Recommenders play a significant role in our daily lives, making decisions for users on a regular basis. Their widespread adoption necessitates a thorough examination of how users interact with recommenders and the algorithms that drive them. An important form of interaction in these systems are algorithmic affordances: means that provide users with perceptible control over the algorithm by, for instance, providing context (‘find a movie for this profile’), weighing criteria (‘most important is the main actor’), or evaluating results (‘loved this movie’). The assumption is that these algorithmic affordances impact interaction qualities such as transparency, trust, autonomy, and serendipity, and as a result, they impact the user experience. Currently, the precise nature of the relation between algorithmic affordances, their specific implementations in the interface, interaction qualities, and user experience remains unclear. Subjects that will be discussed during the workshop, therefore, include but are not limited to the impact of algorithmic affordances and their implementations on interaction qualities, balances between cognitive overload and transparency in recommender interfaces containing algorithmic affordances; and reasons why research into these types of interfaces sometimes fails to cross the research-practice gap and are not landing in the design practice. As a potential solution the workshop committee proposes a library of examples of algorithmic affordances design patterns and their implementations in recommender interfaces enriched with academic research concerning their impact. The final part of the workshop will be dedicated to formulating guiding principles for such a library.
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Algorithmic affordances are defined as user interaction mechanisms that allow users tangible control over AI algorithms, such as recommender systems. Designing such algorithmic affordances, including assessing their impact, is not straightforward and practitioners state that they lack resources to design adequately for interfaces of AI systems. This could be amended by creating a comprehensive pattern library of algorithmic affordances. This library should provide easy access to patterns, supported by live examples and research on their experiential impact and limitations of use. The Algorithmic Affordances in Recommender Interfaces workshop aimed to address key challenges related to building such a pattern library, including pattern identification features, a framework for systematic impact evaluation, and understanding the interaction between algorithmic affordances and their context of use, especially in education or with users with a low algorithmic literacy. Preliminary solutions were proposed for these challenges.
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In flexible education, recommender systems that support course selection, are considered a viable means to help students in making informed course selections, especially where curricula offer greater flexibility. However, these recommender systems present both potential benefits and looming risks, such as overdependence on technology, biased recommendations, and privacy issues. User control mechanisms in recommender interfaces (or algorithmic affordances) might offer options to address those risks, but they have not been systematically studied yet. This paper presents the outcomes of a design session conducted during the INTERACT23 workshop on Algorithmic Affordances in Recommender Interfaces. This design session yielded insights in how the design of an interface, and specifically the algorithmic affordances in these interfaces, may address the ethical risks and dilemmas of using a recommender in such an impactful context by potentially vulnerable users. Through design and reflection, we discovered a host of design ideas for the interface of a flexible education interface, that can serve as conversation starters for practitioners implementing flexible education. More research is needed to explore these design directions and to gain insights on how they can help to approximate more ethically operating recommender systems.
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This exploratory study investigates the rationale behind categorizing algorithmic controls, or algorithmic affordances, in the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) of recommender systems. Seven professionals from industry and academia took part in an open card sorting activity to analyze 45 cards with examples of algorithmic affordances in recommender systems’ GUIs. Their objective was to identify potential design patterns including features on which to base these patterns. Analyzing the group discussions revealed distinct thought processes and defining factors for design patterns that were shared by academic and industry partners. While the discussions were promising, they also demonstrated a varying degree of alignment between industry and academia when it came to labelling the identified categories. Since this workshop is part of the preparation for creating a design pattern library of algorithmic affordances, and since the library aims to be useful for both industry and research partners, further research into design patterns of algorithmic affordances, particularly in terms of labelling and description, is required in order to establish categories that resonate with all relevant parties
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The user experience of our daily interactions is increasingly shaped with the aid of AI, mostly as the output of recommendation engines. However, it is less common to present users with possibilities to navigate or adapt such output. In this paper we argue that adding such algorithmic controls can be a potent strategy to create explainable AI and to aid users in building adequate mental models of the system. We describe our efforts to create a pattern library for algorithmic controls: the algorithmic affordances pattern library. The library can aid in bridging research efforts to explore and evaluate algorithmic controls and emerging practices in commercial applications, therewith scaffolding a more evidence-based adoption of algorithmic controls in industry. A first version of the library suggested four distinct categories of algorithmic controls: feeding the algorithm, tuning algorithmic parameters, activating recommendation contexts, and navigating the recommendation space. In this paper we discuss these and reflect on how each of them could aid explainability. Based on this reflection, we unfold a sketch for a future research agenda. The paper also serves as an open invitation to the XAI community to strengthen our approach with things we missed so far.
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The online lifeworld gives adolescents various opportunities to meet their developmental needs. Not all young people benefit from these opportunities. They encounter negative experiences, have difficulties fulfilling their needs and engage in risky and harmful behaviours in the online lifeworld. This poses challenges for Dutch youth work professionals, as little is known about the digital lives of Dutch adolescents and the challenges they encounter when meeting their developmental needs in the online lifeworld. In this qualitative study, a photovoice method was used to collect screenshots from adolescents (N = 175) concerning their experiences and needs in the online lifeworld. Six types of developmental needs in the online lifeworld were distinguished. The article concludes that understanding how adolescents use online affordances to fulfil their developmental needs is a starting point for all youth work professionals in providing adequate support to adolescents in the online lifeworld.
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Smart speakers are heralded to make everyday life more convenient in households around the world. These voice-activated devices have become part of intimate domestic contexts in which users interact with platforms.This chapter presents a dualstudy investigating the privacy perceptions of smart speaker users and non-users. Data collected in in-depth interviews and focus groups with Dutch users and non-users show that they make sense of privacy risks through imagined sociotechnical affordances. Imagined affordances emerge with the interplay between user expectations, technologies, and designer intentions. Affordances like controllability, assistance, conversation, linkability, recordability, and locatability are associated with privacy considerations. Viewing this observation in the light of privacy calculus theory, we provide insights into how users’ positive experiences of the control over and assistance in the home offered by smart speakers outweighs privacy concerns. On the contrary, non-users reject the devices because of fears that recordability and locatability would breach the privacy of their homes by tapping data to platform companies. Our findings emphasize the dynamic nature of privacy calculus considerations and how these interact with imagined affordances; establishing a contrast between rational and emotional responses relating to smart speaker use.Emotions play a pivotal role in adoption considerations whereby respondents balance fears of unknown malicious actors against trust in platform companies.This study paves the way for further research that examines how surveillance in the home is becoming increasingly normalized by smart technologies.
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Online social networks produce a visuality that reflects the attention economy governing this space. What is seen becomes elevated into prominence by networked publics that ‘perform’ affective expressions within platform affordances. We mapped Twitter images of refugees in two language spaces - English and Arabic. Using automated analysis and qualitative visual analysis, we found similar images circulating both spaces. However, photographs generating higher retweet counts were distinct. This highlights the impact of affective affordances of Twitter — in this case retweeting — on regimes of visibility in disparate spheres. Representations of refugees in the English language space were characterized by personalized, positive imagery, emphasizing solidarity for refugees contributing to their host country or stipulating innocence. Resonating images in the Arabic space were less personalized and depicted a more localized visuality of life in refugee camps, with an emphasis on living conditions in refugee camps and the efforts of aid organizations.
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Students’ health profession education includes learning at the workplace through placements. For students, participating in daily work activities in interaction with supervisors, co-workers and peers is a valuable practice to learn the expertise that is needed to become a health care professional. To contribute to the understanding of HPE-students’ workplace learning, the focus of this study is to identify affordances and characterise student’s participation during placements. We applied a research design based on observations. Three student-physiotherapists and four student-nurses were shadowed during two of their placement days. A categorisation of affordances is provided, in terms of students’ participation in activities, direct interactions and indirect interactions. Students’ daily participation in placements is discussed through unique combinations and sequences of the identified affordances reflecting changing patterns over time, and differences in the degree of presence or absence of supervisors, co-workers and peers.
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Blended learning, a teaching format in which face-to-face and online learning is integrated, nowadays is an important development in education. Little is known, however, about its affordances for teacher education, and for domain specific didactical courses in particular. To investigate this topic, we carried out a design research project in which teacher educators engaged in a co-design process of developing and field-testing open online learning units for mathematics and science didactics. The preliminary results concern descriptions of the work processes by the design teams, of design heuristics, and of typical ways of collaborating. These findings are illustrated for the case of two of the designed online units on statistics didactics and mathematical thinking, respectively.
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