Talk by Kate Howland (University of Sussex)

Kate Howland, Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design, at the University of Sussex will give the first talk of the academic year.

Designing conversational support for end-user programming in smart homes

The talk will present design-based research exploring how voice user interfaces can support end-user programming tasks in smart home contexts. I'll focus on a study of spoken end-user programming utterances in the home, currently being carried out as part of the EPSRC CONVER-SE project. We are conducting contextual interviews, Wizard of Oz prototype testing and bodystorming activities with participants who have existing smart home technology in their homes and have little or no programming experience. We are using semi-structured interviews to understand current and future needs and capture contextually grounded natural expressions of spoken programmatic rules defining smart home behaviours. Through a Wizard of Oz prototype we are exploring and evaluating approaches to conversational support for composition and editing of such rules. The bodystorming activity allows us to seek active input from participants on how they would like to be able to address and interact with such a system. Early results on the use of keywords and syntax will be discussed, along with the stepwise editing and authoring of rules across conversational turns.

About Kate

Kate Howland is a Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design at the University of Sussex, where she conducts research investigating how users without a technical background can be more involved in the design and programming of novel technologies. This includes the design and study of end-user and novice programming environments, and the use of participatory methods with user groups that face greater barriers to taking an active role in technology design, including children and older people.