Motivated by the need to support those self-managing chronic pain, we report on the development and evaluation of a novel pressure-based tangible user interface (TUI) for the self-report of scalar values representing pain intensity. Our TUI consists of a conductive foam-based, force-sensitive resistor (FSR) covered in a soft rubber with embedded signal conditioning, an ARM Cortex-M0 microprocessor, and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). In-lab usability and feasibility studies with 28 participants found that individuals were able to use the device to make reliable reports with four degrees of freedom as well map squeeze pressure to pain level and visual feedback. Building on insights from these studies, we further redesigned the FSR into a wearable device with multiple form factors, including a necklace, bracelet, and keychain. A usability study with an additional 7 participants from our target population, elderly individuals with chronic pain, found high receptivity to the wearable design, which offered a number of participant-valued characteristics (e.g., discreetness) along with other design implications that serve to inform the continued refinement of tangible devices that support pain self-assessment.

To better support the self-management of chronic pain, this paper investigates how those living with the condition prefer to self-assess their pain levels using smartphones. Our work consists of three stages: design ideation and review, an in-lab user study with 10 participants resulting in nine candidate interfaces, and a 3 week field trial of two further honed measures with 12 participants. This research firstly yields a better understanding of participants' strong and sometimes contrasting preferences regarding their self-assessment of pain intensity. We additionally contribute two novel interfaces that support accurate, quick, and repeated use along with other participant-valued interactions (e.g., familiar, relatable, and highly usable). In particular, we focus on designing tailored measures that both enhance respondent motivation as well as minimize the difficulty of meaningful self-assessment by supporting the cog-nitive effort in translating a subjective experience into a single numerical value.

Researchers have recently been focusing on understanding online communities in social networks that offer easy access to new audiences. How do online communities function within these social networks? In this work, we conducted a mixed-method study of public Google+ Communities and found two major types evident in both how users talk about them and how they appear to use them: plazas to meet new people, and topic boards to discuss common interests. This reflects two common motivations users cite in describing Communities: "meeting like minded people" and "finding great content". We characterize these two types of Communities within Google+ using mixed methods including surveys, interviews, and quantitative analytics, and expose differences in user behaviors between them.

Social support plays an important role in health systems. While significant work has explored the role of social support in CMC environments, less analysis has considered social support in mobile health systems. This paper describes socially supportive messages in VERA, a mobile application for sharing health decisions and behaviors. The short and bursty interactions in social awareness streams [36] afford a particular style of social support, for which we offer the label staccato social support. Results indicate that, in comparison to previous work, staccato social support is characterized by a greater prevalence of esteem support, which builds respect and confidence. We further note the presence of 'following up', a positive behavior that contributes to supportive interactions, likely via social pressure and accountability [7,38]. These findings suggest design recommendations to developers of mobile social support systems and contribute to understanding technologically mediated social support for health.

Visual approaches for conducting research during the design process often give voice to people and ideas that might otherwise remain obscured. Recent and increasing interest in visual research techniques has coincided with technological advances such as camera phones and visually oriented mobile applications. As a result of this close association between digital technologies and image-based research techniques, there are multiple opportunities and challenges within human–computer interaction (HCI) design practice to employ these strategies to improve user experiences. This article provides an overview of current visual approaches to research highlighting the role technology has played in facilitating and inspiring these techniques. A series of case studies are presented that provide a basis for understanding a breadth of visual approaches in HCI design practices as well as serve as a point of entry to a critical and reflective discussion about the use of these approaches in different circumstances. Based on these reflections, three value statements are offered as a means to encourage the use of these visual approaches more broadly and critically in HCI design studies.

Despite the abundance of research on social networking sites, relatively little research has studied those who choose not to use such sites. This paper presents results from a questionnaire of over 400 Internet users, focusing specifically on Facebook and those users who have left the service. Results show the lack of a clear, binary distinction between use and non-use, that various practices enable diverse ways and degrees of engagement with and disengagement from Facebook. Furthermore, qualitative analysis reveals numerous complex and interrelated motivations and justifications, both for leaving and for maintaining some type of connection. These motivations include: privacy, data misuse, productivity, banality, addiction, and external pressures. These results not only contribute to our understanding of online sociality by examining this under-explored area, but they also build on previous work to help advance how we conceptually account for the sociological processes of non-use.

Most mobile technology systems designed to encourage healthy decisions focus on prescriptive persuasion, telling the user either implicitly or explicitly what to do, as the primary means of improving health. However, other technically and socially viable options exist. Drawing on both relevant social theory and previous CSCW research, this paper suggests that open-ended social awareness, making users aware of both others' and their own decisions, may also serve as an effective central design principle for mobile health. To explore this approach, this paper presents analysis of qualitative data from two studies of such a system. Results suggest that open-endedness allowed users flexibility and freedom in defining what counts as health, and that the social aspects compounded both the positive and the occasionally negative impacts of this openness. The paper concludes with implications for the design and evaluation of research on mobile health technology, as well as suggestions for how future work can further explore the design space of mobile health beyond prescriptive persuasion.

The assessment of emotion, or affect, is critical for anyone trying to understand human behavior. But there is a problem: affect as a state is frequently changing and difficult to recall and express, yet in research, we typically only assess it via a single questionnaire at the end of a study. This work presents PAM, the Photographic Affect Meter, a novel tool for measuring affect in which users select from a wide variety of photos the one which best suits their current mood. Our findings indicate that PAM-which takes seconds to complete and is designed to run on modern mobile phones and mobile computing devices-demonstrates strong construct validity across two studies and is very well suited for frequent sampling in context. This work provides a tool to researchers in need of frequent assessment of affect and guidance to others interested in developing similar measurement tools.

Designers of mobile, social systems must carefully think about how to help their users manage spatial, semantic, and social modes of navigation. Here, we describe our deployment of MobiTags, a system to help museum visitors interact with a collection of "open storage" exhibits, those where the museum provides little curatorial information. MobiTags integrates social tagging, art information, and a map to support navigation and collaborative curation of these open storage collections. We studied 23 people's use of MobiTags in a local museum, combining interview data with device use logs and tracking of people's movements to understand how MobiTags affected their navigation and experience in the museum. Despite a lack of social cues, people feel a strong sense of social presence--and social pressure--through seeing others' tags. The tight coupling of tags, item information, and map features also supported a rich set of practices around these modes of navigation.