Human Computer Interaction

(CNSCC.202)

Lecture 9 Ubicomp and CSCW

Dr. Muhammad Azhar Iqbal

Lancaster University, UK
Spring Term, 2023

Acknowledgements: Jiangtao Wang, Damian Arellanes

Two Closely-Related Research
Areas with HCI

• Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing (Ubicomp)

• Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

(CSCW)
Two Closely-Related Research
Areas with HCI

• Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing
(Ubicomp)

• Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

(CSCW)
Bigger Vision: Pervasive (Ubiquitous)
Computing

“In the 21st century the technology

revolution will move into the everyday, the
small and the invisible…”
“The most profound technologies are those
that disappear. They weave themselves
into the fabrics of everyday life until they
are indistinguishable from it.”
Mark Weiser (1952 –1999)

 Small, cheap, mobile processors and sensors

in almost all everyday objects
on your body/clothes (“wearable computing”)
embedded in environment (“ambient intelligence”,
“smart home”, “urban/large-scale sensing”)
What is Pervasive/Ubiquitous
Computing?

• Pervasive/Ubiquitous computing is a concept in

computer science where computing is made
to appear anytime and everywhere.

• In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous

computing can occur using any device, in any
location, and in any format. A user interacts
with the computer, which can exist in many
different forms, including laptop computers,
tablets and terminals in everyday objects.
~from Wiki
Pervasive Computing Enablers

• Sensors and Actuators

• Communication Technologies

• Material Technologies
1st Enabler: Sensors/Actuators

• Cameras, microphones,...
• Fingerprint sensor
• Radio sensors
• RFID
• Infrared
• Location sensors
– e.g., GPS
• ...
Example 1: Radio Sensors

• No external power supply

– energy from the actuation process
– piezoelectric and pyroelectric materials
transform changes in
pressure or temperature
into energy

• RF signal is transmitted via an antenna

• Applications: temperature surveillance,

remote control (e.g., wireless light switch),...
Example 2: RFIDs (“Smart Labels”)

• Make daily “things” to be identified.

• Identify objects from distance

– Small IC with RF-transponder

• Internet of Things (IoT)

• Cyber-Physical System (CPS)

Example 3: Crowdsensing: Enabling
Large-Scale Ubiquitous Sensing
Human mobility, 任务MCS
任务
embedded sensor in Task
Cloud
mobile device at a
p ort d Server
n d re
ol l ect a
C
Data integration

Air quality Noise level

Flow of citizens Traffic congestion

status

Extend Ubiquitous Sensing capability to a larger scale (e.g., community, city)

2nd Enabler:
Communication(WiFi/5G)
3rd Enabler: New Materials

• Important: whole eras named after materials

– e.g., “Stone Age”, “Iron Age”, “Pottery Age”, etc.

• Semiconductors, fibers
– information and communication technologies

• Organic semiconductors
– change the external appearance of computers

• “Plastic” laser
– Flexible displays,…
Example 1: Interactive Map
• Foldable and rollable

You are here!

Example 2: Smart Clothing
• Conductive textiles and inks
– print electrically active
patterns directly onto fabrics

• Sensors based on fabric

– e.g., monitor pulse, blood
pressure, body temperature

• Invisible collar microphones

• “Wearable computing”
Context-Aware Computing
• A style of computing in which situational and
environmental information (context/situation) about
people, places and things is used to anticipate
immediate needs and proactively take situation-
aware actions.

• Key Techniques (Overview)

– Context Modeling
• Characterize correlations among different contexts
– Context Sensing & Inference
• Sensing: acquire low-level context
• Inference: from the low-level to the high-level
– Context-aware Actuation/Adaption
Two Closely-Related Research Areas
with HCI

• Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing (Ubicomp)

• Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

(CSCW)
What is CSCW?

• CSCW addresses “how collaborative activities

and their coordination can be supported by
means of computer systems”

• Combines the understanding of the way

people work in groups with the enabling
technologies of computer networking, and
associated hardware, software, services and
techniques.
What is CSCW?
• Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is
the study of how people utilize technology
collaboratively, often towards a shared goal.

• CSCW addresses how computer systems can

support collaborative activity and coordination.

• More specifically, the field of CSCW seeks to

analyze and draw connections between currently
understood human psychological and social
behaviors and available collaborative tools, or
groupware.
What is Groupware?
• Groupware refers to software that allows
multiple users work together on one project while
sitting in locally and remotely with each other at
the real time, so it is also known as
“Collaboration Software“.
Levels of Collaboration
• Three categories depending on level collaboration:

• Communication can be thought of as unstructured

interchange of information. A phone call or an
instant messaging chat discussion are examples of
this.

• Conferencing (or collaboration level) refers to

interactive work toward a shared goal.
Brainstorming or voting are examples of this.

• Co-ordination refers to complex interdependent

work toward a shared goal.
Groupware Functions
• Synchronous Groupware: real-time groupware
allows multiple users to perform their work at a
same time. A primary need of synchronous
groupware is real-time coordination in between
all connected users with this software, so they
need shared audio channels for making the
communication.

• Asynchronous Groupware: multiple users perform

their tasks at different time duration. These allow
different services like as email handling, file
sharing, structured messages, workflow,
collaborative writing system, and other.
CSCW Matrix
• One of the most common ways
of conceptualizing CSCW
systems is to consider the
context of a system's use.

• One such conceptualization is

the CSCW Matrix.

• The matrix considers work

contexts along two dimensions:
whether collaboration is co-
located or geographically
distributed, and whether
individuals collaborate
synchronously (same time) or
asynchronously (not depending
on others to be around at the
same time).
Advantages of CSCW
• Work together asynchronously provide members with
the luxury to contribute when they want, from
the location of their choosing, thus eliminating the
need for members to "synchronize schedules".

• CSCW also allows employees with specific expertise to

be a part of teams without the concern of
geographic restraints."

• CSCW can also result in major cost savings to

companies who implement virtual teams and allow
employees to work at home by eliminating the need
for travel, rented office space, parking, electricity,
office equipment, etc.
Research Topics in CSCW
• Social and crowd computing. Studies, theories, designs,
mechanisms, systems, and/or infrastructures addressing social media,
social networking, wikis, blogs, online gaming, crowdsourcing,
collective intelligence, virtual worlds or collaborative information
behaviors.
• System design. Hardware, architectures, infrastructures, interaction
design, technical foundations, algorithms, and/or toolkits that enable
the building of new social and collaborative systems and experiences.
• Theories. Critical analysis or theory with clear relevance to the design
or study of social and collaborative systems, within and beyond work
settings.
• Empirical investigations. Findings, guidelines, and/or studies on
practices, communication, collaboration, or use as related to
collaborative technologies. CSCW 2020 welcomes diverse methods and
approaches.
• Mining and modelling. Studies, analyses and infrastructures for
making use of large- and small-scale data.
Research Topics in CSCW (cont.)
• Methodologies and tools. Novel methods or combinations of
approaches/tools used in building systems or studying their use.
• Domain-specific social and collaborative applications.
Including applications to healthcare, transportation, gaming,
sustainability, education, accessibility, global collaboration, or
other domains.
• Collaboration systems based on emerging
technologies. Mobile and ubiquitous computing, game engines,
virtual worlds, multi-touch, novel display technologies, vision and
gesture recognition, big data, MOOCs, crowd labour markets,
SNSs, or sensing systems.
• Ethics and policy implications. Analysis of the implications of
socio-technical systems and the algorithms that shape them.
• Crossing boundaries. Studies, prototypes, or other
investigations that explore interactions across disciplines,
distance, languages, generations, and cultures, to help better
understand how to transcend social, temporal, and/or spatial
Top Conferences

• Ubicomp
– International Joint Conference on Pervasive and
Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp/IMWUT)
– PerCom 2020: International Conference on
Pervasive Computing and Communications

• CSCW
– ACM Conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)
After-Class Reading Assignment

• Read one of the following papers from

Ubicomp/Percom/CSCW, and present it to your team mates
through online seminars.
– [1] PSAllocator: Multi-Task Allocation for Participatory
Sensing with Sensing Capability Constraints. ACM CSCW
2017.

– [2] Participants Selection for From-Scratch Mobile

Crowdsensing Via Reinforcement Learning. IEEE
International Conference on Pervasive Computing and
Communications (PerCom 2020)

Download link: https://www.researchgate.net/

End of This Lecture