Andy Dow

As computers permeate more and more aspects of our lives, it becomes increasingly important that we consider those marginalised or excluded by new innovations. Especially, when we consider that digital systems have shown the potential to provide a means of self-expression and even emancipation. In embarking on a PhD program of HCI research in Digital Civics at Open Lab, I have focused on designing technologies in collaboration with public and voluntary sector care organisations delivering services to people with disabilities.

My work has principally concerned creating digital systems to capture the voice, opinions and experiences of people making use of community-based support services, as a means to provide data for service innovation. Employing Participatory Action Research inspired methods, a mixture of qualitative design practices and participatory design, technologies have been co-produced throughout my PhD with organisations providing support services. Working in complicated, multi-stakeholder design settings has produced not only implications for system’s design but also hints at some of the complexities of introducing digital technologies into public, private and voluntary sector service spaces at the point of service provision.

PUBLICATIONS
Andy Dow, John Vines, Rob Comber, and Rob Wilson. 2016. ThoughtCloud: Exploring the Role of Feedback Technologies in Care Organisations. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3625-3636. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858105

Andy Dow, John Vines, Toby Lowe, Rob Comber, and Rob Wilson. 2017. What Happens to Digital Feedback?: Studying the Use of a Feedback Capture Platform by Care Organisations. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5813-5825. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025943

Andy Dow, Rob Comber, and John Vines. 2018. Between Grassroots and the Hierarchy: Lessons Learned from the Design of a Public Services Directory. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174016

Roisin McNaney, John Vines, Andy Dow, David Green, and Peter Wright. 2018. Enabling Participation of People with Parkinson’s and their caregivers in Co-Inquiry around Collectivist Health Technologies. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174065