Home » (Page 2)
Archives
BreakBOT: A Digital Emotion Regulation Chatbot
Students frequently use social media (SM) as a digital break from studying. Concerns have been raised that these breaks harm academic performance and wellbeing by acting as a form of procrastination. Counter evidence suggests they can also act as a form of recovery that positively supports performance and well-being. It is currently unclear how SM can be used as a healthy rather than unhealthy break.
This project takes a research-through design approach drawing on behavioural frameworks and an emotion-regulation perspective to investigate how SM can support students in taking healthy breaks from studying. Four studies were conducted.
Study 1 used qualitative methods to investigate what characterises a healthy and unhealthy social media break from a behavioural and emotion-regulation perspective.
Study 2 was a systematic review of past emotion-regulation literature to synthesise design guidelines for developing technologies supporting healthy SM breaks and reducing unhealthy ones.
Study 3 involved co-design workshops with undergraduates in ideating and developing a chatbot prototype (BreakBOT) that implements emotion-regulation design guidelines to support taking healthy SM breaks.
Study 4 used a mixed-methods approach to explore undergraduates’ experience using BreakBOT in-the-wild.
Together this work provides a set of contributions that advance our understanding of students’ SM break-taking behaviour and how we can design systems to support them in taking healthy rather than unhealthy breaks when studying.
People
This project was conducted by Elahi Hossain under the supervision of Prof Anna Cox, Prof Nadia Berthouze and Dr Greg Wadley.
Publications
Hossain, E., Wadley, G., Berthouze, N., & Cox, A. L. (2024). Social Media Breaks: An Opportunity for Recovery and Procrastination. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.
Hossain, E., Wadley, G., Berthouze, N., & Cox, A. (2022, April). Motivational and situational aspects of active and passive social media breaks may explain the difference between recovery and procrastination. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (pp. 1-8).
Leveraging AI to Overcome the Academic Peer Review Crisis
In this project we focus on alleviating the peer review crisis in academia. With an increasing number of submissions and a limited number of reviewers, reviewers are becoming overburdened, leading to delays in the review process due to a shortage of reviewers. This research explores using AI tools, such as ChatGPT, to support reviewers by reducing their workload and improving efficiency without compromising the quality of reviews.
The project involves qualitative studies to understand the needs and demands of both reviewers and authors. The initial study examined how reviewers conduct peer reviews, identifying key challenges including iterative interactions with authors, learning how to review, review complexity, lack of training, and workload issues. Another study explored authors’ requirements and attitudes, emphasizing the need for good feedback, optimism about AI, concerns about trust, ethical considerations, and the impact of AI on review processes.
The research also includes an experiment using AI (ChatGPT) to reduce reviewers’ workload and enhance review quality. Reviewers perceived both benefits and challenges, such as saving time, providing different perspectives, and improving confidence, while also facing issues like initial setup time and integration with current workflows. The project underscores the necessity of effective collaboration workflows and robust data protection measures for implementing AI tools in the review process.
People
This project is being developed by Shiping Chen, under the supervision of Prof Anna Cox and Prof Duncan Brumby.
Publications
S Chen, DP Brumby, AL Cox (2024) How to Alleviate the Peer Review Crisis: Insights from an interview study CHIWORK2024
S Chen, DP Brumby, AL Cox (2023) How to Alleviate the Peer Review Crisis: Insights from an interview study CHI 2023 workshop “In2Writing: Intelligent and Interactive Writing Assistants”
eWorkLife: Remote Working during COVID19 lockdowns
eWorkLife was a project that ran from 2020 in response to the sudden switch to remote working that was brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We designed a self-reflection tool which aimed to help workers understand their remote working needs and provided personalised recommendations. This tool took the form of a brief survey, which included some open self-reflection questions and some validated surveys that were used to both help workers reflect on their work practices and provide recommendations to strategies they could adopt to help them adapt.
Our 3 step process
- Before you start, take some time to reflect on your work-life balance and what is it exactly you would like to improve. You can spend as much time as you want on this activity. Don’t know where to start? Click here to take part in our research project – we will guide you through a self-reflection exercise (10 mins) and provide you with guidance as to which strategies are most likely to work for you
- Select one or two strategies to start with and see how you get on. Remember, your time = your rules. If something doesn’t work for you, you can always revert back to old habits or try out new strategies. Click here to find an overview of the evidence-based strategies that can help you stay productive while working from home
- We know from psychological research that goal setting is really important in terms of changing a behaviour. A bit like setting an objective, it’s important to choose a clear and measurable goal. In order to help you stick to your new goal, we recommend you write down what you intend to try. You can also decide to share your commitment on social media, or just by talking to friends, family and/or colleagues. Keeping track of how are you going, and what is working, or not working is really important. Also, you will find that as time goes by, or situations change, you might want to revisit your strategies. Don’t be hard on yourself if you don’t achieve your goal. If that happens, set a more realistic goal and start again. It’s best to set small achievable goals than lots of different ones. Most importantly, make sure you give yourself a reward when you have achieved your goal! Those taking part in our research project receive additional support with setting goals to change their digital behaviours.
We have carefully chosen the examples of apps that are listed on this site and we hope you find them beneficial, however, unfortunately, we cannot be responsible for the information provided on other websites or in the apps listed.
- Index of Strategies
- Video content describing the strategies
- The science behind these strategies
- Feedback from people who have used our recommendations
Physical Activity during Lockdown
We were interested in how much physical activity people were engaging in – after the move to remote working erased the need to commute, the gyms closed and, for a period of time, even going out to exercise outside was only allowed once per day. We also wanted to understand the role of digital technology in helping people stay active during the lockdown.
We created a Physical Activity survey that was distributed on social media and through newsletters at University College London. The initial survey attracted a total of 390 participants who told us about their physical activity habits: how much time they spent exercising, commuting and sitting – before and during the lockdown and at the start of the survey, in May 2020.
We then sent out four weekly follow-up surveys, so that each week participants could tell us about the changes in their physical activity as well as their motivations and experiences of using technologies aimed to support activity, such as apps, online classes or step trackers. A total of 126 participants completed all five surveys.
We found that people who used digital activity trackers during lockdown demonstrated an increase in vigorous physical activity. This suggests that a robust exercise regime can be maintained even when access to gyms and classes is restricted and using digital activity trackers may facilitate it. On the other hand, we did not find the use of technology to be related with levels of sedentariness during lockdown. Moreover, although many people became more aware of the importance of physical activity during lockdown, problems with motivation and injury resulting from rapid changes in exercise routine, posed a challenge to staying physical active.
People
A team of researchers developed this project: Professor Anna Cox, Dr Sandy Gould, Dr Joseph Newbold, Dr Marta Cecchinato, Dr Anna Rudnicka and Dave Cook.
Publications
Rudnicka, A., Newbold, J., Cook, D., Cecchinato, M., Gould, S., & Cox, A.L. (2020). Eworklife: Developing effective strategies for remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Newbold, J. W., Rudnicka, A., & Cox, A.L. (2021). Staying active while staying home: The use of physical activity technologies during life disruptions. Frontiers in Digital Health, 3, 753115.
Newbold, J. W., Rudnicka, A., Cook, D., Cecchinato, M. E., Gould, S. J., & Cox, A. L. (2022). The new normals of work: a framework for understanding responses to disruptions created by new futures of work. Human–Computer Interaction, 37(6), 508-531.
Gould, S. J., Rudnicka, A., Cook, D., Cecchinato, M. E., Newbold, J. W., & Cox, A. L. (2023). Remote work, work measurement and the state of work research in human-centred computing. Interacting with Computers, 35(5), 725-734.
Adolescent Mental Health and Development in the Digital World
In 2020, many university programs had to shift at least part of their teaching online. This opened up many questions about the impact of online learning and the lack of in-person interaction on students’ ability to learn and socialise and on their mental health. Professor Anna Cox and Professor Yvonne Rogers led a study investigating the the role of digital technology in the academic and personal lives of undergraduate students who started their courses in autumn 2020.
The study combined mixed-methods surveys with focus groups, conducted in November 2020, and involving a total of 38 student participants. The overarching aim was to understand how these students made use of technology to support themselves through starting university, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Each focus group participated in four half-hour discussions, centred around the following themes: (1) use of technology to improve mental wellbeing; (2) impact of social media during Covid-19; (3) impact of technology on students’ self-regulated learning strategies; and (4) challenges to maintaining focus during online lectures and strategies adopted to overcome them.
The participants reported using a number of technologies to support learning, social interaction and mental wellbeing. With lectures moved online, students appreciated being able to learn in their own time and at their own speed, however they also reported challenges around effective scheduling and motivation. Online lectures that involved polls and quizzes worked well at maintaining engagement. However, the use of different platforms and technologies across different modules created confusion and made it hard for students to figure out a timetable.
We also learned that some students shifted academic conversations to social media channels such as Instagram, as that was seen as a more reliable way of reaching people. Creation of breakout rooms during lectures was not always effective at facilitating social interaction, as some students struggled with starting a conversation, let alone making new friends. Messenger and social media groups organised by universities were seen as helpful at facilitating interaction between students, but were not available to everyone.
Moreover, the students reported that listening to music helped manage negative emotions and lift mood, and playing video games could help flatmates get to know each other. Other forms of online leisure, however, such as watching films, were often seen as a way of procrastinating, and associated with guilt, unless used sparingly.
This project was funded by the UKRI as part of the Adolescent Mental Health and Development in the Digital World project.
People
This project was led by Prof Anna Cox and Prof Yvonne Rogers with assistance from Elahi Hossain.
Publications
Hossain, E., Cox, A. L., Dowthwaite, A., & Rogers, Y. (2024). Adaptive, Sociable and Ready for Anything: Undergraduate Students Are Resilient When Faced with Technological Change. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW1), 1-32.
Conceptualising and measuring digital emotion regulation
This project aims to develop a theoretical framework and novel technologies to investigate how, where, when and why people engage in digital emotion regulation. Existing research shows that individuals often use digital technologies to shape their emotions in response to situations; yet social norms often cast such technology use as disrespectful or distracting. The discrepancy between the practice and perception of digital emotion regulation is due to the lack of a systematic understanding of these practices. This project aims to develop a novel framework for better understanding digital emotion regulation, ways to study it in everyday settings, and evidence-based recommendations for managing it in ways that benefit individuals and society.
The evidence provided by this project will inform the societal debate about technology overuse and its impact on work, education and interpersonal relationships. The created knowledge will inform policy-makers, designers, and end-users about appropriate use of technology in everyday settings.
Find out more at the project webpage hosted at the University of Melbourne
Publications
Tag, B., Sarsenbayeva, Z., Cox, A. L., Wadley, G., Goncalves, J., & Kostakos, V. (2022). Emotion Trajectories in Smartphone Use: Towards recognizing emotion regulation in-the-wild. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2022.102872.
Wadley, G., Kostakos, V., Koval, P., Smith, W., Webber, S., Cox, A., Gross, J., Höök, K., Mandryk, R. & Slovák, P. (2022) The Future of Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction . CHI ’22 Extended Abstracts
Hossain, E., Wadley, G., Berthouze, N., & Cox, A. (2022) Motivational and Situational Aspects of Active and Passive Social Media Breaks May Explain the Difference Between Recovery and Procrastination . Proceedings of CHI 2022 Late-Breaking Work
Citizen Cyberlab and Citizen Science
An increasing number of research projects rely on data provided by citizen scientists and many of these projects collect personal information about the citizen. The Citizen Cyberlab project researched and evaluated on-line collaborative environments and software tools that stimulate creative learning in the context of Citizen Cyberscience. Beyond helping scientists execute laborious tasks, Citizen Cyberscience projects enable citizens to learn about science and take part in the more creative aspects of research. Little is known about the learning and creativity processes stimulated by such projects, even though millions of volunteers participate. Even less is known about how to optimize those processes.
In addition, we know very little about why a citizen scientist would decide to participate in a project or why they would decide to disclose or withhold their data. With data protection becoming one of the most socially salient issues and the focus of a recent legislative overhaul, it is important to understand the complexities of human behaviour in voluntary disclosure scenarios.
Publications
Rudnicka, A; Gould, SJJ; Cox, AL (2022). Citizen Scientists Are Not Just Quiz Takers: Information about Project Type Influences Data Disclosure in Online Psychological Surveys. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice [HTML] [PDF]
Rudnicka, A; Cox, AL; Gould, SJJ; (2019) Why Do You Need This? Selective Disclosure of Data Among Citizen Scientists. In Proceedings of CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings. Paper #392 [PDF] [HTML]
Jennett, C., Kloetzer, L., Schneider, D., Iacovides, I., Cox, A. L., Gold, M., … & Talsi, Y. (2016). Motivations, learning and creativity in online citizen science. Journal of Science Communication, 15(3).
Eveleigh, A., Jennett, C., Blandford, A., Brohan, P., & Cox, A. L. (2014, April). Designing for dabblers and deterring drop-outs in citizen science. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2985-2994).
Eveleigh, A., Jennett, C., Lynn, S., & Cox, A. L. (2013, October). “I want to be a captain! I want to be a captain!” gamification in the old weather citizen science project. In Proceedings of the first international conference on gameful design, research, and applications (pp. 79-82).
Iacovides, I., Jennett, C., Cornish-Trestrail, C., & Cox, A. L. (2013). Do games attract or sustain engagement in citizen science? A study of volunteer motivations. In CHI’13 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1101-1106).
Mobile Mental Health Interventions for Anxiety Management
Digital mental health is a rapidly growing area within Human-Computer Interaction. Mental health problems will affect one-third of the population worldwide during their lifetime. At the present moment, anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and are among the most common psychological disorders with an estimated 264 million adults experiencing anxiety worldwide. The significant effects of anxiety disorders make mental health a public health priority.
One of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety disorders is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Technology advances have created the opportunity to deliver psychological interventions in daily life – a type of intervention described as ‘ecological momentary interventions’ (EMIs). In addition, such advances have opened up possibilities for the delivery of “just-in-time interventions” that adapt treatment delivery over time to provide interventions most likely to be effective, using information gathered through ecological momentary assessment (EMA) or sensing.
The widespread availability of smartphones has led to a proliferation of mobile apps for anxiety. Such systems can be used in conjunction with therapy, as standalone treatments, or for use in the prevention of mental illness. As such, they provide an accessible solution to many barriers to care.
Designing digital technologies for mental health requires navigating a complex design space, for which various design components have remained unexplored. In addition, despite the potential benefits of using such technologies, the majority of them fail to gain traction, the attrition rates of people using them are high, and sustained use is even rarer. Insights into consumer perspectives regarding how mobile health can best support anxiety disorder management, and how to design mobile technologies to provide an engaging experience for users are lacking. Personalizing intervention content to individual users could lead to sustained use. Yet, currently available technology-based interventions are not tailored to account for variability in different characteristics and we know little about the design options for such systems.
This project investigated the design of mobile interventions for mental health disorders and their potential to improve engagement for anxiety management apps. It unveils the different components that comprise such interventions, the enablers, and barriers to engagement with applications designed for that purpose, the desired features, and the possibilities of enhancing care by personalizing content to individual clients. It asks which are the technological and interaction possibilities of such systems, why users engage and disengage from mobile apps for anxiety management, and how health professionals might tailor intervention content for users of such systems.
People
This project was delivered by Andreas Balaskas under the supervision of Prof Gavin Doherty, Prof Anna Cox, Dr Stephen Schueller.
Publications
Balaskas, a. (2023). The design space of mobile mental health interventions for anxiety management. Thesis
Balaskas, A., Schueller, S. M., Cox, A. L., Rashleigh, C., & Doherty, G. (2023). Examining young adults daily perspectives on usage of anxiety apps: A user study. PLOS Digital Health, 2(1), e0000185.
Balaskas, A., Schueller, S. M., Cox, A. L., & Doherty, G. (2022). Understanding users’ perspectives on mobile apps for anxiety management. Frontiers in Digital Health, 4, 854263.
Balaskas, A., Schueller, S. M., Cox, A. L., & Doherty, G. (2021). The functionality of mobile apps for anxiety: systematic search and analysis of engagement and tailoring features. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 9(10), e26712.
Balaskas, A., Schueller, S. M., Cox, A. L., & Doherty, G. (2021). Ecological momentary interventions for mental health: A scoping review. PloS one, 16(3), e0248152.
Improving Time Management in Academia through Better Time Estimation Support
This project investigates time management challenges in academia focusing on the extensive time spent on planning tasks and highlighting the need for effective time estimation tools.
The project’s objective is to identify and investigate the effectiveness of planning support tools that can help academics manage their time better. Initial studies involved diaries and interviews with academics, revealing that current AI tools are often underutilised, and that manual planning is still common. Indicating a need for more precise time estimation support.
A literature and technology review identified existing strategies for accurate time estimation. This informed the design of a time monitoring intervention. Overall, the research aims to develop and refine tools that support proactive and precise time management, enhancing productivity in academic environments.
People
This project is being developed by Yoana Ahmetoglu, supervised by Anna Cox and Duncan Brumby. Supported by MSc students Shermin Teoh, Andy Ying, and Akeisha Iskandar.
Publications
Y Ahmetoglu, DP Brumby, AL Cox (2024) Bridging the Gap Between Time Management Research and Task Management App Design: A Study on the Integration of Planning Fallacy Mitigation Strategies CHIWORK2024
Ahmetoglu, Y., Brumby, D. P., & Cox, A. L. (2021). Disengaged from planning during the lockdown? an interview study in an academic setting. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 20(4), 18-25.
Ahmetoglu, Y., Brumby, D. P., & Cox, A. L. (2021). To plan or not to plan? A mixed-methods diary study examining when, how and why knowledge work planning is inaccurate. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW3), 1-20.
Ahmetoglu, Y., Brumby, D., & Cox, A. (2020, August). A Longitudinal Interview Study on Work Planning During COVID-19 Lockdown. Microsoft.
Ahmetoglu, Y., Brumby, D. P., & Cox, A. L. (2020, April). Time Estimation Bias in Knowledge Work: Tasks With Fewer Time Constraints Are More Error-Prone. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-8).
iWARDS
With her colleagues in the Research Department for Medical Education (RDME) at UCL Medical School, Dr Antonia Rich recently interviewed 96 trainees who told them the many challenges to work-life balance they face. The study, “You can’t be a person, and a doctor” (Rich et al., 2016), was published in BMJ Open: https://tinyurl.com/Richetal2016.
They found that a lack of work-life balance in postgraduate medical training negatively impacted trainees’ learning and well-being. The expectation to prioritise work at the cost of their personal lives resulted in low morale and harmed well-being.
To help address this, Prof Anna Cox and Dr Antonia Rich developed an intervention to improve junior doctors’ well-being. In March and April 2018 we ran a series of free workshops with postgraduate medical trainees in three hospitals: the Royal Free, Whittington and University College Hospital. At the workshops, we explored how to enhance resilience and improve well-being. The first part of the workshop looked at how we can increase our resilience through self-care, and the second part of the workshop looked at how creating microboundaries can support work-life balance. Using “reflection cards” we prompted discussions in which participants reflected on and shared their own experience of the practical issues they face.
- Visit the iWARDS website
- Rich, A., Aly, A., Cecchinato, M. E., Lascau, L., Baker, M., Viney, R., & Cox, A. L. (2020). Evaluation of a novel intervention to reduce burnout in doctors-in-training using self-care and digital wellbeing strategies: a mixed-methods pilot. BMC Medical Education, 20(1), 1-11.
The temporal flexibility of crowdwork
Over the past decade, there has been a rise in the number of people working on crowdsourcing platforms. Although those who work on crowdworking platforms (i.e., crowdworkers) value having autonomy over scheduling their own time, research suggests that they do not benefit from the temporal flexibility to choose when and for how long to work. Therefore, in this project, we aim to understand what limits the temporal flexibility of crowdworkers, and how this aspect impacts the workers. Our ultimate goal is to inform the design of future crowdsourcing platforms.
We employ Value Sensitive Design (VSD) as our theory and design framework. Using the lens of VSD and a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we show that crowdworkers’ temporal flexibility is limited by three different types of time constraints: (i) worker-imposed time constraints, (ii) client-imposed time constraints, and (iii) platform-imposed time constraints. These time constraints limit: (a) the temporal working preferences of workers, (b) the time workers have to make decisions, and (c) the work pace and work schedules of workers. Ultimately, we confirm that the existing features of crowdsourcing platforms do not fully support flexible temporal arrangements for workers; instead, these platforms favour clients’ flexibility to workers’ detriment.
People
This project was conducted by Dr Laura Lascau under the supervision of Prof Anna Cox, Prof Duncan Brumby and Dr Sandy Gould.
Publications
Lascău, L., Brumby, D. P., Gould, S. J., & Cox, A. L. (2024). “Sometimes It’s Like Putting the Track in Front of the Rushing Train”: Having to Be ‘On Call’for Work Limits the Temporal Flexibility of Crowdworkers. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 31(2), 1-45.
Lascau, L. (2023). Time as currency: a value sensitive design exploration of crowdworkers’ temporal flexibility (Doctoral dissertation, UCL (University College London)).
Lascau, L., Gould, S. J., Brumby, D. P., & Cox, A. L. (2022, April). Crowdworkers’ temporal flexibility is being traded for the convenience of requesters through 19 ‘invisible mechanisms’ employed by crowdworking platforms: A comparative analysis study of nine platforms. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (pp. 1-8).
Lascau, L., Gould, S. J., Cox, A. L., Karmannaya, E., & Brumby, D. P. (2019, May). Monotasking or multitasking: Designing for crowdworkers’ preferences. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-14).
