Contravision: exploring users' reactions to futuristic technology

  • Authors:
  • Clara Mancini;Yvonne Rogers;Arosha K. Bandara;Tony Coe;Lukasz Jedrzejczyk;Adam N. Joinson;Blaine A. Price;Keerthi Thomas;Bashar Nuseibeh

  • Affiliations:
  • The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;Two Cats Can, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;UNiversity of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom;The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom;University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

How can we best explore the range of users' reactions when developing future technologies that may be controversial, such as personal healthcare systems? Our approach -- ContraVision -- uses futuristic videos, or other narrative forms, that convey either negative or positive aspects of the proposed technology for the same scenarios. We conducted a user study to investigate what range of responses the different versions elicited. Our findings show that the use of two systematically comparable representations of the same technology can elicit a wider spectrum of reactions than a single representation can. We discuss why this is so and the value of obtaining breadth in user feedback for potentially controversial technologies.