Tom Rodden

University of Nottingham | Notts · School of Computer Science

Investigation of household electricity usage patterns, and matching the patterns to behaviours, is an important area of research given the centrality of such patterns in addressing the needs of the electricity industry. Additional knowledge of household behaviours will allow more effective targeting of demand side management (DSM) techniques.

When we speak of ethics, we refer to the articulation of moral principles intended to promote societal and individual good. Derived of moral philosophy, they describe the codified process by which we determine how and why specific human conduct might be deemed right or wrong, good or bad. This is especially critical in the context of human-subjects...

For many of us, the notion of ‘fun’ conjures up visions of experiences that are amusing, pleasant, entertaining, playful—perhaps even frivolous. Rides, games, shows and perhaps even the experience of visiting an art gallery can embody these senses of fun, providing amusing and momentary distractions from the toils of life. And yet, such experiences...

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to enable applications that foster a more efficient, sustainable, and healthy way of life. If end-users are to take full advantage of these developments we foresee the need for future IoT systems and services to include an element of autonomy and support the delegation of agency to software processes and connec...

Investigation of household electricity usage patterns, and matching the patterns to behaviours, is an important area of research given the centrality of such patterns in addressing the needs of the electricity industry. Additional knowledge of household behaviours will allow more effective targeting of demand side management (DSM) techniques. This...

We present fieldwork findings from the deployment of an interactive sensing system that supports the work of energy advisors who give face-to-face advice to low-income households in the UK. We focus on how the system and the data it produced are articulated in the interactions between professional energy advisors and their clients, and how they col...

We present fieldwork findings from the deployment of an interactive sensing system that supports the work of energy advisors who give face-to-face advice to low-income households in the UK. We focus on how the system and the data it produced are articulated in the interactions between professional energy advisors and their clients, and how they col...

Consumer demand for food that satisfies specific needs rather than generic mass produced food is growing. In response, the food industry is actively investigating techniques for efficient and comprehensive food customisation. Digital approaches to food customisation are starting to emerge, however, the majority is currently limited to the ingredien...

Mixed reality games (MRGs) encompass a variety of gaming genres such as pervasive games, location-based games, and augmented reality games. They enrich the physical world with technology to create new and exciting possibilities for games – but at the same time introduce new challenges. In order to make the vast design space of MRGs easily accessibl...

This paper proposes a set of five ethical principles, together with seven high-level messages, as a basis for responsible robotics. The Principles of Robotics were drafted in 2010 and published online in 2011. Since then the principles have influenced, and continue to influence, a number of initiatives in robot ethics but have not, to date, been fo...

Effectively regulating the domestic Internet of Things (IoT) requires a turn to technology design. However, the role of designers as regulators still needs to be situated. By drawing on a specific domain of technology design, human–computer interaction (HCI), we unpack what an HCI-led approach can offer IT law. By reframing the three prominent desi...

In this paper we present the study of interactional arrangements that support the collaboration of headquarters (HQ), field responders and a computational planning agent in a time-critical task setting created by a mixed-reality game. Interactional arrangements define the extent to which control is distributed between the collaborative parties.We p...

The study of agent helpers using linguistic strategies such as vague language and politeness has often come across obstacles. One of these is the quality of the agent's voice and its lack of appropriate fit for using these strategies. The first approach of this article compares human vs. synthesised voices in agents using vague language. This appro...

The study of agent helpers using linguistic strategies such as vague language and politeness has often come across obstacles. One of these is the quality of the agent's voice and its lack of appropriate fit for using these strategies. The first approach of this article compares human vs. synthesised voices in agents using vague language. This appro...

Touch screen technology's first public appearance was in the early 2000s. Touch screens became a part of the daily life with the invention of smartphones and tablets. Now, this technology has the potential to be the next big change in flight deck design. To date, mobile devices are deployed by several air carriers to perform a host of non-safety cr...

Many interactional issues with Flight Management Systems (FMS) in modern flight decks have been reported. Avionics designers are seeking for ways to reduce cognitive load of pilots with the aim to reduce the potential for human error. Academic research showed that touch screen interfaces reduce cognitive effort and provide an intuitive way of inter...

In order to benefit from potential reduced operational costs and crew workload airlines are increasingly interested in touchscreen-based Electronic Flight Bags (EFB). This paper focuses on the specific domain of Search and Rescue (SAR) Helicopters. A first set of results aiming to explore and understand potential benefits and challenges of an EFB i...

Future flight deck designs from various avionics manufacturer incorporate touchscreen technology. There is little published research investigating the impact of inflight vibrations and increased G-Force (+Gz) on touchscreen usability. A Fitts' law experiment was conducted to understand the effect of +Gz on touchscreen usability. 2-Gz and 3-Gz condi...

Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies on human interaction with such systems. This pape...

Mixed reality games (MRGs) pose new challenges but also opportunities to designers. In order to make the design space of MRGs easily accessible and enable collaborative design in a playful manner we have developed Mixed Reality Game Cards. These ideation cards synthesize design knowledge about MRGs and are inspired by a variety of other successful...

This one-day, embedded workshop will explore the design intersections of human values and internet of things (IoT) applications. In a day-long session we will configure and build small IoT devices (using the Particle platform), then deploy them to collect, share and publish the data they harvest throughout the conference. During the conference prog...

Through crowdsourcing and open innovation, product manufacturers are exploiting digital technologies to communicate with their consumers, drawing on the crowd to propose new products and designs. The food industry has struggled with adopting this model due to the lack of an effective language around the taste and texture of food. Existing sensory v...

While HCI has a long tradition of formally modelling task-based interactions with graphical user interfaces, there has been less progress in modelling emerging ubiquitous computing systems due in large part to their highly contextual nature and dependence on unreliable sensing systems. We present an exploration of modelling an example ubiquitous sy...

Break activities – deliberate and unexpected – are common throughout the working day, playing an important role in the wellbeing of workers. This paper investigates the role of increasingly pervasive ICT in creating new opportunities for breaks at work, what impact the technology has on management of boundaries at work, and the effects these change...

This paper presents findings from a co-design project that aims to augment the practices of professional energy advisors with environmental data from sensors deployed in clients’ homes. Premised on prior ethnographic observations we prototyped a sensor platform to support the work of tailoring advice-giving to particular homes. We report on the dep...

In this paper we present the design and evaluation of the Temperature Calendar -- a visualisation of temperature variation within a workplace over the course of the past week, highlights deviation from organisational temperature policy, and aims to bring staff "into the loop" of understanding and managing heating, and so reduce energy waste. The di...

Notions like ‘Big Data’ and the ‘Internet of Things’ turn upon anticipated harvesting of personal data through ubiquitous computing and networked sensing systems. It is largely presumed that understandings of people’s everyday interactions will be relatively easy to ‘read off’ of such data and that this, in turn, poses a privacy threat. An ethnogra...

Personal service customization, or personalization, is one of the core tools that are being used by on-line providers of information services such as search engines, social media, news sites and product recommender systems to optimize the individual user experience in hopes of attracting and keeping users. In this paper we will examine the user pro...

A quick journey through prevention science (e.g., substance misuse prevention) and a comparison between online and offline risks, harm, and vulnerability in children suggests that new approaches and interventions are needed to promote Internet safety and minimise the new sources of risk associated with accessing the Internet. In this paper we prese...

In this paper, we outline an online survey-based study seeking to understand academic attitudes towards social media research ethics (SMRE). As the exploratory phase of a wider research project, findings are discussed in relation to the responses of 30 participants, spanning multiple faculties and locations at one international university. The pape...

This dataset accompanies our paper that presents the design and evaluation of the Temperature Calendar -- a visualization of temperature variation within a workplace over the course of the past week. This highlights deviation from organizational temperature policy, and aims to bring staff ``into the loop'' of understanding and managing heating, and...

The Orchid Project, in partnership with Rescue Global, is a collaborative project that drives the science of human-agent collectives to real-world applications in disaster response.During the 2014 Angel Thunder exercise in the USA, researchers from the Orchid Project embedded with Rescue Global to complete an ethnographic study (Fischer et al., 201...

Online search engines, social media, news sites and retailers are all investing heavily in the development of ever more refined information filtering to optimally tune their services to the specific demands of their individual users and customers. In this position paper we examine the privacy consequences of user profile models that are used to ach...

The avionics industry is seeking to understand the challenges and benefits of touchscreens on flight decks. This paper presents an investigation of interactive displays on the flight deck focusing on the impact of target size, placement and vibration on performance. A study was undertaken with search and rescue (SAR) crew members in an operational...

Interactive autonomous systems are likely to be more involved in future energy systems to assist human users. Given this, we prototyped a future scenario in which householders are assisted in switching electricity tariffs by an agent-based interactive system. The system uses real-time electricity monitoring to instantiate a scenario where participa...

A quick journey through prevention science (e.g., substance misuse prevention) and a comparison between online and offline risks, harm, and vulnerability in children suggests that new approaches and interventions are needed to promote Internet safety and minimise the new sources of risk associated with accessing the Internet. In this paper we prese...

Most research in the area of identity has focused on the interaction between people (Garfinkel, 1956; Goffman, 1957; Gumperz, 1999; Hall, 2013). However, there is now a marked increase in everyday interactions with software agents in the broader discourse context (e.g. Satnav systems giving instructions to a driver, automated phone instructions). W...

Self-reflection is an important tool for understanding and encouraging behavior change for wellbeing and personal sustainability. This can be a deliberate choice, or unintentionally prompted decision. In this paper we discuss self-reflection on participating in an experience sampling study. 14 Participants wore an Autographer camera for five workin...

There is a growing realization that the notion of sustainability should encompass the aspect of human energy as well as environmental resources. Indeed, many HCI researchers have already concerned themselves with designing persuasive technologies leading towards human sustainability. Self-reflection plays at least two critical roles in these initia...

Application of design in HCI is a common approach to engendering behavioural change to address important challenges such as sustainability. Encouraging such change requires an understanding of current motivations and behaviours in the domain in question. In this paper, we describe use of wearable cameras to study motivations and behaviours around f...

We consider a setting where an agent-based planner instructs teams of human emergency responders to perform tasks in the real world. Due to uncertainty in the environment and the inability of the planner to consider all human preferences and all attributes of the real-world, humans may reject plans computed by the agent. A na¨ıve solution that repl...

Closed innovation approaches have been employed for many years in the food industry. But, this sector recently perceives its end-user to be wary of radically new products and changes in consumption patterns. However, new product development involves not only the product itself but also the entire manufacturing and distribution network. In this pape...

Online search engines, social media, news sites and retailers are all investing heavily in the development of ever more refined information filtering to optimally tune their services to the specific demands of their individual users and customers. In this position paper we examine the privacy consequences of user profile models that are used to ach...

Command and control environments ranging from transport control rooms to disaster response have long been of interest to HCI and CSCW as rich sites of interactive technology use embedded in work practice. Drawing on our engagement with disaster response teams, including ethnography of their training work, we unpack the ways in which situa-tional un...

The regulatory climate is in a process of change. Design, having been implicated for some time, is now explicitly linked to law. This paper recognises the heightened role of designers in the regulation of ambient interactive technologies. Taking account of incumbent legal requirements is difficult. Legal rules are convoluted, uncertain, and not gea...

In the information age, tools for examining the validity of data are invaluable. Provenance is one such tool, and the PROV model proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium in 2013 offers a means of expressing provenance in a machine readable format. In this paper, we examine from a user's standpoint notions of provenance, the accessibility of the PR...

A growing number of studies use wearable sensors, including cameras, to detect user activity patterns. When an object of academic investigation, these patterns are interpreted by researchers and conclusions are drawn about people's habits and routines. Alternatively, interpretations are provided by users themselves during extensive post-study inter...

The regulatory climate is in a process of change. Design, having been implicated for some time, is now explicitly linked to law. This paper recognises the heightened role of designers in the regulation of ambient interactive technologies. Taking account of incumbent legal requirements is difficult. Legal rules are convoluted, uncertain, and not gea...

In the information age, tools for examining the validity of data are invaluable. Provenance is one such tool, and the PROV model proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium in 2013 offers a means of expressing provenance in a machine readable format. In this paper, we examine from a user’s standpoint notions of provenance, the accessibility of the PR...

In the information age, tools for examining the validity of data are invaluable. Provenance is one such tool, and the PROV model proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium in 2013 offers a means of expressing provenance in a machine readable format. In this paper, we examine from a user’s standpoint notions of provenance, the accessibility of the PR...

In the aftermath of major disasters, first responders are typically overwhelmed with large numbers of, spatially distributed, search and rescue tasks, each with their own requirements. Moreover, responders have to operate in highly uncertain and dynamic environments where new tasks may appear and hazards may be spreading across the disaster space....

In this paper we argue for the position that responsible safeguards for privacy and ethical treatment of human data are of vital importance to retain the public confidence and trust that is necessary for the development and future success of internet mediated research (IMR). We support our position based on the high level of popular and media atten...

We draw on ethnographic studies to understand the collaborative nature of network policies or rules in domestic settings. We outline the technical nature of network policy in enterprise domains and how this contrasts with the social or collaborative nature of rules in everyday life. We then consider the deployment of network control and policy syst...

This paper proposes a novel disaster management system called HAC-ER that addresses some of the challenges faced by emergency responders by enabling humans and agents, using state-of-the-art algorithms, to collaboratively plan and carry out tasks in teams referred to as human-agent collectives. In particular, HAC-ER utilises crowdsourcing combined...

Human-agent collectives (HAC) offers a new science for exploring the computational and human aspects of society. They are a new class of socio-technical systems in which humans and smart software (agents) engage in flexible relationships in order to achieve both their individual and collective goals. Sometimes the humans take the lead, sometimes th...

As we find greater potential for agent instructors, we must be aware of how their language use can affect the user and interaction as a whole. This study investigates the use of intentionally imprecise or vague language as a communicative strategy to mitigate the impact of instructions. We look at the effects it has on improving the perception of a...

As we find greater potential for agent instructors, we must be aware of how their language use can affect the user and interaction as a whole. This study investigates the use of intentionally imprecise or vague language as a communicative strategy to mitigate the impact of instructions. We look at the effects it has on improving the perception of a...

Ubiquitous computing systems raise unprecedented challenges to how we currently elicit, secure and sustain user consent. Consent is the interactional process by which a user agrees to the terms of engagement with a system, and it represents the principle mechanism by which we protect our privacy online. However, whereas traditional online interacti...

Existing approaches to attaining informed consent are outdated and inappropriate for use in ubiquitous computing systems. The pervasiveness of the technology and the nature of user interaction require a rethinking of consent mechanisms. In this paper we briefly introduce and discuss several new approaches to consent acquisition developed specifical...

We present an ethnographic study of energy advisors working for a charity that provides support, particularly to people in fuel poverty. Our fieldwork comprises detailed observations that reveal the collaborative, interactional work of energy advisors and clients during home visits, supplemented with interviews and a participatory design workshop w...

Whilst being addressed in terms of traditional online interactions, the concept of consent has only recently seen attention in respect of pervasive systems. This paper takes the position that consent (online), as it currently stands, is a fiction. It reflects only the most basic requirements of the original concept and, as such, should not be trans...

Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) are frequently unread as a consequence of their complexity and length. Readability formulas are used to objectively measure this complexity, but ironically their outputs are also unreadable to many. This motivated the development of a chrome extension called Literatin that compares the complexity of popular fictional lit...

In this paper, we describe HomeNetViewer, a system for collecting, visualising and annotating domestic network NetFlow records from a domestic network gateway. HomeNetViewer is designed to collect ground truth data which, enables the linking of users to low level network traffic. We present our first annotated dataset from a real household in the U...

UK electricity market changes provide opportunities to alter households' electricity usage patterns for the benet of the overall electricity network. Work on clustering similar households has concentrated on daily load proles and the variability in regular household behaviours has not been considered. Those households with most variability in reg-...

How a household varies their regular usage of electricity is useful information for organisations to allow accurate targeting of behaviour modification initiatives with the aim of improving the overall efficiency of the electricity network. The variability of regular activities in a household is one possible indication of that household’s willingne...

More research in web and Information Retrieval is turning towards session-based retrieval rather than single item or query investigation. However, most of the session detection attempts only used simplistic rules (e.g. "30 mins inactivity creates a new session"). Up to this point, there are various fuzzy definitions of session, but no general conse...

With ever increasing developments in computing technology, approaches to attaining informed consent are becoming outdated. In light of this ongoing change, researchers have begun to propose several new mechanisms to meet the emerging challenges of consent in pervasive settings. Unfortunately a particular problem arises when considering consent in t...

We generate requirements for time-critical distributed team support relevant for domains such as disaster response. We present the Radiation Response Game to investigate socio-technical issues regarding team coordination. Field responders in this mixed-reality game use smartphones to coordinate, via text messaging, GPS, and maps, with headquarters...

Smart grids are a key feature of future energy scenarios, with the overarching goal of better aligning energy generation and demand. The work presented here considers the role of the user in such systems, and the contexts in which such roles might emerge. The data used is drawn from focus groups with 72 participants, using novel scenario techniques...

Recently, many algorithms have been developed for autonomous agents to manage home energy use on behalf of their human owners. By so doing, it is expected that agents will be more efficient at, for example, choosing the best energy tariff to switch to when dynamically priced tariffs come about. However, to date, there has been no validation of such...

We present a field trial of how instructions from an intelligent planning agent are dealt with by distributed human teams, in a time-critical task setting created through a mixed-reality game. We conduct interaction analysis to examine video recorded field observations and game log data. The findings highlight the social process by which players in...

Our natural environment is complex and sensitive, and is home to a number of species on the verge of extinction. Surveying is one approach to their preservation, and can be supported by technology. This paper presents the deployment of a smartphone-based citizen science biodiversity application. Our findings from interviews with members of the biod...

Future energy systems that rely on renewable energy may bring about a radical shift in how we use energy in our homes. We developed and prototyped a future scenario with highly variable, real-time electricity prices due to a grid that mainly relies on renewables. We designed and deployed an agent-based interactive system that enables users to effec...

Our natural environment is complex and sensitive, and is home to a number of species on the verge of extinction. Surveying is one approach to their preservation, and can be supported by technology. This paper presents the deployment of a smartphone-based citizen science biodiversity application. Our findings from interviews with members of the biod...

The New Forest cicada is a declining species native to the UK, and the last unconfirmed sighting was in 2000. One of the difficulties in identifying the cicada is that it sings at a high frequency typically inaudible to adults. In this paper we describe a field test of a novel citizen science smartphone application designed to detect and classify t...

Pervasive computing systems raise unprecedented challenges to citizen privacy. They fundamentally skew the relationship between our public and private selves, conflating the two in ever-changing and unanticipated ways. Within this context, the act of consenting is a critical mechanism of empowerment, allowing us to protect those aspects of our live...

E-books are becoming ubiquitous. Whether or not they will eventually replace books or merely complement them, there is a concern that something important might be lost in moving from print to digital books. While there is a wealth of research into the challenges and opportunities of e-reading, there is little research aiming to understand the broad...

Ethnographic study in two contrasting museums highlights a widespread but rarely documented challenge for CSCW design. Visitors' engagement with exhibits often ends prematurely due to the need to keep up with or attend to fellow group members. We unpack the mechanics of these kinds of phenomena revealing how the behaviours of summoning, pressurizin...

This paper outlines recent developments in the Scaling the Rural Enterprise (SRE) research project – an interdisciplinary project that combines the expertise of social scientists, computer scientists and software developers, in order to inform the development and design of digital technologies in a rural context. The paper provides a brief overview...

Research into domestic infrastructures has focused upon a user's understanding and control of in-home networking technologies. It has exposed a range of needs that have either lead to the creation of new tools and services, or have triggered a fundamental re-evaluation of the status quo. We consider a class of domestic environment that has largely...

Ubiquitous computing systems tend to be complex, seamless, data-driven and interactive. Reacting to both context, and users' implicit actions resulting from the lived experience, they cast all traces of human life as potential 'data'. To augment users' endeavours, such systems are necessarily embedded below the line of human attention, drawing upon...

This paper explores the measurement, apportionment and representation of widespread energy monitoring. We explicate the accountability to users of the data collected by this type of monitoring when it is presented to them as a single daylong picture. We developed a technology probe that combines energy measurement from the home, workplace and the j...

With the proliferation of digital reading technologies and their underlying ecosystem, practices of reading are currently undergoing significant changes. Despite the currency of the topic, we find there is little empirical research on how people incorporate digital reading technologies into their existing leisure-based reading practices. In this pa...

Doing research `in the wild' is becoming an increasingly popular approach towards developing innovative computing systems and applications. This paper reflects upon a research project conducted in the wild, and key aspects of the work involved in making the project work, to examine current tropes about the approach. It suggests that doing research...

The article discusses how to create and resolve discomfort for a thrilling and memorable experience. Uncomfortable interaction causes a degree of suffering to the user, mentally through suspense, fear, and anxiety or even physically through movement, exertion, and pain. The increasing use of computers in games, rides, performances, installations, a...

Changes in the UK electricity market, particularly with the roll out of smart meters, will provide greatly increased opportunities for initiatives intended to change households' electricity usage patterns for the benefit of the overall system. Users show differences in their regular behaviours and clustering households into similar groupings based...

This paper describes a method for defining representative load profiles for domestic electricity users in the UK. It considers bottom up and clustering methods and then details the research plans for implementing and improving existing framework approaches based on the overall usage profile. The work focuses on adapting and applying analysis framew...

Changes in the UK electricity market mean that domestic users will be required to modify their usage behaviour in order that supplies can be maintained. Clustering allows usage profiles collected at the household level to be clustered into groups and assigned a stereotypical profile which can be used to target marketing campaigns. Fuzzy C Means clu...

This paper takes an approach to clustering domestic electricity load profiles that has been successfully used with data from Portugal and applies it to UK data. Clustering techniques are applied and it is found that the preferred technique in the Portuguese work (a two stage process combining Self Organised Maps and Kmeans) is not appropriate for t...

An introduction to the special issue of 'The Turn to The Wild' is provided. The introduction reveals that the phrase 'in-the-wild' is becoming popular again in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), describing approaches to HCI research and accounts of user experience phenomena that differ from those derived from other lab-based methods. Re...

In this paper, we present AgentSwitch, a prototype agent-based platform to solve the electricity tariff selection problem. AgentSwitch incorporates novel algorithms to make predictions of hourly energy usage as well as detect (and suggest to the user) deferrable loads that could be shifted to off-peak times to maximise savings. To take advantage of...