People express their creativity through something that they enjoy doing. Through engagement in creative work, creators cultivate their identity, enhance problem-solving skills, and speak their thoughts and feelings. In this paper, we look into how a community of practice supports members in legitimizing their creativity. We conducted a user study with members of a home brewing community to understand their creative beer-crafting practice. We first interviewed 11 home brewers, nine of which are members of a home brew club and two who did not belong to any home brewing organization. We then observed club members as they participated in club activities. Our findings suggest that two types of resource sharing are key in supporting different aspects of creativity in a community of practice. Based on these findings, we propose design strategies for supporting sharing in a creative community of practice.

Distance learners often experience social isolation and impoverished social interaction with their remote peers. To better understand the connections that distance learners are able to build with peers, we interviewed them about whether and how they perceive or cultivate connections with one another. Our analysis reveals how connections in an online learning environment are formed and experienced across different social contexts and technology affordances, and what strategies and practices enable and inhibit these connections. We discuss the implications of our findings for concepts of shared identity and evolving peer relationships among online learners and for design directions that might address their social needs.

Understanding user behaviors and social relations in social media has been an important topic in Human-Computer Interaction research. In this paper, we look at an emerging form of social media, Event-based Social Networks (EBSNs), which support a special type of hybrid community where people are connected online to organize themselves for offline gatherings. EBSN users are labeled as either organizers or members on existing platforms, and their behavioral and relationship patterns in offline events have not been described systematically. To understand participation dynamics in EBSNs, we present an interview study with 12 Meetup users and categorize a variety of social roles beyond organizers and members. We identify that different types of organizers, classical leaders and delegated leaders, have different relationship patterns with various types of members, including active contributors, active followers, newcomers and occasional visitors. By comparing these roles with purely offline or online communities, we discuss how participation dynamics in EBSNs reflect the intertwined impacts of hybrid community and implications of our findings for technology designs.

We designed, implemented, and evaluated an iOS mobile application called EnergyHome to investigate how social interaction among housemates is related to their engagement in energy-saving practices. EnergyHome enables housemates to track personal energy-saving activities and to collaborate on saving energy together. Fourteen pairs of housemates used EnergyHome for a week. Afterwards, we interviewed each participant about their use of the app. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed using an iterative comparative approach. We identified two types of social dynamics in the way housemates used the app. In complementary dynamics, one housemate took the initiative to set energy-saving challenges and the other(s) followed. In symmetrical dynamics, housemates collectively set energy-saving challenges but no one tried to exert control. Based on these findings, we discuss design strategies to motivate energy conservation that take into account different social dynamics among housemates.

In the U.S., hotels are a heavy energy-consuming sector. Yet they sometimes prioritize customer satisfaction over lower energy use. In this study, we discuss how mobile designs can help to motivate energy-saving behaviors while maintaining users' satisfaction. We conducted a diary study of 13 participants and an interview study of 20 participants to understand user experiences around energy consumption in hotel and motel rooms. We found that people unnecessarily consume energy because they are unfamiliar with the hotel room environment and they want to be catered to by the hotel. We suggest two mobile design ideas: location-based energy conservation, and blending lights, and discuss the opportunities of mobile designs to balance personal controls and automation to support user experience and satisfaction yet decrease energy use in hospitality settings.