Florida State University School of Information Assistant Professor Yubo Kou has published two research papers that will be presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Glasgow, Scotland on May 4-9, 2019. The conference is designed to facilitate discussion about the latest in interactive technology, allowing people from different disciplines, cultures, sectors, communities, and backgrounds to come together with the common purpose of creating technology that works for people and society.
The first paper, titled “Turn to the Self in Human-Computer Interaction: Care of the Self in Negotiating the Human-Technology Relationship”, is co-authored by Xinning Gui, Yunan Chen, and Bonnie Nardi. The research discusses how various forms of technology require a lot of attention and work from their users, which sometimes become burdensome and exploitative. Kou explains, “For example, using social media could easily become a burden when one spends considerable time browsing others’ posts while creating his or her own.” Against this backdrop, the paper further discusses what are possible solutions for users and technology design so that users could benefit from their technology while still keeping their sanity.
The second paper, titled “A Practice-Led Account of the Conceptual Evolution of UX Knowledge” is co-authored with Colin M. Gray. The paper dives into the issues of industry practices such as user experience design (UX) and how it will sometimes evolve too fast, not allowing formal education to catch up in terms of curriculum and course content. Meanwhile, UX practitioners use social media to boost their online presence, to share knowledge, and to learn from each other. Kou describes further, “What we did in the study is to explore if we could collect and analyze what those UX practitioners care most about online to inform UX education.” Kou and Gray were able to generate a vocabulary that practitioners use for their professional communication. “While there are many more things to do in this space”, says Kou, “We believe even identifying the vocabulary can help UX students to get a better understanding of what industry practices look like.”
Kou is excited to present his findings at the conference and looks forward to what future research will look like as a result of these studies. “Rapidly shifting technologies bring many opportunities and challenges to how we discover meanings in everyday life and learn new things. My future research will keep focusing on novel interactions that happen between people and technology, and between social media and education.”