Researchers of online safety for older couples where at least one partner has cognitive impairment have posited the need for more flexible and adaptive online safeguard options and systems that support shared decision-making practices to maintain autonomy. We designed a safety option probe that embodies these two design requirements and then observed the practices of such couples when engaged in collaborative online safety discussions and decision-making. Focusing on conversational roles and dynamics, we found that their navigation of safety options was often grounded in relationship histories and broader sociotechnical dynamics that long predate their cognitive issues. In addition, while the process still remained highly collaborative, it was not marked by equitable turn-taking as has been considered the hallmark of shared decision-making. We argue that future shared online safety systems for older couples with memory concerns should not focus on equitable discussion and explicit agreement as has been previously recommended and instead support mutual exploration and negotiation of safety setting choices.

With the increasing usage of mental health applications (MHAs), there is growing concern regarding their data privacy practices. Analyzing 437 user reviews from 83 apps, we outline users’ predominant privacy and security concerns with currently available apps. We then compare those concerns to criteria from two prominent app evaluation websites – Privacy Not Included and One Mind PsyberGuide. Our findings show that MHA users have myriad data privacy and security concerns including a user’s control over their own data, but these concerns do not often overlap with those of experts from evaluation websites who focus more on issues such as required password strength. We highlight this disconnect and propose solutions in how the mental health care ecosystem can provide better guidance to MHA users and experts from the fields of privacy and security and mental health technology in choosing and evaluating, respectively, potentially useful mental health apps.

The prevalence of data across all disciplines and the large workforce demand from industry has led to the rise in interest of data science courses. Educators are increasingly recognizing the value of building communities of practice and adapting and translating courses and programs that have been shown to be successful and sharing lessons learned in increasing diversity in data science education. We describe and analyze our experiences translating a lower-division data science curriculum from one university, University of California, Berkeley, to another setting with very different student populations and institutional context, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). We present our findings from student interviews across two semesters of the course offering at UMBC specifically focusing on the challenges and positive experiences that the students had in the UMBC course. We highlight lessons learned to reflect on the existing large scale program at UC Berkeley, its adaptation and opportunities for increasing diversity in new settings. Our findings emphasize the importance of adapting courses and programs to existing curricula, student populations, cyberinfrastructure, and faculty and staff resources. Smaller class sizes open up the possibility of more individualized assignments, tailored to the majors, career interests, and social change motivations of diverse students. While students across institutional contexts may need varying degrees of support, we found that often students from diverse backgrounds, if engaged deeply, show significant enthusiasm for data science and its applications.

Research predicts that 196 million people will be diagnosed with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) by 2020. People who experience AMD and other vision loss face barriers that affect their Quality of Life (QoL). People experience only modest improvement from technologies (e.g., screen readers, CCTV), tools (e.g., magnifying glasses, tactile buttons), and human help (e.g., friends, blindness organizations). Further, there are issues to accessing these resources based on one's place of residence. To explore these challenges and determine design implications to support people who have experienced vision loss (PVL), we conducted a qualitative semi-structured interview study exploring QoL with 10 PVL. We uncovered themes of supporting creative work, recognizing the impact of one's living in a non-urban setting on QoL, and increasing efficiency at accomplishing tasks. We motivate the inclusion of PVL in the design process because they learned skills while sighted and are now low vision or blind.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a growing source of entertainment, but people who are visually impaired have not been effectively included. Audio cues are motivated as a complement to visuals, making experiences more immersive, but are not a primary cue. To address this, we implemented a VR game called Virtual Showdown. We based Virtual Showdown on an accessible real-world game called Showdown, where people use their hearing to locate and hit a ball against an opponent. Further, we developed Verbal and Verbal/Vibration Scaffolds to teach people how to play Virtual Showdown. We assessed the acceptability of Virtual Showdown and compared our scaffolds in an empirical study with 34 youth who are visually impaired. Thirty-three participants wanted to play Virtual Showdown again, and we learned that participants scored higher with the Verbal Scaffold or if they had prior Showdown experience. Our empirical findings inform the design of future accessible VR experiences.