Personal health and wellbeing have grown as an object of study within HCI research and many individuals undergoing weight loss journeys use persuasive systems, such as weight loss apps, to guide them. These systems rely on various principles to persuade users toward their health goal and have in much research been considered having positive effects. There are however also parallel findings indicating unwanted effects. To explore the effects of persuasive system design, we conduct a longitudinal exploratory expert evaluation of 10 free weight loss tracking apps by emulating drastic weight loss for an extended period of time. The objective of the exploration is to unravel potential negative effects of using such systems. Our findings highlight risks of negative effects as some apps take a passive stance toward drastic weight loss, while others actively encourage it through design. We contribute to a growing strand of health related HCI research by mapping out the relation between design and negative consequences of persuasive system use.
In this paper we present our work on the design and evaluation of a web-based digital archive. The aim of this research project was to explore ways of enabling easy access to materials about their cultural heritage for indigenous people. In this project we worked in close collaboration with the Sami people across brainstorming sessions, design workshops, prototype development, and user tests. During this process we became aware of two intertwined sensitivities, i.e. a cultural sensitivity and a design sensitivity - and we refer to this as a “double sensitivity”. The data recorded from the interviews and the participants' interaction with the prototype were analyzed using thematic analysis as the methodological approach. Our results pointed at five main code clusters including: tonality of the design, usability, sociability, ethical considerations and technical errors. In this paper we discuss these findings, and we suggest that our results, and the proposed notion of “double sensitivity” contributes important research on human computer interaction (HCI) design for indigenous people.
There is a growing strand of research on social justice in HCI. While many contemporary HCI studies are being conducted and analyzed in a social justice context, still few studies examine how this plays out among older adults and their use of technology. In this paper, three streams of HCI and HCI-connected research are mapped out describing personal characteristics, economic benefits, and age-related vulnerability at the forefront of older adults’ technology use. Through an empirical study and a social justice-oriented perspective, I establish how HCI research on older adults’ technology use fails to include important societal factors and misses out on valuable insights such as how societal structures can affect senior’s life and technology use. Contributions posit three opportunities into how a social justice-oriented perspective can benefit research regarding older adults’ technology use in HCI.
As technology and social media develop and expand, technology-facilitated sex trafficking becomes increasingly difficult to take action against and prevent. Technology-facilitated sex trafficking implies the use of digital tools such as social media platforms to coordinate trafficking and (mis)lead persons into sexual exploitation, e.g., commercial sex. To address and prevent sex trafficking as it expands through technology, legal frameworks can both help and interfere with the work provided by aid organizations and authorities. We present an expert interview study with six professionals from authorities, women shelters and NGO organizations working alongside the Swedish (governance) Model. Our findings show that digital technology is useful yet heavily challenging for anti-trafficking organizations and authorities in their fight against sex trafficking, exploitation, and digital child abuse. More resources and tools are needed to mitigate the (mis)use of technology and prevent abuse. To do this, we discuss the need to recontextualize efforts against trafficking within the structural conditions and legal model of Swedish society that facilitate exploitation. Furthermore, we propose a series of risk-mitigating approaches which centers four questions for the HCI community working towards anti-trafficking efforts.