Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary field that explores the interaction between humans and computers, emphasizing especially the design and use of computer technology. Within this domain, the notion of sense of agency, usually defined as the users perceiving their actions as influencing the system, is of crucial importance. Another central notion is that of socio-technical systems, referring to the interplay between social and technical elements. In this work, we delve into users’ perceptions of their interactions with smart devices, drawing insights from a dataset collected during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.

The dataset, gathered through an expansive survey, was distributed in professional and personal networks, offers a window into the perspectives of 587 respondents, predominantly highly educated professionals with significant technological familiarity. While the sample’s specificity limits the generalizability of findings, it offers valuable insights into how tech-savvy users perceive their interactions with smart devices, illuminating the nuanced dynamics of HCI within socio-technical contexts.

One of the survey’s notable aspects was its focus on users’ choice of a single smart device to consider throughout their responses. This deliberate framing encourages a deeper exploration of users’ relationships with specific technologies, shedding light on the intricacies of their interactions. For respondents who did not own multiple smart devices, the instruction was to choose their primary device, such as a computer or mobile phone, thus ensuring consistency in the examination of user experiences.

Within the dataset, various dimensions of users’ interactions with smart devices emerged, encompassing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects. Users’ perceptions of agency, defined as their sense of control and influence over the device, are particularly intriguing. Analysis of the dataset reveals diverse manifestations of agency, ranging from feelings of empowerment and efficiency to frustrations stemming from perceived limitations or complexities in device operation.

Moreover, the socio-technical lens allows us to delve deeper into the contextual factors shaping users’ interactions. The dataset captures not only users’ individual experiences but also the broader socio-cultural and technological landscapes influencing these interactions. Factors such as educational background, professional expertise, age, and gender are among the variables examined, offering insights into how these socio-demographic factors intersect with users’ perceptions of smart device interactions.

The dataset’s utilization in previous research endeavors underscores its significance in advancing our understanding of human-computer interaction, user behavior analysis, and agency. By building upon existing research and leveraging the data available, researchers can uncover deeper insights into the complexities of smart device interactions and contribute to the development of more user-centered technologies.

The COVID-19 context during which the data were collected adds another layer of complexity to the analysis. Due to the increased time spent at home and the increase in remote work, the global pandemic catalyzed increased reliance on technology for work, education, and socialization. Understanding users’ interactions with smart devices within this unique context provides valuable implications for designing technologies that accommodate evolving user needs and preferences.

In conclusion, users’ notions of their interactions with smart devices offer a rich tapestry of insights that intersect with key concepts in HCI, including agency and socio-technical systems. Through the analysis of a dataset collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, we gain valuable insights into users’ perceptions, behaviors, and experiences with smart devices within the context of a rapidly evolving technological landscape. This dataset serves as a springboard for further exploration in the field, driving forward our understanding of human-computer interactions in an increasingly digital world.

Where to find more:

• Agency in Human-Smart Device Relationship: A work in progress description of a research done with this dataset

Initial call for collecting the responses

Link to the dataset (Open Access)

https://doi.org/10.3390/data9040056

https://doi.org/10.34894/traony

Main Personal Related Publication

https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16030090

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You may receive support from proper offices at the university, open source initiatives, as well as from the web. Here, I will share my favorite set of resources. Some are strictly related to the university where I am currently working, however, many institutions offer similar services.

Support for writing and related work:

• Universities have dedicated facilities (in Tilburg it is called Scriptorium) to help with writing assignments, such as a paper, a report, or your thesis. These facilities offer individual support for writing in both the language of your bachelor/master’s thesis (whether it is Dutch, French, Finnish, or something else) and English. You can also get help with searching for relevant background literature, consulting specific databases, and with questions about quoting and source referencing. Do not misunderstand me, they will not do the work for you but they can provide you with guidance and feedback.
• Libraries have a collection of best practices on how to reference sources in the proper manner and avoid plagiarism. Ref Cite is the one of the Library of Tilburg University: It is a self-study tutorial explaining the why and how of working with sources in academic writing.
• Libraries (here you can find the link to the one of TiU) are also the natural go-to place for retrieving material for your thesis. Nowadays your library is probably digital and offers your remote access via dedicated VPN. Nevertheless, your resources may also be available in paper format.

Support for Software and IT in General

• Some software is expensive, some is difficult to configure, and some has special licenses for students/researchers/faculties member. The IT support (here the link to the one in TiU) may help you in navigating this labyrinth and solve the various software (and hardware) related issues.
• Data are an important ingredient for your thesis. Your library (link again to the TiU one) may have access to particular packages (datasets) that are not available in a common setting.
• Data are also available in the web. Possible sources include the one mentioned in this post as well the datasets that I recently released.

IT Resources Offered for Free to Students

Being a student is (sometimes) an asset. Many companies and no-profit associations offer special support to students for experimenting and conducting their researches. Here there are two that I believe should be mentioned:

• Amazon Education: offers for free both classes as well as free computing resources for practicing cloud computing and related skills.
• GithHub education pack: offers an entire set of IT based services as well as the GithHub pro version for free to students that apply for this program.

Online Communities in the Web

Online communities may also be a source of support, mentorship, and exchange of ideas. Here are two that you should consider joining:

• StackeXchange (here you can see my profile) contains many communities that can be helpful for programming, configuring applications, as well as handling research in general.
• AskAcademia in Reddit is also a nice (virtual) place for exchanging opinions of academia-related issues.

Problems in Organizing Your Time and Delays

Deviation from what is originally expected is more common than you can imagine. Universities usually offer dedicated facilities for covering these problems. In TiU, this is the case of the Dean of Students. This is where you can find tailored support in case personal circumstances cause unforeseen problems for you. You can also develop a personal roadmap or working/study schedule.

Personal Coaching and Mental Health in General

Let’s face it, Covid times are not easy for anybody. In this respect, universities are organizing services that are supporting the mental health of students and staff. If you are experiencing difficulties in focusing, you may contact a specialized service (again, here you can find the one of TiU as an example) that can offer tailored support for your specific issue.

Other Online Resources for Your Thesis

A bit of self-promotion here. I am curating a few guides with the aim of offering quick (but effective) tips and suggestions for delivering a good thesis. In particular, I would suggest you to look at:

• A curated set of articles for improving the various aspects of your thesis
• A curated set of articles for moving from “Script Programming” to Object Oriented Programming.

Your #Thesis will benefit from all the help that it can get. Here you can find who can help you and how.
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Adopting healthy scientific practices is essential for conducting good quality research. This may be intuitive but it is hard to achieve and does not happen naturally. This video from the Royal Society introduces the problem:

The term “replication crisis” emphasizes that replication, a corner stone in science, is often considered of secondary importance. If we want to fight this phenomena it is important to conduct research using practices that promote the possibility to do that.

The open science movement not only offers you a way to get credited for your work (see this post on open access for more), but also tries to solve the problem of replicability. It takes into account several aspects at the level of researchers, scientific venues, funding organizations, etc.

In this article, we will focus on aspects related to the way research is conducted and the direct implications (and advantages) for your thesis.

I am assuming that you are not interested in falsifying your data or following any other intentional malpractices. In case you wonder, if you get caught, you could face serious consequences that range from immediate nullification of your thesis to expulsion and/or immediate termination of your internship.

As a single researcher (or small group of researchers) your attention should go towards offering to other scientists the possibility to access the data that you used for the analysis as well as your procedures. This video explain in a funny way why:

In other words, these are a set of good research practices that you should take into account:

• Carefully describe the procedures that you followed for obtaining the data.
• Make your data publicly available so that other scientists can check what you are doing. This includes your mentor and your second reader.
• Document each step of the process in order to be able to share this information with fellow researchers.
• Disclose the meaning of each field in the data.
• Disclose and share the programming code that you used for developing the data as well as the analysis.

Adopting these practices has several direct benefits:

• Your supervisors and/or reviewers will be positively impressed and predispose towards a higher grade.
• You will obtain a (very) good grade independently from your findings. In fact, your thesis is not about your findings: Showing you capability to follow the scientific method is way more important.
• Your work could, starting from your data, be published in a relatively easy manner as a tangible follow up of your thesis. Thus, differentiating your CV from other graduated students.
• A fellow student could decide to continue your work. Thus, you will be able to leave something tangible after you, instead of having your thesis completely forgotten.

In a nutshell, the bottom line is that good research practices will give you a better grade.

In this article, I limited myself to describing the scientific practices that a single individual should follow in pursuing his/her thesis. Adopting a more transparent approach clearly has several benefits and a direct implication on your grade. However, the problem of replicability is bigger than it may look like from this post. It is taken into serious consideration by the entire scientific community. In case you are interested in knowing more, this video gives you a general (and insightful) view on the problem:

#good #research practices like the one promoted by #OpenScience and #OpenData lead to better grades for your #Thesis as well as to a better #Science and more visibility of your work via #openaccess.
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Data come in all shapes and forms. If you are doing your thesis, you are in search of a proof of concept In other words, you are attempting to prove the validity of an idea or concept, not to produce an industry/ready solution . Therefore, most of the time, you do not need particularly large datasets. However, you want to be sure that they are of a sufficient quality. After all, you need to elaborate them without introducing too much noise.

What follows is a selected set of resources. It is not exhaustive and I am pretty sure that you will be able to find more by searching the Internet and asking your supervisor. However, this list is a good starting point in case you are trying to build a research/thesis proposal or you are stuck and in search of an idea.

Google datasets search:

• Link: https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/

You guessed right. Google has a dedicated search engine for datasets. It is freely available and index data that implement a particular schema.org format. Some of the data may be behind paywalls. However, academics and students usually can contact the data provider in order to get access to them or to a selected portion that is sufficient for their study.

EU Open Data Portal:

• Link: https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/

Once again, you guessed right. The European Union is committed to foster a strong data transparency policy. At the time of writing this article, I was able to find 15399 different datasets that are freely available. They cover a large variety of topics and are related to all the various arguments under the jurisdiction of the EU.

Yahoo Finance:

• Link: https://finance.yahoo.com/
• Link to the help center: https://help.yahoo.com/kb/download-historical-data-yahoo-finance-sln2311.html

There are plenty of financial DB in the web. Yahoo finance is the most known and straightforward. In case you are looking for daily quotations of various financial assets, this is the place for you. The second link will explain how to download historical data.

More on financial data:

• Link Thomson Reuters API: https://customers.reuters.com/developer/apis_tech.aspx

Some programming knowledge is required. An Application Programming Interface (API) gives you the possibility to access to the data of a website in a programmatic way. Reuters has a dataset that includes financial news and press releases. All you have to do is to write a few lines of code for accessing this information.

Kaggle.com, a community approach:

• Link: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets

Kaggle offers for its members the possibility to access and share data. In addition, it offers also a set of demo code for accessing and manipulating the data. The community is data science driven. However, some of the datasets do not require particular programming skills.

Get your data by yourself:

• link: https://www.programmableweb.com/

There is an ever growing amount of websites that offer the possibility to access them programmatically. Programmableweb is a directory that tries to list them. In addition, it lists links to the proper resources for using them. Note that use the APIs will require some programming. However, you may end up creating original datasets and this is already a valuable outcome of your thesis.

Where to get data for your thesis? In summary:

I hope that by now you realized that datasets are far from been a sparse resource. This collection or resources can serve you as the starting point for finding what you are looking for or for refining/developing your research idea.

Do you need #data? Here you can find a collection of resources for finding your dream datasets. #DataScience #BigData #OpenData
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