BCNM at CSCW 2022
The 25th ACSM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing featured presentations by BCNM faculty, students, and alumni!
CSCW is the premier venue for research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, communities, and networks. Bringing together top researchers and practitioners, CSCW explores the technical, social, material, and theoretical challenges of designing technology to support collaborative work and life activities.
Read more about CSCW here.
The Distressing Ads That Persist: Uncovering The Harms of Targeted Weight-Loss Ads Among Users with Histories of Disordered Eating
Liza Gak: UC Berkeley
Seyi Olojo: UC Berkeley
Niloufar Salehi: UC Berkeley
Targeted advertising can harm vulnerable groups when it targets individuals' personal and psychological vulnerabilities. We focus on how targeted weight-loss advertisements harm people with histories of disordered eating. We identify three features of targeted advertising that cause harm: the persistence of personal data that can expose vulnerabilities, over-simplifying algorithmic relevancy models, and design patterns that increase engagement but can also encourage unhealthy behavior. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals with histories of unhealthy body stigma, dieting, and disordered eating, we found that targeted weight-loss ads posed a range of negative emotional and physical outcomes, placing a burden of individual responsibility on the user. At the same time, we observed that targeted individuals demonstrated agency and resistance against distressing ads. Drawing on scholarship in postcolonial environmental studies, we use the concept of slow violence to articulate how targeted advertising inflicts concrete harms on vulnerable populations. CAUTION: This paper includes media that could be triggering, particularly to people with an eating disorder. Please use caution when reading, printing, or disseminating this paper.
Not Another School Resource Map: Meeting Underserved Families' Information Needs Requires Trusting Relationships and Personalized Care
Tonya Nguyen: UC Berkeley
Samantha Robertson: UC Berkeley
Niloufar Salehi: UC Berkeley
Public school districts across the United States have implemented school choice systems that have the potential to improve underserved students' access to educational opportunities. However, research has shown that learning about and applying for schools can be extremely time-consuming and expensive, making it difficult for these systems to create more equitable access to resources in practice. A common factor surfaced in prior work is unequal access to information about the schools and enrollment process. In response, governments and non-profits have invested in providing more information about schools to parents, for instance, through detailed online dashboards. However, we know little about what information is actually useful for historically marginalized and underserved families. We conducted interviews with 10 low-income families and families of color to learn about the challenges they faced navigating an online school choice and enrollment system. We complement this data with four interviews with people who have supported families through the enrollment process in a wide range of roles, from school principal to non-profit staff (``parent advocates''). Our findings highlight the value of personalized support and trusting relationships to delivering relevant and helpful information. We contrast this against online information resources and dashboards, which tend to be impersonal, target a broad audience, and make strong assumptions about what parents should look for in a school without sensitivity to families' varying circumstances. We advocate for an assets-based design approach to information support in public school enrollment, which would ask how we can support the local, one-on-one support that community members already provide.
Friendscope: Exploring In-the-Moment Experience Sharing on Camera Glasses via a Shared Camera
Molly Nicholas: UC Berkeley, Snap Inc.
Brian A. Smith: Snap Inc, Columbia University
Rajan Vaish: Snap Inc.
We introduce Friendscope, an instant, in-the-moment experience sharing system for lightweight commercial camera glasses. Friendscope explores a new concept called a shared camera. This concept allows a wearer to share control of their camera with a remote friend, making it possible for both people to capture photos/videos from the camera in the moment. Through a user study with 48 participants, we found that users felt connected to each other, describing the shared camera as a more intimate form of livestreaming. Moreover, even privacy-sensitive users were able to retain their sense of privacy and control with the shared camera. Friendscope’s different shared camera configurations give wearers ultimate control over who they share the camera with and what photos/videos they share. We conclude with design implications for future experience sharing systems.
Towards Creative Version Control
Molly Nicholas: UC Berkeley
Sarah Sterman: UC Berkeley
Eric Paulos: UC Berkeley
Version control systems are powerful tools for managing history information and shaping personal and collaborative processes. While many complex tools exist for software engineering, and basic functionality for capturing versions is often found in collaborative applications such as text editors and design layout tools, these systems are not attuned to the needs and behaviors of creative practitioners within those domains, and fail to support creative practitioners in many others. Through 18 semi-structured interviews across diverse domains of creativity, we investigate how creative practitioners use version histories in their process. With the familiar paradigms and features of software version control as an organizing structure, we discuss how these creative practitioners embrace, challenge, and complicate uses of version histories in four ways: using versions as a palette of materials, providing confidence and freedom to explore, leveraging low-fidelity version capture, and reflecting on and reusing versions across long time scales. We discuss how the themes present across this wide range of mediums and domains can provide insight into future designs and uses of version control systems to support creative process.