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Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and voice interfaces have made possible the digital reincarnation of the draftsperson and craftsperson, capable of designing and producing custom work "to spec" for a reasonable cost. We present findings from an experiment using a Wizard-of-Oz-backed recreation of a voice assistant-based designer; participants describe a holiday ornament of their own imagination to the voice assistant, which elicits details and offers design choices before ultimately "creating" the ornament for the participant. For 8 out of 16 participants, a video channel allows the participant to see the designed object as it is iteratively designed and refined. We offer observations about the nature of the interactions between participants and the voice assistant, as well as quantitative measures of participant-reported cognitive load and predicted and actual satisfaction and accuracy of reproduction. Participants report greater satisfaction with their ornaments and experience reduced cognitive load if they can see them being designed; their expectations are higher if they cannot. 15 of 16 participants would use a voice assistant again for a design task.

The effectiveness of social distancing as a disease-slowing measure is dependent on the degree of compliance that individuals demonstrate to such orders. In this ongoing research, we study outdoor pedestrian activity in New York City, specifically using (a) video streams gathered from public traffic cameras (b) dashcam footage from vehicles driving through the city, and (c) mobile phone geo-location data volunteered by local citizens. This project seeks to form a multi-scale map of urban mobility and space occupancy under social distancing policy. The data collected will enable researchers to infer the activities, contexts, origins, and destinations of the people in public spaces. This information can reveal where and, in turn, why stayat-home orders are and are not being followed. As a work in progress, it is yet too early for detailed findings on this project. However, we report here on several unanticipated factors that have already influenced the course of the project, among them: the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, data collection challenges, changes in the weather, and the unexpected nature of the progression of COVID-19. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; Geographic visualization; • Applied computing → Sociology;