Mark Blythe

Northumbria University · Northumbria Design

This paper sets out a framework for exploring flourishing in older age through the lens of what older adults are doing in their lives. Applying a model from positive psychology called personal project analysis (PPA) our study captures a snapshot of older people's goals and their environmental context. Targeting older people aged 80+ we applied PPA...

Despite the vast number of people who use technology as a part of their spiritual practice, there is little research on the subject in studies of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). Although HCI takes the idea of user experience very seriously, the field gives almost no consideration to experiences with technology that might be described as spiritual...

Despite the vast number of people who use technology as a part of their spiritual and transcendental practice, there is little research on the subject of digital transcendence in studies of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This monograph reviews the work that HCI has produced in this area but also draws on related research in psychology, philosoph...

The HCI community is experiencing a resurgence of interest in the ethical, social, and political dimensions of HCI research and practice. Despite increased attention to these issues is not always clear that our community has the tools or training to adequately think through some of the complex issues that these commitments raise. In this workshop,...

Terry Eagleton's "After Theory" applied to Critical Design

Zizek's critical theory applied to The Prayer Companion

The word academic is sometimes used to signify an occupation, a person who works in a university and studies a particular field, as in—“do you see that stoop-backed fellow over there? He’s an academic, he wouldn’t last long in the wild would he?” But it also means “pointless” or “unnecessary” as in “well it’s all academic in any case because I’ve a...

These papers are published largely as they appeared in the 2003 edition. Chapter authors were invited to write a note explaining how things have developed since 2003 or setting the context in which the 2003 chapter was written. These notes are included at the start of each chapter. We would draw your attention to the long note added by Wright and M...

Fiction has long been important to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and practice. Through familiar tools such as personas, scenarios and role-play, fictions can support the exploration and communication of complex psychological, social and technical requirements between diverse collections of designers, developers and end-users. More recen...

Over the last 20 years repeated attempts have been made in HCI to put enjoyment into focus. However, it is only recently that the importance of enjoyment, even in serious applications, has been widely recognised by the HCI community. Typical of a relatively new area of investigation is the lack of an agreed set of terms: enjoyment, pleasure, fun an...

Soon after the launch of the iPhone the British artist and printmaker David Hockney began sending his friends pictures he had made using painting and drawing apps. One of these friends was the writer and art critic Martin Gayford and in 2009 he received an iPhone drawing of a sunrise over the East Yorkshire town of Bridlington (Thames & Hudson 2007...

his paper reports on design strategies for critical and experimental work that remains constructive. We report findings from a design workshop that explored the "home hub" space through "imaginary design workbooks". These feature ambiguous images and annotations written in an invented language to suggest a design space without specifying any partic...

HCI draws on a variety of traditions but recently there have been calls to consolidate contributions around the problems researchers set out to solve. However, with this comes the assumption that problems are tractable and certain, rather than constructed and framed by researchers. We take as a case study a Tumblr community of teen shoplifters who...

To advance understanding of the geographies of age segregation, this paper examines the intersectional social dynamics of age‐segregated environments, considering how migration interacts with age segregation to breed sameness or diversity in ageing environments. We juxtapose findings drawn from two research projects, the first on international reti...

Any design process involves an imaginative act, a picturing of the world as other than it is. Fiction has long played a part in design research in the form of scenarios, personas, sketches, paper-based prototypes, simulations, prototypes and speculative design. The term “design fiction” has been adopted to describe more elaborate and detailed repre...

Any design process involves an imaginative act, a picturing of the world as other than it is. Fiction has long played a part in design research in the form of scenarios, personas, sketches, paper-based prototypes, simulations, prototypes, and speculative design. The term “design fiction” has been recently adopted to describe more elaborate and deta...

As computing technologies become ubiquitous in social life, social science increasingly becomes the study of those technosystems. Similarly, as technology corporations compete to design new ubicomp products, social science research is recruited as a design method. This paper presents an interpretive bricolage, exploring the relationship between soc...

In this paper we investigate how online counter-discourse is designed, deployed and orchestrated by activists to challenge dominant narratives around socio-political issues. We focus on activism related to the UK broadcast media’s negative portrayal of welfare benefit claimants; portrayals characterised as “poverty porn” by critics. Using critical...

What kind of stories and plots do researchers of Human Computer Interaction draw on when they make fictions? This paper applies the "basic plots" identified in the study of literature to scenarios, speculative design and design fiction. Traditional HCI scenarios employ the plot of "Overcoming the Monster" where the monster is some problem to be sol...

As computing technologies become ubiquitous in social life, social science increasingly becomes the study of those technosystems. Similarly, as technology corporations compete to design new ubicomp products, social science research is recruited as a design method. This paper presents an interpretive bricolage, exploring the relationship between soc...

In the field of Human Computer Interaction, user experience research has been characterized in two camps, model-based and design-based. These groups have contrasting approaches to measurement and evaluation. Design-based user experience research is often viewed as a form of bricolage. We find flaws with this means of framing qualitative investigati...

This paper argues that design fiction is a powerful term in part because it is malleable. A wide range of differing design fictions are emerging and we pursue a spatial metaphor to provide a map based on literary approaches. Following Margaret Atwood we trace design fiction back to marvel and wonder tales such as the Arabian Nights through to the s...

This paper argues that comics are a powerful and valuable medium for representing research through design. We review different formats for representing design including the academic paper, the photo-essay and the annotated portfolio. We argue that the comic book form can be better suited to representing various aspects of the design process includi...

This comic reveals multilayered details and insights about the design and making of Paper Street View, a suite of artefacts that allow groups of older people in care environments to navigate Google Street View using a paper map. In creating the comic we wanted to account for material thinking in design. We show that comics can be used as a dynamic...

Much of the academic and commercial work which seeks to innovate around technology has been dismissed as "solutionist" because it solves problems that don't exist or ignores the complexity of personal, political and environmental issues. This paper traces the "solutionism" critique to its origins in city planning and highlights the original concern...

This paper is presented as a "design fiction" because nobody would accept these findings in any other form though they are as true as anything else published at CHI. It begins with empirical investigations into the infamous dream simultaneously experienced by thousands of people. We describe the development of a device designed to capture images fr...

The idea of using game elements outside of the domains of game and play is not new. Similar to the approach of participatory design games, more and more HCI researchers are adopting game design elements in their research methods, e.g. to create a safe and comfortable setting for their participants, to improve group dynamics during research, or to s...

This paper reports a qualitative study of thriving older people and illustrates the findings with design fiction. Design research has been criticized as "solutionist" i.e. solving problems that don't exist or providing "quick fixes" for complex social, political and environmental problems. We respond to this critique by presenting a "solutionist" b...

Critical design and design for debate seek to critique contemporary society through the production of provocative artefacts that cause the viewer to reflect on current trends, assumptions and values. But such designs are typically displayed in relatively elitist contexts – art galleries, conference halls and academic publications. Many designers ar...

This paper reflects on the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) with techno-spirituality and science fiction (SF). The paper considers science fiction treatments of spirituality, religion and "the numinous"- A mysterious presence that evokes fascination, awe and sometimes dread-as stimulus for exploring techno-spiritual design through "...

This paper reflects on the uses of prototypes in "Research through Design" and considers "Design Fiction" as a technique for exploring the potential value of new design work. It begins with an analysis of Research through Design abstracts in the ACM digital library and identifies an emerging language and structure of papers in this emerging field....

The scope of HCI has broadened considerably in the last decade to include concerns with experience, emotion and aesthetics. A small but growing body of work studies the role of digital technology in supporting religious and spiritual practices and experiences. Addressing such sensitive topics presents many challenges, both in understanding the prac...

Design research and practice within HCI is inherently oriented toward the future. However, the vision of the future described by HCI researchers and practitioners is typically utility-driven and focuses on the short term. It rarely acknowledges the potentially complex social and psychological long-term consequences of the technology artefacts produ...

Literary criticism places fictional work in historical, social and psychological contexts to offer insights about the way that texts are produced and consumed. Critical theory offers a range of strategies for analysing what a text says and just as importantly, what it leaves unsaid. Literary analyses of scientific writing can also produce insights...

TimelyPresent is a single purpose information appliance for asynchronous messaging to connect three-generation families whose members need to keep in touch across large distances and in different time zones. The touch screen devices are used in pairs situated in the homes of family members. A user at one end can create a short video clip that is re...

This paper reports findings from a study of meditation videos posted on YouTube. It reports on both the features they offer and the kinds of comments posted. The most-viewed one hundred videos referenced faith-based traditions, "new age" spirituality, and entirely secular meditation practices. A convenience sample of comments was taken as a snapsho...

Artists are increasingly adopting apps such as "Brushes", "Procreate" and "Sketchbook Pro" to create new work. The "Blue Jay Weeble" exhibit for Research Through Design explores the notion of "liveness" around live, experiential digital painting. The artist Jason Wilsher-Mills will perform iPad painting in an immersive space made up of four project...

The paper reports on the growing phenomena of art-making on mobile devices and contributes findings from two studies of artists' responses to iPad painting apps: the first is a series of exploratory workshops where artists were recruited to engage with a range of art apps, the second is a series of in-depth interviews with two artists who had incor...

Delegation is the practice of sharing authority with another individual to enable them to complete a specific task as a proxy. Practices to permit delegation can range from formal to informal arrangements and can involve spontaneous yet finely balanced notions of trust between people. This paper argues that delegation is a ubiquitous yet an unsuppo...

The iTunes App Store contains over six thousand apps related to spirituality and religion. The ACM digital library, however, contains only 98 works that address this topic from an HCI perspective. Despite high-profile calls for research in the area, the HCI community has produced only 19 research papers focused on the topic, almost half of which ar...

HCI researchers working in publically funded institutions are increasingly encouraged to engage the public in their research. Mass media is often seen as an effective medium with which to communicate research to large parts of the population. We present an account of three HCI projects that have used engagements with mass media in order to communic...

This paper reports on experience design work currently in progress. "Wet Pixels" is intended to stimulate discussion around the notion of reproducing original digital images in a physical medium. The prototype's design is informed by mechanical reproduction devices (e.g. relief press, large format camera) and retrospective print processes (halftone...

The paper reflects on three approaches to the dissemination and display of digital art. \'1c"s[edition]\'1d" is a novel, web-based service that offers limited editions of "\'1cdigital prints"\'1d. Analysis of user comments suggests that the metaphor of a \'1c"limited digital edition"\'1d raises issues and to some extent is resisted. The second appr...

User experience research has recently been characterized in two camps, model-based and design-based, with contrasting approaches to measurement and evaluation. This paper argues that the two positions can be constructed in terms of Deleuze & Guattari's "royal science" and "minor science". It is argued that the "reinvention" of cultural probes is an...

Repentir is a mobile application that employs marker-less tracking and augmented reality to enable gallery visitors to explore the under drawing and successive stages of pigment beneath an oil painting's surface. Repentir recognises the position and orientation of a specific painting within a photograph and precisely overlays images that were captu...

The aim of the Brief Encounters Research Network was to explore the potential for new and emerging technologies to enable interdisciplinary collaborative design practices at distance. This research Network proposal was developed in response to current trends in industry, where design is becoming an increasingly international activity undertaken wit...

This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of a group of artists in the North of England. It focuses on the impact of digital technology on their printmaking and wider art practice. Four major themes emerge: apprenticeship, networks, authenticity and commodification. Each of the artists describes a long process of educational and professi...

Slow technology is…in part a reaction against the impulses toward instantaneity afforded by digital technology. This paper explores the slow work of a contemporary 'analogue' painter in the context of current research enquiry into digital art, authenticity and value. [2] A group of artists were recruited to take part in in depth interviews conducte...

The design of technological interventions to motivate behaviour-based reductions in end-user energy consumption has recently been identified as a priority for the HCI community. Previous interventions have produced promising results, but have typically focused on domestic energy consumption. By contrast, this paper focuses on the workplace context,...

This paper reports findings from a series of participatory design workshops with ten people over eighty years old. The focus of the workshops was new banking technologies for the older old. Participants were asked to discuss their current experiences of banking and given packs of concept cards which contained design sketches and brief outlines of c...

This workshop is targeted towards academics in HCI who practice qualitative evaluation methods. In particular we hope to understand the use of participatory practices in ethnography, as well as, share experiences doing fieldwork. This is especially important as community members from different social science backgrounds and countries often receive...

This paper describes a project exploring the design of digital payment services in collaboration with 16 people aged over 80. Many older people find cheques valuable as a means of payment but the UK Payments Council recently proposed their abolition. We describe two designs that simultaneously aimed to preserve and augment the paper cheque as a mea...

An eighty year old today is expected on average to live well beyond the year 2020. However the needs of the older old are seldom considered in relation to current and future banking services. This paper documents a qualitative study investigating the meaning of money to a group of eighty somethings (people aged over 80). Participants were asked to...

This paper reflects on the uses of different forms of storytelling in the design and implementation of an experience prototype for a Museum exhibition about the medieval historian Jean Froissart. Concept designs developed during interdisciplinary design workshops were captured as pastiche scenarios for further discussions. Content was created using...

The Photostroller is a device designed for use by residents of a care home for older people. It shows a continuous slideshow of photographs retrieved from the Flickr™ image website using a set of six predefined categories modified by a tuneable degree of 'semantic drift'. In this paper, we describe the design process that led to the Photostroller,...

This paper reports findings from a multi-method set of four studies that investigate why we continue to fall for phish. Current security advice suggests poor spelling and grammar in emails can be signs of phish. But a content analysis of a phishing archive indicates that many such emails contain no obvious spelling or grammar mistakes and often use...

This paper reports findings from four related studies of the "Tenori-on" as it appears on YouTube in order to consider Web 2.0 as a performance space. A quantitative analysis of returns for "Tenori-on" attempts to model how posts achieve and maintain popularity. This analysis suggests sustained posting and engagement amongst users rather than initi...

Two studies are described that illustrate how one may gain an understanding of the needs of people with very different home circumstances to one's own. The first concerns families separated by long distances, the emotions that they experience and what it would mean to re-connect them with communication technologies. The second is a study of a nunne...

The Arts (i.e., all liberal, cultural, literary, visual and performing arts disciplines) are becoming more prominent at CHI. This SIG will take stock of what they can contribute, and how and why, and what the CHI community needs to do to more fully embrace The Arts to advance the leading edge of design research.

Although topics such as fun, enjoyment, aesthetics, and experience are relatively new in HCI, long traditions of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences have examined them. Some have already been expressed in the appropriation of conceptualizations of experience in HCI research and practice. There is also a small but fast growing body of...

This paper reports on the design, deployment and initial evaluation of "Wattsup", an innovative Facebook application which displays live data from a commercial off-the-shelf energy monitor. The Wattsup application was deployed and trialled in eight homes over an eighteen day period in two conditions - personal energy data viewable and friend's ener...

This paper reports on the design, deployment and evaluation of "Wattsup", an innovative application which displays live autonomously logged data from the Wattson energy monitor, allowing users to compare domestic energy consumption on Facebook. Discussions and sketches from a workshop with Facebook users were used to develop a final design implemen...

The "older old" (people over eighty) are a largely invisible group for those not directly involved in their lives; this project explores the ways that technology might strengthen links between different generations. This paper describes findings from a two-year study of a residential care home and develops the notion of cross-generational engagemen...

In this paper we describe the Prayer Companion, a device we developed as a resource for the spiritual activity of a group of cloistered nuns. The device displays a stream of information sourced from RSS news feeds and social networking sites to suggest possible topics for prayers. The nuns have engaged with the device enthusiastically over the firs...

A relatively new kind of study in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), interaction criticism, is presented. Interaction criticism is an approach of evaluation based on literary and critical theories that originate with the humanities. Interaction criticism seeks to draw on multiple perspectives grounded in traditions very different to those familiar t...

ABSTRACT Sites like YouTube offer vast sources of data for studies of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). However, they also present a number,of methodological challenges. This paper offers an example,study of the initial reception of the iPhone 3G through YouTube. It begins with a quantitative account of the overall shape of the most frequently view...

Designing for older people requires the consideration of a range of design problems, which may be related to difficult and sometimes highly personal matters. Issues such as fear, loneliness, dependency, and physical decline may be hard to observe or discuss in interviews. Pastiche scenarios and pastiche personae are techniques that employ character...

The darker side of email is usually considered in terms of unsolicited mail or spam (e.g. Cerf 2005, Balvanz, Paulsen, and Struss 2004). The problem is well understood and numerous filter systems, along with a variety of legal remedies, have been developed to tackle it with varying degrees of success. Personal abuse including

While the recording industry continues to lobby for increasingly draconian laws to protect their interests, users of digital technology continue to share files and copy protected music. This paper considers the ethics of copying and argues that legal measures are unlikely to solve the music industry's problems in the age of digital reproduction. It...

This paper describes the development and evaluation of "weegie" an audio-photography desk featuring sounds and images inspired by the Govan area of Glasgow. It was intended to be an interactive artwork that would challenge negative preconceptions about the area. The paper describes two techniques used to consider the extent to which the piece achie...

Computing technology is now so entwined with everyday life that enquiries into human computer interaction (HCI) are also studies of society and culture Cultural and Critical theory is then increasingly relevant to studies of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). It is both timely and important to develop understandings of the strengths and limitations...

In this workshop we invite researchers, educators and practitioners to contribute to the construction of a coherent Manifesto for the field of User Experience (UX). Such a UX manifesto should express statements about issues like: Fundamental assumptions underlying UX (principles), positioning of UX relative to other domains (policy) and action plan...

This work draws on studies which explore resistance to the music industry's construal of copying music files as theft. Following a previous ethnography on participants."Technology Scruples" it considers the issue as a design challenge rather than a legal problem. Drawing on critical theory it considers how value might be added to digital music by e...