural engineering. Most existing measures focus on immediate online threats, rather than informing children about these implicit risks. In this paper, we present The KOALA Hero Toolkit, a hybrid toolkit designed to help children and parents jointly understand the datafication risks posed by their mobile apps. Through user studies involving 17 families we evaluate how the toolkit influenced families' thought processes, perceptions and decision-making regarding mobile datafication risks. Our findings show that KOALA Hero supports families' critical thinking and promotes family engagement. We identify future design recommendations for family support, featuring ideas such as integrating triggering moments and bonding moments in toolkit designs. This work provides timely inputs on global efforts aimed at addressing datafication risks and underscores the importance of strengthening legislative and policy enforcement of ethical data governance.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642283
Although video is extremely useful for expressing interaction, post-hoc editing makes it impractical for rapid prototyping. We present an early-stage video-based design method — “editing-in-the-camera” — where title cards guide video capture and label video clips. This method lets designers easily create video prototypes that can be discussed within the same design session, without further editing. We present VideoClipper, a mobile app that incorporates this method by transforming sequences of title cards into an interactive storyboard that designers can shoot into directly. VideoClipper offers simple special effects to better illustrate user interaction with paper prototypes, including ghosting and stop-motion animation. We also present Collaborative VideoClipper, which was created during the COVID-19 pandemic to support multi-user, multi-device rapid prototyping with remote participants. We describe evaluation results of both applications and describe our experiences in diverse educational and professional settings, including brainstorming, interviewing, video prototyping, user studies and participatory design workshops.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642458
Recent combinations of interactive technology, humans, and water have resulted in “WaterHCI”. WaterHCI design seeks to complement the many benefits of engagement with the aquatic domain, by offering, for example, augmented reality systems for snorkelers, virtual reality in floatation tanks, underwater musical instruments for artists, robotic systems for divers, and wearables for swimmers. We conducted a workshop in which WaterHCI experts articulated the field’s grand challenges, aiming to contribute towards a systematic WaterHCI research agenda and ultimately advance the field.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642052
Much reporting on research-through-design (RtD) is vague about markers of time and temporal qualities. This lack of temporal attunement risks obscuring important contextual knowledge, hidden labour, material agencies and potential knowledge contributions. We turn to the notion of the event to articulate the granularities and nuances of RtD processes with an expanded vocabulary. We draw on prior calls from RtD practitioners, the philosophical roots of events, and our previous work with the term in our own research. We describe seven terms to expand the temporal vocabulary of RtD, which can be used to build narratives that emphasize knowledge created along the way, and relieve pressure from the ‘final’ artifact. Our contributions are 1) design events as an ontological shift and analytical tool and 2) a vocabulary that scaffolds design events as a sensitizing tool. We end with a call for more experimentation of non-chronological narratives of RtD.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642560
Product managers are central figures in digital product development, coordinating teams and prioritizing features. Despite their influence, little research explores how their decisions affect user experience, especially in integrating social values into product architecture. Employing a mixed-methods framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 product managers and an online survey with an additional 81, all based in Israel. Our study identifies four unique strategies product managers utilize to balance business goals, user satisfaction, and ethical considerations. The survey data further substantiates the prevalence of these strategies across diverse sectors, confirming they reflect industry-wide approaches in the Israeli tech sector rather than isolated practices. To conclude, we emphasize how ``soft resistance'' tactics, such as adjusting data interpretations based on personal values, impact digital product designs. Moreover, our findings highlight that maintaining an ethical reputation in the job market can be pivotal in shaping product design.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642409