Life Transitions and Social Technologies: Research and Design for Times of Life Change
When people experience major changes in their lives, they often turn to social technologies to help navigate shifting identities and networks and find support and resources. People’s experiences using social technologies during times of life transition, and how to better design such technologies, has been a major focus of social computing research. This workshop will gather researchers working in this space to discuss eight themes. Collaboratively, we will 1) synergize insights from workshop organizers’ and participants’ research to determine how social technologies can be designed to better support people during life transitions and 2) outline an agenda for the future of social computing work focused on life transitions.
Accepted Workshop Papers
Anas Alsuhaibani, Andrew Cox, Frank Hopfgartner, and Xin Zhao. An Investigation of the Physical and Digital Transitions of Saudi Students Coming to the UK
Katherine Cerna. Learning to Know Oneself Again through Self-monitoring Data: Dealing with Life Transitions in Chronic Care
Daniel A. Epstein and Naomi F. Sugie. Designing to Provide Social Support to Job Seekers After Prison Release
Madeline R. Everhart, Arash Zakeresfahani, and James Clawson. Life Happens, Period: Exploring the Social Rhythms Impacting Menstruation Tracking and Sharing
Katie Z. Gach. A Case for Reimagining the UX of Post-Mortem Account Deletion on Social Media
Eden Litt, Judy Jinn, Jennifer Guadagno, Bethany de Gant, and Anita Tseng. Supporting Life Transitions through Facebook
Dilisha Patel, Jill Shawe, Ann Blandford, and Judith Stephenson. Understanding the Use of Social Technologies During a Life Transition: Men's Experience with Fertility Problems
Alisha Pradhan and Amanda Lazar. An "invisible friend", an "invisible maid": Older Adults Associating Social Roles with Voice Assistants
Xiaotian Yin, Tim Tingqiu Yuan, Jian Li. A Theoretical Framework for Collaborative Networked Positioning
Arash Zakeresfahani, Madeline R. Everhart, and James Clawson. Supporting Partner Communication Over the Course of a Pregnancy
Zefeng Zhang. Gigging as Resilience: Managing Emergent Life Situations and Job Transitions
Workshop Themes
Life events vs. processes
Changing identities
Multiple overlapping life events
Physical and digital transitions
Technology non-use during life transitions
Liminality framework
Theoretical frames to draw from
Methodological considerations
Workshop Goals
Facilitate networking, connections, and collective identity for social computing researchers who study life transitions and social technologies.
Discuss and make connections between the eight workshop themes described above.
Set an agenda for the future of social computing research and design around life transitions and social technologies.
Potentially derive a new concise term that can be used to describe this research area.
Provide the groundwork for a collaborative research publication based on insights gained at the workshop.
Workshop Organizers
![5912f06b6252d37b1cba0be9_[1] Daniel Prof](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/060fec_e37ea75c838b43da94220cc409517565~mv2.jpeg/v1/crop/x_0,y_0,w_487,h_487/fill/w_220,h_220,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/5912f06b6252d37b1cba0be9_%5B1%5D%20Daniel%20Prof.jpeg)
Schedule
9:00 AM
Introduction
9:10 AM
Icebreaker
9:30 AM
Short talks by workshop participants about position paper topics
10:15 AM
Coffee break
10:45 AM
Collaborative brainstorming about workshop themes in small groups
11:10 AM
Affinity diagramming based on collaborative brainstorming
11:45 AM
Lunch break
1:30 PM
Keynote speaker: Dr. Marci Gleason, UT Austin
2:15 PM
Walking and talking break-out groups
3:00 PM
Report back from break-out groups and make connections between topics and themes discussed
3:30 PM
Coffee break
4:00 PM
Agenda setting, next steps, future plans
Submit
Early-decisions (for those who want to book travel early)
Deadline: August 25, 2019
Notifications: September 2, 2019
Later-decisions (for those who want to do this after the CHI deadline)
Deadline: September 25, 2019
Notifications: October 2, 2019
Interested participants should submit a short paper describing either:
1) Their research, preliminary or completed, related to life transitions and social technologies - or -
2) A position paper arguing for a particular idea or approach related to conducting research on or designing for life transitions and social technologies.
Papers should use the SIGCHI Extended Abstract format and be 2-5 pages long (excluding references).
Please submit papers to the workshop organizers at haimson@umich.edu.
If accepted into the workshop, you will need to register for CSCW 2019 and pay the workshop fee to attend.
