Our research aims at developing intelligent systems to reduce the transportation-related energy expenditure of a large city by influencing individual behavior. We introduce Copter - an intelligent travel assistant that evaluates multi-modal travel alternatives to find a plan that is acceptable to a person given their context and preferences. We propose a formulation for acceptable planning that brings together ideas from AI, machine learning, and economics. This formulation has been incorporated in Copter producing acceptable plans in real-time. We adopt a novel empirical evaluation framework that combines human decision data with high-fidelity simulation to demonstrate a 4% energy reduction and 20% delay reduction in a realistic deployment scenario in Los Angeles, California, USA.

This paper reports on a study of the prevalence of and possible reasons for peer-to-peer transaction marketplace (P2PM) users turning to out-of-market (OOM) transactions after finding transaction partners within a P2P system. We surveyed 97 P2PM users and interviewed 22 of 58 who reported going OOM. We did not find any evidence of predisposing personality factors for OOM activity; instead, it seems to be a rational response to circumstances, with a variety of situationally rational motivations at play, such as liking the transaction partner and trusting that good quality repeat transactions will occur in the future.

Timebanking is a growing type of peer-to-peer service exchange, but is hampered by the effort of finding good transaction partners. We seek to reduce this effort by using a Matching Algorithm for Service Transactions (MAST). MAST matches transaction partners in terms of similarity of interests and complementarity of abilities and needs. We present an experiment involving data and participants from a real timebanking network, that evaluates the acceptability of MAST, and shows that such an algorithm can retrieve matches that are subjectively better than matches based on matching the category of people's historical offers or requests to the category of a current transaction request.

This paper details the work of a seldom studied but growing population of members of grassroots, offline-project based groups. We aim to understand how these groups self-organize to enable a large number of volunteers to gather and "get things done," and identify design opportunities for technologies to support such work. By studying the work structure, we identified two types of members, regular and episodic participants, who differ in structural role, motivation, and type of work they do. We studied two key tasks: 1) project management, which is mostly done collaboratively by the regular participants; and 2) organization of work events-the project implementation, which involve many episodic participants. For both tasks, we report on common practices and tools that are currently used. We then discuss design implications and user requirements for developing specialized tools to support these tasks.

This paper reports on a study of motivations for the use of peer-to-peer or sharing economy services. We interviewed both users and providers of these systems to obtain different perspectives and to determine if providers are matching their system designs to the most important drivers of use. We found that the motivational models implicit in providers' explanations of their systems' designs do not match well with what really seems to motivate users. Providers place great emphasis on idealistic motivations such as creating a better community and increasing sustainability. Users, on the other hand are looking for services that provide what they need whilst increasing value and convenience. We discuss the divergent models of providers and users and offer design implications for peer system providers.

Automated coaching systems offer a convenient, cost-effective way to reduce stress, which can be a serious health issue. However, one concern with such systems is compliance; users fail to achieve daily stress reduction goals because goals are too easy or too difficult. To address this, we built DStress (Design for Stress), a theoretically grounded system that sets adaptive goals in three coaching dimensions: Exercise, Meditation and Accessibility. DStress modifies goal-difficulty based on the individual's immediately previous performance. In a 28-day deployment with 65 users, DStress reduced scores on one direct measure of stress almost in half, significantly more than two other non-adaptive coaching strategies. However, on a second direct stress measure, no improvement was found. There were also no improvements on other indirect stress measures. Analysis of 2842 user-generated reports suggests our findings were the result of DStress balancing compliance against the degree of challenge of the goals it would set.

Timebanking is a service-based community currency, built on the principle that everyone's time is valued equally. It has potential for community building and reenergizing neighborhoods, but it faces several adoption challenges. We report on the largest investigation of timebanking practices to date by analyzing a combination of service exchange records from the three largest hOurworld timebanks with over 3,500 members with 33,000 completed service exchanges, and a survey of 446 members of over 120 hOurworld timebanks. Our findings suggest that the ideal of 'equal time, equal value' that is at the foundation of timebanking is a source of tension between members with instrumental versus idealistic and altruistic motivations. We suggest that future peer-to-peer systems must incorporate different rewards and incentives in order to accommodate users with different motivations.

Paradigms for the collaborative creation of value through trade and exchange have developed over millennia. Thus, coins emerged in response to a set of challenges in barter and gift exchange. The development of paradigms for trade and exchange continues today, and is accelerating due both to crises in the mainstream global economy, and to new possibilities enabled by information technology. In this discussion paper, we consider alternative and complementary currency and exchange innovations, including local/community currencies, timebanks, crypto-currencies, and person-to-person collaborative economy microenterprises, as a technology design space for currency and exchange. We consider the consequences and trajectories of the rapidly evolving currency ecosystem, particularly with respect to research and development opportunities for CSCW.

Commercial peer-to-peer service exchange businesses, such as AirBnB, Lyft and TaskRabbit, are expanding rapidly, but their non-profit counterparts are lagging behind. We conducted a field study of the most prominent of these, timebanking; a system in which 'time dollars' are earned and spent by people providing services for and receiving them from each other. Our study exposed problems with the very metaphor of banking itself, which deter participation. In this paper we discuss how these problems can be tackled with user experience design for systems supporting timebanking. Our design ideas emphasize the personal and social benefits of participation, and avoid such unappealing concepts as debt and neediness that the timebanking metaphor falls afoul of.

We studied the extent to which time-on-task is correlated with perception of usability for people who are familiar with a phone model and for those who are not. Our controlled experiment, conducted in Japan, correlated subjective usability assessments with time-on-task for expert and novice users on three different mobile phone models. We found that the correlation between perceived usability and time-on-task is stronger when participants are more familiar with the phone model. While not significant when initially inspecting a new phone model, a negative correlation between time-on-task and perceived usability becomes significant with as little as an hour's time doing tasks on the unfamiliar phone. This suggests that designing the UI to make time-on-task as short as possible may not have much effect on the purchase decision, but as experience increases, it may increase the loyalty of existing users.

In order to study the effect supporting awareness of a colleague's activity on a collaborator's communication intentions, we developed ActivitySpotter. It is a research tool and awareness display that determines a user's current activity through a semantic analysis of documents s/he accesses and shares this information with collaborators. We ran a user study on 22 participants to investigate how accurately ActivitySpotter represents user activity and whether different representations of activity (presence only, topic keywords, or activity labels) influence awareness differently and lead users to change their contact intention. Our findings suggest that activity content awareness can help users glean more about what their collaborators are doing, especially if they are more socially distant, and can afford screen space to have the display showing. This increase in awareness also positively influences users' intentions to communicate in a socially appropriate manner.

In this paper we investigate effects of the content of interruptions and of the time of interruption delivery on mobile phones. We review related work and report on a naturalistic quasi-experiment using experience-sampling that showed that the receptivity to an interruption is influenced by its content rather than by its time of delivery in the employed modality of delivery - SMS. We also examined the underlying variables that increase the perceived quality of content and found that the factors interest, entertainment, relevance and actionability influence people's receptivity significantly. Our findings inform system design that seeks to provide context-sensitive information or to predict interruptibility and suggest the consideration of receptivity as an extension to the way we think and reason about interruptibility.

This paper presents a context-aware mobile recommender system, codenamed Magitti. Magitti is unique in that it infers user activity from context and patterns of user behavior and, without its user having to issue a query, automatically generates recommendations for content matching. Extensive field studies of leisure time practices in an urban setting (Tokyo) motivated the idea, shaped the details of its design and provided data describing typical behavior patterns. The paper describes the fieldwork, user interface, system components and functionality, and an evaluation of the Magitti prototype.

One of the main challenges in building multi-user mobile information systems for real-world deployment lies in the development of scalable systems. Recent work on scaling infrastructure for conventional web services using distributed approaches can be applied to the mobile space, but limitations inherent to mobile devices (computational power, battery life) and their communication infrastructure (availability and quality of network connectivity) challenge system designers to carefully design and optimize their software architectures. Additionally, notions of mobility and position in space, unique to mobile systems, provide interesting directions for the segmentation and scalability of mobile information systems. In this paper we describe the implementation of a mobile recommender system for leisure activities, codenamed Magitti, which was built for commercial deployment under stringent scalability requirements. We present concrete solutions addressing these scalability challenges, with the goal of informing the design of future mobile multi-user systems.

No abstract available.

This paper reports on the results of studies of task management to support the design of a task list manager. We examined the media used to record and organize to-dos and tracked how tasks are completed over time. Our work shows that, contrary to popular wisdom, people are not poor at prioritizing. Rather, they have well-honed strategies for tackling particular task management challenges. By illustrating what factors influence task completion and how representations function to support task management, we hope to provide a strong foundation for the design of a personal to-do list manager. We also present some preliminary efforts in this direction.

Email has come to play a central role in task management, yet email tool features have remained relatively static in recent years, lagging behind users? evolving practices. The Taskmaster system narrows this gap by recasting email as task management and embedding task-centric resources directly in the client. In this paper, we describe the field research that inspired Taskmaster and the principles behind its design. We then describe how user studies conducted with ?live? email data over a two-week period revealed the value of a task-centric approach to email system design and its potential benefits for overloaded users.

Infrastructure software comprises code libraries or runtime processes that support the development or operation of application software. A particular infrastructure system may support certain styles of application, and may even determine the features of applications built using it. This poses a challenge: although we have good techniques for designing and evaluating interactive applications, our techniques for designing and evaluating infrastructure intended to support these applications are much less well formed. In this paper, we reflect on case studies of two infrastructure systems for interactive applications. We look at how traditional user-centered techniques, while appropriate for application design and evaluation, fail to properly support infrastructure design and evaluation. We present a set of lessons from our experience, and conclude with suggestions for better user-centered design and evaluation of infrastructure software.

E-mail, far from being a poor, technically limited substitute for face-to-face communication, has some unique and compelling properties that make it ideally suited for talking about objects. In this article we show how e-mail users have evolved new forms of electronic deictic references to refer to work objects and have taken full advantage of the fluid boundaries between the different roles that e-mail can assume. We also illustrate how e-mail users draw on the persistence of the medium to make sense of the objects being talked about and sometimes even transform the conversation itself into an object of conversation. We conclude with several design suggestions for future electronic mail software based on these findings.

Users working with documents that are too large and detailed to fit on the user's screen (e.g. chip designs) have the choice between zooming or applying appropriate visualization techniques. In this paper, we present a comparison of three such techniques. The first, focus plus context screens, are wall-size low-resolution displays with an embedded high-resolution display region. This technique is compared with overview plus detail and zooming/panning. We interviewed fourteen visual surveillance and design professionals from different areas (graphic design, chip design, air traffic control, etc.) in order to create a repre sentative sample of tasks to be used in two experimental comparison studies. In the first experiment, subjects using focus plus context screens to extract information from large static documents completed the two experimental tasks on average 21% and 36% faster than when they used the other interfaces. In the second experiment, focus plus context screens allowed subjects to reduce their error rate in a driving simulation to less than one third of the error rate of the competing overview plus detail setup

This paper borrows ideas from social science to inform the design of novel "sensing" user-interfaces for computing technology. Specifically, we present five design challenges inspired by analysis of human-human communication that are mundanely addressed by traditional graphical user interface designs (GUIs). Although classic GUI conventions allow us to finesse these questions, recent research into innovative interaction techniques such as 'Ubiquitous Computing' and 'Tangible Interfaces' has begun to expose the interaction challenges and problems they pose. By making them explicit we open a discourse on how an approach similar to that used by social scientists in studying human-human interaction might inform the design of novel interaction mechanisms that can be used to handle human-computer communication accomplishments

In this paper, we describe FLANNEL, an architecture for adding computational capabilities to email. FLANNEL allows email to be modified by an application while in transit between sender and receiver. This modification is done without modification to the endpoints---mail clients---at either end. This paper also describes interaction techniques that we have developed to allow senders of email to quickly and easily select computations to be performed by FLANNEL. Through, our experience, we explain the properties that applications must have in order to be successful in the context of FLANNEL.

This essay considers the problem of defining the context that context-aware systems should pay attention to from a human perspective. In particular, we argue that there are human aspects of context that cannot be sensed or even inferred by technological means, so context-aware systems cannot be designed simply to act on our behalf. Rather, they will have to be able to defer to users in an efficient and nonobtrusive fashion. Our point is particularly relevant for systems that are constructed such that applications are architecturally isolated from the sensing and inferencing that governs their behavior. We propose a design framework that is intended to guide thinking about accommodating human aspects of context. This framework presents four design principles that support intelligibility of system behavior and accountability of human users and a number of human-salient details of context that must be accounted for in context-aware system design.

Article From Web press to Web pressure: multimedia representations and multimedia publishing Share on Authors: Victoria Bellotti Apple Research Labs, 1 Infinite Loop, MS: 301-4A, Cupertino, CA Apple Research Labs, 1 Infinite Loop, MS: 301-4A, Cupertino, CAView Profile , Yvonne Rogers Apple Research Labs & Sussex University, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK Apple Research Labs & Sussex University, Brighton BN1 9QH, UKView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '97: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in computing systemsMarch 1997 Pages 279–286https://doi.org/10.1145/258549.258755Online:27 March 1997Publication History 39citation859DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations39Total Downloads859Last 12 Months13Last 6 weeks1 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Many efforts have been made to exploit the properties of graphical notations to support argument construction and communication. In the context of design rationale capture, we are interested in graphical argumentation structures as cognitive tools to support individual and collaborative design in real time. This context of use requires a detailed understanding of how a new representational structure integrates into the cognitive and discursive flow of design, that is, whether it provides supportive or intrusive structure. This article presents a use-oriented analysis of a graphical argumentation notation known as QOC (Questions, Options, and Criteria). Through a series of empirical studies, we show that it provides most support when elaborating poorly understood design spaces, but is a distraction when evaluating well-constrained design spaces. This is explained in terms of the cognitive compatibility between argumentative reasoning and the demands of different modes of designing. We then provide an account based on the collaborative affordances of QOC in group design meetings, and extend this to discuss the evolution of QOC argumentation from short term working memory to long term group memory.

A study of a spatially distributed product design team shows that most members are rarely at their individual desks.Mobility is essential for the use of shared resources and for communication.It facilitates informal interactions and awareness unavailable to colleagues at remote sites.Implications for technology design include portable and distributed computing resources, in particular, moving beyond individual workstation-centric CSCW applications.

Certain design projects raise difficult user-interface problems that are not easily amenable to designers' intuition or rapid prototyping due to their novelty, conceptual complexity, and the difficulty of conducting appropriate user studies. Interpersonal access control in computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems is just such a problem. We describe a collection of systematic theory-based analyses of a system prototype that inherited its control mechanism from two preexisting systems. We demonstrate that the collective use of system and user modeling techniques provides insight into this complex design problem and enables us to examine the implications of design decisions for users and implementation. The analyses identify a number of weaknesses in the prototype and are used to propose ways of making substantive refinements to improve its simplicity and appropriateness for two tasks: altering one's accessibility and distinguishing between who can make what kinds of connections. We conclude with a discussion of some critical issues that are relevant for CMC systems, and reflect on the process of applying formal human-computer interaction (HCI) techniques in informal, exploratory design contexts.

Article Multidisciplinary modelling in HCI design…in theory and in practice Share on Authors: Victoria Bellotti Apple Computer Inc., One Infinite Loop, MS: 301-4A, Cupertino, CA and Rank Xerox Research Centre (formerly EuroPARC), 61 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AB, UK Apple Computer Inc., One Infinite Loop, MS: 301-4A, Cupertino, CA and Rank Xerox Research Centre (formerly EuroPARC), 61 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AB, UKView Profile , Simon Buckingham Shum Human-Computer Interaction Group, Dept. Psychology, University of York, York, YO1 5DD, UK Human-Computer Interaction Group, Dept. Psychology, University of York, York, YO1 5DD, UKView Profile , Allan MacLean Rank Xerox Research Centre (formerly EuroPARC), 61 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AB, UK Rank Xerox Research Centre (formerly EuroPARC), 61 Regent Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AB, UKView Profile , Nick Hammond Human-Computer Interaction Group, Dept. Psychology, University of York, York, YO1 5DD, UK Human-Computer Interaction Group, Dept. Psychology, University of York, York, YO1 5DD, UKView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1995 Pages 146–153https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223923Online:01 May 1995Publication History 23citation1,433DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations23Total Downloads1,433Last 12 Months23Last 6 weeks4 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Awareness of individualand group activities is critical to successful collaboration and is commonly supported in CSCW systems by active, information generation mechanisms separate from the shared workspace.These mechanisms pena~ise information providers, presuppose relevance to the recipient, and make access difficult, We discuss a study of shared editor use which suggests that awareness information provided and exploited passively through the shared workspace, allows users to move smoothly between close and loose collaboration, and to assign and coordinate work dynamically.Passive awareness mechanisms promise effective support for collaboration requiring this sort of behaviour, whilst avoiding problems with active approaches.