Dhaval Vyas

University of Queensland | UQ

While HCI scholars have examined how e-textiles serve to bridge the gender divide, there is little research into refugee, asylum seeker and low socioeconomic migrant women (WRAMs) and e-textiles. This paper presents the results of a series of two community-led participatory design workshops to study the factors that enable these women, who face int...

In this paper, we focus on makerspace practices that can hinder or enable access for under-resourced women of colour who are novices to making, predominantly migrants and refugee women. We report on a 21 month long ethnographic fieldwork at nine makerspaces across two metropolitan Australian cities. The findings present barriers and opportunities a...

Ecovillages, communities in which people integrate self-built houses, shared facilities, organic farming, composting, and self-governance into everyday practices, serve as laboratories for ongoing experiments in sustainable living. While topics like sustainability, simple living, and making are well discussed in the HCI community, we aim to investi...

Maker culture and DIY practices are central to democratizing the design of technology; enabling non-designers (future end-users) to actively participate in the design process. However, little is known about how individuals from under-resourced communities and low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, can practically leverage maker practices to de...

Men's sheds are community makerspaces where retired men can socialize and cooperatively organize craftwork type activities (predominantly - woodworking). The HCI and CSCW literature has increasingly shown the importance of positive health outcomes associated with makerspace-type environments. This paper aims to study how men's shed members engage i...

While varying degrees of participatory methods are often explored by the HCI community to enable design with different user groups, this paper seeks to add weight to the burgeoning demand for community-led design when engaging with diverse groups at the intersections of marginalisation. This paper presents a 24-month-long qualitative study, where t...

The conventional 'participant-as-informant' model of user research has recently been challenged by approaches that advocate for participants to have a greater authorial control over narratives that portray their lived experiences. This is particularly important for addressing relationships of power and representation. Informed by narrative approach...

In this pictorial, we present findings from a field study in an eco-village. Eco-villages are communities where residents share environmental values and have developed long-term making practices around housing, food production and other methods of living self-reliant. We investigate sustainable making practices to study how and why makers design, b...

The DIY and maker movement has enabled makers to venture out into entrepreneurial endeavours. Members of this community are known to experience a sense of fulfillment when personal moral codes of ethics are maintained, even when they are from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Our work seeks to explore ways in which this fulfillment is als...

Upon arrival to a host community, refugees and asylum seekers face immense challenges to rebuild their social capital that is critical in the process of their resettlement. Developing a holistic understanding of these challenges can provide significant opportunities to inform designers and services providers working with this demography. We adopt t...

Eco-home makers are permaculturists, artists and environmentalists who actively engage with the environment and nature in order to build self-made, sustainable homes. Through the conceptual lens of “placemaking”, we draw on an ethnographic study of eco-home makers and focus on unpacking important lessons for sustainable HCI research. Engaging with...

Multisensory augmented reality enables content developers to generate more realistic, sensory rich user experiences. Applications and research related to multisensory augmented reality expands through several areas such as education, medicine, human-machine interactions, human-food interactions, marketing, and neuroscience. Aim of this workshop is...

Eco-home makers are permaculturists, artists and environmentalists who actively engage with the environment and nature in order to build self-made, sustainable homes. Through the conceptual lens of "placemaking", we draw on an ethnographic study of eco-home makers and focus on unpacking important lessons for sustainable HCI research. Engaging with...

In some developing countries, widows are looked down upon and are often considered inauspicious especially in rural regions. Some societies even consider them and their issues invisible. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study focused on understanding how technology could facilitate entrepreneurial and DIY activities of widows from ru...

The ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach used in current activity tracking devices such as FitBit, Jawbone, and smartwatches may not be enough to encourage healthier behaviour patterns in people, as much more considerate design is required to create meaningful experiences. This paper focuses on designing an activity tracking system that can be used in a wo...

This paper presents findings from a set of ‘magic machines’ workshops with newly arrived Iraqi refugees in Australia. The aim was to allow a broad range of response in designing innovative and creative technologies that can help refugees deal with specific challenges. To bring the ‘future’ into the present and to understand their needs and experien...

This paper aims to examine motivations of participants for being involved in a crafts-based, women-only maker organization. Over a period of three months, we observed and interviewed ten women aged 42 - 78 to explore how they experienced being involved in knitting, sewing, crocheting, card making and other similar craft forms. Using the ethos of ca...

Displacement caused by war, conflict and persecution affects refugees and asylum seekers in more ways than we can imagine. This article investigates refugees and asylum seekers' experiences associated with displacement and the effects it has on their social capital. We present findings from a qualitative study that involved a mix of 24 participants...

HCI and CSCW literature has extensively studied a wide variety of maker cultures. In this paper, we focus on understanding what making is like for people and communities who do not have access to advanced technological infrastructures. We report on six-month-long ethnographic fieldwork at a non-profit, resource-constrained, e-waste recycling centre...

Extended reality has been used in various application areas creating societal impact including in health, education, and the arts. However, there has not been enough research to help alleviate the issues of refugees around the world using extended reality applications. In this paper, we focus on identifying issues that refugees face in Australia an...

This paper presents findings from field trial of a mobile application called ‘Dhana Labha’ in a rural Sri Lankan community. Dhana Labha was designed to be used by the community members to manage their personal finances, oversee their performance in managing multiple microfinance loans and assist in loan collection. We distributed the application am...

Newcomer refugees face enormous challenges on their arrival in host countries to start their new lives. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and volunteers play a vital role in helping newly arrived refugees meet their needs during their process of resettlement. ICT can facilitate social interactions between refugees and NGOs, thus supporting refu...

This paper presents findings from a set of co-design workshops aimed at identifying the core values of underbanked women from rural Sri Lanka, associated with their everyday financial practices and experiences. We sought to gain in-depth insights into the aspirations, rationales, and concerns of this demography, where traditionally household financ...

Microfinance is an inherently social process. Over the years, it has emerged as an essential means for providing financial services to the "underbanked" population in developing countries. This paper presents a qualitative study focused on understanding existing cooperative practices associated with microfinance in rural Sri Lanka. Through semi-str...

Mobile applications and gamification approaches have the potential to provide a better learning experience to children. However, these practices are rarely applied in the developing world. This paper presents a case study of a tablet-based application designed for primary school students in rural Sri Lanka for learning mathematics. In contrast to t...

People experiencing financial hardship often possess resilient and resourceful behaviors when handling their day-to-day activities. Understanding how these individuals manifest resilience during adversity could provide insights into how technologies can support their existing efforts. In a partnership with an Australian community care center, we id...

Conflicts in Iraq and Syria have forced millions of minorities to flee their countries and seek refuge elsewhere. This paper investigates the factors that affect the social capital of newly arrived refugees in Australia and the role of information and communication technology in supporting the rebuilding of their social capital. We present the find...

Hackerspaces and the hacker movement¹ are receiving increasing attention within the HCI research community, yet these sites also have the potential to exclude people of low socioeconomic status from participating. We present a case study of an urban Australian e-waste recycling social enterprise (Substation33) that engages volunteers and welfare re...

Conflicts in Iraq and Syria have forced millions of minorities to flee their countries and seek refuge elsewhere. This paper investigates the factors that affect the social capital of newly arrived refugees in Australia and the role of information and communication technology in supporting the rebuilding of their social capital. We present the find...

In this paper, we focus on creative practices associated with smartphone images for supporting scientific work. We employed observations and semi-structured interviews with 12 research staff members from a biomedical engineering institute over a period of three months and explored the role smartphone images play in supporting their scientific activ...

Financial literacy can play an important role in supporting the livelihood of the poor. Sri Lanka, being a country that aims to become a knowledge economy, has started to integrate the use of technology in its primary education. This paper presents a case study from a Co-Design activity with primary school children in rural Sri Lanka to ideate desi...

Women are more likely to experience poverty than their male counterparts, through negative life events that can potentially place women in a crisis situation. Past studies highlight that there is a need for a better understanding of the tools that could both support and empower women in crisis situations. We respond to this with a study that illust...

Engaging in 'making' activities has been shown to have a positive impact on health and wellbeing. In this paper we present our work in progress towards an understanding of the making activities of a group of seven women in different crisis situations. Through self-reported probe kits and semi-structured contextual interviews, we found that our part...

This paper focuses on the issues refugees and asylum seekers face in their daily lives in Australia. We present findings from a field study that included a mix of fourteen participants involving refugees, asylum seekers, activists and community workers, who participated in a cultural probes inspired and semi-structured interview studies. The probes...

Within Australia women are more likely to experience poverty than their male counterparts, where certain negative life events could potentially place women in a crisis situation. This paper describes the use of a self-reported probe kit in a marginalised community of women who are living in crisis situations. The kit contains a video camera, dispos...

Tablet computers can be an effective tool to improve education. While there is an abundance of studies showcasing the use of tablets for education in the developed countries, such a use of tablets is under-studied in the developing countries. In this paper we present the findings of a study done in rural Sri Lanka, which aimed at developing a groun...

This paper contends that problems such as poverty and economic disadvantage are equally social in their nature as they are economic. As such, a social frame of reference is helpful in design. Using a qualitative approach, we study the ways 13 Australian households living on a low income manage, organise and interact in their everyday financial acti...

This paper presents an exploration through participatory design in supporting those living on a low income. We share our findings from a workshop with users of an Australian non-profit organisation involved with food relief. This process of co-creation with disadvantaged participants led to ideas for technologies to assist those rebuilding after a...

When refugees and asylum seekers start new lives in a host community, they face many challenges and often rely on others for help. ICT can play a significant role to empower and support them in their new lives. In this paper, we focus on understanding the challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face in order to build a comprehensive perspective...

Affordance is an important concept in the field of human–computer interaction. There are various interpretations of affordances, often extending the original notion of James J. Gibson. Often the treatment of affordances in the current human–computer interaction literature has been a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. We believe...

In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and financial issues are handled within family settings. Families develop 'systems'€™ or methods through which they coordinate and manage their everyday financial activities. Through an analysis of our fieldwork data collected from fifteen families, we provide...

In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and financial issues are handled within family settings. Families develop 'systems' or methods through which they coordinate and manage their everyday financial activities. Through an analysis of our fieldwork data collected from fifteen families, we provide s...

In addition to functional and technological features, the role of augmented objects should also be seen in terms of how effectively they fit into the everyday practices of users and how they enhance users' experiences. In this article, the authors introduce a low-tech, internet-of-things technology called CAM Cooperative Artefact Memory that is use...

Emergency relief centres provide financial, housing, food and other types of support to families and individuals who experience financial hardship. These centres are non-profit, often government supported organizations that rely on the help of their volunteers and social workers. This paper reports on our preliminary findings from field visits to o...

Managing finances is a practice carried out daily in homes across the world. Despite this, the practice is not yet a strong focus for HCI work in the home. This paper looks specifically at the ways that families organise and manage their finances. Based on a process of in-situ qualitative interviews, we find that money management is often a collabo...

Bug fixing is a highly cooperative work activity where developers, testers, product managers and other stakeholders collaborate using a bug tracking system. In the context of Global Software Development (GSD), where software development is distributed across different geographical locations, we focus on understanding the role of bug trackers in sup...

Emergency relief centres provide financial, housing, food and other types of support to families and individuals who experience financial hardship. These centres are non-profit, often government supported organizations that rely on the help of their volunteers and social workers. This paper reports on our preliminary findings from field visits to o...

Managing finances is a practice carried out daily in homes across the world. Despite this, the practice is not yet a strong focus for HCI work in the home. This paper looks specifically at the ways that families organise and manage their finances. Based on a process of in-situ qualitative interviews, we find that money management is often a collabo...

The dynamic, chaotic, intimate and social nature of family life presents many challenges when designing interactive systems in the household space. This paper presents findings from a whole-of-family approach to studying the use of an energy awareness and management system called “Ecosphere”. Using a novel methodology of inviting 12 families to cre...

Earlier work within the CSCW community treated the notion of awareness as an important resource for supporting shared work and work-related activities. However, new trends have emerged in recent times that utilize the notion of awareness beyond work-related activities and explore social, emotional and interpersonal aspects of people’s everyday live...

Budgeting is an important means of controlling ones finances and reducing debt. This paper outlines our work towards designing more user centred technology for individual and household budgeting. Based on an ethnographically informed study with 15 participants, we highlight a misalignment between people's actual budgeting practices and those suppor...

This paper investigates the motivations of young adults aged 18 to 24 years to participate in physical activities and how technology might best support this motivation. Motivational factors were studied through contextual interviews, an adapted cultural probe activity and a survey with a group of young adults currently active in sports. From our pr...

This work brings a perspective from an employer-sponsored health and wellness program called Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) to the 'quantified self' research. We present preliminary findings from a study with 17 university employees who participated in the GCC. We aimed to explore how participants derived meaningfulness from their self-tracking e...

The research reported in this paper explores autonomous technologies for agricultural farming application and is focused on the development of multiple-cooperative agricultural robots (AgBots). These are highly autonomous, small, lightweight, and unmanned machines that operate cooperatively (as opposed to a traditional single heavy machine) and are...

Understanding how families manage their finances represents a highly important research agenda given the recent economic climate of debt and uncertainty. To have a better understanding of the economics in domestic settings, it is very important to study the ways money and financial issues are collaboratively handled within families. Using an ethnog...

Budgeting is an important means of controlling ones finances and reducing debt. This paper outlines our work towards designing more user centred technology for individual and household budgeting. Based on an ethnographically informed study with 15 participants, we highlight a misalignment between people's actual budgeting practices and those suppor...

This paper investigates the motivations of young adults aged 18 to 24 years to participate in physical activities and how technology might best support this motivation. Motivational factors were studied through contextual interviews, an adapted cultural probe activity and a survey with a group of young adults currently active in sports. From our pr...

A new era of visible and sharable electricity information is emerging. Where eco-feedback is installed, households can now visualise many aspects of their energy consumption and share this information with others through Internet platforms such as social media. Despite providing users with many affordances, eco-feedback information can make public...

The aim of this ethnographic study is to understand welding practices in shipyard environments with the purpose of designing an interactive robot welder. The robot is meant to help workers with their daily job while being deployed on a jack-up rig. The design of the robot, including its user interface turns out to be a challenging task due to sever...

Software development settings provide a great opportunity for CSCW researchers to study collaborative work. In this paper, we explore a specific work practice called bug reproduction that is a part of the software bug-fixing process. Bug reproduction is a highly collaborative process by which software developers attempt to locally replicate the 'en...

Designing systems for multiple stakeholders requires frequent collaboration with multiple stakeholders from the start. In many cases at least some stakeholders lack a professional habit of formal modeling. We report observations from student design teams as well as two case studies, respectively of a prototype for supporting creative communication...