Thu 18/3 

Fri  26/3

You are requested to analyze the data from one of the earlier studies presented to you and use this to provide a theory regarding awareness that answers the research questions noted below. The analysis should motivate a next mini-data collection that will take place either as a short interview/focus group during this week. If this phase reaches some interesting conclusions you are encouraged to continue this investigation during the video prototyping course).

The project topic concerns the affective benefits and costs from mediated awareness regarding family and friends. Consider this example scenario below:

"Alison 75, is retired, well in her health and living alone and independently at her home town. A robotic rabbit on her mantelpiece lights up whenever there is activity at the home of her daughter Barbara living 60 kilometers away. After dinner she awaits for some activity indication at Barbara's home. She knows then that the whole family is back home and are getting ready for dinner. She likes to have the reassurance that everything is as normal. She often waits for an hour after dinner before calling Barbara to have a little chat. Barbara, uses her rabbit to show if Alison is at home or out. She is happy to see that her mother goes out for a walk every now and then. She would like also to know how Alison has eaten today and how she feels, but she has to find these things out by phoning. This is nice, it is good to chat every day, but sometimes she feels her mother avoids to complain so as not to load her with her troubles not of her own."

The rabbit in this scenario is typical of a wide variety of design concepts, market products or research oriented scenarios exploring the use of systems for achieving mediated awareness and connectedness. In related literature, there is an abundance of variations of how such systems behave, what information is communicated, how much control people have. Scenarios discussed address a wide variety of user groups and needs: co-workers, lovers, grandparents/grandchildren, parents/children through the day, etc.

The promise of such systems is for connected individuals to live in the constant "presence in absence" of others, having at their "peripheral reach" a blog, ora newsfeed about their activities, expressions of feelings, or thoughtful messages. Sleep patterns, moods, whereabouts, level of activity, etc. are some of the types of information such systems are designed to provide. 

During this course you will analyze data collected from related user research, to answer the following question:

• What are the affective costs and benefits of mediated awareness?

It is often anticipated that people should experience emotional benefits relating to the basic human need to belong. Reassurance that loved ones are well, emotional support, self-expression are all possible benefits that have been discussed in different research projects.  It is also thought that mediated awareness can bring costs relating to obligations (e.g., to call someone you'd rather not at that time), expectations that are unmet, privacy threats, etc.

You are not starting from scratch. There is some work into this you can rely on. I would like you to start from the point of the ABC questionnaire: This is an attempt to operationalize costs and benefits and measure them using a questionnaire. You are requested to take a step back and check the assumptions built into this questionnaire by considering qualitative data from different user groups and collected through different methods.

Data Sets:

• Interviews of Divorced Parents, by Lana Yarosh
• Interviews of Busy Parents, by J.Khan

Deliverables

• your presentation
• report (max 5000 words) detailing your process, your results and reflections upon the exercise if relevant; you are encouraged to use the ACM extended abstracts format

Reports should be mailed to Panos by Friday 17:00.

N.B. Only one report and presentation needs to be made for both assignments 1 and 2.

Option A. Checking your conclusions

Summarize your conclusions from the analysis; Plan and execute a focus group to verify/extend your findings.

Option B. This is a reading assignment. Please prepare a 10' presentation to describe a method for collecting or analyzing qualitative data - you can consult the list below or a more extensive list at 2008_IDC_MastersID_DBB03.htm.

Your presentation and report should describe

• Step by step guide of what to do.
• How does data collected feed into design?
• Tips to follow
• Pitfalls to avoid.
• Rationale of the method
• Relation to other methods
• Known uses (cases)
• An example