How will pedestrians from different regions interact with an approaching autonomous vehicle? Understanding differences in pedestrian culture and responses can help inform autonomous cars how to behave appropriately in different regional contexts. We conducted a field study comparing the behavioral response of pedestrians between metropolitan Mexico City (N=113) and Colima, a smaller coastal city (N=81). We hid a driver in a car seat costume as a Wizard-of-Oz prototype to evoke pedestrian interaction behavior at a crosswalk or street. Pedestrian interactions were coded for crossing decision, crossing pathway, pacing, and observational behavior. Most distinctly, pedestrians in Mexico City kept their pace and more often crossed in front of the vehicle, while those in Colima stopped in front of the car more often.

ABSTRACT Information workers and software developers are exposed to work fragmentation, an interleaving of activities and interruptions during their normal work day. Small‐scale observational studies have shown that this can be detrimental to their work. In this paper, we perform a large‐scale study of this phenomenon for the particular case of software developers performing software evolution tasks. Our study is based on several thousands interaction traces collected by Mylyn and the Eclipse Usage Data Collector. We observe that work fragmentation is correlated to lower observed productivity at both the macro level (for entire sessions) and at the micro level (around markers of work fragmentation); further, longer activity switches seem to strengthen the effect, and different activities seem to be affected differently. These observations give ground for subsequent studies investigating the phenomenon of work fragmentation.

Information workers and software developers are exposed to work fragmentation, an interleaving of activities and interruptions during their normal work day. Small-scale observational studies have shown that this can be detrimental to their work. In this paper, we perform a large-scale study of this phenomenon for the particular case of software developers performing software evolution tasks. Our study is based on several thousands interaction traces collected by Mylyn, for dozens of developers. We observe that work fragmentation is correlated to lower observed productivity at both the macro level (for entire sessions), and at the micro level (around markers of work fragmentation); further, longer activity switches seem to strengthen the effect. These observations are basis for subsequent studies investigating the phenomenon of work fragmentation.

In this article, we examine how collective notions of belonging and imagination become a fertile terrain upon which transnational websites can sustain certain social practices across national boundaries that would be otherwise difficult. Drawing on field work carried out in the United States and Mexico, and using transnational imagination as our analytical lens, we observed three phenomena that are closely related to the use of a transnational website by a migrant community. First, the transnational website under study was a place for a collective imaginary rather than just for the circulation of news. Also, through transnational imagination, migrants can make claims about their status in their community of origin. Moreover, the website is instrumental in harmonizing the various views of the homelands' realities. Finally, the website can inspire us to look beyond dyadic forms of communication.

Self-interruptions account for a significant portion of task switching in information-centric work contexts. However, most of the research to date has focused on understanding, analyzing and designing for external interruptions. The causes of self-interruptions are not well understood. In this paper we present an analysis of 889 hours of observed task switching behavior from 36 individuals across three high-technology information work organizations. Our analysis suggests that self-interruption is a function of organizational environment and individual differences, but also external interruptions experienced. We find that people in open office environments interrupt themselves at a higher rate. We also find that people are significantly more likely to interrupt themselves to return to solitary work associated with central working spheres, suggesting that self-interruption occurs largely as a function of prospective memory events. The research presented contributes substantially to our understanding of attention and multitasking in context.

A framework for analyzing computer-mediated communication is presented, based on Clark's theory of common ground. Four technologies are reviewed: Facebook, Wikipedia, Blacksburg Electronic Village, and World of Warcraft, to assess their “social affordances,” that is, how communication is supported and how the technologies provide facilities to promote social relationships, groups, and communities. The technology affordances are related to motivations for use and socio-psychological theories of group behaviour and social relationships. The review provides new insights into the nature of long-lasting conversations in social relationships, as well as how representations of individuals and social networks augment interaction.

The difficulties associated with the evaluation of ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) technologies increase in application domains such as hospitals, where human life can be at risk, privacy of personal records is paramount, and labor is costly and highly distributed across space and time. For the last 6 years numerous Ubicomp technologies in support of hospital work have been created and pilot-tested. In this article, the lessons learned from these evaluations are discussed, using two criteria to classify them. The first criterion is ecological validity, namely, the extent to which the evaluation is conducted under realistic conditions. Alternatives range from controlled experiments to in situ evaluations. The article argues in particular for the advantages of intermediate approaches, which is referred to as in silico and in replica. The second criterion relates to the degree of integration of the technology with the environment, which is referred to as its pervasiveness. The evaluation grid that comes out of this exercise highlights the importance of ecological validity in evaluating ambient computing technology that supports the activities conducted in complex health care settings such as hospitals. This provides a framework for evaluating Ubihealth, which can be used to select appropriate techniques as a function of the technological and environmental complexity as well as to devise novel evaluation techniques.

For the last 30 years, several empirical studies have been conducted to understand how software engineers work. However, during this period, many changes occurred in the context of software development: new communication technologies like instant messaging appeared as well as new quality models to evaluate the work being conducted. Despite this new context, much of the research in the collaborative aspects of software design is based on research that does not reflect these new aspects of work. Thus, a more up-to-date understanding of the nature of software engineering work - as a type of information work - is necessary. The purpose of this paper is to present the initial findings of an observational study to understand how software developers' time is distributed during their workday. The main results are related to aspects of collaboration observed in 55% of their time, information seeking consuming 31,90% of developers' time, and poor use of software process tools in 5% of the time observed. In particular, this last result is different from what one would expect and which has been previously been reported in the literature.

One important tendency in software development has been the globalization of its industry. Software developers are frequently required to work in groups which are distributed throughout multiple geographic locations. People and processes (e.g. software design) are consequently distributed. Providing the support that will allow distributed software developers to collaborate at a convenient moment, is therefore extremely complicated both for the person making contact and the person being contacted. We therefore propose a characterization and a model of collaborative working spheres (CWS) through which to understand the management of activities in distributed software development (DSD). Our work first aims to characterize DSD activities mainly through a survey of literature. We then describe a projected scenario to illustrate how DSD activities can be supported by technology and finally we propose a characterization of CWS through which to represent how DSD workers can collaborate at a moment which is suitable for all involved participants.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be instrumental to the sense of community connectedness of migrants: being aware of the daily occurrences in their home communities. Whereas formerly, migrant workers were using the postal service and telephone as the preferred channels of communication, nowadays the penetration of the Internet is likely to change the panorama. Focusing mainly on phone-based communication, this work analyzes the notion of community connectedness from the perspective of people from the municipality of Juchipila, Mexico now living in the USA. We highlight three communication cycles that can influence the sense of community connectedness over time. Finally, this work concludes by discussing the role played by ICTs in the level of community connectedness.

This work presents preliminary results of a case study of intergenerational communication through video blogging, following a 79-year old blogger and the responses from his younger readers. An open, non-patronizing and direct form of intergenerational communication was observed, which fits into the stereotype activation model of communication framework. We report on the motivations and nature of interaction between blogger and readers and highlight some of the implications for the choice of supportive media for intergenerational communication.

Many older adults in Mexico are likely to experience isolation and emotional discomfort because of the migration of one or more family members to the USA. Despite the increasing number of communication tools provided by the Internet, their current design and characteristics, limit their use by older adults. Our work aims at offering a board-based messaging system with a simplified interface, which can be used by older adults to interchange messages and pictures through the Internet with those members of their family living abroad. The system works as a shared board of messages that family members can access from any web browser. We report on the design and the implementation of the system, and the plans for a future in-situ evaluation.

We present data from detailed observation of 24 information workers that shows that they experience work fragmentation as common practice. We consider that work fragmentation has two components: length of time spent in an activity, and frequency of interruptions. We examined work fragmentation along three dimensions: effect of collocation, type of interruption, and resumption of work. We found work to be highly fragmented: people average little time in working spheres before switching and 57% of their working spheres are interrupted. Collocated people work longer before switching but have more interruptions. Most internal interruptions are due to personal work whereas most external interruptions are due to central work. Though most interrupted work is resumed on the same day, more than two intervening activities occur before it is. We discuss implications for technology design: how our results can be used to support people to maintain continuity within a larger framework of their working spheres.

Most current designs of information technology are based on the notion of supporting distinct tasks such as document production, email usage, and voice communication. In this paper we present empirical results that suggest that people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work. We present results of fieldwork observation of information workers in three different roles: analysts, software developers, and managers. We discovered that all of these types of workers experience a high level of discontinuity in the execution of their activities. People average about three minutes on a task and somewhat more than two minutes using any electronic tool or paper document before switching tasks. We introduce the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. People worked in an average of ten different working spheres. Working spheres are also fragmented; people spend about 12 minutes in a working sphere before they switch to another. We argue that design of information technology needs to support people's continual switching between working spheres.

Hospitals are convenient settings for deployment of ubiquitous computing technology. Not only are they technology-rich environments, but their workers experience a high level of mobility resulting in information infrastructures with artifacts distributed throughout the premises. Hospital information systems (HISs) that provide access to electronic patient records are a step in the direction of providing accurate and timely information to hospital staff in support of adequate decision-making. This has motivated the introduction of mobile computing technology in hospitals based on designs which respond to their particular conditions and demands. Among those conditions is the fact that worker mobility does not exclude the need for having shared information artifacts particular locations. In this paper, we extend a handheld-based mobile HIS with ubiquitous computing technology and describe how public displays are integrated with handheld and the services offered by these devices. Public displays become aware of the presence of physicians and nurses in their vicinity and adapt to provide users with personalized, relevant information. An agent-based architecture allows the integration of proactive components that offer information relevant to the case at hand, either from medical guidelines or previous similar cases.

We report results from a study on the adoption of an information visualization system by administrative data analysts. Despite the fact that the system was neither fully integrated with their current software tools nor with their existing data analysis practices, analysts identified a number of key benefits that visualization systems provide to their work. These benefits for the most part occurred when analysts went beyond their habitual and well-mastered data analysis routines and engaged in creative discovery processes. We analyze the conditions under which these benefits arose, to inform the design of visualization systems that can better assist the work of administrative data analysts.

We present an empirical study investigating collaborative and individual decision-making about data using two different information visualization systems. Based on previous research, one system is considered more transparent than the other in terms of visual representation and functionality. We found that people who worked in groups were more correct in their answers for objective questions, based on searching a large dataset. These results held for the more transparent system, but not the less transparent system. In a second task, groups were more accurate in their results for a free data discovery task. Again, these results held for the more transparent system only. Subjects using this system also produced results that were higher in complexity but judged lower in importance. Groups and individuals did not differ. We suggest that given the right visualization system, groups do better than individuals in finding more accurate results, but not necessarily increased or more meaningful results.