While Generative AI (GenAI) systems are designed primarily for individual use, it is increasingly integrated into collaborative work. Its impact, however, on collaboration dynamics, such as information flow, role negotiation, and decision-making, remains unclear. To investigate this, we conducted a qualitative study comprising observations and semi-structured interviews with a total of 27 higher education students through the lens of distributed cognition. Our findings show that in synchronous settings, shared use of GenAI supported transparency and mutual awareness, with the interaction space functioning as attentional anchors, shared memory, and negotiable contributions to group decisions. Instead, in asynchronous teamwork, GenAI was typically used individually, with outputs later introduced into discussions, reducing opportunities for negotiation. As such, we contribute empirical evidence on GenAI’s influence on collaborative dynamics and design considerations that position GenAI-Supported Cooperative Work (GSCW) as a bridge between Human–AI Interaction and CSCW.

Effectively and securely retrieving data from various blockchain networks remains a critical challenge. We propose a novel framework that provides enhanced capabilities for authenticated data retrieval, empowering users and regulatory bodies. Our framework provides a scalable solution for information verification across diverse blockchain systems, enabling a variety of different types of actors to be integrated. Our framework allows metadata from various systems to be combined, also providing support for secure querying.

Material reuse and recycling plays a key role in reducing carbon emissions in the architecture and construction sector. A “Material Passport” (MP) is a record describing how a material is used throughout its lifetime, from genesis to termination, recording operations carried out on the material. The granularity of information recorded in a MP can vary, however ensuring that this provenance trail remains immutable is a key requirement. The benefits of using a MP, operations carried out on a MP, and recording of transactions within a distributed Blockchain (parachain) is described. A scenario is used to illustrate how the proposed approach can be used in practice.

With a growing number of institutions involved in the global education market, it has become increasingly challenging to verify the authenticity of academic achievements such as CVs and diplomas. Blockchain is an enabling technology that can play a key role in solving this problem. This study introduces a blockchain-based achievement record system that produces a verifiable record of achievements. The proposed system aims to facilitate the process of authentication and validation of certificates reliably, easily, and quickly, leveraging the unique capabilities offered through Blockchain technology (public Ethereum Blockchain) and smart contracts. We present the design and implementation of the system and its components and tools. We then evaluate the system through a number of studies to measure the system's usability, effectiveness, performance, and cost. A System Usability Scale (SUS) test gave a scale of 77.1. Through a literature survey, we demonstrate that this system is a significant improvement on legacy systems, being both more user-friendly and more efficient. We also conduct a detailed cost analysis and discuss the positives and limitations of alternative blockchain solutions.

The HCI field has seen a growing body of qualitative research, making use of a wide range of activities and methods. Interviews and workshops are some of the main techniques used to help understand user needs and to conduct co-design activities with them. However, these methods might be conducted in various ways and have different advantage and disadvantages. An important aspect influencing the types of activities and methods used is the culture of research participants. This paper aims to compare the research methods conducted in the context of the Saudi Arabian culture. It provides a reflection on the methods used to understand user needs when designing social commerce platforms, including interviews, co-design workshops and critique design workshops. We found that each method has its positives and negatives in terms of user preferences, and can help to obtain useful information at different levels of detail. For example, conducting semi-structured interviews by text was preferred by participants who are at home with their families. However, they can be slower than other methods.

Summary Smart contracts can be implemented using either centralized or decentralized (blockchain) platforms. However, for a large class of applications, neither of these two alternatives on its own can provide adequate scalability, performance, quality of service, security, and trust requirements. We argue that for many applications, hybrid solutions that combine both on and off‐blockchain components are more adequate. In this article, we introduce the design and implementation of a novel hybrid smart contract architecture built using the Ethereum blockchain connected to a centralized smart contract management system developed by us. We then compare and evaluate the implementation of an asset tracking service using three different architectures: on‐chain, off‐chain, and hybrid. We demonstrate that using a hybrid architecture, we can substantially improve performance of applications while retaining security and trust for critical tasks.

Summary With an ever‐increasing variety and complexity of Internet of Things (IoT) applications delivered by increasing numbers of service providers, there is a growing demand for an automated mechanism that can monitor and regulate the interaction between the parties involved in IoT service provision and delivery. This mechanism needs to take the form of a contract, which, in this context, is referred to as a service level agreement (SLA). As a first step toward SLA monitoring and management, an SLA specification is essential. We believe that current SLA specification formats are unable to accommodate the unique characteristics of the IoT domain, such as its multilayered nature. Therefore, we propose a grammar for a syntactical structure of an SLA specification for IoT. The grammar is built based on a proposed conceptual model that considers the main concepts that can be used to express the requirements for hardware and software components of an IoT application on an end‐to‐end basis. We followed the goal question metric approach to evaluate the generality and expressiveness of the proposed grammar by reviewing its concepts and their predefined lists of vocabularies against two use cases with a considerable number of participants whose research interests are mainly related to IoT. The results of the analysis show that the proposed grammar achieved 91.70% of its generality goal and 93.43% of its expressiveness goal.

This paper describes the development and delivery of a course, in close collaboration with industry, over a ten-year period. We describe the details of this collaboration, which aims to equip students with collaborative software development experience, incorporating open source, Enterprise Middleware technologies and industry best practices. In presenting our case study we share valuable insights, into the challenges and opportunities, for all parties involved. We present the reflections of all stakeholders, including; the course leader, the industrial partner, lab demonstrators, and students. We also present the results of our investigations to track the employment of our graduates over the last five years, identifying that all students who responded are employed within relevant positions or undertaking further study. Based on our successful delivery of the course, in this paper we make all tools and teaching materials available to the open source community, for delivery at other institutions. We emphasise the importance of the continued involvement of industry partners to inform pedagogical practices within Computer Science.

Internet and cloud based services involve electronic interactions that are normally regulated using service agreements (SA). Once an agreement between business partners is in place, a service can be monitored and/or enforced using an SA equivalent electronic contract. Because of the dynamic nature of such Internet and cloud based relationships, the rapidity at which electronic contracts are constructed, verified for correctness, tested, and deployed is an extremely important factor. This paper describes a model checker based framework for supporting the automated testing and deployment of electronic contracts. The central components of the framework are a contract monitoring service called the Contract Compliance Checker (CCC), the SPIN model checker, and EPROMELA, a language developed specifically for modeling electronic contracts. We describe how SPIN can be used to automatically generate execution sequences from an EPROMELA model of a contract, and how such sequences can then b e used to test the correctness of the model equivalent electronic contract deployed to the CCC.