Christopher Le Dantec: Across Boundaries of Influence and Accountability: The Multiple Scales of Public Sector Information Systems

The use of ICTs in the public sector has long been touted for its potential to transform the institutions that govern and pro- vide social services. The focus, however, has largely been on systems that are used within particular scales of the public sector, such as at the scale of state or national government, the scale of regional or municipal entity, or at the scale of local service providers. The work presented here takes aim at examining ICT use that crosses these scales of influence and accountability. We report on a year long ethnographic investigation conducted at a variety of social service outlets to understand how a shared information system crosses the boundaries of these very distinct organizations. We put for- ward that such systems are central to the work done in the public sector and represent a class of collaborative work that has gone understudied.

Bio: Christopher Le Dantec, 2008 Foley Scholar and Microsoft Research Fellow, is a Ph.D. Candidate in Human-Centered Computing, advised by Keith Edwards. His research aims to understand the values of individuals not well served by current technologies and to explore the role technology plays and as agent of change. Prior to Georgia Tech, he was an interaction designer with Sun Microsystems and helped establish its interaction design practice in the Czech Republic.

Svetlana Yarosh: Video Playdate: Toward Free Play across Distance

We present an empirical investigation of video-mediated free play between 13 pairs of friends (ages 7 and 8). The pairs spent 10 minutes playing with each of four different prototypes we developed to support free play over videoconferencing. We coded each interaction for the types of play and the amount of social play observed. The children in our study were largely successful in playing together across videoconferencing, though challenges in managing visibility, attention, and intersubjectivity made it more difficult than face-to-face play. We also found that our prototypes supported some types of play to varying degrees. Our contribution lies in identifying these design tradeoffs and providing directions for future design of video-mediated communication systems for children.

Bio: Svetlana “Lana” Yarosh is a 4th-year Ph.D. student in the Human-Centered Computing program at Georgia Institute of Technology, advised by Prof. Gregory D. Abowd. Her Ph.D. thesis focuses on designing, implementing, and empirically investigating technologies to connect young children and parents who live apart. She has participated in internships at AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft Research. She is the recipient of AT&T Labs Fellowship and the Anita Borg Google Scholarship. She has received degrees in Computer Science and in Psychology from University of Maryland, College Park.

Thomas N. Smyth: Where There's a Will, There's a Way: Mobile Media Sharing in Urban India

We present the results of a qualitative study of the sharing and consumption of entertainment media on low-cost mobile phones in urban India, a practice which has evolved into a vibrant, informal socio-technical ecosystem. This wide-ranging phenomenon includes end users, mobile phone shops, and content distributors, and exhibits remarkable ingenuity. Even more impressive is the number of obstacles which have been surmounted in its establishment, from the technical (interface complexity, limited Internet access, viruses), to the broader socioeconomic (cost, language, legality, institutional rules, lack of privacy), all seemingly due to a strong desire to be entertained.

Bio: Thomas Smyth is a Ph.D student in the Technologies and International Development Lab at GVU. His research focuses on new media technologies and public discourse in the developing world. His recent projects include developing novel media technologies for post-conflict reconciliation in Liberia, and investigating media sharing practices in urban India.