Human-Centered Data Science Lab

Dr. Cecilia Aragon and SCCL researcher, Daniel Perry, attended the Serious Play conference held at the DigiPen Institute in Redmond, Washington August 23rd – 25th. The conference attracted leaders within the fields of game design, education and learning. “It was incredible to see people from computer science, game designers, learning scientists, k -12 educators, and corporate professionals all come together to discuss the future of gaming and education,” said Perry.

http://www.seriousplayconference.com/

Collaborative Creativity: A Complex Systems Model with Distributed Affect
Cecilia R. Aragon and Alison Williams
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2011
Abstract:
The study of creativity has received significant attention over the past century, with a recent increase in interest in collaborative, distributed creativity. We posit that creativity in distributed groups is fostered by software interfaces that specifically enable socio-emotional or affective communication. However, previous work on creativity and affect has primarily focused on the individual, while group creativity research has concentrated more on cognition rather than affect. In this paper we propose a new model for creativity in distributed groups, based on the theory of groups as complex systems, that includes affect as well as cognition and that explicitly calls out the interface between individuals as a key parameter of the model. We describe the model, the four stages of collaborative creativity and the causal dynamics in each stage, and demonstrate how affect and interface can facilitate the generation, selection, and amplification of ideas in the various stages of collaborative creativity. We then validate our model with data from three field sites. The data was collected from longitudinal studies of two distributed groups involved in producing creative products—astrophysicists studying supernovae and the expansion rate of the universe and children creating multimedia programming projects online—and interviews with staff in a multinational engineering company.

Making Energy Savings Easier: Usability Metrics for Thermostats
Daniel Perry, Cecilia Aragon, Alan Meier, Therese Peffer, and Marco Pritoni

Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 6, Issue 4, August 2011, pp. 226 – 244
Abstract

U.S. residential thermostats control approximately 9% of the nation’s energy use. Many building codes now require programmable thermostats (PTs) because of their assumed energy savings. However, several recent field studies have shown no significant savings or even higher energy use in households using PTs compared to those using non-PTs. These studies point to usability problems that lead to incorrect use and wasted energy. However, the lack of clear, consistent metrics has hampered the acceptance of usability concerns by thermostat manufacturers. Thus there is a need for metrics specific to PTs that manufacturers can use to evaluate their products.

In this paper, we report on the results of a usability study conducted on five commercially available PTs and the development of four new metrics suitable for use in evaluating thermostat usability. Our study confirmed usability deficits in the current generation of PTs and showed the metrics are correlated with each other as well as agreeing with the qualitative results of the study.