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Smart heating systems are one of the core components of smart homes. A large portion of domestic energy consumption is derived from HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, making them a relevant topic of the efforts to support an energy transition in private housing. For that reason, the technology has attracted attention both from the academic and the industry communities. User interfaces of smart heating systems have evolved from simple adjusting knobs to advanced data visualization interfaces, that allow for more advanced setting such as time tables and status information. With the advent of AI, we are interested in exploring how the interfaces will be evolving to build the connection between user needs and underlying AI system. Hence, this paper is targeted to provide early design implications towards an AI-based user interface for smart heating systems.
Sharing economies enabled by technical platforms have been studied regarding their economic, legal, and social effects, as well as with regard to their possible influences on CSCW topics such as work, collaboration, and trust. While a lot current research is focusing on the sharing economy and related communities, there is little work addressing the phenomenon from a socio-technical point of view. Our workshop is meant to address this gap. Building on research themes and discussion from last year’s ECSCW, we seek to engage deeper with topics such as novel socio-technical approaches for enabling sharing communities, discussing issues around digital consumer and worker protection, as well as emerging challenges and opportunities of existing platforms and approaches.
Diese Studie untersucht die Aneignung und Nutzung von Sprachassistenten wie Google Assistant oder Amazon Alexa in Privathaushalten. Unsere Forschung basiert auf zehn Tiefeninterviews mit Nutzern von Sprachassistenten sowie der Evaluation bestimmter Interaktionen in der Interaktionshistorie. Unsere Ergebnisse illustrieren, zu welchen Anlässen Sprachassistenten im heimischen Umfeld genutzt werden, welche Strategien sich die Nutzer in der Interaktion mit Sprachassistenten angeeignet haben, wie die Interaktion abläuft und welche Schwierigkeiten sich bei der Einrichtung und Nutzung des Sprachassistenten ergeben haben. Ein besonderer Fokus der Studie liegt auf Fehlinteraktionen, also Situationen, in denen die Interaktion scheitert oder zu scheitern droht. Unsere Studie zeigt, dass das Nutzungspotenzial der Assistenten häufig nicht ausgeschöpft wird, da die Interaktion in komplexeren Anwendungsfällen häufig misslingt. Die Nutzer verwenden daher den Sprachassistenten eher in einfachen Anwendungsfällen und neue Apps und Anwendungsfälle werden gar nicht erst ausprobiert. Eine Analyse der Aneignungsstrategien, beispielsweise durch eine selbst erstellte Liste mit Befehlen, liefert Erkenntnisse für die Gestaltung von Unterstützungswerkzeugen sowie die Weiterentwicklung und Optimierung von sprachbasierten Mensch-Maschine-Interfaces.
There has been a growing interest in taste research in the HCI and CSCW communities. However, the focus is more on stimulating the senses, while the socio-cultural aspects have received less attention. However, individual taste perception is mediated through social interaction and collective negotiation and is not only dependent on physical stimulation. Therefore, we study the digital mediation of taste by drawing on ethnographic research of four online wine tastings and one self-organized event. Hence, we investigated the materials, associated meanings, competences, procedures, and engagements that shaped the performative character of tasting practices. We illustrate how the tastings are built around the taste-making process and how online contexts differ in providing a more diverse and distributed environment. We then explore the implications of our findings for the further mediation of taste as a social and democratized phenomenon through online interaction.
Trust and Social Capital: Revisiting an Offshoring Failure Story of a Small German Software Company
(2009)
Regions and their innovation ecosystems have increasingly become of interest to CSCW research as the context in which work, research and design takes place. Our study adds to this growing discourse, by providing preliminary data and reflections from an ongoing attempt to intervene and support a regional innovation ecosystem. We report on the benefits and shortcomings of a practice-oriented approach in such regional projects and highlight the importance of relations and the notion of spillover. Lastly, we discuss methodological and pragmatic hurdles that CSCW research needs to overcome in order to support regional innovation ecosystems successfully.
Die nutzerInnenfreundliche Formulierung von Zwecken der Datenverarbeitung von Sprachassistenten
(2020)
2019 wurde bekannt, dass mehrere Anbieter von Sprachassistenten Sprachaufnahmen ihrer NutzerInnen systematisch ausgewertet haben. Da in den Datenschutzhinweisen angegeben war, dass Daten auch zur Verbesserung des Dienstes genutzt würden, war diese Nutzung legal. Für die NutzerInnen stellte diese Auswertung jedoch einen deutlichen Bruch mit ihren Privatheitsvorstellungen dar. Das Zweckbindungsprinzip der DSGVO mit seiner Komponente der Zweckspezifizierung fordert neben Flexibilität für den Verarbeiter auch Transparenz für den Verbraucher. Vor dem Hintergrund dieses Interessenkonflikts stellt sich für die HCI die Frage, wie Verarbeitungszwecke von Sprachassistenten gestaltet sein sollten, um beide Anforderungen zu erfüllen. Für die Erhebung einer Nutzerperspektive analysiert diese Studie zunächst Zweckangaben in den Datenschutzhinweisen der dominierenden Sprachassistenten. Darauf aufbauend präsentieren wir Ergebnisse von Fokusgruppen, die sich mit der wahrgenommenen Verarbeitung von Daten von Sprachassistenten aus Nutzersicht befassen. Es zeigt sich, dass bestehende Zweckformulierungen für VerbraucherInnen kaum Transparenz über Folgen der Datenverarbeitung bieten und keine einschränkende Wirkung im Hinblick auf legale Datennutzung erzielen. Unsere Ergebnisse über von Nutzern wahrgenommene Risiken erlauben dabei Rückschlüsse auf die anwenderfreundliche Gestaltung von Verarbeitungszwecken im Sinne einer Design-Ressource.
3D Printers as Sociable Technologies: Taking Appropriation Infrastructures to the Internet of Things
(2017)
Beyond HCI and CSCW: Challenges and Useful Practices Towards a Human-Centred Vision of AI and IA
(2019)
Focus on what matters: improved feature selection techniques for personal thermal comfort modelling
(2022)
Occupants' personal thermal comfort (PTC) is indispensable for their well-being, physical and mental health, and work efficiency. Predicting PTC preferences in a smart home can be a prerequisite to adjusting the indoor temperature for providing a comfortable environment. In this research, we focus on identifying relevant features for predicting PTC preferences. We propose a machine learning-based predictive framework by employing supervised feature selection techniques. We apply two feature selection techniques to select the optimal sets of features to improve the thermal preference prediction performance. The experimental results on a public PTC dataset demonstrated the efficiency of the feature selection techniques that we have applied. In turn, our PTC prediction framework with feature selection techniques achieved state-of-the-art performance in terms of accuracy, Cohen's kappa, and area under the curve (AUC), outperforming conventional methods.
Voice assistants (VA) collect data about users’ daily life including interactions with other connected devices, musical preferences, and unintended interactions. While users appreciate the convenience of VAs, their understanding and expectations of data collection by vendors are often vague and incomplete. By making the collected data explorable for consumers, our research-through-design approach seeks to unveil design resources for fostering data literacy and help users in making better informed decisions regarding their use of VAs. In this paper, we present the design of an interactive prototype that visualizes the conversations with VAs on a timeline and provides end users with basic means to engage with data, for instance allowing for filtering and categorization. Based on an evaluation with eleven households, our paper provides insights on how users reflect upon their data trails and presents design guidelines for supporting data literacy of consumers in the context of VAs.
Appropriating Digital Fabrication Technologies — A comparative study of two 3D Printing Communities
(2015)
Digital fabrication technologies have a great potential for empowering consumers to produce their own creations. However, despite the growing availability of digital fabrication technologies in shared machine shops such as FabLabs or University Labs, they are often perceived as difficult to use, especially by users with limited technological aptitude. Hence, it is not yet clear if the potentials of the technology can be made accessible to a broader public, or if they will remain limited to some form of “maker elite”. In this paper, we study the appropriation of digital fabrication on the example of the use of 3D printers in two different communities. In doing so, we analyze how users conceptualize their use of the 3D printers, what kind of contextual understanding is necessary to work with the machines, and how users document and share their knowledge. Based on our empirical findings, we identify the potentials that the machines offer to the communities, and what kind of challenges have to be overcome in their appropriation of the technology.
Software offshoring has been established as an important business strategy over the last decade. While research on such forms of Global Software Development (GSD) has mainly focused on the situation of large enterprises, small enterprises are increasingly engaging in offshoring, too. Representing the biggest share of the German software industry, small companies are known to be important innovators and market pioneers. They often regard their flexibility and customer-orientation as core competitive advantages. Unlike large corporations, their small size allows them to adopt software development approaches that are characterized by a high agility and flat hierarchies. At the same time, their distinct strategies make it unlikely that they can simply adopt management strategies that were developed for larger companies.
Flexible development approaches like the ones preferred by small corporations have proven to be problematic in the context of offshoring, as their strong dependency on constant communication is strongly affected by the various barriers of international cooperation between companies. Cooperating closely over companies’ borders in different time zones and in culturally diverse teams poses complex obstacles for flexible management approaches. It is still a matter of discussion in fields like Software Engineering and Computer Supported Cooperative Work how these obstacles can be tackled and how they affect companies in the long term. Hence, it is agreed that we need a more detailed understanding of distributed software development practices in order to come to feasible technological and organizational solutions.
This dissertation presents results from two ethnographically-informed case studies of software offshoring in small German enterprises. By adopting Anselm Strauss’ concept of articulation work, we want to deepen the understanding of managing distributed software development in flexible, customer-oriented organizations. In doing so, we show how practices of coordinating inter-organizational software development are closely related to aspects of organizational learning in small enterprises. By means of interviews with developers and project managers from both parties of the cooperation, we do not only take into account the multiple perspectives of the cooperation, but also include the socio-cultural background of international software development projects into our analysis.
This paper aspires to develop a deeper understanding of the sharing/collaborative/platform economy, and in particular of the technical mechanisms upon which the digital platforms supporting it are built. In surveying the research literature, the paper identifies a gap between studies from economical, social or socio-technical angles, and presentations of detailed technical solutions. Most cases study larger, ‘monotechnological’ platforms, rather than local platforms that lend components from several technologies. Almost no literature takes a design perspective. Rooted in Sharing & Caring, an EU COST Action (network), the paper presents work to systematically map out functionalities across domains of the sharing economy. The 145 technical mechanisms we collected illustrate how most platforms are depending on a limited number of functionalities that lack in terms of holding communities together. The paper points to the necessity of a better terminology and concludes by discussing challenges and opportunities for the design of future and more inclusive platforms.