Happy Tuesday, the best day of the week.

Today was the second day of Ramp Up Week. Today felt a lot less overwhelming, and it was actually quite fun. Andrew Neel visited us. He taught us about the IRB process and Ethics. We were also introduced to ShareLaTex, Arduino, Box Sharing and paper circuits. I made a card that using paper circuits. It asks you to find the north star. When you press “push me” on the card, the north star lights up! It was a quick and easy task. I look forward to seeing what else we can do with paper circuits.

Homework:

1.

ShareLatex: I have created two biographies about myself. Below you can access the PDF of both of them. One is my professional biography the other is meant to inspire high school student specifically high school students unsure about what they want to do with the future or hesitant about pursuing computer science.

You can access my professional biography here:

You can access my alternative bio here.

2.

Observations: Around 9 PM, I spent 20 minutes observing people outside of a chipotle downtown Bloomington. I used a combination of Temporal Mapping, Spatio-temporal Mapping & Object Mapping. Temporal Mapping: I paid attention to the way the individual held their phones, their facial expressions, and what they did with their (free) hands. Spacio-Temporal Mapping: I focused on the individuals in one spot of the outdoor eating area of Chipotle. I also observed whoever came into my line of vision as I continued to look in that direction and how they interacted with their phones as the moved through or remained in that space. Object mapping: Overall, I focused on how the individuals I observed interacted with their cell phones.  My summary and observations are as followed.

I sat outside of chipotle in downtown Bloomington, IN to observe some of the customers who also sat out front, those who walked in and out of chipotle, along with those who walked by. I focused on the two men in my direct line of view until they left. I then shifted my attention to whoever walked by. The two individuals were seated at the tables closest to the sidewalk. They were both dressed in the same outfit, I am assuming it is a uniform of some sort so, I shall refer to the two of them as buzz cut and shortcut. Buzzcut had most of his back towards me and shortcut was facing my direction. Both of the men had finished their meals by the time I arrived. Their expressions remained the same the entire time I was there. Buzzcut sat with a bored look on his face, he leaned forward with his arms were folded in his lap most of the time. He was rarely on his phone the whole time that I was observing. Shortcut looked uninterested the whole time that I was there. He sat with his phone in his right hand and he used his left to navigate the screen on his phone.
Throughout the space, there was also a guy sitting alone on my right side hunched over on his phone. He was not eating. There was also a family of four to my direct right in the table a yard away from me. Towards the beginning of their meal, they stayed off their phones, but each of the parents pulled their phones out by the time the family finished their meal. However, I did not observe them using their phones for long periods of time.
My most interesting connection was the lack of cell phone accessories. During my time spent observing, I literally saw one person with headphones and she was wrapping it around her phone as she entered the chipotle.
My 20-minute observation is outlined below.

9:20: Two white men sat across from each other. Each of them is on their phones. They do not speak to each other. Shortcut held his phone in his right hand and used his left hand to navigate the screen. Buzzcut left-hand lays limp in his lap while his right-hand is holding his phone.
9:22 Buzz cut puts his phone away and says something to shortcut. Shortcut responds with one word. Neither looks up from their phones.
—
9:24 the dad in a family on my right (not in my direct line of view) pulled out his phone for less than half a minute
—
9:26 Buzz cut continues talking to shortcut. Shortcut responds with one-word answers.
2:28 Shortcut stops looking at his phone for about half a minute. He responds to buzz cit with full sentences. He goes back to his phone. The conversation ends.
9:29 buzz cut checks his phone (to see the time). He says something to shortcut.
9:29 shortcut stands up with the phone in hand and still looking at the phone.
9:29 they leave.

9:31 young woman walks out of chipotle looking down at his phone in his right hand. A bag of food is in the left hand.

9:32 Two pairs of men and women walk into chipotle. One phone is visible in one girl’s right hand.

9:38 man walked down the street talking on his phone. right arm swinging. left hand holding his phone to his ear.

I believe that this assignment would be IRB exempt. Since it uses human subjects it requires some approval of the IRB board; however, since my observations were done in a public setting of public behavior, it is exempt.

 

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Summaries

In “Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) for Researching Distributed Populations”, Haley MacLeod, Ben Jelen, Annu Prabhakar, Lora Oehlberg, Katie Siek, & Kay Connelly study the effectiveness of their adaptation of a few the Human-Computer Interaction research method when studying a remote population. The researchers used a Facebook support group to recruit 11 female adults participants from the United States and Austraila with a rare disease. All participants were paid $50 for their participants. Creating their own Facebook group with the participants,  the researchers spent 22 weeks conducting their study. The researchers collected both qualitative and quantitative data. They found that there were several limitations with their method of research including their inability to tell whether or not participants read their post or if they simply viewed it making it harder to determine participants interactions with the activities they designed. The researchers found that there were different levels of engagement which ranged from active to none at all. The amount of engagement decreased and plateaued as time progressed. They also found several communication issues between then and the participants in terms of what they wanted them to do. Some of the challenges they faced also included the collection of their data because of the lack of tools to do that and recommend careful selection of types of participants input and understanding of how Facebook works on both the researcher and participants part.

In “Defining Through Expansion: Conducting Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) Research with Stigmatized Groups”, Juan F. Maestre, Haley MacLeod, Ciabhan L. Connelly, Julia C. Dunbar, Jordan Beck, Katie A. Siek, & Patrick C. Shih, used an asynchronous remote community type research method to involve individuals living with HIV in their study. They used Facebook to recruit 19 participants of various facial backgrounds from several Facebook group and paid them $50 for their participation. The participants were asked to completed several weekly activities over a span of 8 weeks. Together, they contributed to the conversation of the different ways one can use the ARC method for Human-Computer Interaction studies, provided a formal definition of the ARC method and affirmed previous findings. The researchers in this study found that ARC allowed them to recruit a large population with a high response rate and participation. It also allowed the participants to find community. This study showed that this approach to HCI research is beneficial because it allowed for a variety of ways to collect data including surveys, photo elicitation, co-design, focus groups, and personas. Since the researchers used Facebook, they advise being cautious of the risks surrounding the vulnerability of personal information.

MacLeod, H., B. Jelen, A. Prabhakar, and L. Oehlberg. 2016. “Asynchronous Remote Communities (Arc) for Researching Distributed Populations.” Retrieved (http://www.haleymacleod.com/Papers/2016-pervasivehealth-arcmethod.pdf).

Maestre, Juan F. et al. 2018. “Defining Through Expansion : Conducting Asynchronous Remote Communities ( ARC ) Research with Stigmatized Groups.”

 

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Congratulations, you have reached the end of today’s blog entry.

Reward? A picture of the chipotle where I did my observations for HW 2.