tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64530901502791130242024-03-13T05:52:08.432-05:00HCI for PeaceHCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-119718160577327402016-04-27T09:26:00.001-05:002016-04-27T09:26:12.190-05:00HCI & Conflict SIG at CHI 2016If you are coming to CHI 2016, we invite you to join us for the HCI & Conflict SIG, on May 12, at 11:30am, room 112. We will discuss the role interactive technologies can play to prevent, deescalate, and recover from armed conflict, while focusing on developing ideas for specific projects. To get these ideas going, you may want to check this <a href="http://interactions.acm.org/blog/view/violent-groups-social-psychology-and-computing">blog post on violent groups, social psychology, and computing</a>. HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-18524099775834101662014-04-05T19:38:00.001-05:002014-04-06T18:44:27.942-05:00Papers and articles on HCI for Peace<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Hourcade, J.P. and Nathan, L. (2013).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~hourcade/papers/humancomputationandconflict.pdf" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #6e7587; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Human Computation and Conflict</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">. In Michelucci (Ed.) Handbook of Human Computation (pp. 993-1009). New York: Springer.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Hourcade, J.P., Bullock-Rest, N.E., Jayatilaka, L. and Nathan, L. (2012).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/september-october-2012/hci-for-peace" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #6e7587; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">HCI for Peace: Beyond Tie Dye</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">. interactions, 19(5), 40-47.</span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">Hourcade, J.P. and Bullock-Rest, N.E. (2011).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~hourcade/hciforpeace.pdf">HCI for Peace: A Call for Constructive Action</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">. Proceedings of CHI 2011. ACM Press: pp. 443-452.</span> </span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: 'Titillium Web', sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">You can contact Juan Pablo Hourcade at juanpablo-hourcade@uiowa.edu </span> </span>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-58062887830080096112014-04-03T19:13:00.003-05:002014-04-03T19:15:27.954-05:00HCI for Peace at the Build Peace: Peace Through Technology conferenceThe MIT Media Lab is hosting a conference titled <a href="http://howtobuildpeace.com/">Build Peace: Peace Through Technology</a>. This is an exciting development that we hope will enable human-computer interaction researchers to connect with peace practitioners, activists, and researchers from other fields. Batya Friedman and Juan Pablo Hourcade are presenting ignite talks at the conference.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-92167233241791093562013-12-11T11:07:00.003-06:002013-12-11T11:08:31.902-06:00Human computation and conflictJuan Pablo Hourcade and Lisa Nathan wrote a chapter for the Handbook of Human Computation titled <i>Human computation and conflict.</i> It provides an overview of ways in which human computation may be used to promote peace, but also how it could be counter-productive. There is a <a href="http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~hourcade/papers/humancomputationandconflict.pdf">draft version of the chapter</a> available online.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-56568318483951128012013-08-05T12:18:00.001-05:002013-08-05T12:18:17.466-05:00Read about the HCI for Peace Ideathon's outcomesThe <a href="http://interactions.acm.org/blog/view/chi-2013-hci-for-peace-ideathon-summary">outcomes of the HCI for Peace Ideathon</a> are now posted in an interactions magazine blog post by Juan Pablo Hourcade.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-21623728852435405852013-04-22T11:22:00.002-05:002013-04-22T11:22:41.157-05:00HCI for Peace Ideathon at CHI 2013<style>
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</style>HCI for Peace is hosting a SIG meeting at CHI 2013 in Paris. This SIG will be the first opportunity for CHI
attendees to meet during the main part of the conference, share their ideas,
and provide concrete ways to move forward with this line of research. We are calling it an "Ideathon" because we want to get lots of ideas on the role HCI researchers can play in preventing, de-escalating, and recovering from armed conflict.<br />
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The meeting will be on Wednesday, May 1st, and 9am in room 362/363.<br />
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<br />HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-59523682058944755772012-09-06T13:07:00.002-05:002012-09-06T13:07:45.933-05:00Other organizations working on interactive technologies for peaceLooking for other perspectives on technologies for peace? Two successful organizations include the <a href="http://peace.stanford.edu/">Peace Innovation Team</a> at Stanford University, and the <a href="http://ict4peace.org/">ICT for peace foundation</a>.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-16974094991334680462012-09-05T19:11:00.002-05:002012-09-05T19:11:27.564-05:00HCI for Peace on the cover of interactions magazineHCI for Peace is the <a href="http://mags.acm.org/interactions/20120910/?CFID=103952793&CFTOKEN=69113350#pg1">cover story</a> for the September-October 2012 edition of interactions magazine. Let us know what you think about the story, and share your own ideas about how to promote peace through interactive technologies.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-46246293539298047482012-05-08T08:12:00.004-05:002012-05-08T08:18:46.561-05:00HCI for Peace Workshop at CHI 2012We had a wonderful workshop on Saturday at the CHI conference. The <a href="http://www.divms.uiowa.edu/~hourcade/chi2012-hciforpeace/participants.html">papers presented at the workshop</a> included a wide range of work, from calming technologies aiming at self-awareness and self-regulation, to the visualization of data (from detecting land mines to see patterns behind human behavior), to the gathering of data and media from individuals, with the challenges of curation, and finding common narratives that can lead to peace. We also discussed how patterns in the way people experience and share information on conflict can lead to more conflict or to peace. Themes that emerged for further discussion included the high complexity of the challenges, the importance of context and different viewpoints, and the role of design.<br />
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We also had a chance to explore issues of professional ethics, making (non-violent) conflict constructive, and tensions with the use of the word "peace". In particular, we agreed that the efforts we discussed were directed at preventing, de-escalating, recovering, and minimizing the damage from armed conflicts.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-56069155507622804742011-12-29T16:08:00.006-06:002011-12-30T06:59:00.212-06:00Interview with Lisa Nathan<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK5plrIvcAE9ZGEnWWBvHHxgDUgPmY-o5HdvSDsuVZwQzg3rHS3B313RupSveDq6dGxR3SJpaDf8Y5QG3M0mWllMKV5c0YG8SQJkSEuPNmjqPVlpcXlWd81cKia70abtf13VQRGeVQmunL/s1600/nathan.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 98px; height: 100px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK5plrIvcAE9ZGEnWWBvHHxgDUgPmY-o5HdvSDsuVZwQzg3rHS3B313RupSveDq6dGxR3SJpaDf8Y5QG3M0mWllMKV5c0YG8SQJkSEuPNmjqPVlpcXlWd81cKia70abtf13VQRGeVQmunL/s320/nathan.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691675975901423922" /></a><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; "><a href="http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/lnathan/">Lisa Nathan</a> is a faculty member at SLAIS, the iSchool at the University of British Columbia. Through a range of projects she investigates: 1) the design of information systems that address societal challenges, specifically those that are ethically charged and impact multiple generations (e.g., environmental degradation, war, colonialism) and 2) creative information practices that influence how these systems are appropriated over time. She is a founding member of the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal project hosted by the University of Washington. The project's website provides citizens around the world with various means to access and use video interviews with personnel from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (e.g., judges, defense lawyers, translators, prosecutors). The research team is building design theory and method to inform the development of the multi-lifespan information system design research initiative.</span><div><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; "><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; ">HCI for Peace interviewed Lisa about her work with the <a href="http://www.tribunalvoices.org/">Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal</a> project.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; "><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span><b>Lisa Nathan: </b></span><span style="text-align: left; "><span>A brief caveat before I dive into answering the questions - although the responses are mine, my experience with this project is strongly shaped by the numerous individuals I have had the honor of working with over the past few years. In particular, discussions with Batya Friedman (project PI), Nell Grey, Milli Lake, Bob Utter and Betty Utter continue to shape how I think about the project.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><b>HCI for Peace: </b></span></span><span style="text-align: left; "><span>Can you briefly explain the concept of multi-lifespan information systems and how it may apply to post-conflict reconciliation?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><b>Lisa Nathan: </b></span></span><span style="text-align: left; "><span>For me, the question motivating multi-lifespan information system design is simple - how can we design information systems to help us address complex societal challenges that influence many generations? For example, how might we design an information system to help recover from genocide or environmental degradation or colonization? Rather than thinking in the short term - designing an information system to meet the needs of today - the multi-lifespan information system approach is focused on longer-term goals. In terms of post-conflict reconciliation, the multi-lifespan design approach recognizes that reconciliation after horrific conflict will likely take many generations to achieve. The approach positions designers to investigate how an information system might scaffold this multi-year process. Although the concept is simple, implementation is complex and quite frankly, daunting. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><b>HCI for Peace: </b>How did you get involved in the project with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><b>Lisa Nathan: </b></span></span><span style="text-align: left; "><span>At the time I was a doctoral student working with Professor Batya Friedman at the University of Washington. We attended a talk by Angeline Djampou, the Director of LIbraries for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). After the talk we met with Ms. Djampou to discuss with her the multi-lifespan information system design approach, which at the time was a nascent concept. There was a great deal of synergy throughout the conversation. She invited us to visit the ICTR in Tanzania to speak with administrative officials about developing a multi-lifespan information system associated with the work of the ICTR. We made the trip a few months later and officials were very receptive to the idea. We were invited to return a few months later to start a project. Once we were back in Seattle we invited a range of people involved in information system design, international justice, international criminal law, and film to work with us on crafting the project. Over many long discussions and challenging debates, the Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal project began to take shape. We were given permission from the ICTR to recruit tribunal personnel for video interviews. During the interviews judges, defense lawyers, interpreters, prosecutors shared compelling reflections concerning the role of justice in the process of reconciliation. There were no restrictions in terms of interview questions and ICTR administration did not ask to review the material we collected. Interviewees were provided the opportunity to review his or her video interview, but only one person asked to have an interview sealed until the ICTR closes. That was the beginning of the project. Although an incredible amount of work has gone into the project over the past few years, it is still just getting underway.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="text-align: left; "><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><b>HCI for Peace: </b>What is one of the greatest challenges in the project?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><b>Lisa Nathan: </b>The multi-lifespan information system design approach is incredibly ambitious. It is much easier to critique than it is to feel that you have made progress because we are building a system to address a complex, shifting issue. Clearly this challenge is tied to what you use for metrics of success. Most projects in our field are in the 2-5 year range and it is a bit easier to figure out whether they were successful or not. Similarly, funding opportunities and other standard research components are based on projects with a much shorter time frame. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><b>HCI for Peace: </b>What are your hopes for the system you built?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><b>Lisa Nathan: </b>It is critical to realize that although there are strong technical components, at its heart this is a deeply human endeavor, it depends a lot on things like interpersonal relationships, goodwill, trust, and respect. I see those involved as stewards of the system, constantly evaluating and trying to improve the system (technical aspects, policies, protocols, etc.).One of my deepest wishes is that more Rwandans become actively involved in the project. I am not referring just to Rwandans using the material within the system to support local initiatives -- which is happening and is fantastic --but Rwandans becoming active stewards, helping to envision future adaptations of the Voices from the Rwandan Tribunal information system.</span></div>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-60122120855466203082011-11-16T20:52:00.001-06:002011-11-16T20:53:40.133-06:00HCI for Peace hosting a workshop at CHI 2012It will be on May 5 or 6, 2012 in Austin, Texas. Please checkout the <a href="http://www.divms.uiowa.edu/%7Ehourcade/chi2012-hciforpeace/">workshop's website</a> for more information.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-51269969782356948472011-06-07T11:25:00.004-05:002011-06-07T11:31:52.228-05:00HCI for Peace on SustainableLensSamuel Mann interviewed Juan Pablo Hourcade for SustainableLens, a radio program out of Otago Access Radio in New Zealand. You can <a href="http://sustainablelens.org/?p=105">listen to the interview about HCI for Peace</a>, which covers most of the material in the paper Prof. Hourcade presented on HCI for Peace at the CHI 2011 conference. The interview starts about 5 minutes and 40 seconds into the program.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-12180440360652468252011-05-25T16:48:00.012-05:002011-05-25T17:05:53.095-05:00Humanitarian demining: An interview with Lahiru Jayatilaka<div style="right: 215px;" id="divSn" class="divSn divTx"><span id="spnFrom" class="rwRRO" _e_ondblclick="onDblClkReadRcp(event);" _e_onclick="onClkRcp(event);" _e_oncontextmenu="onRwCm(event);" _fjnk="1" _dn="Lahiru Jayatilaka" _rt="SMTP" _em="lahiru@seas.harvard.edu" _ao="3" title="lahiru@seas.harvard.edu"></span> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style> <p class="MsoNormal">Lahiru Jayatilaka is a researcher at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He leads the project called <a href="http://iis.seas.harvard.edu/projects/petals">PETALS</a>, which aims to create visual support devices for use by humanitarian deminers. We recently had the opportunity to interview him.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">HCI for Peace: </span>What has inspired you to conduct research on computer-based solutions to clear landmines?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">LJ: </span>Thrishantha Nanayakkara introduced me to the severity of the landmine problem during my Sophomore year at Harvard. After a couple of conversations with him, I was moved by the humanitarian urgency of the problem, and simultaneously shocked at the state-of-the-art in the domain. I, like most others, could not wrap my mind around the fact that most landmine clearance occurred with humans using metal detectors and hand-held probing tools. In these times of ‘high-tech’, it seemed unjust to have a fellow human being manually finding and removing buried explosives--a missed audio signal seemed to be the difference between life and death. Furthermore, I found it hard to accept the reality that countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia had remained contaminated with landmines since around the 1970s. Why was landmine clearance so slow? Why did we have to risk human life to get rid of these post-conflict threats? These ponderings, along with a keenness to apply my skills as a Computer Scientist to interesting, challenging and socially relevant problems, were some of the driving factors behind my decision to enter this space.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">HCI for Peace: </span>Can you give us a brief overview of the PETALS project?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">LJ: </span>The PETALS (Pattern Enhancement Tool for Assisting Landmine Sensing) project is a recent research initiative at Harvard University that aims to develop assistive visual devices to improve the safety and efficiency of metal detector-based humanitarian demining. PETALS is motivated by two fundamental characteristics of humanitarian landmine clearance. First, metal detectors are, and will for a very long time remain, the primary detection tool for finding landmines. Second, metal detectors are of limited effectiveness, as modern landmines contain only minimal amounts of metal, making them difficult to distinguish from the ubiquitous but harmless metallic clutter littering post-combat areas. In response to these challenges related to detection, the PETALS system enables deminers to visualize ‘metallic signatures’. A metallic signature is simply the outline of an electromagnetic field belonging to a buried metallic object. Given that a metallic signature is roughly proportional in size and shape to the buried metallic object, visualizing metallic signatures provides more information to the deminer about the nature of the object buried in the ground, thereby, enabling better detection decisions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">HCI for Peace: </span>What are your plans for the future of PETALS?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-weight: bold;">LJ: </span>We are currently prototyping the PETALS system with both novice and expert humanitarian deminers at a demining training center. These preliminary field studies have helped us gather ecological support for our experimental findings, and also ascertain feedback about eventual system design. We hope to continue with these field studies during the coming months, while simultaneously transitioning PETALS to a field-ready system. If our plans proceed as expected, we hope to deploy PETALS commercially in the not-so-distant future.</p> </div>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-39358609460544206342011-02-15T11:39:00.003-06:002011-02-15T11:42:39.817-06:00HCI for Peace: A Call for Constructive ActionA preview of our CHI 2011 paper is now available here: <a href="http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/%7Ehourcade/hciforpeace.pdf">http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~hourcade/hciforpeace.pdf</a>. Here is the abstract for the paper:<br />Peace is an important value for the human-computer interaction research community, yet it has not resulted in the development of a research sub-community or even a research agenda. In this paper we seek to address this void by first motivating the need for computing research on promoting peace and preventing war. We then review evidence on the factors that affect the likelihood that armed conflict will occur, as well as the aspects involved when individuals make moral decisions on whether or not to support a war. Based on this review, we propose a research agenda, citing research examples from the human-computer interaction literature and discussing new ideas.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-37145711090516897792010-11-04T17:29:00.001-05:002010-11-04T17:30:46.375-05:00The Future of Simulation<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> by Ronald "Skip" Cole<br /><br />I want to ask you a favor. I ask that you spend sometime in the next week or so, maybe while in the shower, or stuck in traffic, pondering a question. This is a question that I and others have thought about for several years, and I think we are just scratching the surface as to where the answers will lead us. So I sincerely hope you can give it some thought, and share back here any insights that you may have.<br /><br />The question is this, "How can simulation improve human decision making?"<br /><br />The ability for people to easily and inexpensively create synthetic or ‘virtual’ environments is relatively new. We can project that this ability is going to get even more inexpensive and powerful. Imagine that, just as any educated adult is expected to be able to write a document with a word processor, in the future, any educated adult will be expected to be able to use software to create virtual worlds, worlds that can be used for educational or even experimental purposes. How will that change the real world?<br /><br />There is nothing, by the way, theoretically holding us back from this future. It is just a matter of good interface design and refining our educational processes. What are now graduate level courses in simulation design will soon become quite common fare - there are not a lot of profound secrets there. Indeed, as simulations have to work with us common humans in the loop, most of the lessons seem intuitive when stated out loud.<br /><br />As the printing press ushered in a new age of creativity and improved communication, the ability to create interactive worlds will do so also. Just as Gutenberg probably could not have foreseen a talented 18 year old writing "<b><i>Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus</i></b>" for mass distribution using his 'movable type,’ it is hard for us to see all there is to come. So the time spent pondering this question may be time very well spent.<br /><br />How could simulations affect your personal life? Are you having a hard time convincing someone of something? Don't you just wish you could let them step into a world in which they have already made the decision you want them to make, so they could see how better off they would be? We try to do this with each other all of the time. Painting a shared vision of a common future is a very powerful technique in persuasion. Technology will help us do this with even greater saliency.<br /><br />How will simulations affect commerce? Imagine if anyone doing a business proposal, for a restaurant say, had to submit a simulation of how the restaurant would function; when the customers would come in, how they would be treated, etc. Currently banks don't demand such an item because it would be too expensive to create, but the price is coming down on such software. Modern software techniques and the open source movement are driving the costs down, and will continue to do so. Software, once written, is written, and if it is well written, other software can be built on top of it.<br /><br />How will international affairs be different when all nations could see, maybe just a little bit, further down the line, when making their plans? What if any nation planning aggressive action could see how things are likely to pan out? This ability might not be enough to stop all wars, but it may at least prevent some of the more foolish ones.<br /><br />What happens to the human race as its members grow in experience and improved communication? How will our 'collective intelligence' be changed? The ability to predict and communicate second and third order effects has been traditionally been poor, and it will never be perfect. Look closely behind any modern catastrophe, and you will find tortured Cassandras: People who tried to give warning, but were not heard. These voices have been drowned out by the charlatans, noise and expediency. Creating platforms to allow ideas to play themselves out in more objective settings seems like something we must do. It is hard to put a value on not making bad decisions.<br /><br />I have been working on an Open Simulation Platform (OSP) at the United States Institute of Peace. This is a tool that could allow anyone to create, conduct, refine and share online training simulations. I have been exploring its use in helping prepare peacebuilders, by providing another possible tool for them to use relying on cheap, ubiquitous simulation technology. Innovations have traditionally been fueled by great conflicts. The 'space race' gave us microelectronics and microwave ovens. The cold war produced the Internet - a distributed network that could survive a nuclear attack. If the 'fuel' that drives the innovation toward inexpensive, ubiquitous simulation technology is the pursuit of peace, I think that matters. And I’m proud that we are playing our part in this next stage of the mankind’s progression.<br /><br />So please, share back with us any thoughts you may have. And if you are interested in helping us on this journey, drop an email to OSP at usip.org.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>The views expressed here are purely the author’s are not necessarily those of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policies.</i></span></span>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-60194019788386475412010-09-14T10:14:00.006-05:002010-09-14T10:53:16.457-05:00Design for Change Finland<div>by Anna Keune and Pavan Ramkumar</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzJdSouwHPM_l2wWOJwxX92UYGewO1eS6MWtLihJsmYNcOH77q4HB96wyFbnsCfetzRURmwGNv2dIYZIgrzsyApgglXb26snt0Bsu1__BM9GyEOqu9aJRcFRJ3k6_UzKXj5I_8pdaYFrG/s1600/DFC-Finland-FBLogo.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzJdSouwHPM_l2wWOJwxX92UYGewO1eS6MWtLihJsmYNcOH77q4HB96wyFbnsCfetzRURmwGNv2dIYZIgrzsyApgglXb26snt0Bsu1__BM9GyEOqu9aJRcFRJ3k6_UzKXj5I_8pdaYFrG/s320/DFC-Finland-FBLogo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516795725891399650" /></a><br /><!--StartFragment--><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Design for Change (DfC) is a worldwide school contest that originated from Kiran Bir Sethi's Design for Giving project, in Ahmedabad, India in 2007. Here you can find out more about the global movement: </span></span><span style="color:#0000FF;"><u><a href="http://www.designforchangecontest.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://www.designforchangecontest.com</span></span></a></u></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;">DfC is calling children to work for one week on solutions for a local problem they are most drawn towards. The contest aims to give children the opportunity to think critically about their everyday life, form working groups, come up with a plan of action, and act upon it. The global movement has great potential to awaken the talents and awareness of children to participate in shaping their world, by offering a simplified four-step design process toolkit of "feel, imagine, do and share" to children. DfC sends the message that learning can happen through hands-on design practices, and interconnectedness of knowledge domains. During the DFC contest, the teacher's role changes. The teacher becomes a facilitator and learns together with the students.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />The DfC contest is specifically targeted to the school environment. With this it is expanding the possibilities that school offers to children by stretching the boundaries from within.<br /><br />Currently, 22 countries are participating in the global movement including Finland. We set up DfC Finland with 4 volunteers, in the spring of 2010. We performed the four step process with children in Helsinki. The children chose their own content and worked on a campaign to stop Finland from supporting cluster-bombs in war territories, and a pro-cycling blog. You can view a video summarizing the workshop in Helsinki here: </span></span><span style="color:#0000FF;"><u><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW7NlTFkVr8"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW7NlTFkVr8</span></span></a></u></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /><br />We also conducted an interview with the teacher, who offered us the opportunity to work with the children. You can listen to the experiences of the teacher from Finland here: </span></span><span style="color:#0000FF;"><u><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7etEWqSmbY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7etEWqSmbY</span></span></a></u></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /><br />Recently, DfC Finland launched an open call for volunteers to help take Design for Change Finland to more schools or youth groups around Finland. School teachers from Oulu and Lapeenranta have expressed interest to participate with their classes.<br /><br />Last Saturday, we conducted a workshop with Unicef, in which the teachers and students of the Unicef school in Helsinki got to try out part of the DfC process and get inspired. The topic was to develop the Unicef school network in Finland.<br /><br />On November 20th, the global child rights day, the TEDxYouth will be organized at the Aalto Design Factory in Helsinki. Design for Change Finland will be offering a workshop for children there.<br /><br />Design for Change, as it originated from India is representative of a trend in how and where innovative ideas originate and spread, sometimes called reverse innovation. It picks up on universal challenges and offers an example of a solution from India to all other parts of the world. Anyone in the world can gain from learning how to become more socially engaged, and collaborate with others based on their own interests.<br /><br />If you are curious and moved to contribute, do reach the DfC Finland volunteers at </span></span><span style="color:#0000FF;"><u><a href="http://www.blogger.com/dfc.finland@gmail.com"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">dfc.finland@gmail.com</span></span></a></u></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span> <!--EndFragment--> </div>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-20924758482332977922010-06-17T13:33:00.006-05:002010-06-17T14:11:43.622-05:00HCI Hero award for HCI for Peace<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHtbcpKjzze9qnlj2NHdMD2uoEkkag93cBtEy5PfE4FcPoXde4ZJdfb8hmnvkZjPDBe9aaw6xnJ-0jtvHh6DEZn6jpZ7b7ruS4_2iDzXKZgBd1sf6W2IQTRadMTToztqyP3smGSoP5UQ1v/s1600/hci+hero.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHtbcpKjzze9qnlj2NHdMD2uoEkkag93cBtEy5PfE4FcPoXde4ZJdfb8hmnvkZjPDBe9aaw6xnJ-0jtvHh6DEZn6jpZ7b7ruS4_2iDzXKZgBd1sf6W2IQTRadMTToztqyP3smGSoP5UQ1v/s320/hci+hero.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483814020215583954" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~hourcade">Juan Pablo Hourcade</a> received the 2010 HCI Hero Award at the <a href="http://www.umd.edu">University of Maryland</a>'s <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil">Human-Computer Interaction Lab</a>'s <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/">Symposium</a> for his work with Natasha Bullock-Rest in organizing HCI for Peace. We hope the award will help raise awareness of HCI for Peace's goals and will encourage others to pursue research in this area.</div>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-90379010696772409032010-05-17T13:34:00.007-05:002010-05-18T10:51:10.637-05:00HCI for Peace at CHI 2010<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTEXYmXsCT1GgwAYLgohveI-M_sLXcl-jz1jbnwtv3Ew3WKW-k8LNG0l6AFcK5t41Zulg2N5ZveL6Uia4D_yM2rEYjcBZM-xp1tvJLHW7OJ5B2pdl8y04oBEd2_DM_3dNG72sgN_UnRIRo/s1600/natasha-dove.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTEXYmXsCT1GgwAYLgohveI-M_sLXcl-jz1jbnwtv3Ew3WKW-k8LNG0l6AFcK5t41Zulg2N5ZveL6Uia4D_yM2rEYjcBZM-xp1tvJLHW7OJ5B2pdl8y04oBEd2_DM_3dNG72sgN_UnRIRo/s320/natasha-dove.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472311152854778818" /></a><br />Bringing HCI for Peace to CHI 2010 was a great success! We recruited 500 peace ambassadors through the distribution of as many postcards and peace ribbons, held an informal brainstorm for peace gathering, and collected many ideas for peace on sticky notes. <br /><br />At the peace gathering, partners discussed their ideas for peace and wrote them down on sticky notes. From these ideas, several main themes emerged: promoting education, increasing social awareness of everyday actions, creating a culture of peace, engaging other organizations, exposing the ugly side of war, promoting cross-cultural understanding, and building infrastructure and tools. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Promote education<br /></span>Education plays an important role in creating peace. Participants suggested working on raising literacy rates for women, educating children, giving opportunities to adults and elderly people, and building education ICTs. Another participant captured a popular sentiment – “peace starts from the kids.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Social awareness of everyday actions<br /></span>Some participants noted the importance of informed social awareness. One stated, simply, “think about who you’re working for and what their goals are.” Another mentioned that giving consumers tools to ascertain product origin and the conditions in which different products are created can help people making more ecologically and humanitarianly sound choices. Social networking sites can allow the sharing of social pressure to maximize individuals’ social impact. Another participant stressed the need for moving beyond quick fixes by figuring out how to promote long-lasting changes in attitudes and behaviors relating to informed consumer knowledge<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Highlight peace <br /></span>Creating a culture that values peace includes creating activities that highlight peace: geocaching of “peace sites” in the model that war sites and battlefields are commended, including places like the ones where Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. spoke.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Engage other organizations<br /></span>Ben Bederson and Allison Druin mentioned creating an HCI Peace Corps in their acceptance talk for the SIGCHI social impact award, a group that could carry out service projects around the world, in the form of Master’s projects, PhD work, and sabbatical work, similar to the University of Maryland’s <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/designingforabetterworld/">Human-Computer Interaction Lab’s service day</a>. Other ideas included connecting with existing peace groups to combine forces. A participant suggested hosting a TED talk that focused on peace and conflict in Africa or other developing regions. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Expose the ugly side of war<br /></span>One idea to promote peace is to educate people about the negative facts of war through pictures, stories, and anecdotes, as a way to encourage people to think about the importance of peace. One participant noted, “conflict should not produce profit,” highlighting the frequent interplay between the two, dovetailing with another participant’s suggestion to create visualizations that illuminate the public cost of war and who profits to help people understand the true forces that create conflict. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Promote cross-cultural understanding<br /></span>By far the most discussed topic was reducing conflict through emphasizing a common humanity, encouraging people to step out of their comfort zones to make cross-cultural connections and seek out information from new sources of ideas, help them learn about each other, and think from another perspective. Ideas to this effect included setting up video-conferencing classrooms across the world, creating a site for “speed friending” across the globe – particularly for countries in conflict, encouraging diverse groups of young children to communicate through playing and collaborating together across time and space, setting up partnerships for the privileged to collobrate and help people in need, and a computer-mediated pen pal system to match children in conflict prone tension areas. To seek out different perspectives, one participant suggested a findyouropposite.net, a space in which one could discuss ideas with people from different persuasions and backgrounds. A participant mentioned that it is important for everyone’s voices to be heard, even if it requires extra work on our part. Microblogging could be used as a helpful tool, both for sharing experiences and for making higher numbers of contacts from other countries. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Infrastructure tools<br /></span>In the realm of infrastructure, one participant expressed a desire to create guidelines/heuristics to evaluate the use of oppressive language and sexist applications or online tools as a way to cut down these harmful forces. Another suggested that the HCI community could use its technical skills to build tools for organizing and communicating for peace. Another suggested improving worldwide computing technology overall. <br /><br />If any of these ideas speak to you, think about the ways in which you can contribute to make peace a reality. If you have ideas or projects you’d like us to hear, feel free to leave a comment, tweet with the #hciforpeace hashtag, or leave us a note on our Facebook group. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">What are we going to do now? <br /></span>For CHI 2011, we are planning an HCI for Peace Special Interest Group, as well as a panel discussion.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-28551962372296148582010-04-07T19:06:00.004-05:002010-04-07T19:12:55.175-05:00Massive brainstorm at CHI 2010How can computing be used to promote peace and prevent conflict? Join us in a massive brainstorm to coincide with CHI 2010 by following these steps: <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Become a Peace Ambassador</span>. Find a peace ribbon attached to postcards near the CHI 2010 registration desk or in the Exhibits Hall and add it to your nametag.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Talk to your friends</span> about computing for peace.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Share your ideas</span> on <a href="http://twitter.com/HCIforPeace">Twitter</a> (#hciforpeace), our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=316847658617">Facebook</a> page (HCI for Peace), and this blog by commenting on this story.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbgU79SQfTiFvQ2EPIiSb2zYGOtyil_-afXifC33WuyAR-saUk_DZSyuQCofQ3GkEaUTrzY3g87z3nAr_jmz2Z7uQ5WkXR5BpU9K4N_8xRaVXh7RaGoKr-2r5w5wSD0jdzapzm-4GkhXpx/s1600/postcard-pic.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbgU79SQfTiFvQ2EPIiSb2zYGOtyil_-afXifC33WuyAR-saUk_DZSyuQCofQ3GkEaUTrzY3g87z3nAr_jmz2Z7uQ5WkXR5BpU9K4N_8xRaVXh7RaGoKr-2r5w5wSD0jdzapzm-4GkhXpx/s320/postcard-pic.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457552432613658338" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvDgngW7ZhyWQZsmmMLSGOvGQ4S5t35DBpr0WeLONQjGgGUrRb-MSPYbh3ULOnFy1dSZf8R9Jt_jwQGMVbRzbpx_xJhk0biLcMwKpyHUuXfpfuIZkcB_Msoqa-QAFHz2AvYeG0VfIbAq_0/s1600/nametag.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvDgngW7ZhyWQZsmmMLSGOvGQ4S5t35DBpr0WeLONQjGgGUrRb-MSPYbh3ULOnFy1dSZf8R9Jt_jwQGMVbRzbpx_xJhk0biLcMwKpyHUuXfpfuIZkcB_Msoqa-QAFHz2AvYeG0VfIbAq_0/s320/nametag.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457552633367077762" /></a><br /><br />Need some food for thought? Browse this blog for articles on computing initiatives related to peace and interviews with Allison Druin and Ben Bederson (winners of the 2010 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award), Ben Shneiderman and others.<br /><br />Not going to CHI? We would still like to hear your ideas. Share them through one of our online homes.<br /><br />We are hoping to spark a massive online brainstorm, tapping into the expertise, knowledge, and wisdom of the HCI community. Our grassroots movement seeks to create the conditions for peace by promoting the precursors of peace – democracy, education, economic opportunity – and decreasing the known causes of conflict -war profiteering, inequality, environmental stress, and the failure of the social contract, to name a few. The HCI community is uniquely positioned in the computing world to affect change in this arena, its focus not only on individual users, but on the effect of technology at a societal and global scale.<br /><br />Through wearing the peace ribbon, you not only express your desire for a more peaceful world, but also are instantly linked with the like-minded Peace Ambassadors around you, visibly united in a common goal; we hope this call to action starts community-wide discussions from which positive action can spring. CHI brings together individuals from different backgrounds and areas of expertise, from many countries, with different opinions. It is our wish that this diversity will cross-pollinate, resulting in a wide variety of ideas on how computing can help achieve peace. Our world can be no brighter than the worlds we dream of. <br /><br />It is our dream that the conversations started at this conference will encourage research, create a community of impassioned individuals, forge new partnerships, start long-lasting discussions, and prompt actions to promote peace and prevent conflict. <br /><br />And, if you know of computing for peace work we should feature on our blog, e-mail us at hciforpeace@gmail.com.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-56340622105826777052010-04-06T18:56:00.009-05:002010-04-07T09:22:41.908-05:00Interview with Thomas SmythThomas Smyth is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focus is on technologies for international development. At CHI 2010, he will present a paper titled "MOSES: Exploring New Ground in Media and Post-Conflict Reconciliation," which was selected as an Honorable Mention. We recently had a chance to interview Thomas about his research in Liberia and his thoughts on the use of computing in post-conflict reconciliation efforts.<br /><p><br /><b>HCI for Peace:</b> Could you tell us a bit about MOSES and your experiences in Liberia?</p><p><br /><b>Thomas:</b> Sure! The MOSES project was conceived in partnership with Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in an effort to promote and support a national dialogue on the causes and effects of the war, as well as on other topics. Together, we realized that Liberia's severely limited post-war communications infrastructure could not support rich communications across large distances. So we designed a mobile, video-sharing kiosk system allowing users to record and browse comments, opinions, and discussions. I've attached a few photographs of the system in use.<br /></p><br /><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlzAQtHyZ4GkqQSr4rBzWpOE88xTK8o5r_SysR9Mp1Y5UXHlQV01JQEtOYLuuH2ibJg0jIA2Hw2xKHW_-lvNXNntVBYE7yTpj_4dsTx8UmbDMssVMLurQzPqLfDiynYrpHBKzwCBYPexhB/s320/kids-using-moses.jpg"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR49tEUIYklBWG63Nl3XZDJzTiGWfx6PEmcwB6RGS3Sqc-moPEfoPKgSBc0khEOPT3kB8JNKepOkB99BlkWVzKdyJpSxtBfzCUDD5xNEUGVgBkDf1Wa2uFMrufi_OyBPm7eBGcBwCzRz7v/s320/moses.jpg"><br /><p><br />MOSES has been across much of Liberia, thanks to the tireless work of our country program manager, John Etherton. We have collected over 900 videos and thousands have used the system. We found that MOSES was very well received by Liberians. They were quite willing to engage seriously with the system, talking about a wide range of serious issues, and also contributing lots of lighter content such as jokes and songs. In an interview study we conducted, the results of which appear at CHI this year, users expressed feelings of empathy and solidarity they derived from the system, as well as a general enthusiasm towards the experience of using the novel machine. Users were especially affectionate towards the system's cartoon helper character, also called Moses. As a result, we are particularly excited about the potential of animated agent technology for novice, low-literate user groups. In general, we've learned a huge amount about designing for such groups.<br /></p><p><br />Of course what we can't claim is that MOSES has had a general, positive impact on Liberia's prospects for peace. Measuring such a thing would nigh to impossible given the time scales we're faced with (the TRC's mandate has now expired and our project has since wound down along with the TRC itself.) On the other hand, we can claim to have built and fielded an advanced, interactive, new media technology for dialogue, and found that it was understood, embraced, and engaged with on a deep and meaningful level by ordinary Liberians from all strata of society. We saw that the system supported rich connections and communications between far flung regions of Liberia, where none would have been possible otherwise. We feel that this is a great first step in this largely unexplored territory.<br /></p><p><br />My personal experiences in Liberia were truly unforgettable. I spent three weeks there last year helping to ready MOSES for deployment. I travelled to several rural areas within a few hours of the capital, where the sheer beauty of the Liberian countryside and warmth of its people were in plain and abundant view. Remnants of the era of conflict were also sadly everywhere, be they bombed out buildings, amputee ex-combatants, abandoned tanks, UN checkpoints, or a feeling of insecurity among locals in some areas, due to the regular occurrence of armed robberies. Twice, Liberian research assistants I was working with had to intervene to prevent me from wandering off into dangerous situations. Luckily, I did not actually get into any trouble while I was there. Despite all the reminders of turmoil, though, I experienced a palpable degree of hope among the people I met. This came out both through discussions I had with people as well as through what they recorded using MOSES. Issues of development--better schools, better roads, better hospitals, better economic performance--were hot on everyone's tongues. The war received far fewer attention. I look at this as a good sign.</p><p><br /><b>HCI for Peace:</b> What role do you see for computing technologies in future post-conflict reconciliation efforts?</p><br /><b>Thomas:</b> I think supporting communication should and will continue to be a focal point. I would be interested to explore using new media technologies in conjunction with a human moderator to support in-person synchronous discussions, as a complement to the more automated approach we adopted with MOSES. It would also be great to see MOSES scaled up, perhaps in a different context, to include multiple kiosks--our initial pilot only included one.<br /><p><br />Sadly, intra-state conflict of the sort experienced by Liberia is on the rise in today's world. As such, I think that efforts to incorporate ICTs into post-conflict reconciliation efforts will only increase, as the cost of technologies continues to drop. It will be interesting to follow the results of these experiences in the future, as a consensus on best practices hopefully emerges.<br /></p><p><br />I would close, though, by putting a large set of parentheses around this work and other efforts like it. I think anyone would agree that the most important factor in preventing repeated civil conflicts is strong and careful leadership both from within the country and from the international community. We position MOSES as an example (and we hope an inspiring one) of some of the tools at the disposal of those who must work tirelessly to build and maintain peace. We remain at their service.</p>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-74889042847370706912010-04-03T17:32:00.016-05:002010-04-06T09:29:23.208-05:00Interview with Ben Shneiderman<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_LHRQyIX-F5q26sDHSWoiIisAyuNAuxPnbDXMuEGB21lFfz2ebSOr26b3K2L6TCXDz7ZUWmpVN7VcpBHfJHiI6J9oH2mHOjAxjUEwkvbu8XUJWJl0VdAIla1i08LqPBo7PXDWtElyWDrM/s1600/bens.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 246px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_LHRQyIX-F5q26sDHSWoiIisAyuNAuxPnbDXMuEGB21lFfz2ebSOr26b3K2L6TCXDz7ZUWmpVN7VcpBHfJHiI6J9oH2mHOjAxjUEwkvbu8XUJWJl0VdAIla1i08LqPBo7PXDWtElyWDrM/s320/bens.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456043138103334946" border="0" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">We recently had a chance to interview Ben Shneiderman, one of the founders of the human-computer interaction field. Ben is a Professor in the </span><a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Department of Computer Science</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">, Founding Director of the </span><a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">, and Member of the </span><a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Institute for Advanced Computer Studies</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> at the University of Maryland. He was made a </span><a href="http://fellows.acm.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Fellow of the ACM</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> in 1997, elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001, and received the ACM CHI </span><a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/%7Eben/CHI-award.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">HCI for Peace: </span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">You have been a consistent advocate for designers of technologies to take into account the impact of their creations on society. This has included calls to consider the impact of technologies on peace and democracy. In what ways can the HCI community encourage researchers and practitioners to use social impact statements and other forms of promoting the ethical and responsible design of technologies?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ben:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> I believe developers of every socio-technical system should consider its impact on society and invite stakeholders to comment during planning stages. This is especially appropriate for government funded efforts, as described in:</span></span></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Shneiderman, B., Rose, A., </span></span><a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=238378"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Social Impact Statements: Engaging Public Participation in Information Technology Design</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. Proc. CQL'96, ACM SIGCAS Symposium on Computers and the Quality of Life (Feb. 1996) 90-96.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Other researchers, using the term </span></span><a href="http://depts.washington.edu/vsdesign/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Value Sensitive Design</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> have carried these arguments further and showed how careful analysis can lead to improved designs that reduce bias, increase privacy, or promote participation. Practitioners can build on these suggestions and then record their efforts on public web sites so as to inspire others. For example, in working with </span></span><a href="http://triton.towson.edu/%7Ejlazar/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Jonathan Lazar</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> we helped the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to make their web site more accessible and universally usable, which they describe in a link from every page: </span></span><a href="http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/Accessibility.aspx"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/Accessibility.aspx</span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Developers of commercial web sites can also describe their process to consider the social impact of their work. This could include ways to promote health equity, social justice, democratic processes, and especially peace. HCI professionals can volunteer to monitor voting machine usage or consult for state governments on the design of effective voting machines.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">HCI for Peace:</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> With </span></span><a href="http://triton.towson.edu/%7Ehhochhei/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Harry Hochheiser</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span></span><a href="http://ischool.umd.edu/people/preece/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Jenny Preece</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> and others, you have been recently focusing your attention on technology-mediated social participation. How can we use or design social participation technologies to promote peace and prevent conflict? </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Ben:</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> The widely popular social networks, blogs, microblogs, and other communications technologies could spawn dramatically increased social/civic participation for valuable national priorities such as healthcare, energy sustainability, education, disaster response, and community safety. However, applying these technologies to promote peace and prevent conflict will require imagination and effort.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We can all be inspired by the example of Jodie Williams whose emailing and organizing work to develop the International Campaign to Ban Landmines won her the </span></span><a href="http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1997/williams-cv.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">1997 Nobel Peace Prize</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. Similar efforts by inspired leaders could organize citizens to ban other weapons, reduce arms spending, fight oppression, promote human rights, and prevent conflicts. I and other HCI professionals have had the opportunity to help design instruments for the International Atomic Energy Association (UN unit in Vienna) to monitor adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTBT). Raising awareness of the opportunities for HCI involvement in similar efforts is an important step.</span></span></div>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-31582554043349526122010-03-29T14:44:00.014-05:002010-03-30T20:39:03.263-05:00Peace innovation from Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU3xUnPj28jnI8w49RkjyDva4whC9VJ_XykGaWwM5AuwACVv_dhCH_cvo0ddU_reCnqr__hs5wVhDfqtKC_ZP8rR1N2P0stES4x9m9TWBEHPPudO4UR5NEK8PKQIekJ2m8tGa8s0eZvGy_/s1600/n25747795577_9145.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5454146709794235042" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 140px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 224px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU3xUnPj28jnI8w49RkjyDva4whC9VJ_XykGaWwM5AuwACVv_dhCH_cvo0ddU_reCnqr__hs5wVhDfqtKC_ZP8rR1N2P0stES4x9m9TWBEHPPudO4UR5NEK8PKQIekJ2m8tGa8s0eZvGy_/s320/n25747795577_9145.jpg" border="0" /></a>Good news for us: We are not the only ones in the field talking about computing technology and peace.<br /><br />BJ Fogg, Director of Stanford’s <a href="http://captology.stanford.edu/">Persuasive Technology Lab</a>, has taught a class called Peace Innovation: Learning How Technology Can Promote Global Harmony in 30 Years. The class gave students the task of devising ways to use Web 2.0 technology – YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps – to promote greater harmony. Students worked in small teams to run “peace innovation trials”, creating goals, their own tools for measuring success, and developing tools that “ordinary people” could use to measure the impact of a peace trial.<br /><br />A main idea was that by creating these materials and making them widely available, high school and college instructors all over the world would be able to lead their own students in peace innovation. The projects ranged from Unplug Now, whose goal was to get users to unplug any unused appliance in their proximity, to Peace and Sticky Rice, an application that attempted to use game-playing as a way to increase participants’ willingness to take action to end hunger, and measure the “stickiness” (or resistance to change) of attitude changes at later points in time. Through not prescribing any one solution, and defining peace by evaluating how to create its antecedents, the solutions can be flexible, efficient, and efficacious.<br /><br />Fogg, recognized as one of<a href="http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0811/gallery.10_new_gurus.fortune/"> Fortune’s 2008 10 New Gurus You Should Know</a>, lays out his steps for creating a peace technology infrastructure now:<br />1. peace technology course at Stanford<br />2. blogging about peace technology examples<br />3. creating direction of peace technology initiatives<br />4. developing teaching materials<br />5. preparing to fund trials<br />6. systematic insights (resources)<br /><br />Often, Fogg notes, trying to define peace serves as an obstacle to achieving it, when discussion gets mired down and then prevents the taking of action. Instead, he suggests, we should focus on creating the environment for peace. First, he says, it is important to examine the antecedents of peace, then evaluate the importance of each antecedent and how likely it is to be achieved, and with that information then target the antecedents that will bring about the most change fastest.<br /><br />Fogg also helped found <a href="http://peace.stanford.edu/">Peace Dot</a>, a directory of websites that show their interest in peace by registering subdomains with a “peace” prefix.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-21379130684695325612010-03-24T01:57:00.025-05:002010-03-30T20:17:19.311-05:00Louis Fein, champion of academic computer science and computing for peaceIn 1963, on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the moment the world teetered precipitously on the edge of the outbreak of nuclear war, a computer consultant in Palo Alto, California proposed the idea of a new organization: the Peace on Earth Research Center. The proposition, put forth in <a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1463890"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Computer-Oriented Peace Research</span></a>, suggests putting the sharpest analytical minds to the practical problems of achieving peace, constructing computer models to understand the problems that cause armed conflict, and developing solutions to prevent future conflicts.<br /><br />Its author, the Palo Alto consultant Dr. Louis Fein, had just seen an achievement of his vision at Purdue University, which established the first Computer Science Department in the United States in October 1962. Fein played an instrumental role in the movement to establish computer science as a discrete academic discipline, parted from engineering and mathematics. Oft-rebuffed by universities around the country, he persevered in his attempts, publishing <a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=368427">papers</a> and presenting his views across the country. <div><br />Fein held pioneering views not only on the place for computer science in academia, but on the role of computers in peace oriented research as well. In <a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1463890"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Computer-Oriented Peace Research</span></a>, Fein notes that computer-oriented analysts have directed their experience in many areas, <blockquote>"...banking, insurance, combinatorial mathematics, chemical engineering, and war gaming. We are quite familiar with the role of computers as problem solvers, as calculators and as simulators, emulators, and imitators. <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">But computers play their most significant role as a socratic goad to analysis and problem formulation</span>."</blockquote>Just as the Manhattan Project was completed only with a vast research team, Fein writes, we should not expect that peace is task for one professor, or a "lone genius" "on a dedicated philanthropist's grant," but a project needing serious and expert attention from the community as a whole.<br /><br />It can be difficult to conceptualize peace, and to talk about it as well, but, Fein dismisses complexity as a reason to neglect peace, noting "the distinctive analytic approach to practical problems and computing instruments of computer-oriented analysts" can only be beneficial in finding the solutions for peace.<br /><br />Now, almost 50 years later, how has the field responded to his call? The past 10-15 years have seen a large number of <a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1520354">publications</a> addressing Fein’s first challenge to understand the breakdown of peace by statistically analyzing the empirical data on conflict to better understand the risk factors.<br /><br />Equipped with this information, the computing community is prepared to tackle Fein’s second challenge: using computing technology to defuse current conflicts and prevent future ones from occurring. Private motivation to go to war as well as the horrific impact of war could be exposed through <a href="http://www.gapminder.org/">information visualization techniques</a>. Mobile technologies can help provide information to prevent disease, promote healthy habits, and <a href="http://www.unfoundation.org/our-impact/stories-of-impact/health-data-disaster-relief/mobile-activism-make-text-not-war.html">aid people in developing regions</a>. <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/167560/google_and_grameen_launch_mobile_services_for_the_poor.html">Technologies to facilitate peer-to-peer micro-financing</a> can also provide more people with opportunities to become economically self-sufficient.<br /><br />“What the hell are we making these machines for,” asks Fein in a <a href="http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/12/the-cybernated-generation/">1965 Time article</a>, “if not to free people?” </div>HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-36515138265107524962010-03-11T15:27:00.000-06:002010-03-12T10:50:20.914-06:00Interview with Allison Druin and Ben Bederson<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDcWCC3_VTPLMQ8Tn6j8R-PxUKlA5u8mxQyuo3clyD1tpiborGl4wmwdim647WRSPaLwYbiJV9mzlDrFQDjTnHkj1eubdEHy7o3jg87J_nkkFp-5LsC1tCTktpI-gxte1bVvDWbONNP3u-/s1600-h/ben-and-allison-small-708629.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 168px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDcWCC3_VTPLMQ8Tn6j8R-PxUKlA5u8mxQyuo3clyD1tpiborGl4wmwdim647WRSPaLwYbiJV9mzlDrFQDjTnHkj1eubdEHy7o3jg87J_nkkFp-5LsC1tCTktpI-gxte1bVvDWbONNP3u-/s320/ben-and-allison-small-708629.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447494127126159122" border="0" /></a><br />We recently had a chance to interview <a href="http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/%7Eallisond/">Allison Druin</a> and <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/%7Ebederson/">Ben Bederson</a>, winners of the <a href="http://www.sigchi.org/about/awards/2010-sigchi-awards">2010 ACM SIGCHI Social Impact Award</a>. Allison is the current Director of the <a href="http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/">Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory</a> at the University of Maryland and Ben preceded Allison in the same position. Ben and Allison have both conducted research on technologies with strong ties towards promoting peace and understanding. Below is a transcript of our interview.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">HCI for Peace:</span> Education and awareness of other cultures are often cited as precursors of peace. You have been a leader in giving children a voice in the design of technologies. You have also led, with Ben, the <a href="http://en.childrenslibrary.org/">International Children’s Digital Library</a>, providing free online access to thousands books in over 50 languages. What is your long-term vision for your work on giving children a voice in the design of technologies and promoting intercultural understanding?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Allison Druin:</span> My long-term mission which I believe is shared by our whole research team in Maryland, is to create more design methods and technologies that can increase participation of children from all cultures. We are currently working on new “Distributed Co-Design” methods that can enable children in Haiti to add their ideas to a design problem being worked on by a group in Israel or Mongolia. We need online tools that can support this kind of distributed intergenerational design collaboration. We are just at the beginning stages of understanding what is needed. We believe though when this can happen, our technologies can give voice to all children from all cultures which is a critical first step in understanding what we all share and how we are different.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">HCI for Peace:</span> One of the most consistent findings in the literature on the causes of conflict is that fully democratic countries are less likely to participate in international conflicts and to have civil wars. What role can the human-computer interaction community play in supporting democracy by designing and evaluating computer-based voting systems?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ben Bederson:</span> There are two critical components to voting systems. The first is that they accurately record the voter’s intended vote. The second is that the voter <span style="font-weight: bold;">believes</span> that their vote was accurately recorded. Both are crucial. If citizens don’t have confidence that their vote is accurate (even if it is), then the voting system – and resulting outcome – is suspect, and can cause grave social problems. The HCI community must help ensure that not only are voting systems reliable, secure and accurate, but also that the voters understand and believe in them. This is a very important distinction because some of solutions that aim to solve security and accuracy issues are likely to decrease user confidence – by using complex cryptographic techniques. As always, the best solutions balance the needs of all stakeholders.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6453090150279113024.post-4939329124234295032010-02-27T17:46:00.000-06:002010-03-12T11:05:37.294-06:00We are not alone. Other organizations and initiatives promoting peace through computing<a href="http://ict4peace.org/mission-1.html">ICT4Peace</a><br />The ICT for Peace foundation is a group that enhances communication in situations needing crisis management. The group, started after he 2003 World Summit on the Information Society, aims to assist the international community in using information and communication technologies to effectively assist in humanitarian crisis situations, allowing relief and peace groups to better communicate about needs and collaboration efforts in the field, to ensure supplies go to the right places, and to share crucial information. ICT4Peace works with a wide range of organizations, including the United Nations, Microsoft, and Oracle. This group strives to reduce the chaos often surrounding violent conflict situations.<br /><br /><a href="http://peacetour.org/what-are-benevolent-technologies">World Peace Through Technology</a><br />World Peace Through Technology attempts to educate and inform about ways technology can be used for peace, including ways to foster community, games that teach cooperation skills, open source, ways to reduce technology’s negative impact on the environment, and generating energy through alternatives to fossil fuels. The group aims to bridge the digital divide and use art and music to popularize and inspire striving towards peace.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.etc.cmu.edu/peace2008/">The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace</a><br />The Future of Interactive Technology for Peace was a conference hosted by the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University. Scholars of all stripes got together to examine new directions of applying interactive technology to the arenas of conflict resolution, diplomacy, and international affairs. They used PeaceMaker, a video game inspired by real events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as a starting point for new ideas.<br /><br /><a href="http://peace.stanford.edu/">Peace dot</a><br />Peace dot uses a simple idea – organize websites relating to peace by registering their subdomains with a “peace” prefix, which is then organized into a directory by Stanford. Groups as diverse as Couchsurfing, a site that connects travelers with users around the world willing to host them, to Children of Peace, a UK-based charity addressing the protection and well-being of Israeli and Palestinian children, are connected through this scheme.<br /><br />If your organization or initiative is involved in promoting peace through computing technologies and you would like to be featured in this list, send us an email – hciforpeace@gmail.com -- and we’ll gladly do a feature.HCI for Peacehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03425257890075538561noreply@blogger.com0