Hello, everyone. My name is Óscar Alvarado.
And today I’d like to share with you the research
I did with my colleagues Vero Vanden Abeele, David Geerts and Katrien Verbert
titled Towards Tangible Algorithms: Exploring the Experiences
of Tangible Interactions with Movie Recommender Algorithms.
Artificial intelligence has taken an important part in our interactions
and daily activities, with recommendation systems being one of the best examples.
Scholars report that personalized recommendations tend to produce
unwanted experiences for users such as invisibility, anxiety, biases
in the processes, lack of control and feedback,
and other ethical issues that challenge the user's autonomy.
Although studies have been made
about possible solutions over Graphical User Interfaces,
we encourage studying tangible user interfaces to enhance the interaction
with personalized algorithmic recommendations.
We wanted to have a better understanding of the following interrogates
in good ways the user's ambition examples of possible
tangible user interfaces meant to interact with mobile recommendation system.
In what ways can tangible user interfaces enhance the algorithmic experience
in movie recommendation systems in profiling, transparency and control areas?
Is there a possibility that tangible user interfaces
could foster algorithmic awareness and more collaborative
and social interactions with a movie recommendation system?
We also propose the concept of tangible algorithms:
Tangible user interfaces dedicated to enhancing one or more design
areas of our experience in everyday algorithmic systems,
Their profiling processes or decisions, in a specific context.
This research presents a list of design areas to improve algorithmic experience.
These include: transparency and control, algorithmic awareness, algorithmic social
practices, algorithmic user control, selective algorithmic remembering.
We decided to disregard the last two areas for this study's effect.
Although subsequent studies can explore them in the future.
For our research, we implemented a two-fold strategy.
First, we performed a co-design exploration
of low-fidelity, tangible solutions to interact with the algorithmic movie
recommendations.
Second, we implemented a high fidelity, tangible user interface.
We initialized the design exploration with a preliminary design space.
We tested granular control in contrast with on and off switches.
Then whether the design of tangible user interfaces can gain from such projection
linked with the recommender systems, so we have an abstract and humanoid
shapes, also, soft pillow-like and hard cube-like interfaces.
Lastly, we have single devices or a two device strategy.
We embedded
all of these design characteristics in low fidelity prototypes.
First, Single cube:
With no granular control, an abstract shape, hard interface and a single device.
Double cubes: with granular control, an abstract shape, hard interface
and two devices.
A Rag doll:
with no granular control, a humanoid form, soft interface and a single device.
Rounded pillow:
with granular control, abstract shape, soft interface and a single device.
We reached out to a sample of 18 active movie recommender system users,
who were non-native English speakers and between the ages of 21 and 52 years old.
All of them had subscribed to a movie streaming platform at least once.
We then proceeded to divide the study in three main steps: a sensitizing
activity, a co-design session, and a post interview questionnaire.
If you want more details about the sensitizing activity, please
refer to our paper.
After this activity, we proceeded with the co-design session.
We presented our four prototypes to each participant during the interviews.
Following a latine-square design.
Since the prototypes were low fidelity, an interface was implemented
using the movie database API to get movie recommendations and information.
When each prototype usage was clear, the interviewer asked for the participants
feedback through semi-structured questions
related to transparency, control and awareness over the system.
Finally, our participants filled in a final online
questionnaire regarding their experiences and perceptions towards the prototypes.
After a thematic analysis, we came out with a series of results
regarding the experiences of tangible interactions with movie recommendations.
Participants pictured an opportunity in tangible user interfaces to provide
an appealing
way to elicit explicit feedback and improve algorithmic recommendations.
The physicality produced a sense of ownership
and control, in contrast with graphical user interfaces.
One participant even mentioned that this was because of the “sense
of touching of power in their hands” that the tangible user interfaces gave them.
Participants
frequently associated our prototypes with their current remote controls
and described how tangible user interfaces
could have a hard time competing with such prominent interfaces.
Participants stated the granularity makes them “feel
more in control when you can select and choose the percentages”.
This way, granular control was a must for tangible user interface.
A single device approach was favored by participants
implying that fewer devices create better experiences with algorithms,
and more than one device was inconvenient for this context.
Participants didn't see an added value of transparency because the tangible user
interface didn't inform them why certain movies were being recommended.
Participants mentioned the social dynamics happening around movies
and the interactions around the movie recommender system,
giving the opportunity to foster collaborative,
and cooperative interactions thanks to our tangible user interfaces.
Based on the feedback, we also uncovered experiences
with the specific design choices included in our preliminary design space.
First, although soft tangible user interfaces were referred
to as easier to find, comfortable and appropriate for the context,
participants also stated that it could promote interaction
mistakes because of these same characteristics.
An idle state option was suggested, which we later implemented.
Second, hard tangible user interfaces were seen as more precise
and portable, but participants were concerned about privacy,
possibly losing the item or for it to become unwanted or dust keeper.
Third, humanoid forms had positive feedback.
Participants described them as fun and emotional
and expressed how they could portray themselves.
One participant
mentioned the experience of watching “something sad with my sad doll”.
They also stated that the humanoid form could reduce the seriousness
of the interface.
Fourth, rounded tangible user interfaces were praised
for their accessibility of options and simple interaction,
but lack of precision, just like soft tangible user interfaces.
While they mentioned how handy it was to shake
the cubic tangible user interfaces for random recommendations.
Following the two-fold strategy, In the second part of this study,
we introduce our high-fidelity prototype: RECFFY.
The first tangible user interface designed to interact with a movie
recommendation system.
RECFFY was designed following different principles:
we followed a single device approach,
chose a soft tangible user interface with an idle state
to avoid unwanted interaction, a humanoid form and granular control.
Each movie genre is related to an emotion, and the tangible user
interface was centered in user perceived control and awareness.
A dislike function and random recommendation were also incorporated.
It also provides six different functionalities,
consists of a standby button behind the tangible user interface,
pressing the belly to play the selected movie or long
press it to show or hide the justification for it.
Rolling left or right for navigating, shaking for random recommendations,
tilting down to dislike
and bending the device's tips to increase or reduce each mood.
If you want to know more technical details about our tangible
interface, please refer to our paper.
Following the study,
we can mention the relevance of tangible algorithms in five aspects.
First, because we can interact and experience them,
they can overcome the abstract meaning of the term algorithm.
Second, users can reflect themselves to contextualize recommendations
thanks to tangible algorithms.
This is enforced by the humanoid form we proposed.
Third, they could provide a new form of algorithmic social practices,
increasing social dynamics because of its physicality.
Fourth, tangible algorithms produce this sense of control
and ownership, promoted by the granularity function.
Fifth, they provide a novel solution for explicit feedback,
improving accuracy and usefulness.
We also believe this
study opens new possibilities towards tangible user interfaces and their design,
taking into account elements like the algorithmic context
and how each physical form is more suitable for each environment.
The complementary uses for tangible algorithms such as decoration or playing
and also to take into consideration the implementation
of graphical user interfaces to achieve transparency.
RECFFY, comes as the first tangible user interface
dedicated to improve awareness and control, enhancing the algorithmic
experience of algorithmic systems in various contexts.
We encourage you to read the full article
Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues and acknowledge
that part of this research has been supported
by the KU Leuven Research Council and the University of Costa Rica.
Thank you all for your attention.