Demonstrating Interaction: The Case of Assistive Technology

Abstract

Technology ‘demos’ have become a staple in technology design practice, especially for showcasing prototypes or systems. However, demonstrations are also commonplace and multifaceted phenomena in everyday life, and thus have found their way into empirical research of technology use. In spite of their presence in HCI, their methodical character as a research tool has so far received little attention in our community. We analysed 102 video-recorded demonstrations performed by visually impaired people, captured in the context of a larger ethnographic study investigating their technology use. In doing so, we exhibit core features of demonstrational work and discuss the relevance of the meta-activities occurring around and within demonstrations. We reflect on their value as an approach to doing HCI research on assistive technologies, for enabling shared understanding and letting us identify opportunities for design. Lastly, we discuss their implications as a research instrument for accessibility and HCI research more broadly.

Supporting Awareness of Visual Impairments and Accessibility Reflections through Video Demos and Design Cards

“…Here we provide background information guiding the decisions behind the approach we have devised and implemented, which also heavily draws from our own previous research findings and experiences engaging with VIP [58,59].…”

“…To address some of the above mentioned shortcomings, we have deeply engaged with demonstrations performed by VIP, collected in empirical research investigating their use of technology [59]. By analysing a series of video demonstrations we have outlined core features that constitute them as demonstrations.…”

“…The first workshop material was a set of four video demonstrations performed by different VIP. These demos were captured in a prior research project investigating technology use by VIP [59] and were selected from such dataset based on their short duration (i.e. less than 2 minutes), and the simplicity, clarity and conciseness of the activities demonstrated.…”

“…Our main contribution lies in the articulation of such an approach and materials, building on some of our previous work. Here we provide a practical application of video demos in research [59] and the creation of the reflective design cards which are rooted in previous empirical work [7,13,25,58,66]. In this paper we describe and contextualise the background of our workshop approach and the materials developed.…”

Accessible Parallel Embodiment of Multiple Robotic Avatars in a Cafe

“…Critical Disability scholars and activists have explained how disabled people have a longer history of integrating technology into their lives and their bodies, compared to most non-disabled individuals [43,64,97]. In fact, many assistive technologies are seen as an extension of the body that become integral parts of the embodied experience of the individual [2,66,73,75,76]. Disabled people's embodied cyborg experiences are often associated with the use of assistive devices, which are directly connected or in proximity of one's body such as wheelchairs, prosthetic devices, and cochlear implants [4,6,19,45,62].…”