The DUB Shorts format focuses on sharing a research paper in a 15 to 20-minute talk, similar to traditional conference presentations of a paper. Speakers will first present the paper, then participate in Q&A.
DUB shorts will be conducted using Zoom, via an invitation distributed to the DUB mailing list. Participants who are logged into Zoom using a UW account will be directly admitted, and participants who are not logged in to a UW account will be admitted using a Zoom waiting room.
Speakers interested in presenting a DUB Short should submit our form:
Information School
'Otter this World': Can a Mobile Application Promote Children's Connectedness to Nature?
Can a mobile application encourage children to spend more time outdoors and promote their connectedness to nature? In this paper, we present results from a three-week experimental deployment study of NatureCollections, a mobile application that allows users to build, curate, and share nature photo collections. Twenty-eight children (aged 9-12) and their parents participated in the study; 15 used the NatureCollections app, and 13 used a basic Photo app. We found that the NatureCollections app significantly increased the time children spent outdoors compared to the Photo app. Children in both groups said they felt happy and excited about spending time in nature. However, children in the NatureCollections group reported that time spent outside with the app increased their curiosity about the types of species and plants they saw and photographed. Children in the NatureCollections group also engaged in nature-based conversations with their parents, and even sought to look up information online about the plants and animals they observed. In contrast, children in the basic Photo app group did not display this level of curiosity about what they saw in nature, and the photos they took were driven largely by the aesthetic qualities of nature elements. Our results suggest that NatureCollections promotes and supports children’s connectedness to nature.
Marquette University
A Human-Centered Review of the Algorithms used within the U.S. Child Welfare System
The U.S. Child Welfare System (CWS) is charged with improving outcomes for foster youth; yet, they are overburdened and underfunded. To overcome this limitation, several states have turned towards algorithmic decision-making systems to reduce costs and determine better processes for improving CWS outcomes. Using a human-centered algorithmic design approach, we synthesize 50 peer-reviewed publications on computational systems used in CWS to assess how they were being developed, common characteristics of predictors used, as well as the target outcomes. We found that most of the literature has focused on risk assessment models but does not consider theoretical approaches (e.g., child-foster parent matching) nor the perspectives of caseworkers (e.g., case notes). Therefore, future algorithms should strive to be context-aware and theoretically robust by incorporating salient factors identified by past research. We provide the HCI community with research avenues for developing human-centered algorithms that redirect attention towards more equitable outcomes for CWS.