Preface
There has been a lot written already about the impact of COVID, both on the world in general and more specifically within academia. Conferences, workshops and symposia have not been the same for some time. Luckily, by the time British HCI 2021 rolled around, everyone already had experience of conducting and participating in online events and were not phased that the event would be completely online.
British HCI workshops
Workshops at British HCI provide an excellent opportunity for building new communities around exciting new research topics, consolidating relationships within existing communities and generally finding great opportunities for collaboration. Where conference presentations showcase work of individual researchers and their teams, a workshop - when it is conducted properly, at least - is really at the heart of any conference because this is where the participants get to exchange ideas in a more relaxed setting, on topics they are familiar with and passionate about. Luckily, British HCI researchers really know how to design and conduct workshops. There were four excellent workshop proposals accepted to British HCI and the organisers all had good ideas on how to make the events interactive and productive for all involved.
The first workshop was on the Embodiment of Things. This workshop explored topics related to cultural heritage, and the new opportunities that the digitalisation of museum objects brings for creating novel cultural interaction and participation paradigms. This workshop had a focus on community building and prompting conversations amongst the participants. The cultural heritage sector has long been exploring how technology can add to, rather than detract, from the experience of engaging with objects in museums. In this workshop, there was a focus on how digital technologies foster collaboration. This is important, since museums are increasingly being thought of as spaces that can play a role in effecting social change, and as such they become less about education towards visitors and more about a place where artefacts and exhibits foster exchange of ideas. Related to this is this notion of the ‘museum without walls’, which challenges the view of a museum as simply a physical space full of objects, but rather something that includes intangibles such as collective wisdom, or the knowledge that exists via communication between artists and museum professionals (Hummelen, I. and Scholte, 2004). Digitalisation of museum objects certainly can play a role in achieving this vision.
The second workshop ‘Beyond Questionnaires: Innovative Approaches to Evaluating Mixed Reality’ posed the question as to whether survey-based evaluation was really the best fit for evaluating Mixed Reality. This workshop aimed to bring researchers together to come up with ideas for new and exciting research directions where evaluation is more tightly coupled to experience that is being evaluated. This brings to mind the Voxbox (Golsteijn et al., 2015) which sought to obtain feedback from live events using a tangible machine with different and fun interactions as a substitute for the more traditional person with a clipboard.
The third workshop ‘Digital Living and its Impact on Cognition – Healthy or Harmful?’ sought to understand how our digital practices might be affecting our cognitive processes. There has long been a fear of parents that too much screen time, or fast paced cartoons are affecting children’s attention spans, as well as research into how pacing of television affects memory and attention (especially within the field of advertising). When computers first started appearing in homes, attention shifted to negative effects of spending too much time in front of the computer, or children playing video games. Whilst the research focus is often on negative effects, it is always important to understand that there are two sides to every story and so framing the question ‘healthy or harmful’ is important for achieving balance.
The fourth workshop was ‘Trust in Home – Rethinking Interface Design in IoT’. This workshop sought to develop a community looking at how IoT is used in a home, for smart health, appliances, toys and security. There is a myriad of research on topics related to smart technologies but one area where there is still a lot to uncover is in this notion of trust. A home is a difficult place, where users range from very young to very old, with different and possibly conflicting priorities and schedules. How is it possible to instrument and manage smart environments that give all diverse users what they want without creating imbalances of power, where all people whether young and old understand their responsibilities and actions towards privacy and security issues?
The fifth workshop was on “Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusivity in Cyber Security”. The papers presented here touch on those groups that tend to be excluded from cybersecurity design requirements for domains such as financial applications and everyday routines in retirement villages. The main take-away from this workshop is the lack of design knowledge for users in interacting with cybersecurity. Novel ways to increase inclusion and accessibility are presented in this workshop reporting on a number of ongoing research projects in the UK, Ireland and Portugal.
Given the very interesting topics and the questions they raised, we are certain that all participants to British HCI this year, including their organisers, would have had interesting and insightful discussions and we hope that those conversations continue well into next year where the hope must be to have the opportunity also for some face-to-face interactions.
British HCI Doctoral Consortium
Like many other conferences, the British HCI conducted a Doctoral Consortium. It is an opportunity for Ph.D. students to present and discuss their work in progress with other students and the chairs. Also, this year, many works were submitted, of which we were able to accept six for participation.
All the doctoral projects submitted had in common that they focused on users' positive experiences and increasing their wellbeing. Here is a brief look at a selection of a few submissions.
For example, one submission addressed alterity relationships between humans and machines. The work looks at how the unique qualities of machines, such as persistence and infinite willpower or the ability not to judge, can be used for a new form of social interaction between humans and machines. In this way, the student wants to explore a way of designing agentive technologies in which machines do not imitate humans but instead use their unique qualities that are fundamentally different from human qualities.
Another submission focused on the positive experiences of employees at the workplace. Since experience design or positive design predominantly presents work situated in the field of leisure activities, the workplace represents an important area of research.
Other submissions addressed topics such as cognitive behavioural therapy, predicting employee turnover using machine learning, and incorporating lighting into the creative work of directors in the theatre through novel lighting controls.
All participants present their work in a short presentation, followed by a discussion with all participants. Following the meeting, which was conducted online due to the COVID19 pandemic, the chairs provided individual feedback on each paper and excerpts from the discussion. We are sure that all participants of this year's British HCI Doctoral Consortium, including the Chairs, had an insightful discussion. The topics and questions were exciting, and we look forward to next year's conference. Two presentations from the Doctoral Consortium were developed into “camera ready” papers and are included in these adjunct proceedings volume.
Annika Wolf
John Moore
Frederica Goncalves
Matthias Laschke
Anirudha Joshi
Alan Dix
José Abdelnour Nocera
References
Golsteijn, C., Gallacher, S., Koeman, L., Wall, L., Andberg, S., Rogers, Y. and Capra, L., 2015, January. VoxBox: A tangible machine that gathers opinions from the public at events. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 201-208).
Hummelen, I. and Scholte, T., 2004. Sharing knowledge for the conservation of contemporary art: changing roles in a museum without walls?. Studies in Conservation, 49(sup2), pp.208-212.
Acknowledgements
The British HCI 2021 conference gratefully acknowledges:
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT for supporting historically supporting this and previous conferences over the years.
The BCS Interaction Specialist Group for being the backbone to this conference series and the British HCI community over three decades.
The BCS Sociotechnical Specialist Group for supporting this event and promoting it amongst its members, networks and the wider sociotechnical community in the UK and overseas.
The Sociotechnical Research Group for Innovation and User Experience at The University of West London for providing its human and technical resources to host this conference successfully
The European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET) for promoting the conference amongst its members, networks and the wider EUSSET community.
Our International Programme Committee who helped us select and bring quality submissions to this conference.
The staff at the University of West London Events and Finance teams for help with administrative and IT support.
Thanks to all the contributors for making the British HCI Conference series a continuing success.
Organisers
General Chairs: Jose Abdelnour Nocera (University of West London and ITI/Larsys), Helen Petrie (University of York), Gavin Sim (University of Central Lancashire)
Technical Program Chairs: Torkil Clemmensen (Copenhagen Business School) and Fotios Spyridonis (University of Greenwich)
Full Paper Chairs: Effie Law (University of Leicester) and Julio Abascal (University of the Basque Country)
Position Paper Chairs: Elahe Kani (University of West London) and Arthi Manohar (Brunel University)
Doctoral Consortium Chairs: Anirudha Joshi (IIT Bombay), Matthias Laschke (University of Siegen) and Alan Dix (Swansea University)
Workshop Chairs: John Moore (The National Archives), Frederica Gonçalves (ITI/ Larsys, University of Madeira), and Annika Wolff (Lappeenranta University of Technology)
Industry Chairs: Christina Li (Infinity Interactive) and Elisa del Galdo (Hidalgo UX)
Social Media and Publicity Chair: Daniel G. Cabrero (Personas Technology LTD)
Student Volunteer Chairs: Parisa Saadati and Nurha Yingta (University of West London)
Programme Committee
Julio Abascal University of the Basque Country
José Abdelnour Nocera University of West London
Ifeoma Adaji University of Saskatchewan
Raian Ali Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Dena Althani Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Ikram Asghar University of South Wales
Toseef Aslam University of Lahore
Engie Bachir Middlesex University
Nevena Balezdrova Brunel University
Ralph Barthel University of Greenwich
Russel Beale University of Birmingham
Pradipta Biswas Indian Institute of Science
Michaela Black Ulster University
Judy Bowen University of Waikato
Kyle Boyd Ulster University
Hubert Cecotti Fresno State
Jiahong Chen University of Sheffield
Kathy Clawson University of Sunderland
Torkil Clemmensen Copenhagen Business School
Gilbert Cockton University of Sunderland and Northumbria University
Federico Colecchia Brunel University
Anton Dahbura Johns Hopkins University
Ed de Quincey School of Computing and Mathematics, Keele University
Alan Dix Computational Foundry, Swansea University
Huseyin Dogan Bournemouth University
Hua Dong Brunel University
Felix Engel University Hagen
Gorka Epelde VICOMTech – Visual Interaction and Communication Technologies Center
Richard Evans Brunel University
Shamal Faily Bournemouth University
Ip-Shing Fan Cranfield University
Ali Farooq University of Turku
Katherine Fennedy Singapore University of Technology and Design
Tom Flint Edinburgh Napier University
Vanja Garaj Brunel University
Tomás García Ferrari University of Waikato
Carina González Universidad de La Laguna
Ana Gil González Universidad de Salamanca
Frederica Gonçalves ITI/LARSyS, Universidade da Madeira
Marisela Gutierrez Lopez University of Bristol
Lynne Hall University of Sunderland
Matthias Heintz University of Leicester
Robert Hendley University of Birmingham
Abraham Hidalga Cardiff University
Juan Higuera Universitat Politècnica de València
Anirudha Joshi IIT Bombay
Elahe Kani Zabihi University of West London
Mike Kann Brunel University
Genovefa Kefalidou University of Leicester
Jyoti Kumar Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Matthias Laschke University of Siegen
Effie Lai-Chong Law University of Leicester
Nguyenthinh Le Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Hyowon Lee Dublin City University
Christina Li Infinity Interactive
Jo Lumsden Aston University
Víctor López-Jaquero University of Castilla-La Mancha
José Antonio Macías Iglesias Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Arthi Manohar Brunel University
Cristina Manresa University of Balearic Islands
John Mills UCLan
Nicole Mitsche University of Sunderland
Caroline Moeckel London South Bank University
Arthur Money Brunel University
John Moore The National Archives
Maurice Mulvenna Ulster University
Samuel Navasmedrano Institute for Geoinformatics (ifgi), University of Münster
Robin Neuhaus University of Siegen
Ronan O’Dea The Centre for Creative Informatics, Limerick Institute of Technology.
David Oswald Schwäbisch Gmünd School of Design
Ignacio Panach-Navarrete Universitat de València
Mark Perry Brunel University
Helen Petrie University of York
Dorina Rajanen University of Oulu, Department of Information Processing Science
Debbie Rankin Ulster University
Bryan Scotney University of Ulster
Katie Seaborn Tokyo Institute of Technology
Gavin Sim University of Central Lancashire
Ashok Sivaji MIMOS Berhad
Kirsten Smith University of Southampton
Emilia Sobolewska Edinburgh Napier University
Dora Souza Dias Brunel University
Fotios Spyridonis University of Greenwich
Andrea Taylor Glasgow School of Art
Gülşen Töreyargın Middle East Technical University
Nicholas Vanderschantz University of Waikato
Wad Ghaban University of Birmingham
Jonathan Weinel University of Greenwich
Michael Wilson Netwell CASALA, Dundalk Institute of Technology
Annika Wolff Lappeenranta University of Technology
Papers:
W1 - Workshop on the Embodiment of Things (EoT 2021)
Rebecca Hutcheon, John Moore, Eirini Goudarouli, Duncan Hay and Christian Sauer Workshop on the Embodiment of Things (EoT 2021) http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W1.0
Annika Wolff Framing Data Curation as Museum Practice http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W1.1
Sandra Woolley, Tim Collins, Richard Rhodes and Fiona Polack Museums of the Future: Heritage Experiences in the Reality-Virtuality Continuum http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W1.2
Alda Terracciano Digital Interaction, Oral History and Archives in Geographies of Information Virtual Exhibition http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W1.3
Simon Bowen, Caroline McDonald, Sarah Mander, David de la Haye, Tom Feltwell and Yu Guan Story:Web : Co-authoring Immersive Climate Change Stories using Museums as Big Data http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W1.5
W2 - Beyond Questionnaires: Innovative Approaches to Evaluating Mixed Reality
Effie L-C. Law, Santawat Thanydait, Matthias Heintz, Abey Campbell and Fridolin Wild Beyond Questionnaires: Innovative Approaches to Evaluating Mixed Reality http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.0
Santawat Thanyadit, Matthias Heintz and Effie Lai-Chong Law Data Visualization for Asynchronous VR Classroom http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.1
Xinyu Huang and Fridolin Wild A new metric scale for measuring trust towards holographic intelligent agentes http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.2
Xuanhui Xu, Xingyu Pan, David Kilroy, Arun Kumar, Eleni Mangina and Abraham G. Campbell Augmented Reality for Veterinary self-learning during the pandemic: a holistic study protocol for a remote, randomised, cross-over study http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.3
Diogo Branco, Paula Alexandra Silva, Jorge Almeida, Paulo Menezes, Sergi Bermudez I Badia and Artur Pilacinski Virtual Reality, a tool for safe testing of user experience in collaborative robotics http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.4
Pejman Saeghe How To Identify Questionnaires For Mixed Reality Applications http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.5
Matthias Heintz and Effie Lai-Chong Law Beyond Paper: PDart - Participatory Design Augmented Reality tool http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W2.6
W3 - Digital Living and its Impact on Cognition – Healthy or Harmful?
Madeleine Steeds, Marta E. Cecchinato, Corina Sas and Sarah Clinch Digital Living and its Impact on Cognition – Healthy or Harmful? http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W3.0
W4 - Trust in Home – Rethinking Interface Design in IoT
Cigdem Sengul, Arthi Manohar and Jiahong Chen Trust in Home – Rethinking Interface Design in IoT http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W4.0
W5 - Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusivity in Cyber Security
Huseyin Dogan, Paul Whittington, Edward Apeh and Duncan Ki-Aries 1st Workshop on Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusivity in Cyber Security http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W5.0
Stephen Ambore, Alexander Breban, Edward Apeh and Huseyin Dogan Evaluating Security and Accessibility Trade-off for Visually Impaired Mobile Financial Services Users http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W5.1
Bilikis Banire, Dena Al Thani and Yin Yang Addressing Cyber Security Accessibility: A Qualitative Study http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W5.2
Ella Cotterill, Garth Ledingham and Huseyin Dogan Cyber Security Capabilities and Requirements for a User Interface Supporting the Routines of Retirement Village Residents across US and UK http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-W5.3
Doctoral Consortium
Robin Neuhaus The Unique Qualities of Machines in Quasi-Social Interactions – Exploring and Understanding Otherware http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-DC.1
Nurha Yingta, Jose Abdelnour-Nocera, Obed Brew and Ikram Ur Rehman Usefulness Design Goals of Occupational mHealth Apps for Healthcare Workers http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2021-DC.2