Toni Robertson

• Professor of Interaction Design at University of Technology Sydney

This paper discusses Participatory Design workshops that sought to enable ageing people to articulate their core values in relation to their experiences of ageing. Our motivations were to better understand how ageing people decide whether or not to adopt and use particular technologies, and to gain insights into the kinds of technologies that might...

Movement-based design is reaching critical mass in HCI, and we can start to identify strategies, similarities and differences in how it is approached. Similarities may include, for example, a strong first person perspective on design, emphasising movement, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities of the designer, as well as starting from the premise th...

Movement-based design is reaching critical mass in HCI, and we can start to identify strategies, similarities and differences in how it is approached. Similarities may include, for example, a strong first person perspective on design, emphasising movement, somatics and aesthetic sensibilities of the designer, as well as starting from the premise th...

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. --- Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor

A significant number of models and frameworks have introduced, and been used to support, positive approaches to ageing. They include Successful Ageing, Active Ageing and Ageing in Place, among others. The number of models can create confusion for technology designers who wish to incorporate such models into practice. This paper reviews different mo...

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises a massive increase in interconnectivity between objects and spaces requiring some sense of cooperation and interaction between them. We suggest the explicit conceptualization of the cooperation between objects and spaces as cooperative work and explore some of the visions, analogies and exemplary illustrations...

This paper rethinks the role of technology in the life of older people by critically considering the discourses around ageing: drawing on insights from literatures on active ageing, findings from two studies conducted with older citizens and prevalent understandings of old age in technology design. It argues for a departure from the deficit model o...

The Internet of Things is a vision for a world of interconnected smart devices. We present an alternative vision based on a review of literature that emphasizes the importance and role of objects in social relations. We situate this work in relation to a conceptual understanding of objects and sociality, and note some methodological implications of...

Mutual learning processes provide the context for this paper. We reflect on the early research design process of an ongoing project that is investigating the potential contributions of the Internet of Things (IoT) to ageing well. While mutual learning is assumed and embedded in Participatory Design tools and methods, it was only when we explicitly...

In this paper we contribute to the growing body of research into the use and design of technology in the kitchen. This research aims to identify opportunities for designing technologies that may augment existing cooking traditions and in particular familial recipe sharing practices. Using ethnographic techniques, we identify the homemade cookbook a...

We explore relationships between habits and technology interaction by reporting on older people's experience of the Kinect for Xbox. We contribute to theoretical and empirical understandings of habits in the use of technology to inform understanding of the habitual qualities of our interactions with computing technologies, particularly systems expl...

The advent of the Internet of Things creates an interest in how people might interrelate through and with networks of internet enabled objects. With an emphasis on fostering social connection and physical activity among older people, this preliminary study investigated objects that people over the age of 65 years viewed as significant to them. We c...

The advent of the Internet of Things creates an interest in how people might interrelate through and with networks of internet enabled objects. With an emphasis on fostering social connection and physical activity among older people, this preliminary study investigated objects that people over the age of 65 years viewed as significant to them. We c...

The goal of this panel is to reflect on the past and discuss the present and future of designing for an experiencing body in HCI. The motivation is to discuss the full range of rich body/movement-based experiences and how the CHI community can embrace and extend these perspectives on designing for the body. The panelists and audience will be asked...

This paper surveys recent Internet of Things (IoT) related HCI literature, and examines it in light of a comprehensive framework by Atzori et al. (2010). Mapping HCI literature to this framework helped us understand the extent and the focus of IoT related HCI efforts, including a lack of HCI engagement with deeper human-centred perspectives of the...

This paper presents findings from a scoping study conducted with 12 participants who use cloud productivity tools in a range of small business contexts and work arrangements. There are two key areas discussed in this paper; access and equity issues within different Australian geographic regions and polarized views of cloud technology that resonate...

This paper offers an HCI perspective on the emergent agenda of the Internet of Things (IoT). The purpose is to provide insights and resources for how HCI could engage productively with the IoT agenda while it is still evolving and being realised. We examined and reviewed HCI-related literature and commercial products of the IoT, categorising a fina...

We present a review of literature from the fields of gerontology, gerontechnology, HCI and government policy that deals with social and technical solutions for the ageing population. We highlight common assumptions about ageing people, which we argue are still embedded in much of the research related to the domain of ageing. This paper challenges s...

Based on a series of interviews of Australians between the ages of 55 and 75 this paper explores the relations between our participants’ attitudes towards and use of communication, social and tangible technologies and three relevant themes from our data: staying active, friends and families, and cultural selves. While common across our participants...

There is growing interest in designing for movement-based interactions with technology, now that various sensing technologies are available enabling a range of movement possibilities from gestural to whole-body interactions. We present a design methodology of Moving and Making Strange, an approach to movement-based interaction design that recognize...

This paper reports the findings from a series of scoping interviews designed to evaluate, ground and refine the initial understandings, assumptions and concepts of a research team in a larger project about the role of social and tangible technologies in maintaining good habits into old age. Participants' understandings of some basic terms used in t...

Remote participatory prototyping is characterised by extended periods of engagement, working directly with participants in the context of real-world problem settings, and by the use of social technologies. This paper reports a prototyping activity that aimed to design web-based software, over a three-month period, to support people's 'everyday' tra...

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DESI_a_00157

This paper reports the findings from a field study of distributed scientific collaboration within a national animal health laboratory. Collaboration in this setting is challenged by the need for biosecurity - there are physical containment barriers between scientists and work groups and movement of people and other physical objects across the barri...

We have been exploring the design of an advanced collaboration platform to support scientists in a national animal health laboratory to work collaboratively across a physical containment barrier. This paper describes the design considerations based on the findings from a field study of the collaboration processes in this particular environment. We...

The Making Design and Analysing Interaction track at the Participatory Innovation Conference calls for submissions from 'Makers' who will contribute examples of participatory innovation activities documented in video and 'Analysts' who will analyse those examples of participatory innovation activity. The aim of this paper is to open up for a discus...

This paper explores some of the benefits of formally capturing stakeholder perspectives through conducting stakeholder interviews in a large, collaborative project. The case study discussed is an Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) venture between two universities, industry, government and communities based in the for...

We briefly sketch an overview of emerging design research and practice, which values the lived body as a central theoretical foundation in the design of interactive technologies. Three main areas of research activity are presented: theoretical and philosophical perspectives on bodies and embodiment; concepts of the body; and design approaches and m...

We conducted field studies with three multi-disciplinary cancer teams at three hospitals. We investigated distributed multi-disciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) at each setting focusing on the organisational context, existing collaboration technology facilities and the use and availability of digital medical information systems. Our results highlight...

This paper reports our findings from a study of multidisciplinary team meetings for the treatment and ongoing management of breast cancer patients. The focus of the fieldwork was the meetings within and between a large group of multidisciplinary health professionals from two hospitals in Sydney, a large public teaching hospital and a much smaller p...

As movement-based, interactive technologies continue to become more embedded in our daily lives, aliveness, vitality and pleasure in our interactions with these technologies are becoming sought-after qualities. Dance is one discipline that works directly with these qualities of aesthetic experience through the moving body. We conducted a series of...

This paper examines the implications of conceptualising planning as a type of design activity. This is explored through results from a two-month field study that investigated the planning and decision making behaviour of people engaged in preparing for multipoint, international air travel. Planning travel is a type of ill-structured complex problem...

Improving Indigenous access to university education has been a major focus in Australia over the last four decades. However, despite success in several areas of recognised priority to the Indigenous community, participation in Information Technology (IT) degree programs remained very low throughout the 1980s and '90s. The University of Technology,...

This paper is about new forms of participation that are enabled as a result of social technologies. The premise is that social technologies simultaneously create and demand an engagement with the dynamic relations of design and use and that this gives rise to new forms of participation 'in the wild'. Our aim is to contribute to understandings and p...

This paper describes the development and use of a set of design representations of moving bodies in the design of Bystander, a multi-user, interactive, immersive artwork built on video-based, motion-sensing technology. We extended the traditional user-centred design tools of personas and scenarios to explicitly address human movement characteristic...

This paper describes a two-year research study that piloted and evaluated the use of low-cost, low-bandwidth Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to support meetings between agricultural researchers and farmers in rural Indonesia and researchers in Australia. We found that the primary constraints to ICT use in rural Indonesia are rarely...

The emphasis on participation in social technologies challenges some of our traditional assumptions about the role of users and designers in design. It also exposes some of the limitations and assumptions about design embedded in our traditional models and methods. Based on a review of emerging practice we present four perspectives on design in the...

This paper extends the analytic framework Suchman used in Plans and Situated Actions by using it as a tool in the design of interactive, immersive environments that rely on human movement as input. We describe the historical and methodological background to Suchman's framework and the impact of her analysis on the development of HCI and related fie...

We present analytic concepts that emerged from field studies of the everyday practices of Film and Television Freelancers. We categorised the freelancers' mobile practices into two dimensions: the interplay of flux and stability, and the interplay of the macro and the micro. These dimensions emphasised two key practices that the freelancers engaged...

Software developers' work is much more interesting and multifarious in practice than formal definitions of software development processes imply. Rational models of work are often representations of processes defined as they should be performed, rather than portrayals of what people actually do in practice. These models offer a simplified picture of...

We present an observational study that was conducted to guide the design of an enhanced collaboration platform to support distributed multidisciplinary team meetings between two hospitals. Our goal was to find out how the breast cancer multidisciplinary team collaborates in their face-to-face meetings and in their discussions using an existing vide...

This paper reflects on the Action Research approach adopted in the design of the ECHONET (EchoCardiographic Healthcare Online Networking Expertise in Tasmania) system --a telemedicine system developed by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation) Australia to facilitate the sharing of expertise and services between the Intensi...

This paper reports on a study that explored ways of inventing and devising movement for use in the design of movement-based interaction with video-based, motion-sensing technologies. Methods that dancers, trained in movement improvisation and performance-making, used to choreograph movement were examined as sources of potential methods for technolo...

The results of a study of two computer games, that use human movement as direct input, were analysed using four existing frameworks and approaches, drawn from different disciplines that relate to interaction and movement. This enabled the exploration of the relationships between bodily actions and the corresponding responses from technology. Intera...

Based on many experiences of developing interactive systems by the authors, a framework for the description and analysis of interaction has been developed. The dimensions of this multimodal interaction space have been identified as sensory modalities, ...

In an electronic-society the production of texts is increasingly enabled or mediated through ICT. Existing typographic research seems to focus on isolated, rule-formulating studies that often have little impact on typographic practice. Our proposed framework aims to overcome these problems, by providing as complete and holistic explanation as possi...

This paper presents concepts to extend our understandings of bodily aspects of technology interactions. The aim of the paper is to offer a way of looking at the role our haptic and kinaesthetic senses play in experiencing tangibles. We approach this issue by framing it around how our bodies establish relationships with things. Four themes body-thin...

Interactive systems such as community blogs and online campaign sites that require, expect or anticipate user contributions, can be conceptualised as containers, or spaces for interaction. Digital Eskimo is a design agency responsible for creating such online social spaces. In this case study we outline how we have adapted the design research metho...

Mobile devices, applications and services have become integrated into people’s daily lives on a personal and professional level. Although traditional research methods are being used to understand the use of mobile devices and applications, methodological challenges still exist. Researchers have responded to these challenges in a variety of ways, wi...

This paper develops the notion of experiential bodily knowing as a designer's (sens-)ability to reason about movement and responses to movement as part of the process of designing movement enabled interaction with artifacts, products and spaces. We arrived at this notion by reframing the practice of in- teraction design as a discipline of movement...

Typography is increasingly undertaken with and mediated through Information Technologies. One of the most visible manifestations of this change is the expansion from the printed page to screen environments and device displays. Moving type is an example of a new quality of text made possible by the use of new technologies. In this study we propose a...

The paradigm of "access, anytime, anywhere" has been critiqued within the mobile HCI literature as a broad assumption that simplifies understandings of actual work practice, and as an example of rhetoric that allows researchers to ignore the temporal aspects of mobility. The key aspect of technology use that remains unclear, however, when discussin...

The way we consume textual information is changing. One of the most visible manifestations of this change is the expansion from the printed page to screen environments and device displays. Moving type is an example of a new quality of text made possible by the use of new technologies. In this study we propose a framework to explain why type should...

When we design information technology we risk building specific metaphors and models of human activities into the technology itself and into the embodied activities, work practices, organisational cultures and social identities of those who use it. This paper is motivated by the recognition that the assumptions about human activity used to guide th...

In this paper we present initial findings from an empirical study of the mobile technology use and mobile work practices of freelancers in the domain of Film and Television. Our findings demonstrate that mobile phones were primarily used to manage other personal activities and concerns unrelated to the local work. They were used only intermittently...

This paper is about the developer as technical user interacting with computer technology as part of the infrastructure that makes possible their 'real work' of developing a large and complex software product. A longitudinal ethnographic study of work practice in a software development company that uses an Agile development approach found that the d...

This paper presents thoughts to extend our understanding of bodily aspects of technology interactions. The aim of the paper is to offer a way of looking at the role our kinaesthetic sense plays in human-computer interaction. We approach this issue by framing it around how our bodies establish relationships with things when interacting with technolo...

Bystander is a multi-user, immersive, interactive environment intended for public display in a museum or art gallery. It is designed to make available heritage collections in novel and culturally responsible ways. We use its development as a case study to examine the role played in that process by a range of tools and techniques from participatory...

This paper reports findings from a study of Labanotation, an already established movement notation, as a design tool for movement-based interaction where movements of the human body are direct input to technology. Using Labanotation, we transcribed movements performed by players of two different Eyetoy TM games. Our analysis identified a range of a...

This paper presents use scenarios, derived from user-centred design research and practice, as a useful tool for representing the user in the design of mbusiness technologies. Use scenarios are increasingly being employed as a method for addressing issues facing the mbusiness community such as lack of adoption of technologies and services, usability...

This paper describes the development of movement-oriented personas and scenarios for representing multiple users of an interactive, immersive environment, designed as an artistic work for a public space. Personas and scenarios were integrated into a user interaction script and linked to a set of movement schemas using Labanotation for group choreog...

Mobile devices, applications and services have become integrated into people's daily lives on a personal and professional level. Although traditional research methods are being used to understand the use of mobile devices and applications, methodological challenges still exist. Researchers have responded to these challenges in a range of ways, with...

This research project draws together two areas; interactive art and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This paper describes the data collection of audience behaviour in a variety of museum and gallery locations. Subsequent data analysis leading to persona and scenario design illustrates how empirical data can inform the design of a movement-based in...

This paper describes the development of movement- oriented personas and scenarios for representing multiple users of an interactive, immersive environment, designed as an artistic work for a public space. Personas and scenarios were integrated into a user interaction script and linked to a set of movement schemas using Labanotation for group choreo...

We interviewed 26 information architects about their work, their backgrounds and their perceptions of their roles as information architects. Our research aimed to identify and understand the work practices that define the position of information architect as well as the human-computer interaction and usability issues that are relevant to their work...

Interaction between people and computers can now be driven by movements of the human body without the need for mediation by other input devices. We present a way of conceptualising movement-based interaction. Our approach uses two existing frameworks for investigation of the relationship between bodily actions and the corresponding response from te...

Intranets can play significant roles in medium to large organisations. They provide the means for people to communicate and traverse through information spaces, independently of geographical and/or temporal constraints. To date, the term Information Architecture (IA) has been adopted by technology designers to describe both structure and the proces...

Suddenly, a few years ago, the job title information architect seemed to just appear within ICT design environments and job advertisements. Around the same time information architect also just appeared as one of the jobs that HCI and usability professionals might do. For example, it is not listed in Preece et al., Human-Computer Interaction (1994)...

The relations between various computer applications and the social and organisational behaviour they are intended to support are not natural or pregiven. They are always constructed and always the result of decisions made somewhere. This paper takes a fragment of shared design work and considers some solutions to one of the technical problems that...

This paper introduces and describes someconcepts basic to a phenomenologicalunderstanding of human perception that isderived from the phenomenology ofMerleau-Ponty. His account of the livedexperience of the embodied subject, as thebasis of both our experience in our world andour agency in our actions within it, isconsistent with the focus on design...

Instead of a formal examination, HCI students completed part of their assessment in a local video game parlour. It is one of the few places where a large group of students can experience participant observation of technology in its everyday situation of use. In this paper we discuss some of the useability issues that were identified during the eval...

The underlying premise of this paper is that the defining constraint in the design of technology to enable people in different physical spaces to work together is the essential corporeality of human cognition. Its empirical basis is a long-term field study of cooperative design in a small distributed company. The paper is not a descriptive account...

Susan: I guess you know all the staff except Reg are female. . . . . I have found females, funnily enough, and it's a generalisation. But no it's not. We couldn't work this way if most of the staff weren't women. I have found that women, with this set up, that the women are much better at being part of the team and getting on with their tasks and r...

The focus of this paper is the relations between the work practices and technology needs of small Australian design companies and the discourses of Participatory Design. Because these companies use off-the-shelf technology, these relations are shaped not just by factors specific to company size, but also by the geographic and cultural separation be...

Based on a field study of cooperative design in a distributed company, this paper identifies and defines the embodied actions of the designers that enabled a cooperative design process. These actions are considered as classes of cognitive practices that are simultaneously available to the actor and others in a shared physical workspace. The public...

This paper reports a field study of the design of a multimedia, educational software product, from the early articulations about the kind of product to be made, to the production of the prototype used for capital raising. The designers were members of a small distributed company who used computer systems and communication technology, as well as hig...

Written texts are more and more consumed in a multitude of different environments and media: on screens or device displays, at home, in offices or in public spaces, in quiet, private places or in noisy surroundings; mediated by new technologies such as mobile phones or personal digital assistants. This paper traces the development of typography fro...

Indigenous Australian people continue to experience chronic disadvantage relative to the living standards and well-being of non-Indigenous Australians. Despite the increased availability of education to Aboriginal Australians, their participation in Information Technology programmes is very low, as is their awareness of the options available in the...

Infrastructure is an essential part of all human endeavours. Instead of viewing the infrastructure necessary for the production of software systems and the program code as separate entities and independent of one another, this paper offers the view that neither the infrastructure nor the code are discrete things that can be examined in isolation. T...

The ability of technology to detect interaction with bodily movements is changing. In order to inform the design of technology that relies on movements of the body for interaction, we need methods that allow us to study movement with appropriate analytical rigour. In this paper we explicate some of the philosophical foundations and underlying assum...

This paper reports the analysis of a range of workplace interviews with people who define themselves as information architects. This is a recent job title that is commonly used to describe people who are involved in the design and development of web-based applications, including those designed to be used on mobile devices. Our research aimed to ide...

Mobile devices, applications and services have become integrated into people’s daily lives on a personal and professional level. Although traditional research methods are being used to understand the use of mobile devices and applications, methodological challenges still exist. Researchers have responded to these challenges in a variety of ways, wi...