Mothers of preschool children with cerebral palsy are often responsible for delivering multiple home therapy programs. Technology could be a way to bridge some of the challenges of home therapy delivery, such as lack of regular contact with professionals and the need for support continuity. We interviewed seven mothers and four speech therapists to explore their challenges, and the types of support they currently receive (or give). Key issues included limitations of existing communication channels between mothers and professionals, the mothers’ social support needs, and the level of commitment required to self-deliver home therapy. Based on findings indicating video sharing as an existing practice among mothers, we conducted three workshops to further investigate how a video-based platform could support home therapy delivery. We conclude with a number of design considerations for such technologies, to improve communication and collaboration between professional therapists, mothers and members of their wider social network.

Configuring community technology to ensure its sustainability has proved challenging. We present a 3-year longitudinal study and evaluation of two independent situated community display networks in rural contexts. We describe how the design of the display systems evolved to reflect the needs and desires of the community. We report on the way stakeholders’ perceptions of the displays changed over time, and examine the community dynamics involved in the administration, maintenance and moderation of the systems. Drawing from our findings, we further explore the role of the community champion and their impact on sustainability and scalability. We provide recommendations for the design of community network display technology that supports democratic inter-community politics and governance, and is sensitive to the hidden emotional labor and social resources that are required from communities to fully adopt and sustain display technology.

Learning about alternatives to violence is an essential part of change work with domestic violence perpetrators. This is complex work, seeking to tackle a sensitive issue by involving the development of deep, embodied learning for perpetrators who may lack perspective on their behaviour. Interactive storytelling has been providing users with the opportunity to explore speculative scenarios in a controlled environment. We discuss the design of Choice-Point: a web-based application that allows perpetrators adopt the role of different fictional characters in an abusive scenario for conveying the essential skill of perspective-taking. We evaluated Choice-Point through trials with three groups of perpetrators, a support group of victim-survivors and an expert critique from support workers. We discuss challenges in using such technologies - such as our system - for engagement; the value of perpetrator agency in supporting non-violent behaviours, and the potential to positively shape perpetrators' journeys to non-violence within social care settings.

Recent HCI research has investigated how digital technologies might enable citizens to identify and express matters of civic concern. We extend this work by describing JourneyCam, a smartphone-based system that enables powered wheelchair users to capture video and sensor data about their experiences of mobility. Thirteen participants used JourneyCam to document journeys, after which the data they collected was used to support discussions around their experiences. Our findings highlight how the system facilitated the articulation of complex embodied experiences, and how the collected data might have particular value in surfacing these experiences to help inform urban design and policymaking. Participants valued the ways in which JourneyCam's moving image and sensor data made hard-to-express sensations apparent, as well as how it enabled them to surface previously unrecognised issues. We conclude by highlighting future opportunities for how such tools might enable citizens to inform and influence civic governance.

Mass adoption and innovation in the field of the Internet of Things has transformed the environments we live in, from stale siloes of technologies into rich interactive playgrounds. Nevertheless, the vast majority of surface area in these spaces are being overlooked and under-utilized in today's research. Surface imaging provides the means to extend and include typically out-of-reach, disconnected objects into these playgrounds. However, existing surface imaging technologies are impractical to embed in everyday environments, restricting researchers from exploring the design and interaction opportunities they can afforded these spaces. In this paper, we propose IRIS, a modular surface imaging prototype capable of providing scalable, low-cost, high-resolution surface imaging. We describe a real-world case study where IRIS is used to identify and track fresh fruit produce being prepared -- a task that is typical infeasible with existing technologies. Through IRIS, we hope to enable the community to exploit these under-explored surface areas and enhance the rich, interactive, connected environments we inhabit.

This paper describes the challenges and lessons learned in the experience-centered design (ECD) of the Spheres of Wellbeing, a technology to promote the mental health and wellbeing of a group of women, suffering from significant mental health problems and living in a medium secure hospital unit. First, we describe how our relationship with mental health professionals at the hospital and the aspirations for person-centric care that we shared with them enabled us, in the design of the Spheres, to innovate outside traditional healthcare procedures. We then provide insights into the challenges presented by the particular care culture and existing services and practices in the secure hospital unit that were revealed through our technology deployment. In discussing these challenges, our design enquiry opens up a space to make sense of experience living with complex mental health conditions in highly constrained contexts within which the deployment of the Spheres becomes an opportunity to think about wellbeing in similar contexts.

Parkinson's is a complex and multifaceted condition with a myriad of symptoms, thus, designing for and with this user group requires careful consideration. We reflect upon two studies, employing different design methodologies, relating to the design of rehabilitative exergames in Parkinson's. The first explored the concept of designing 'for' People with Parkinson's (PwP) and focused on specifications outlined by clinical stakeholders. The second used a designing 'with' approach and modified a pre-established participatory design method for use with PwP. We call attention to the importance of carrying out design work with PwP and contribute; an empathic understanding of living with Parkinson's, a set of recommendations for how to design with PwP and a set of wider considerations for developing rehabilitative exergames for PwP.

We present an evaluation of Panopticon, a video surrogate system, as an online eLearning support search tool for finding information within video lectures. A comparison was made with a standard video player (YouTube) in two scenarios with two classes of users: revision students and independent learners. Results showed that users of Panopticon were significantly faster at finding information within the lecture videos than users of the YouTube player. It was also found that videos predominantly featuring a talking lecturer took longest to navigate, presenting design implications for lectures to be uploaded to open eLearning platforms.

We present a novel approach to graspable interfaces using Touchbugs, actuated physical objects for interacting with interactive surface computing applications. Touchbugs are active tangibles that are able to move across surfaces by employing vibrating motors and can communicate with camera based multi-touch surfaces using infrared LEDs. Touchbug's embedded inertial sensors and computational capabilities open a new interaction space by providing autonomous capabilities for tangibles that allow goal directed behavior.

The Break-Time Barometer is a social awareness system, which was developed as part of an exploratory study of the use of situated sensing and displays to promote cohesion in a newly-dispersed workplace. The Break-Time Barometer specifically aims to use an ambient persuasion approach in order to encourage people to join existing breaks, which take place within this community. Drawing upon a privacy-sensitive ubiquitous sensing infrastructure, the system of-fers information about potentially break-related activity in social spaces within this workplace, including alerts when specific events are detected. The system was developed using a user-centered iterative design approach. A qualitative mixed methods evaluation of a full deployment identified a diverse set of reactions to both the system and the design goal, and further elaborated the challenges of designing for social connectedness in this complex workplace context.

We describe FoodBoard, an instrumented chopping board that uses optical fibers and embedded camera imaging to identify unpackaged ingredients during food preparation on its surface. By embedding the sensing directly, and robustly, in the surface of a chopping board we also demonstrate how surface contact optical sensing can be used to realize the portability and privacy required of technology used in a setting such as a domestic kitchen. FoodBoard was subjected to a close to real-world evaluation in which 12 users prepared actual meals. FoodBoard compared favourably with existing unpackaged food recognition systems, classifying a larger number of distinct food ingredients (12 incl. meat, fruit, vegetables) with an average accuracy of 82.8%.

Panopticon is a video surrogate system that displays multiple sub-sequences in parallel to present a rapid overview of the entire sequence to the user. A novel, precisely animated arrangement slides thumbnails to provide a consistent spatiotemporal layout while allowing any sub-sequence of the original video to be watched without interruption. Furthermore, this output can be generated offline as a highly efficient repeated animation loop, making it suitable for resource-constrained environments, such as web-based interaction. Two versions of Panopticon were evaluated using three different types of video footage with the aim of determining the usability of the proposed system. Results demonstrated an advantage over another surrogate with surveillance footage in terms of search times and this advantage was further improved with Panopticon 2. Eye tracking data suggests that Panopticon's advantage stems from the animated timeline that users heavily rely on.

There is an increasing desire to remain connected when physically distant and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is one means of satisfying this desire. In particular, there is a growing trend for individuals to use commercially available technology to connect with friends and family in social and leisure settings. Drawing on this trend, performative arts and existing telecommunications research, we identify the social practice of sharing a meal together as ripe for reinterpretation within CMC. We explore the opportunities to design a technology platform that supports remote guests in experiencing togetherness and playfulness within the practices of a traditional dinner party. Through both visual and aural channels as well as remote agency, the dinner guests were able to share a holistic telematic dining experience comparable to a traditional co-presence dinner. Based on the findings, we propose that one must consider the social structure and cultural background of users to inform the design of a technological intervention.

We describe the development, application and evaluation of a design method tailored for working with people with mild to moderate dementia. Our experiences with the approach highlighted areas where designers and participants held radically different views. The tenet of our approach was that to overcome these differences we needed to create an empathic relationship between participants and designers. To achieve this we modified participatory design techniques to foster respectful engagement with participants in the development of a digital aid to facilitate "safe walking". The process begins with broad qualitative scoping and design work then moves to developing personally tailored, individual designs to further exploration of the experiential elements of the domain while reducing the need for the participants to engage in abstract thought. Reflection highlights a number of important areas that demand consideration when undertaking research in this area and, more generally, when performing design work with people with dementia.

The use of digital technologies is increasingly proposed in health and social care to address the aging population phenomenon but, in practice, the designers of these technologies are ill equipped to design for older people. We suggest participatory design as an approach to improving the quality of design for older people but, based on previous work and our own experiences, identify four central issues that participatory design approaches need to address. We describe an approach to early engagement in design with older people that address each of these issues and some of our experiences applying the approach in a variety of different design projects. We conclude by discussing some of the issues that have been highlighted when attempting apply this approach in different design contexts and the issues that have been raised when working with partners who are less committed to the idea of engaging with older adults in participatory design.

Ubiquitous computing technologies have traditionally striven to augment objects and the environment with sensing capabilities to enable them to respond appropriately to the needs of the individuals in the environment. This paper considers how such technologies might be harnessed to support language learning, and specifically Task-Based Learning (TBL). Task-Based Learning (TBL) involves doing meaningful tasks in a foreign language, emphasising the language's use in practice. TBL is seen as a highly engaging and motivating approach to learning a language, but is difficult to do in the classroom. Here, learners typically engage in activities that only simulate 'real-world' tasks, and as such only rehearse language use, rather than applying the language in practice. In this paper, we explore how an instrumented, context-aware environment whose design is grounded in pedagogical principles can support TBL. We present the French Kitchen, an instrumented kitchen for English speakers who are learning French, and describe a 46-participant evaluation of the kitchen. Based on the evaluation, we provide a set of design recommendations for those building instrumented systems for TBL.

We present the development of a socially acceptable cueing device for drooling in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sialorrhea, or drooling, is a significant problem associated with PD and has a strong negative emotional impact on those who experience it. Previous studies have shown the potential for managing drooling by using a cueing device. However, the devices used in these studies were deemed unacceptable by their users due to factors such as hearing impairment and social embarrassment. We conducted exploratory scoping work and high fidelity iterative prototyping with people with PD to get their input on the design of a cueing aid and this has given us an insight into challenges that confront users with PD and limit device usability and acceptability. The key finding from working with people with PD was the need for the device to be socially acceptable.