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Natalia Romero

Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Faculty Member

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Papers by Natalia Romero

Adaptive Experience Sampling: Addressing the Dynamic Nature of In-Situ User Studies

Experience sampling techniques can be used to study user experiences with products in a natural s... more Experience sampling techniques can be used to study user experiences with products in a natural setting and over time. Nowadays, researchers can use selective sampling to link the timing and questions to relevant product events and contextual events. Existing research has focused on maximizing the quality and quantity of feedback, while at the same time minimizing interruptions and maintaining the motivation of the participants. In practice, however, the optimal timing and content of questions also depends on the changing interests of the researcher, a topic that has not yet been addressed. This position paper introduces ‘adaptive experience sampling’, i.e. a method that enables researchers and designers to change the focus of their experience sampling study on the fly. Using adaptive experience sampling, researchers and designers can better link the sampling to their gradually growing insights.

Grounding Privacy in Mediated Communication

Springer Netherlands

This paper addresses the need of interpersonal privacy coordination mechanisms in the context of ... more This paper addresses the need of interpersonal privacy coordination mechanisms in the context of mediated communication, emphasizing the dialectic and dynamic nature of privacy. We contribute the Privacy Grounding Model—built upon the Common Ground theory—that describes how connected individuals create and adapt privacy borders dynamically and in a collaborative process. We present the theoretical foundations of the model. We also show the applicability of the model, where we give evidence from a field study that illustrates how it can describe privacy coordination mechanisms amongst users of an instant messaging application and a desktop awareness system. The model describes efficient and effective factors that communicators consider in their decisions to use mechanisms for coordination. The Privacy Grounding Model aims to help designers reflect on how their system supports, or fails to support, people’s need for lightweight and distinctive privacy coordination mechanisms, and in particular how communicators within the system create and use privacy border representations for grounding their needs to interact with each other.

Keeping in touch with the family: home and away with the ASTRA awareness system

CHI'04 extended …, Jan 1, 2004

This paper describes research in supporting close family members living apart to keep in touch wi... more This paper describes research in supporting close family members living apart to keep in touch with each other. We introduce an awareness system for supporting lightweight social communication between mobile individuals and people at home. Communication is based on pictures, short messages and reachability information. A field test has provided empirical evidence that affective benefits, to this point only hypothesized by researchers in awareness systems, are indeed experienced by users of our system.

Connecting the family with awareness systems

Personal and …, Jan 1, 2007

Awareness systems have attracted significant research interest for their potential to support int... more Awareness systems have attracted significant research interest for their potential to support interpersonal relationships. Investigations of awareness systems for the domestic environment have suggested that such systems can help individuals stay in touch with dear friends or family and provide affective benefits to their users. Our research provides empirical evidence to refine and substantiate such suggestions. We report our experience with designing and evaluating the ASTRA awareness system, for connecting households and mobile family members. We introduce the concept of connectedness and its measurement through the Affective Benefits and Costs of communication questionnaire (ABC-Q). We inform results that testify the benefits of sharing experiences at the moment they happen without interrupting potential receivers. Finally, we document the role that lightweight, picture-based communication can play in the range of communication media available.

Measuring affective benefits and costs of awareness systems supporting intimate social networks

CTIT workshop …, Jan 1, 2004

Human beings are social beings. We have a fundamental need to communicate -to form, maintain and ... more Human beings are social beings. We have a fundamental need to communicate -to form, maintain and enhance social relationships. Members of intimate social networks (e.g. family members, close friends) that live apart, stay in touch with each other through a range of synchronous and asynchronous communication media. This paper describes research focused at developing and testing a questionnaire measure that is sensitive to the affective benefits and costs that communication media may have for their users. First, a requirements study is reported, investigating real-life communication between family members, in order to identify their various communication needs and patterns, as well as their use of various existing communication media. We subsequently describe the development of a new questionnaire measure, the Affective Benefits and Costs in Communication Questionnaire (ABC-Q), that is aimed to assess the affective characteristics of communications, which were hitherto largely ignored in measures of social presence or communication effectiveness. We conclude this paper by describing a field study, evaluating the ASTRA awareness system that is specifically aimed at supporting intimate social networks. During this study the ABC-Q was first applied. Results in terms of reliability and validity of the questionnaire show that the ABC-Q is a promising measure.

A field study of Community Bar:(mis)-matches between theory and practice

Proceedings of the 2007 …, Jan 1, 2007

Community Bar (CB) is groupware supporting informal awareness and casual interaction. CB's design... more Community Bar (CB) is groupware supporting informal awareness and casual interaction. CB's design was derived from three sources: prior empirical research findings concerning informal awareness and casual interaction, a comprehensive sociological theory called the Locales Framework, and the Focus/Nimbus model of awareness. We conducted a field study of a group's on-going CB use. We use its results to reflect upon the matches and mis-matches that occurred between the theoretical and actual usage behaviors anticipated by our design principles vs. those observed in our deployment. As a critique, this reflection is an important iterative step in recognizing flaws not just as usability problems, but as an incorrect translation of theory into design that can be re-analyzed from a theoretical perspective.

Addressing interpersonal communication needs through ubiquitous connectivity: Home and away

Ambient …, Jan 1, 2003

This paper describes a user study regarding the human need to stay in touch with closely related ... more This paper describes a user study regarding the human need to stay in touch with closely related people. The study was a combination of interviews and diaries. This user needs analysis has informed the design of a novel end-to-end communication system for helping closely related people, who are spread geographically, to stay in touch. The design concept is described in brief, followed by a summary of ongoing implementation and assessment work.

The unbearable lightness of being there: contrasting approaches to presence engineering

Proceedings of …, Jan 1, 2003

Organizational memories as electronic discussion by-products

Groupware, 2000. CRIWG …, Jan 1, 2000

An approach to develop Organizational Memory Systems is presented. It is based on the re-use of c... more An approach to develop Organizational Memory Systems is presented. It is based on the re-use of computer-supported discussions held as meeting preparations. The discussions are rich in informal knowledge, which is basic for a good Organizational Memory. The presentation is illustrated with a brief introduction to OMUSISCO, a software system based on the approach. OMUSISCO uses SISCO meeting preparation discussions as information source. A thesaurus is built to help users access knowledge. The system was tested with simple discussions but it should scale up well in real situations.

Behaviours and preferences when coordinating mediated interruptions: Social and system influence

ECSCW 2007, Jan 1, 2007

There is a growing interest in technologies for supporting individuals to manage their accessibil... more There is a growing interest in technologies for supporting individuals to manage their accessibility for interruptions. The applicability of these technologies is likely to be influenced by social relationships between people. This paper describes an experiment that examines interplay between the collaborative relationship of an interruptor and an interruptee and two different system approaches to handle interruptions. We tested how the system behaviour and the working relationship between the actors influence their interruption behaviours. The results of this experiment regarding the influence of social relation confirm the findings of prior works saying that interruptors show more consideration when initiating interruptions if they share a common goal with interruptees comparing to the situation when they do not. We have extended those findings by showing that interruptees display similar interruption behaviours to those presented by interruptors. The results regarding the system influence show a clear trend towards the positive effect of the Automatic system on peoples' interruption behaviours which is based on: (i) the visible interruption costs, (ii) social tension and (iii) system preference. We think that the results of this experiment translated into the design implications can prove helpful in informing the design of computer-mediated solutions supporting interruption handling.

Grounding interpersonal privacy in mediated settings

Proceedings of the ACM 2009 …, Jan 1, 2009

Recent technologies supporting continuous connectivity enable sustained awareness within social n... more Recent technologies supporting continuous connectivity enable sustained awareness within social networks, which eventually boosts interaction and therefore the need of individuals to manage their interpersonal privacy. This paper introduces the Privacy Grounding Model that describes how people develop and use mechanisms to establish a shared understanding of their intentions to interact with others. The main design implication of this model is the need for lightweight interactive mechanisms by which individuals can collaboratively ground needs for interaction. To illustrate how the model supports the design of grounding mechanisms, we present examples and discuss a case study that informs about their use during several weeks.

Measuring Affective benefits and costs of mediated awareness: development and validation of the abc-questionnaire

Awareness …, Jan 1, 2009

The interactions and relationships we have with other people form an essential social network tha... more The interactions and relationships we have with other people form an essential social network that supports us and adds meaning to our lives. This well-known fact is illustrated by the massive success of communication media such as e-mail, mobile telephony, and text messaging and the massive adoption of social networking applications such as Facebook and Twitter.

Privacy and HCI: methodologies for studying privacy issues

CHI'06 extended abstracts on Human …, Jan 1, 2006

Interactive and lightweight mechanisms to coordinate interpersonal privacy in mediated communication

Human-Computer Interaction …, Jan 1, 2009

In this paper we describe three mechanisms that enable people to coordinate their interaction nee... more In this paper we describe three mechanisms that enable people to coordinate their interaction needs with others in their social network. The proposed designs are based on the Privacy Grounding Model [4] that argues the need for lightweight and interactive coordination mechanisms to support the dynamic and dialectic nature of interpersonal privacy coordination.

Common ground to analyse privacy coordination in awareness systems

Human-Computer Interaction-INTERACT …, Jan 1, 2005

This paper discusses how Clarke's theory of Common Ground can be applied to analyse how individua... more This paper discusses how Clarke's theory of Common Ground can be applied to analyse how individuals connected by Awareness Systems conjointly meet and negotiate their privacy needs. The exposition illustrates how Awareness Systems are a mechanism for helping individuals to meet their privacy needs rather than as a privacy threat, as a first impression might suggest.

Providing Privacy While Being Connected

Memory and Sharing of Experience, …, Jan 1, 2004

The unbearable lightness of being there: contrasting approaches to presence engineering (Proceedings Paper)

Grounding Privacy in Mediated Communication

This paper addresses interpersonal privacy coordination in the context of mediated communication,... more This paper addresses interpersonal privacy coordination in the context of mediated communication, emphasizing the dialectic and dynamic nature of privacy. We contribute the Privacy Grounding Model − built upon the Common Ground theory − that describes how connected individuals create and adapt privacy borders dynamically and in a collaborative process. We present the theoretical foundations of the model. We also show the applicability of the model, where we give evidence from two case studies that illustrate how it can describe privacy coordination among users of an instant messaging application and a desktop awareness system. More generally, we believe designers can use the Privacy Grounding Model to reflect on how their system supports or fails to support people's lightweight privacy coordination mechanisms, and in particular how communicators within the system create and use privacy border representations as common ground. Finally we briefly consider the design of interactive and lightweight privacy grounding mechanisms.

Design of Coordination Mechanisms for Negotiating Conversation Initiation in Mediated Communication

Workshop on Adaptation …

Playful persuasion to support older adults' social and physical activities

Interacting with …, Jan 1, 2010

In this paper we describe a case study in which we examine how to develop playful persuasive solu... more In this paper we describe a case study in which we examine how to develop playful persuasive solutions to motivate older adults to maintain or increase their social and physical activities. By including various stakeholders (older adults, family, and care givers) and by designing for transitions in life we intend to create solutions that can be used by many different