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CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Play is an essential part of the human experience and can be found throughout the lifespan. While... more Play is an essential part of the human experience and can be found throughout the lifespan. While play has long been of interest to the HCI community, research has often focused on the technologies supporting game play, the potential outcomes of play (e.g., skill-building, health improvements), or play among children. This paper explores what play looks like in online communities that are not specifcally game-based and consist primarily of adults. From online ethnographic work of the ARMY (i.e., Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), fandom of the South Korean musical group BTS, we explore how BTS and ARMY collaboratively construct a playful social environment using various social media platforms. A contribution of this work is to expand our conceptualization of how adults create playful places that are not specifcally game-based and
Conducting unbiased empirical research in social media spaces is of great importance. However, it... more Conducting unbiased empirical research in social media spaces is of great importance. However, it is a highly restrictive space for researchers who are not aligned with, or working from within, the companies who control those spaces. Additionally, even when access to social media networks is available, there are a range of ethical concerns and hurdles around conducting experimental research. Here we present a proof of concept for a system of easily accessible software tools which leverage procedural generation, machine learning, and interactive media to allow researchers– from both technical and non-technical domains– to conduct investigations that involve human personality traits (i.e., Big 5 attributes) in a simulated social media environment. Our past research on personality attributes in social media spaces is both our motivation and exemplar use case, as we have found that affordances and social mores influence individual presentation as measured by personality traits.
Travel restrictions and social distancing measures make it difficult to observe, monitor or manag... more Travel restrictions and social distancing measures make it difficult to observe, monitor or manage physical fieldwork. We describe research in progress that applies technologies for real-time remote observation and conversation in on-road vehicles to observe field work on a farm. We collaborated on a pilot deployment of this project at Kreher Eggs in upstate New York. We instrumented a tractor with equipment to remotely observe and interview farm workers performing vehicle-related work. This work was initially undertaken to allow sustained observation of field work over longer periods of time from geographically distant locales; given our current situation, this work provides a case study in how to perform observational research when geographic and bodily distance have become the norm. We discuss our experiences and provide some preliminary insights for others looking to conduct remote observational research in the field. ABOUT THE AUTHOR/S Wendy Ju Cornell Tech wendyju@cornell.edu ...
Robots deployed in human-populated spaces often need human help to effectively complete their tas... more Robots deployed in human-populated spaces often need human help to effectively complete their tasks. Yet, a robot that asks for help too frequently or at the wrong times may cause annoyance, and a robot that asks too infrequently may be unable to complete its tasks. In this paper, we present a model of humans’ helpfulness towards a robot in an office environment, learnt from online user study data. Our key insight is that effectively planning for a task that involves bystander help requires disaggregating individual and contextual factors and explicitly reasoning about uncertainty over individual factors. Our model incorporates the individual factor of latent helpfulness and the contextual factors of human busyness and robot frequency of asking. We integrate the model into a Bayes-Adaptive Markov Decision Process (BAMDP) framework and run a user study that compares it to baseline models that do not incorporate individual or contextual factors. The results show that our model signifi...
Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 2021
Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2020
Researchers have proposed models of curiosity as a means to drive robots to learn and adapt to th... more Researchers have proposed models of curiosity as a means to drive robots to learn and adapt to their environments. While these models balance goal-and exploration-oriented actions in a mathematically principled manor, it is not understood how users perceive a robot that pursues off-task actions. Motivated by a model of curiosity based on intrinsic rewards, we conducted three online video-surveys with a total of 264 participants, evaluating a variety of curious behaviors. Our results indicate that a robot's off-task actions are perceived as expressions of curiosity, but that these actions lead to a negative impact on perceptions of the robot's competence. When the robot explains or acknowledges its deviation from the primary task, this can partially mitigate the negative effects of off-task actions. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Psychology; • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design.
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Play is an essential part of the human experience and can be found throughout the lifespan. While... more Play is an essential part of the human experience and can be found throughout the lifespan. While play has long been of interest to the HCI community, research has often focused on the technologies supporting game play, the potential outcomes of play (e.g., skill-building, health improvements), or play among children. This paper explores what play looks like in online communities that are not specifcally game-based and consist primarily of adults. From online ethnographic work of the ARMY (i.e., Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), fandom of the South Korean musical group BTS, we explore how BTS and ARMY collaboratively construct a playful social environment using various social media platforms. A contribution of this work is to expand our conceptualization of how adults create playful places that are not specifcally game-based and
Conducting unbiased empirical research in social media spaces is of great importance. However, it... more Conducting unbiased empirical research in social media spaces is of great importance. However, it is a highly restrictive space for researchers who are not aligned with, or working from within, the companies who control those spaces. Additionally, even when access to social media networks is available, there are a range of ethical concerns and hurdles around conducting experimental research. Here we present a proof of concept for a system of easily accessible software tools which leverage procedural generation, machine learning, and interactive media to allow researchers– from both technical and non-technical domains– to conduct investigations that involve human personality traits (i.e., Big 5 attributes) in a simulated social media environment. Our past research on personality attributes in social media spaces is both our motivation and exemplar use case, as we have found that affordances and social mores influence individual presentation as measured by personality traits.
Travel restrictions and social distancing measures make it difficult to observe, monitor or manag... more Travel restrictions and social distancing measures make it difficult to observe, monitor or manage physical fieldwork. We describe research in progress that applies technologies for real-time remote observation and conversation in on-road vehicles to observe field work on a farm. We collaborated on a pilot deployment of this project at Kreher Eggs in upstate New York. We instrumented a tractor with equipment to remotely observe and interview farm workers performing vehicle-related work. This work was initially undertaken to allow sustained observation of field work over longer periods of time from geographically distant locales; given our current situation, this work provides a case study in how to perform observational research when geographic and bodily distance have become the norm. We discuss our experiences and provide some preliminary insights for others looking to conduct remote observational research in the field. ABOUT THE AUTHOR/S Wendy Ju Cornell Tech wendyju@cornell.edu ...
Robots deployed in human-populated spaces often need human help to effectively complete their tas... more Robots deployed in human-populated spaces often need human help to effectively complete their tasks. Yet, a robot that asks for help too frequently or at the wrong times may cause annoyance, and a robot that asks too infrequently may be unable to complete its tasks. In this paper, we present a model of humans’ helpfulness towards a robot in an office environment, learnt from online user study data. Our key insight is that effectively planning for a task that involves bystander help requires disaggregating individual and contextual factors and explicitly reasoning about uncertainty over individual factors. Our model incorporates the individual factor of latent helpfulness and the contextual factors of human busyness and robot frequency of asking. We integrate the model into a Bayes-Adaptive Markov Decision Process (BAMDP) framework and run a user study that compares it to baseline models that do not incorporate individual or contextual factors. The results show that our model signifi...
Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 2021
Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2020
Researchers have proposed models of curiosity as a means to drive robots to learn and adapt to th... more Researchers have proposed models of curiosity as a means to drive robots to learn and adapt to their environments. While these models balance goal-and exploration-oriented actions in a mathematically principled manor, it is not understood how users perceive a robot that pursues off-task actions. Motivated by a model of curiosity based on intrinsic rewards, we conducted three online video-surveys with a total of 264 participants, evaluating a variety of curious behaviors. Our results indicate that a robot's off-task actions are perceived as expressions of curiosity, but that these actions lead to a negative impact on perceptions of the robot's competence. When the robot explains or acknowledges its deviation from the primary task, this can partially mitigate the negative effects of off-task actions. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Psychology; • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design.