Publications
2024
- Towards Just Futures: A Feminist Approach To Speculative Design For Policy Making Dideriksen, Sofie Amalie Torp and Verma, Himanshu and Cila, Nazli and Murray-Rust, Dave (2024) DRS2024
Towards Just Futures: A Feminist Approach To Speculative Design For Policy Making
There is a call for and growing use of future-oriented design methods like speculative design in the development of policies. While these methods offer potential benefits in helping future-proof policies, they also run the risk of solidifying existing structures of power if not applied critically. In this paper, we describe a case study where we created a speculative design exhibition grounded in feminist theory in order to challenge the existing power structures in the public domain. We then discuss the insights from our design process and the reaction the exhibition received from policymakers in light of how feminist theory can help ensure a critical application of future-oriented design methods in policy design. - Token Gesture: Non-Transferable NFTs, Digital Possessions and Ownership Design Elsden, Chris and Morgan, Evan and Black, Suzanne R. and Disley, Martin and Schafer, Burkhard and Murray-Rust, Dave and Speed, Chris (2024) CSCW
Token Gesture: Non-Transferable NFTs, Digital Possessions and Ownership Design
This paper presents the design, deployment and qualitative study of a large-scale, public, generative art exhibition, through which passers-by could create artworks, and mint a non-fungible-token (NFT). Following the month-long exhibition, during which 229 anonymous participants produced artworks, 69 non-transferable NFTs were minted, we surveyed (33) and interviewed (14) expert and novice participants about their experiences. We explored contemporary challenges of owning digital things, and the extent to which NFTs, and ‘Web3’ technologies offer meaningful forms of ownership. Our findings describe how the inability to trade this NFT, and its unique circumstances of acquisition, made it meaningful in ways that extended beyond its immediate (limited) utility and offered participants something through which to construct identity. Reflecting on the aspirations, contradictions, and misconceptions of forms of ownership enabled by NFTs, we conclude with proposals for renewed attention in HCI to the nature of digital possessions, and the potential for ‘ownership design’. - Experiential AI: Between Arts and Explainable AI Hemment, Drew and Murray-Rust, Dave and Belle, Vaishak and Aylett, Ruth and Vidmar, Matjaz and Broz, Frank (2024) Leonardo
Experiential AI: Between Arts and Explainable AI
Experiential artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to the design, use, and evaluation of AI in cultural or other real-world settings that foregrounds human experience and context. It combines arts and engineering to support rich and intuitive modes of model interpretation and interaction, making AI tangible and explicit. The ambition is to enable significant cultural works and make AI systems more understandable to nonexperts, thereby strengthening the basis for responsible deployment. This paper discusses limitations and promising directions in explainable AI, contributions the arts offer to enhance and go beyond explainability and methodology to support, deepen, and extend those contributions. - Acts of Interfacing: Performative Negotiation with Digital Technologies Liu, Yuxi and Murray-Rust, Dave and Redström, Johan and Giaccardi, Elisa (2024) DRS2024
Acts of Interfacing: Performative Negotiation with Digital Technologies
Digital interfaces as we know them are changing. While interfaces become increasingly simple and intuitive, the wider technological infrastructures underlying them become less visible, more complex and difficult to grasp. Drawing on theories from human-computer interactions, software studies, and social practices, this paper examines the notion of interface. We start by tracing central issues of representation and control in the historical development of digital interfaces, and then introduce two shifts that are needed to deal with emerging situations: from representation to performance, and from control to negotiation. Using these shifts we move from traditional notions of the interface to propose acts of interfacing as a concept that captures the performative, contested, constructive qualities of interaction with large scale digital systems. We then highlight strategies for thinking past traditional one to one notions of the interface using this new frame and designing how we interact with digital technologies. - (Un)Making AI Magic: A Design Taxonomy Lupetti, Maria Luce and Murray-Rust, Dave (2024) Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(Un)Making AI Magic: A Design Taxonomy
This paper examines the role that enchantment plays in the design of AI things by constructing a taxonomy of design approaches that increase or decrease the perception of magic and enchantment. We start from the design discourse surrounding recent developments in AI technologies, highlighting specific interaction qualities such as algorithmic uncertainties and errors and articulating relations to the rhetoric of magic and supernatural thinking. Through analyzing and reflecting upon 52 students’ design projects from two editions of a Masters course in design and AI, we identify seven design principles and unpack the effects of each in terms of enchantment and disenchantment. We conclude by articulating ways in which this taxonomy can be approached and appropriated by design/HCI practitioners, especially to support exploration and reflexivity. - Metaphor Gardening: Experiential Engagements for Designing AI Interactions Murray-Rust, Dave and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Nicenboim, Iohanna (2024) DRS2024
Metaphor Gardening: Experiential Engagements for Designing AI Interactions
Designers deploy metaphors in various constructive ways but there is a challenge in noticing and selecting helpful metaphors to describe AI systems. Metaphors serve to highlight certain aspects of AI but their influence can be so potent that envisioning or discussing AI in alternative ways becomes challenging, with unwanted expectations, lazy tropes and hidden biases. Alternative metaphors help designers grasp distinctive qualities of AI and move past hidden assumptions. Hence, it is key to support designers in precise, plural and intentional metaphor use to grasp unique qualities of AI and explore its relationalities. We illustrate this through a selection of prototyping journeys in which metaphors directly shaped students’ design trajectories and allowed them to explore the relational, entangled complexities of AI systems. Finally, ‘metaphor gardening,’ provides a series of recommendations for designers when designing AI with metaphors, which we hope can ultimately support a generative and responsible approach to AI technologies. - Spatial Robotic Experiences as a Ground for Future HRI Speculations Murray-Rust, Dave and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Ianniello, Alessandro and Gorbet, Matt and Van Der Helm, Aadjan and Filthaut, Liliane and Chiu, Adrian and Beesley, Philip (2024) Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Spatial Robotic Experiences as a Ground for Future HRI Speculations
This work illustrates how artistic robotic systems can provide a reservoir of unfamiliarity and a basis for speculation, to open the field toward new ways of thinking about HRI. We reflect on a collaborative project between design students, a media art studio, and design researchers working with the baggage handling department of a strategic European airport. Engaging with the industrial context, we developed ’meta-behaviours’ - abstracted ideas of processes carried out on the worksite and passed these over to the students who translated them into robotic enactions based on hardware and a form language developed by the media art studio. The resulting visit experience challenges the audience to decode the installation in terms of meta-behaviours and their possible relations to industrial HRI. We used this to reflect on the value of conducting artistic and speculative work in HRI and to distil actionable recommendations for future research. - Unpacking Human-AI Interactions: From Interaction Primitives to a Design Space Tsiakas, Konstantinos and Murray-Rust, Dave (2024) ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems
Unpacking Human-AI Interactions: From Interaction Primitives to a Design Space
This paper aims to develop a semi-formal representation for Human-AI (HAI) interactions, by building a set of interaction primitives which can specify the information exchanges between users and AI systems during their interaction. We show how these primitives can be combined into a set of interaction patterns which can capture common interactions between humans and AI/ML models. The motivation behind this is twofold: firstly, to provide a compact generalisation of existing practices for the design and implementation of Human-AI interactions; and secondly, to support the creation of new interactions by extending the design space of HAI interactions. Taking into consideration frameworks, guidelines and taxonomies related to human-centered design and implementation of AI systems, we define a vocabulary for describing information exchanges based on the model’s characteristics and interactional capabilities. Based on this vocabulary, a message passing model for interactions between humans and models is presented, which we demonstrate can account for existing HAI interaction systems and approaches. Finally, we build this into design patterns which can describe common interactions between users and models, and we discuss how this approach can be used towards a design space for HAI interactions that creates new possibilities for designs as well as keeping track of implementation issues and concerns. - Design Guidelines towards Prototyping Tools for Sonic Sketching in UX Design Vardanyan, D. and Huisman, G. and Murray-Rust, D. and Delle Monache, S. (2024) Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association Forum Acusticum 2023
Design Guidelines towards Prototyping Tools for Sonic Sketching in UX Design
When done right, sound design can greatly enhance both physical and digital products. The sounds used to underscore interactions with products are typically short, with an emphasis on timbre and shape, focusing on character rather than musical features, which requires particular approaches to sound sculpting. - On Creative Practice and Generative AI Vidmar, Matjaz and Hemment, Drew and Murray-Rust, Dave and Black, Suzanne R. (2024) Data-Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries: Creative Data Catalysts
On Creative Practice and Generative AI
In recent years, advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning have given rise to powerful new tools and methods for creative practitioners. 2022-2023 in particular saw an explosion in generative AI tools, models and use cases. Noting the long history of critical arts engaging with the AI, this chapter considers both the application of generative AI in the creative industries, and ways in which artists co-shape the development of these emerging technologies. Reviewing the landscape of generative AI in visual arts, music and games, as well as our own experiments with generative AI within The New Real programme, we propose four areas of critical interest for the future mutual co-shaping of generative AI and creative practice. - First International Workshop on Workers-Robot Relationships Zaga, Cristina and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Forster, Deborah and Murray-Rust, Dave and Prendergast, Micah and Abbink, David (2024) HRI2024
First International Workshop on Workers-Robot Relationships
In Industry 5.0, cognitive robots and workers will engage in evolving and reciprocal relations, which we call workers-robot relationships (WRRs). To enable evidence-based work futures with workers, we must co-develop WRRs and understand their impact on work, workers, management, and society. To this end, we posit that the HRI field should work beyond disciplines and include value-driven and plural perspectives through transdisciplinary research done with and for workers. However, WRRs and transdisciplinarity pose unique technical, philosophical, and methodological challenges yet to be explored. We propose a workshop to engage the HRI community working on Industry 5.0, aiming at 1) taking stock of current WRR-related challenges in relevant disciplines, 2) collectively kick-off the exploration of a joint research agenda, 3) preliminary examining if and how transdisciplinarity could help the HRI community, and 4) start discussing how to deal with such complex knowledge integration in practice.
2023
- Data-Enhanced Design: Engaging Designers in Exploratory Sensemaking with Multimodal Data Gorkovenko, Katerina and Jenkins, Adam and Vaniea, Kami and Murray-Rust, Dave (2023) International Journal of Design
Data-Enhanced Design: Engaging Designers in Exploratory Sensemaking with Multimodal Data
Research in the wild can reveal human behaviours, contexts, and needs around products that are difficult to observe in the lab. Telemetry data from the use of physical products can help facilitate in the wild research, in particular by suggesting hypotheses that can be explored through machine learning models. This paper explores ways for designers without strong data skills to engage with multimodal data to develop a contextual understanding of product use. This study is framed around a lightweight version of a data enhanced design research process where multimodal telemetry data was captured by a GoPro camera attached to a bicycle. This was combined with the video data and conversation with the rider to carry out an exploratory sensemaking process and generate design research questions that could potentially be addressed through data capture, annotation and machine learning. We identify a range of ways that designers could make use of the data for ideation and developing context through annotating and exploring the data. Participants used data and annotation practices to connect the micro and macro, spot interesting moments, and frame questions around an unfamiliar problem. The work follows the designers’ questions, methods, and explorations, both immediate concerns and speculations about working at larger scales with machine learning models. This points to the possibility of tools that help designers to engage with machine learning, not just for optimisation and refinement, but for creative ideation in the early stage of design processes. - Agency and Legibility for Artists through Experiential AI Hemment, Drew and Vidmar, Matjaz and Panas, Daga and Murray-Rust, Dave and Belle, Vaishak and Ruth, Aylett (2023) XAIxArts at Creativity and Cognition
Agency and Legibility for Artists through Experiential AI
Experiential AI is an emerging research field that addresses the challenge of making AI tangible and explicit, both to fuel cultural experiences for audiences, and to make AI systems more accessible to human understanding. The central theme is how artists, scientists and other interdisciplinary actors can come together to understand and communicate the functionality of AI, ML and intelligent robots, their limitations, and consequences, through informative and compelling experiences. It provides an approach and methodology for the arts and tangible experiences to mediate between impenetrable computer code and human understanding, making not just AI systems but also their values and implications more transparent, and therefore accountable. In this paper, we report on an empirical case study of an experiential AI system designed for creative data exploration of a user-defined dimension, to enable creators to gain more creative control over the AI process. We discuss how experiential AI can increase legibility and agency for artists, and how the arts can provide creative strategies and methods which can add to the toolbox for human-centred XAI. - From VizBlocks to the Data-Driven Actor: Reimagining an Open-Ended Data Physicalisation Prototype with a Creative Business Lechelt, Susan and Morgan, Evan and Duffy, Clare and Murray-Rust, Dave and Nissen, Bettina (2023) Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
From VizBlocks to the Data-Driven Actor: Reimagining an Open-Ended Data Physicalisation Prototype with a Creative Business
In this case study, we document the process of engaging in an initially unplanned and informal knowledge exchange activity between academic researchers and a local performing arts company. This knowledge exchange activity quickly became a fruitful collaboration during which an academic design research prototype was reimagined as a wholly new product to expand the offering of a creative business. We document the factors that led to the success of this collaboration, reflecting on both features of the collaboration itself and how the design of the initial research prototype configured its repurposing. In terms of the latter, we consider how the original prototype’s ambiguity, open-endedness, customisability and flexible assembly afforded its reimagining. Through the case study, we demonstrate that there is much to be gained from facilitating access to research prototypes for small and medium enterprises and supporting them in appropriating these toward their own goals. - Grasping AI: Experiential Exercises for Designers Murray-Rust, Dave and Lupetti, Maria Luce and Nicenboim, Iohanna and van der Hoog, Wouter (2023) AI & Society
Grasping AI: Experiential Exercises for Designers
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are increasingly integrated into the functioning of physical and digital products, creating unprecedented opportunities for interaction and functionality. However, there is a challenge for designers to ideate within this creative landscape, balancing the possibilities of technology with human interactional concerns. We investigate techniques for exploring and reflecting on the interactional affordances, the unique relational possibilities, and the wider social implications of AI systems. We introduced into an interaction design course (n=113) nine ‘AI exercises’ that draw on more than human design, responsible AI, and speculative enactment to create experiential engagements around AI interaction design. We find that exercises around metaphors and enactments make questions of training and learning, privacy and consent, autonomy and agency more tangible, and thereby help students be more reflective and responsible on how to design with AI and its complex properties in both their design process and outcomes. - Actor-Flower-Mesh-Work: Making Environments Together von Jungenfeld, Rocio and Murray-Rust, Dave (2023) Creating Digitally: Shifting Boundaries: Arts and Technologies—Contemporary Applications and Concepts
Actor-Flower-Mesh-Work: Making Environments Together
In this paper we use an Ingoldian ‘meshwork’ and a Latournian ‘actor network’ approach to unpack the complexities of devising and constructing complex situations that combine creativity and technology. To do this, we draw on our experience of creating and exhibiting an interactive installation. We draw on our observations of the interactions, relations and correspondences between the installation, its elements and the people that visited the space. We develop a discussion of these theories somewhat auto-ethnographically around the artwork Lichtsuchende, a group of robots with social behaviours enacted through light. Their trajectories of becoming are not that straightforward, and by looking at the moments of becoming we can delve into understanding the artwork better using two distinctive approaches: Ingold’s meshwork and Latour’s actor-network. The two approaches enable us to investigate from within and from outside. We seek to understand the ways in which these viewpoints can be applied as methodologies to unpack the factors involved in the creation of an artificial society and the emergence of a shared environment made of human and non-human things. - The Politics of Digital (Human) Rights Wagner, Ben and Sanchez, Andy and Sekwenz, Marie-Therese and Dideriksen, Sofie and Murray-Rust, Dave (2023) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies
The Politics of Digital (Human) Rights
"The Politics of Digital (Human) Rights" published on by Oxford University Press. - Disentangling Fairness Perceptions in Algorithmic Decision-Making: The Effects of Explanations, Human Oversight, and Contestability Yurrita, Mireia and Draws, Tim and Balayn, Agathe and Murray-Rust, Dave and Tintarev, Nava and Bozzon, Alessandro (2023) Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Disentangling Fairness Perceptions in Algorithmic Decision-Making: The Effects of Explanations, Human Oversight, and Contestability
Recent research claims that information cues and system attributes of algorithmic decision-making processes affect decision subjects’ fairness perceptions. However, little is still known about how these factors interact. This paper presents a user study (N = 267) investigating the individual and combined effects of explanations, human oversight, and contestability on informational and procedural fairness perceptions for high- and low-stakes decisions in a loan approval scenario. We find that explanations and contestability contribute to informational and procedural fairness perceptions, respectively, but we find no evidence for an effect of human oversight. Our results further show that both informational and procedural fairness perceptions contribute positively to overall fairness perceptions but we do not find an interaction effect between them. A qualitative analysis exposes tensions between information overload and understanding, human involvement and timely decision-making, and accounting for personal circumstances while maintaining procedural consistency. Our results have important design implications for algorithmic decision-making processes that meet decision subjects’ standards of justice.
2022
- Wooden Mathematics – Making Abstraction Tangible Damrau, Milena and Skrodzki, Martin and Bruscia, Nicholas and Feynes, Aaron and Hunyadi, Teresa and Murray-Rust, Dave (2022) w/k - Zwischen Wissenschaft & Kunst
Wooden Mathematics – Making Abstraction Tangible
Wooden artworks can be found throughout all art historical periods. Yet, they are scarcely found in the realm of mathematical art. In the following collection, each article exemplifies the interaction of wood as both an artistic medium and a means for the illustration of mathematical content. - Gender Choices of Conversational Agent: How Today’s Practice Can Shape Tomorrow’s Values Jung, Ji-Youn and Murray-Rust, Dave and Gadiraju, Ujwal and Bozzon, Alessandro (2022) CUI@CHI 2022
Gender Choices of Conversational Agent: How Today’s Practice Can Shape Tomorrow’s Values
When creating conversational agents, designers have to make decisions about the way the agents present themselves. In this position paper, we identify and synthesize ethical dilemmas that conversational interface designers and researchers face around gender of conversational agents. First, we identify three layers that cause tension in designing conversational agents’ gender: (i) interactional qualities; (ii) goal-orientation; and (iii) societal issues. We then argue that conversational agent designers and researchers can navigate this problem space by comparing two ethical frameworks: a utilitarian perspective and a dialogical ethics perspective. Finally, we argue that dialogical ethics can be a balanced, ethical lens that can help conversational agent designers and researchers make design decisions about the gender of an agent. - Blockchain and Beyond: Understanding Blockchains through Prototypes and Public Engagement Murray-Rust, Dave and Elsden, Chris and Nissen, Bettina and Tallyn, Ella and Pschetz, Larissa and Speed, Chris (2022) Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
Blockchain and Beyond: Understanding Blockchains through Prototypes and Public Engagement
This paper presents an annotated portfolio of projects that seek to understand and communicate the social and societal implications of blockchains, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. These complex technologies rely on human and technical factors to deliver cryptocurrencies, shared computation and trustless protocols but have a secondary benefit in providing a moment to re-think many aspects of society, and imagine alternative possibilities. The projects use design and HCI methods to relate blockchains to a range of topics, including global supply chains, delivery infrastructure, smart grids, volunteering and charitable giving, through engaging publics, exploring ideas and speculating on possible futures. Based on an extensive annotated portfolio we draw out learning for the design of blockchain systems, broadening participation and surfacing questions around imaginaries, social implications and engagement with new technology. This paints a comprehensive picture of how HCI and design can shape understandings of the future of complex technologies. - Metaphors for Designers Working with AI Murray-Rust, Dave and Nicenboim, Iohanna and Lockton, Dan (2022) DRS Biennial Conference Series
Metaphors for Designers Working with AI
In this paper, we explore the use of metaphors for people working with artificial intelligence, in particular those that support designers in thinking about the creation of AI systems. Metaphors both illuminate and hide, simplifying and connecting to existing knowledge, centring particular ideas, marginalising others, and shaping fields of practice. The practices of machine learning and artificial intelligence draw heavily on metaphors, whether black boxes, or the idea of learning and training, but at the edges of the field, as design engages with computational practices, it is not always apparent which terms are used metaphorically, and which associations can be safely drawn on. In this paper, we look at some of the ways metaphors are deployed around machine learning and ask about where they might lead us astray. We then develop some qualities of useful metaphors, and finally explore a small collection of helpful metaphors and practices that illuminate different aspects of machine learning in a way that can support design thinking. - Respect as a Lens for the Design of AI Systems Seymour, William and Van Kleek, Max and Binns, Reuben and Murray-Rust, Dave (2022) Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
Respect as a Lens for the Design of AI Systems
Critical examinations of AI systems often apply principles such as fairness, justice, accountability, and safety, which is reflected in AI regulations such as the EU AI Act. Are such principles sufficient to promote the design of systems that support human flourishing? Even if a system is in some sense fair, just, or ’safe’, it can nonetheless be exploitative, coercive, inconvenient, or otherwise conflict with cultural, individual, or social values. This paper proposes a dimension of interactional ethics thus far overlooked: the ways AI systems should treat human beings. For this purpose, we explore the philosophical concept of respect: if respect is something everyone needs and deserves, shouldn’t technology aim to be respectful? Despite its intuitive simplicity, respect in philosophy is a complex concept with many disparate senses. Like fairness or justice, respect can characterise how people deserve to be treated; but rather than relating primarily to the distribution of benefits or punishments, respect relates to how people regard one another, and how this translates to perception, treatment, and behaviour. We explore respect broadly across several literatures, synthesising perspectives on respect from Kantian, post-Kantian, dramaturgical, and agential realist design perspectives with a goal of drawing together a view of what respect could mean for AI. In so doing, we identify ways that respect may guide us towards more sociable artefacts that ethically and inclusively honour and recognise humans using the rich social language that we have evolved to interact with one another every day. - Using Human-in-the-Loop and Explainable AI to Envisage New Future Work Practices Tsiakas, Konstantinos and Murray-Rust, Dave (2022) Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments
Using Human-in-the-Loop and Explainable AI to Envisage New Future Work Practices
In this paper, we discuss the trends and challenges of the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods in the workplace. An important aspect towards creating positive AI futures in the workplace is the design of fair, reliable and trustworthy AI systems which aim to augment human performance and perception, instead of replacing them by acting in an automatic and non-transparent way. Research in Human-AI Interaction has proposed frameworks and guidelines to design transparent and trustworthy human-AI interactions. Considering such frameworks, we discuss the potential benefits of applying human-in-the-loop (HITL) and explainable AI (XAI) methods to define a new design space for the future of work. We illustrate how such methods can create new interactions and dynamics between human users and AI in future work practices. - Interactive Data Comics Wang, Zezhong and Romat, Hugo and Chevalier, Fanny and Riche, N. and Murray-Rust, Dave and Bach, Benjamin (2022) IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Interactive Data Comics
A set of operations tailored to support data comics narrative goals that go beyond the traditional linear, immutable storyline curated by a story author are introduced and a lightweight specification language, COMICSCRIPT, is proposed for designers to add interactivity to static comics. This paper investigates how to make data comics interactive. Data comics are an effective and versatile means for visual communication, leveraging the power of sequential narration and combined textual and visual content, while providing an overview of the storyline through panels assembled in expressive layouts. While a powerful static storytelling medium that works well on paper support, adding interactivity to data comics can enable non-linear storytelling, personalization, levels of details, explanations, and potentially enriched user experiences. This paper introduces a set of operations tailored to support data comics narrative goals that go beyond the traditional linear, immutable storyline curated by a story author. The goals and operations include adding and removing panels into pre-defined layouts to support branching, change of perspective, or access to detail-on-demand, as well as providing and modifying data, and interacting with data representation, to support personalization and reader-defined data focus. We propose a lightweight specification language, COMICSCRIPT, for designers to add such interactivity to static comics. To assess the viability of our authoring process, we recruited six professional illustrators, designers and data comics enthusiasts and asked them to craft an interactive comic, allowing us to understand authoring workflow and potential of our approach. We present examples of interactive comics in a gallery. This initial step towards understanding the design space of interactive comics can inform the design of creation tools and experiences for interactive storytelling. - Towards a Multi-Stakeholder Value-Based Assessment Framework for Algorithmic Systems Yurrita, Mireia and Murray-Rust, Dave and Balayn, Agathe and Bozzon, Alessandro (2022) 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
Towards a Multi-Stakeholder Value-Based Assessment Framework for Algorithmic Systems
In an effort to regulate Machine Learning-driven (ML) systems, current auditing processes mostly focus on detecting harmful algorithmic biases. While these strategies have proven to be impactful, some values outlined in documents dealing with ethics in ML-driven systems are still underrepresented in auditing processes. Such unaddressed values mainly deal with contextual factors that cannot be easily quantified. In this paper, we develop a value-based assessment framework that is not limited to bias auditing and that covers prominent ethical principles for algorithmic systems. Our framework presents a circular arrangement of values with two bipolar dimensions that make common motivations and potential tensions explicit. In order to operationalize these high-level principles, values are then broken down into specific criteria and their manifestations. However, some of these value-specific criteria are mutually exclusive and require negotiation. As opposed to some other auditing frameworks that merely rely on ML researchers’ and practitioners’ input, we argue that it is necessary to include stakeholders that present diverse standpoints to systematically negotiate and consolidate value and criteria tensions. To that end, we map stakeholders with different insight needs, and assign tailored means for communicating value manifestations to them. We, therefore, contribute to current ML auditing practices with an assessment framework that visualizes closeness and tensions between values and we give guidelines on how to operationalize them, while opening up the evaluation and deliberation process to a wide range of stakeholders.
2021
- Enacting the Last Mile: Experiences of Smart Contracts in Courier Deliveries Tallyn, Ella and Revans, Joe and Morgan, Evan and Fisken, Keith and Murray-Rust, Dave (2021) Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Enacting the Last Mile: Experiences of Smart Contracts in Courier Deliveries
Smart contract systems could change the nature of last-mile delivery for the better through enhanced precision, coordination and accountability. However, technological complexity poses a challenge for end-users participating in the design process, making it hard to explore their experiences and incorporate their perspectives. We describe a case study where technological prototypes create smart contract experiences for professional couriers and receptionists, allowing them to speculate about emerging possibilities, whilst remaining grounded in their current practices. Participants enacted a series of deliveries, choreographed by smart contracts, and their responses were explored in post-experience, one-to-one interviews. Working with professionals to explore the potential impact of smart contract technologies, revealed the systemic webs of value underlying their existing work practices. This has implications for design of such technologies, in which increased automation, efciency and accountability must be delicately balanced with the benefts of sustaining personal values, relationships and agency.
2020
- Exploring The Future of Data-Driven Product Design Gorkovenko, Katerina and Burnett, Daniel J. and Thorp, James K. and Richards, Daniel and Murray-Rust, Dave (2020) Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Exploring The Future of Data-Driven Product Design
Connected devices present new opportunities to advance design through data collection in the wild, similar to the way digital services evolve through analytics. However, it is still unclear how live data transmitted by connected devices informs the design of these products, going beyond performance optimisation to support creative practices. Design can be enriched by data captured by connected devices, from usage logs to environmental sensors, and data about the devices and people around them. Through a series of workshops, this paper contributes industry and academia perspectives on the future of data-driven product design. We highlight HCI challenges, issues and implications, including sensemaking and the generation of design insight. We further challenge current notions of data-driven design and envision ways in which future HCI research can develop ways to work with data in the design process in a connected, rich, human manner.
2019
- Chatty Factories: A Vision for the Future of Product Design and Manufacture with IoT Burnap, Pete and Branson, David and Murray-Rust, Dave and Preston, John and Richards, Dan and Burnett, Dan and Edwards, Nicola and Firth, Rhiannon and Gorkovenko, Katerina and Khanesar, Mojtaba and Lakoju, Mike and Smith, Tom and Thorp, James (2019) Living in the IoT: PETRAS/IET Conference 2019
Chatty Factories: A Vision for the Future of Product Design and Manufacture with IoT
Chatty Factories is a three-year investment by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through its programme for New Industrial Systems. The project explores the transformative potential of placing IoT-enabled data driven systems at the core of design and manufacturing processes. The research focuses on the opportunity to collect data from IoT-enabled sensors embedded in products during real-time use by consumers, explores how that data might be immediately transferred into usable information to inform design, and considers what characteristics of the manufacturing environment might optimise the response to such data. The project also considers implications arising for skills development in the education sector as well as ethics in manufacturing. In this paper we provide a vision for future “Chatty Factories”. - Digital Twins as a Resource for Design Research Burnett, Dan and Thorp, James and Richards, Daniel and Gorkovenko, Katerina and Murray-Rust, Dave (2019) Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays
Digital Twins as a Resource for Design Research
IoT products are embedded with sensors that transmit live data about their use and environment. A key challenge for designers is to gather useful insights from this data in order to accelerate product research, which can be time consuming and labour intensive. Through the Chatty Products dashboard we aim to explore how virtual representations of IoT products and their sensor data, also known as digital twins, can support insight gathering. This demo will present a series of Bluetooth IoT speakers, which are connected to the Chatty Products dashboard, a data exploration and visualisation research tool containing supervisory digital twins of the speakers. The project aims to visualise live data as it relates to the physical product in the wild, enabling contextual inquiry and supporting data exploration. The demo will promote a dialogue around how digital twins can be used to gather design insights based on live data. - Argumentation Theory for Mathematical Argument Corneli, Joseph and Martin, Ursula and Murray-Rust, Dave and Nesin, Gabriela Rino and Pease, Alison (2019) Argumentation
Argumentation Theory for Mathematical Argument
To adequately model mathematical arguments the analyst must be able to represent the mathematical objects under discussion and the relationships between them, as well as inferences drawn about these objects and relationships as the discourse unfolds. We introduce a framework with these properties, which has been used to analyse mathematical dialogues and expository texts. The framework can recover salient elements of discourse at, and within, the sentence level, as well as the way mathematical content connects to form larger argumentative structures. We show how the framework might be used to support computational reasoning, and argue that it provides a more natural way to examine the process of proving theorems than do Lamport’s structured proofs. - Patterns of Design Corneli, Joseph and Holland, Simon and Pease, Alison and Mulholland, Paul and Murray-Rust, Dave and Scaltsas, Dory and Smaill, Alan (2019) 23rd European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs (EuroPLoP ’18)
Patterns of Design
In a straightforward meta-level shift of focus, we use design patterns as a medium and process for capturing insight about the process of design. We survey mainstream design genres, and draw conclusions about how they can help inform the design of intelligent systems. - Experiential AI Hemment, Drew and Aylett, Ruth and Belle, Vaishak and Murray-Rust, Dave and Luger, Ewa and Hillston, Jane and Rovatsos, Michael and Broz, Frank (2019) AI Matters
Experiential AI
Experiential AI is proposed as a new research agenda in which artists and scientists come together to dispel the mystery of algorithms and make their mechanisms vividly apparent. It addresses the challenge of finding novel ways of opening up the field of artificial intelligence to greater transparency and collaboration between human and machine. The hypothesis is that art can mediate between computer code and human comprehension to overcome the limitations of explanations in and for AI systems. Artists can make the boundaries of systems visible and offer novel ways to make the reasoning of AI transparent and decipherable. Beyond this, artistic practice can explore new configurations of humans and algorithms, mapping the terrain of inter-agencies between people and machines. This helps to viscerally understand the complex causal chains in environments with AI components, including questions about what data to collect or who to collect it about, how the algorithms are chosen, commissioned and configured or how humans are conditioned by their participation in algorithmic processes. - Entangled Ethnography: Towards a Collective Future Understanding Murray-Rust, Dave and Gorkovenko, Katerina and Burnett, Dan and Richards, Daniel (2019) Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019
Entangled Ethnography: Towards a Collective Future Understanding
In this work, we develop a vision for entangled ethnography, where constellations of people, artefacts, algorithms and data come together to collectively make sense of the relations between people and objects. This is grounded in New Materialism’s picture of a world understood through entanglement, through resonant constellations, through a multiplicity of unique individual viewpoints and their relationships. These perspectives are especially relevant for design ethnography, in particular for research around smart connected products, which collect data about their environment, the networks they are a part of, and the ways they are used. However, we are concerned about the current trend of many connected systems towards surveillance capitalism, as data is colonised, machinations are hidden, and a narrow definition of value is extracted. There is a key tension that while design, particularly of networked objects, attempts to go beyond human centeredness, the infrastructures that support it are moving towards a less than human perspective in their race to accumulate and dispossess. Our work tries to imagine the situations where participants in networked systems are richly engaged, rather than exploited. We hope for a future where human agency is central to a respectful and acceptable collaborative development of understanding. - Student Perspectives on Digital Phenotyping: The Acceptability of Using Smartphone Data to Assess Mental Health Rooksby, John and Morrison, Alistair and Murray-Rust, Dave (2019) Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Student Perspectives on Digital Phenotyping: The Acceptability of Using Smartphone Data to Assess Mental Health
There is a mental health crisis facing universities internationally. A growing body of interdisciplinary research has successfully demonstrated that using sensor and interaction data from students’ smartphones can give insight into stress, depression, mood, suicide risk and more. The approach, which is sometimes termed Digital Phenotyping, has potential to transform how mental health and wellbeing can be monitored and understood. The approach could also transform how interventions are designed, delivered and evaluated. To date, little work has addressed the human and ethical side of digital phenotyping, including how students feel about being monitored. In this paper we report findings from in-depth focus groups, prototyping and interviews with students. We find they are positive about mental health technology, but also that there are multi-layered issues to address if digital phenotyping is to become acceptable. Using an acceptability framework, we set out the key design challenges that need to be addressed. - Designing New Socio-Economic Imaginaries Speed, Christopher and Nissen, Bettina and Pschetz, Larissa and Murray-Rust, Dave and Mehrpouya, Hadi and Oosthuizen, Shaune (2019) The Design Journal
Designing New Socio-Economic Imaginaries
This short paper recovers the term ‘imaginaries’ which is often used in the social sciences to describe a meaning system that frames individuals lived experience of an inordinately complex world. The paper goes on to reflect on the extent to which design has the capability to disrupt imaginaries through the development of products in order for people to construct new ones, or whether the discipline is perpetuating old models of the world. The paper uses a workshop method to explore socio-economic models in order to better balance the multiple imaginaries that participants hold with the opportunity to design disruptive and critical propositions. Reflections upon the workshop and the concept of imaginaries allows the authors to identify a challenge for design in which it must accept its role as mediator and exacerbator. - Comparing Effectiveness and Engagement of Data Comics and Infographics Wang, Zezhong and Wang, Shunming and Farinella, Matteo and Murray-Rust, Dave and Henry Riche, Nathalie and Bach, Benjamin (2019) Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Comparing Effectiveness and Engagement of Data Comics and Infographics
This paper compares the effectiveness of data comics and infographics for data-driven storytelling. While infographics are widely used, comics are increasingly popular for explaining complex and scientific concepts. However, empirical evidence comparing the effectiveness and engagement of infographics, comics and illustrated texts is still lacking. We report on the results of two complementary studies, one in a controlled setting and one in the wild. Our results suggest participants largely prefer data comics in terms of enjoyment, focus, and overall engagement and that comics improve understanding and recall of information in the stories. Our findings help to understand the respective roles of the investigated formats as well as inform the design of more effective data comics and infographics.
2018
- Design Patterns for Data Comics Bach, Benjamin and Wang, Zezhong and Farinella, Matteo and Murray-Rust, Dave and Henry Riche, Nathalie (2018) ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
Design Patterns for Data Comics
Data comics for data-driven storytelling are inspired by the visual language of comics and aim to communicate insights in data through visualizations. While comics are widely known, few examples of data comics exist and there has not been any structured analysis nor guidance for their creation. We introduce data-comic design-patterns, each describing a set of panels with a specific narrative purpose, that allow for rapid storyboarding of data comics while showcasing their expressive potential. Our patterns are derived from i) analyzing common patterns in infographics, datavideos, and existing data comics, ii) our experiences creating data comics for different scenarios. Our patterns demonstrate how data comics allow an author to combine the best of both worlds: spatial layout and overview from infographics as well as linearity and narration from videos and presentations. - Towards Open-World Scenarios: Teaching the Social Side of Data Science Corneli, Joseph and Murray-Rust, Dave and Bach, Benjamin (2018) Cybernetic Serendipity Reimagined Symposium, Proc. Annual Convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour
Towards Open-World Scenarios: Teaching the Social Side of Data Science
This article reflects on current challenges we encounter in teaching data science to graduate students. A common critique of data science classes is that examples are static and student group work is embedded in an ‘artificial’ and ‘academic’ context. We look at how we can make teaching data science classes more relevant to real-world problems. Student engagement with real problems—and not just ‘real-world data sets’—has the potential to stimulate learning, exchange, and serendipity on all sides, and on different levels: noticing unexpected things in the data, developing surprising skills, finding new ways to communicate, and, lastly, in the development of new strategies for teaching, learning and practice. - ABIBA: An Agent-Based Computing System for Behaviour Analysis Used in Human-Agent Interaction Cui, Can and Murray-Rust, Dave and Robertson, David and Nicodemus, Kristin (2018) Highlights of Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Complexity
ABIBA: An Agent-Based Computing System for Behaviour Analysis Used in Human-Agent Interaction
We build an agent-based system for supporting correlation analysis between human behavioural and non-behavioural patterns. A novel social norm specification language is leveraged to create an interaction model based communication engine for choreographing distributed systems, offering a communication environment for multiple interacting players. Categorising sets of players based on their interaction behaviours allows labelling the other patterns, which the system uses to further its understanding relationship between the two traits. While existing analysis methods are manually applied, non-user-editable and typically opaque, the system offers an end-to-end computing framework and protocols which are modifiable for specific users. Evaluation for this system relies on tests for categories of people who are mentally depressed, where traditional questionnaire-based methods are superseded by methods that use more objective behavioural tests. This approach to evaluation through behavioural experimentation is intended not only to classify sub-types of depression cases which would facilitate elucidation of aetiology but evaluates system performance in a real-world scenario. - Journeys in Mathematical Landscapes: Genius or Craft? Lane, Lorenzo and Martin, Ursula and Murray-Rust, Dave and Pease, Alison and Tanswell, Fenner (2018) Proof Technology in Mathematics Research and Teaching
Journeys in Mathematical Landscapes: Genius or Craft?
We look at how Anglophone mathematicians have, over the last hundred years or so, presented their activities using metaphors of landscape and journey. We contrast romanticised self-presentations of the isolated genius with ethnographic studies of mathematicians at work, both alone, and in collaboration, looking particularly at on-line collaborations in the “polymath” format. The latter provide more realistic evidence of mathematicians daily practice, consistent with the the “growth mindset” notion of mathematical educators, that mathematical abilities are skills to be developed, rather than fixed traits.We place our observations in a broader literature on landscape, social space, craft and wayfaring, which combine in the notion of the production of mathematics as crafting the exploration of an unknown landscape. We indicate how “polymath” has a two-fold educational role, enabling participants to develop their skills, and providing a public demonstration of the craft of mathematics in action. - Towards Executable Representations of Social Machines Murray-Rust, Dave and Davoust, Alan and Papapanagiotou, Petros and Manataki, Areti and van Kleek, Max and Shadbolt, Nigel and Robertson, Dave (2018) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference
Towards Executable Representations of Social Machines
Human interaction is increasingly mediated through technological systems, resulting in the emergence of a new class of socio-technical systems, often called Social Machines. However, many systems are designed and managed in a centralised way, limiting the participants’ autonomy and ability to shape the systems they are part of.In this paper we are concerned with creating a graphical formalism that allows novice users to simply draw the patterns of interaction that they desire, and have computational infrastructure assemble around the diagram. Our work includes a series of participatory design workshops, that help to understand the levels and types of abstraction that the general public are comfortable with when designing socio-technical systems. These design studies lead to a novel formalism that allows us to compose rich interaction protocols into functioning, executable architecture. We demonstrate this by translating one of the designs produced by workshop participants into an a running agent institution using the Lightweight Social Calculus (LSC). - GeoCoin: Supporting Ideation and Collaborative Design with Location-Based Smart Contracts Nissen, Bettina and Pschetz, Larissa and Murray-Rust, Dave and Mehrpouya, Hadi and Oosthuizen, Shaune and Speed, Christopher (2018) Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
GeoCoin: Supporting Ideation and Collaborative Design with Location-Based Smart Contracts
Design and HCI researchers are increasingly working with complex digital infrastructures, such as cryptocurrencies, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. These technologies will have a profound impact on digital systems and their audiences. However, given their emergent nature and technical complexity, involving non-specialists in the design of applications that employ these technologies is challenging. In this paper, we discuss these challenges and present GeoCoin, a location-based platform for embodied learning and speculative ideating with smart contracts. In collaborative workshops with GeoCoin, participants engaged with location-based smart contracts, using the platform to explore digital ‘debit’ and ‘credit’ zones in the city. These exercises led to the design of diverse distributed-ledger applications, for time-limited financial unions, participatory budgeting, and humanitarian aid. These results contribute to the HCI community by demonstrating how an experiential prototype can support understanding of the complexities behind new digital infrastructures and facilitate participant engagement in ideation and design processes. - Social Machines for All Papapanagiotou, Petros and Davoust, Alan and Murray-Rust, Dave and Manataki, Areti and van Kleek, Max and Shadbolt, Nigel and Robertson, Dave (2018) 17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems
Social Machines for All
In today’s interconnected world, people interact to a unprecedented degree through the use of digital platforms and services, forming complex ‘social machines’. These are now homes to autonomous agents as well as people, providing an open space where human and computational intelligence can mingle—a new frontier for distributed agent systems. However, participants typically have limited autonomy to define and shape the machines they are part of.In this paper, we envision a future where individuals are able to develop their own Social Machines, enabling them to interact in a trustworthy, decentralized way. To make this possible, development methods and tools must see their barriers-to-entry dramatically lowered. People should be able to specify the agent roles and interaction patterns in an intuitive, visual way, analyse and test their designs and deploy them as easy to use systems.We argue that this is a challenging but realistic goal, which should be tackled by navigating the trade-off between the accessibility of the design methods –primarily the modelling formalisms– and their expressive power. We support our arguments by drawing ideas from different research areas including electronic institutions, agent-based simulation, process modelling, formal verification, and model-driven engineering. - Sketching Sustainable Land Use in Europe by 2040: A Multi-Stakeholder Participatory Approach to Elicit Cross-Sectoral Visions Pérez-Soba, Marta and Paterson, James and Metzger, Marc and Gramberger, Marc and Houtkamp, Joske and Jensen, Anne and Murray-Rust, Dave and Verkerk, Pieter J. (2018) Regional Environmental Change
Sketching Sustainable Land Use in Europe by 2040: A Multi-Stakeholder Participatory Approach to Elicit Cross-Sectoral Visions
The continuously growing global demands on a finite land resource will require better strategic policies and management of trade-offs to avoid conflicts between different land-use sectors. Visions of the future can support strategic planning by stimulating dialogue, building a consensus on shared priorities and providing long-term targets. We present a novel approach to elicit stakeholder visions of future desired land use, which was applied with a broad range of experts to develop cross-sectoral visions in Europe. The approach is based on (i) combination of software tools and facilitation techniques to stimulate engagement and creativity; (ii) methodical selection of stakeholders; (iii) use of land attributes to deconstruct the multifaceted sectoral visions into land-use changes that can be clustered into few cross-sectoral visions, and (iv) a rigorous iterative process. Three cross-sectoral visions of sustainable land use in Europe in 2040 emerged from applying the approach in participatory workshops involving experts in nature conservation, recreation, agriculture, forestry, settlements, energy, and water. The three visions—Best Land in Europe, Regional Connected and Local Multifunctional—shared a wish to achieve a land use that is sustainable through multifunctionality, resource use efficiency, controlled urban growth, rural renewal and widespread nature. However, they differ on the scale at which land services are provided—EU-wide, regional or local—reflecting the land-sparing versus land-sharing debate. We discuss the usefulness of the approach, as well as the challenges posed and solutions offered by the visions to support strategic land-use planning.
2017
- Provenance Composition in PROV Buneman, Peter and Gascon Caro, Adrian and Moreau, Luc and Murray-Rust, Dave (2017)
Provenance Composition in PROV
When two communicating processes each record their own provenance,what extra information needs to be recorded in order that a satisfactoryaccount can be given, of the combined process? We propose a setof requirements on (i) the kind of information that the processes can shareand (ii) the kind of queries that should be answerable from the combinedprovenance graph. We describe a solution using PROV. - Towards Mathematical AI via a Model of the Content and Process of Mathematical Question and Answer Dialogues Corneli, Joseph and Martin, Ursula and Murray-Rust, Dave and Pease, Alison (2017) Intelligent Computer Mathematics 10th International Conference, CICM 2017
Towards Mathematical AI via a Model of the Content and Process of Mathematical Question and Answer Dialogues
This paper outlines a strategy for building semantically meaningful representations and carrying out effective reasoning in technical knowledge domains such as mathematics. Our central assertion is that the semi-structured Q&A format, as used on the popular Stack Exchange network of websites, exposes domain knowledge in a form that is already reasonably close to the structured knowledge formats that computers can reason about. The knowledge in question is not only facts – but discursive, dialectical, argument for purposes of proof and pedagogy. We therefore assert that modelling the Q&A process computationally provides a route to domain understanding that is compatible with the day-to-day practices of mathematicians and students. This position is supported by a small case study that analyses one question from Mathoverflow in detail, using concepts from argumentation theory. A programme of future work, including a rigorous evaluation strategy, is then advanced. - Modelling the Way Mathematics Is Actually Done Corneli, Joseph and Martin, Ursula and Murray-Rust, Dave and Pease, Alison and Puzio, Raymond and Nesin, Gabriela Rino (2017) 2017 International Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modelling and Design (FARM 2017)
Modelling the Way Mathematics Is Actually Done
Whereas formal mathematical theories are well studied, computers cannot yet adequately represent and reason about mathematical dialogues and other informal texts. To address this gap, we have developed a representation and reasoning strategy that draws on contemporary argumentation theory and classic AI techniques for representing and querying narratives and dialogues. In order to make the structures that these modelling tools produce accessible to computational reasoning, we encode representations in a higherorder nested semantic network. This system, for which we have developed a preliminary prototype in LISP, can represent both the content of what people say, and the dynamic reasoning steps that move from one step to the next. - FinBook: Literary Content as Digital Commodity Gianni, Rory and Mehrpouya, Hadi and Murray-Rust, Dave and Nissen, Bettina and Oosthuizen, Shaune and Speed, Christopher and Symons, Kate (2017) Artists Re: Thinking the Blockchain
FinBook: Literary Content as Digital Commodity
This short essay explains the significance of the FinBook intervention, and invites the reader to participate. We have associated each chapter within this book with a financial robot (FinBot), and created a market whereby book content will be traded with financial securities. As human labour increasingly consists of unstable and uncertain work practices and as algorithms replace people on the virtual trading floors of the worlds markets, we see members of society taking advantage of FinBots to invest and make extra funds. Bots of all kinds are making financial decisions for us, searching online on our behalf to help us invest, to consume products and services. Our contribution to this compilation is to turn the collection of chapters in this book into a dynamic investment portfolio, and thereby play out what might happen to the process of buying and consuming literature in the not-so-distant future. By attaching identities (through QR codes) to each chapter, we create a market in which the chapter can ‘perform’. Our FinBots will trade based on features extracted from the authors’ words in this book: the political, ethical and cultural values embedded in the work, and the extent to which the FinBots share authors’ concerns; and the performance of chapters amongst those human and non-human actors that make up the market, and readership. In short, the FinBook model turns our work and the work of our co-authors into an investment portfolio, mediated by the market and the attention of readers. By creating a digital economy specifically around the content of online texts, our chapter and the FinBook platform aims to challenge the reader to consider how their personal values align them with individual articles, and how these become contested as they perform different value judgements about the financial performance of each chapter and the book as a whole. At the same time, by introducing ‘autonomous’ trading bots, we also explore the different ‘network’ affordances that differ between paper based books that’s scarcity is developed through analogue form, and digital forms of books whose uniqueness is reached through encryption. We thereby speak to wider questions about the conditions of an aggressive market in which algorithms subject cultural and intellectual items – books – to economic parameters, and the increasing ubiquity of data bots as actors in our social, political, economic and cultural lives. We understand that our marketization of literature may be an uncomfortable juxtaposition against the conventionally-imagined way a book is created, enjoyed and shared: it is intended to be. - How Do Europeans Want to Live in 2040 ? Citizen Visions and Their Consequences for European Land Use Metzger, Marc and Murray-Rust, Dave and Houtkamp, Joske and Jensen, Anne and Riviere, Inge La and Paterson, James and Perez-Soba, M. and Valluri-nitsch, Christiane (2017) Regional Environmental Change
How Do Europeans Want to Live in 2040 ? Citizen Visions and Their Consequences for European Land Use
The aspirations, motivations and choices of individual European citizens are a major driver of the future of global, European and local land use. However, until now no land use study has explicitly attempted to find out how the general public wants to live in the future. This paper forms a first attempt to survey European citizens to understand their desired future lives in relation to consequences for European land use. We used a crowdsourcing experiment to elicit visions from young Europeans about their lives in 2040. Participants completed a graphic novel around carefully selected questions, allowing them to create a story of their imagined future lives in pictures. The methodology worked well, and the sample seemed reasonably representative albeit skewed towards an educated population. In total, 1131 responses from 29 countries were received. Results show a strong desire for change, and for more sustainable lifestyles. There is desire for local and ecologically friendly food production, to eat less meat, to have access to green infrastructure and the ability to cycle to work. However, international travel remains popular, and the desire for extensive food production and owning detached houses with gardens will likely result in complex land use trade-offs. Future work could focus more specifically on quantifying these trade-offs, and inform respondents about the consequences of their lifestyle choices. This was a first attempt to use crowdsourcing to understand citizen visions for their lives in the future, and our lessons learend will help future studies improve representativeness and increase responses. - Thinking through Robotic Imaginaries Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2017) RTD2017
Thinking through Robotic Imaginaries
Lichtsuchende is a society of static robots: autonomous to some degree, exhibiting social behaviour and interacting with humans. Responsive and communicative, they perform creature-hood. We use this as a vehicle to question the relationship with their designers, and the reconfiguration of design methodologies around the bringing forth of situated, responsive things, that possess a sense of being in the world. Their quasi-creaturehood situates them between made objects and living beings. We are interested in how we design for the lifeworld of creatures who do not yet exist, how much we can support their being rather than imposing our will on their matter. We argue for a sense of stewardship not ownership – a responsibility to the artefacts, made clear by their creaturehood. We look after them, hold robot surgeries, recognise personality in their defects, and support their life course from installation to installation, as their society grows and changes. We are interested in the pivotal moments in this journey, where design feels as if it is led by their needs rather than our desires: designing with and for the things. In particular, we are interested in beginning to understand the unplanned imaginaries latent in their socialisation, while acknowledging unavoidable design biases. - Understanding Global Climate Change Scenarios through Bioclimate Stratification Soteriades, Andreas and Murray-Rust, Dave and Trabucco, Antonio and Metzger, Marc (2017) Environmental Research Letters
Understanding Global Climate Change Scenarios through Bioclimate Stratification
Despite progress in impact modelling, communicating and understanding the implications of climatic change projections is challenging due to inherent complexity and a cascade of uncertainty. In this letter, we present an alternative representation of global climate change projections based on shifts in 125 multivariate strata characterized by relatively homogeneous climate. These strata form climate analogues that help in the interpretation of climate change impacts. A Random Forests classifier was calculated and applied to 63 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 climate scenarios at 5 arcmin resolution. Results demonstrate how shifting bioclimate strata can summarize future environmental changes and form a middle ground, conveniently integrating current knowledge of climate change impact with the interpretation advantages of categorical data but with a level of detail that resembles a continuous surface at global and regional scales. Both the agreement in major change and differences between climate change projections are visually combined, facilitating the interpretation of complex uncertainty. By making the data and the classifier available we provide a climate service that helps facilitate communication and provide new insight into the consequences of climate change.
2016
- Composition and Substitution in Provenance and Workflows Buneman, Peter and Gascon Caro, Adrian and Murray-Rust, Dave (2016)
Composition and Substitution in Provenance and Workflows
It is generally accepted that any comprehensive provenance model must allow one to describe provenance at various levels of granularity. For example, if we have a provenance graph of a process which has nodes to describe subprocesses, we need a method of expanding these nodes to obtain a more detailed provenance graph. To date, most of the work that has attempted to formalize this notion has adopted a descriptive approach to this issue: for example, given two provenance graphs under what conditions is one “finer grained” than another. In this paper we take an operational approach. For example, given two provenance graphs of interacting processes, what does it mean to compose those graphs? Also, given a provenance graph of a process and a provenance graph of one of its subprocesses, what is the operation of substitution that allows us to expand the graph into a finer-grained graph? As well as provenance graphs, these questions also apply to workflow graphs and other process models that occur in computer science. We propose a model and operations that addresses these problems. While it is only one of a number of possible solutions, it does indicate that a basic adjustment toprovenance models is needed if they are properly to accommodate such an operational approach to composition and substitution. - Applying Occam’s Razor to Global Agricultural Land Use Change Engström, Kerstin and Rounsevell, Mark D A and Murray-Rust, Dave and Hardacre, Catherine and Alexander, Peter and Cui, Xufeng and Palmer, Paul I. and Arneth, Almut (2016) Environmental Modelling and Software
Applying Occam’s Razor to Global Agricultural Land Use Change
We present a parsimonious agricultural land-use model that is designed to replicate global land-use change while allowing the exploration of uncertainties in input parameters. At the global scale, the modelled uncertainty range of agricultural land-use change covers observed land-use change. Spatial patterns of cropland change at the country level are simulated less satisfactorily, but temporal trends of cropland change in large agricultural nations were replicated by the model. A variance-based global sensitivity analysis showed that uncertainties in the input parameters representing to consumption preferences are important for changes in global agricultural areas. However, uncertainties in technological change had the largest effect on cereal yields and changes in global agricultural area. Uncertainties related to technological change in developing countries were most important for modelling the extent of cropland. The performance of the model suggests that highly generalised representations of socio-economic processes can be used to replicate global land-use change. - Softening Electronic Institutions to Support Natural Interaction Murray-Rust, Dave and Papapanagiotou, Petros and Robertson, David (2016) Human Computation
Softening Electronic Institutions to Support Natural Interaction
A large amount of human interaction is prosecuted along the rambunctious pathways of social networks, producing vibrant and chaotic streams of communication. Utterances are channelled along ever more complex pathways to an increasingly fuzzily defined audience of humans and machines. These receivers are eager to find meaning and structure, to coordinate and support social endeavours. However, extracting interactional structures from these outpourings is a complex task, as we deal with overlapping conversations, between many actors, spread across multiple networks. A well developed method of coordinating activity exists in the form of Electronic Institutions (EI). These institutions provide an architecture which allows agents to carry out complex patterns of interaction, based on shared protocols, while assuming little knowledge about their compatriots, and providing guarantees about the outcomes of interactions. While EIs are a powerful tool for coordinating computational agents, they are less widely used to support human activity. A key reason for this is what one must give up in order to join an EI: one must first understand the language used to define the protocols, and then commit to carrying out interactions through the machinery of the EI, sacrificing control and leaving the openness of the interconnected online world. These barriers to entry have meant that traditional EIs have not become relevant to the vast surge of data, or the potential for interaction centred around socially driven systems such as Twitter. Here, we connect the power of EIs to describe and formalise interaction with the open social systems which are currently supporting such a wide range of human interaction. This allows for the modelling of behaviour, to extract patterns of interest from data for summarisation and exploration. It also provides a framework by which computational intelligence can be harnessed in support of informal human interaction. The cost of making this connection is the creation of an additional layer which binds freeform interaction streams into appropriate hooks and levers within EIs, matching loose social discourse with crisp institutional structures. While the general case matching utterances to formal semantics is extremely difficult, the presence of an interaction protocol allows us to concentrate on only the possible actions which would make sense for the institution in its current state, reducing the range of possibilities and simplifying the task of translation such that simple approaches give sufficient discriminatory power. This is not appropriate for every situation, but for well chosen models of interaction, a few matching rules can be enough to create a formal skeleton alongside free discourse. In this paper, we describe how this translation can be carried out, starting from an account of how institutions can still have power when they are no longer the gatekeepers of action. We detail the formal machinery necessary, and describe our implementation using a process calculus, with examples.
2015
- Modelling Farmer Decision-Making to Anticipate Tradeoffs between Provisioning Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity Guillem, E.E. and Murray-Rust, D. and Robinson, Derek and Barnes, Andrew and Rounsevell, Mark (2015) Agricultural systems
Modelling Farmer Decision-Making to Anticipate Tradeoffs between Provisioning Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity
In this paper, an agent-based model of heterogeneous farmer decision-making was coupled with an individual-based model of skylark breeding populations, and applied to a small intensive arable catchment in Scotland. The impacts of farmer decisions on a tradeoff between food and bioenergy production, and skylark numbers, were simulated under the assumptions of three socio-economic scenarios until the year 2050. Bioenergy and food production had a significant negative effect on adult and fledgling skylarks. In a business-as-usual context, the production of food and bioenergy increases smoothly, and the number of skylarks is more stable over time than in other scenarios. Food production was higher in an economic liberalisation scenario, due to intensive management and higher yield performance. This explained the low average number of skylarks found at the landscape level in this scenario. The number of skylarks was highest in a sustainability-oriented scenario, but a sharp decrease was observed from 2035 onwards due to the large area planted with bioenergy crops. The different values for economic, environmental and social attributes of farmer decisions played an important role in the land use mosaic, the implementation of ecologically-related actions and on the provision of ecosystem services and biodiversity. Overall, results suggest that a re-assessment of policy targets and design is necessary to maximise environmental management efficiency at the catchment level by taking into account the heterogeneity in farmer objectives and the tradeoffs in ecosystem services provision. The novel approach of coupling an ABM with an IBM is encouraged in further land use related studies. - Self Curation, Social Partitioning, Escaping from Prejudice and Harassment: The Many Dimensions of Lying Online Kleek, Max Van and Smith, Daniel A and Shadbolt, Nigel R and Murray-Rust, Dave and Guy, Amy (2015) WWW 2015 Companion
Self Curation, Social Partitioning, Escaping from Prejudice and Harassment: The Many Dimensions of Lying Online
Portraying matters as other than they truly are is an important part of everyday human communication. In this paper, we use a survey to examine ways in which people fabricate, omit or alter the truth online. Many reasons are found, including creative expression, hiding sensitive information, role-playing, and avoiding harassment or discrimination. The results suggest lying is often used for benign purposes, and we conclude that its use may be essential to maintaining a humane online society. - Social Personal Data Stores: The Nuclei of Decentralised Social Machines Kleek, Max Van and Smith, Daniel A and Murray-Rust, Dave and Guy, Amy and Dragan, Laura and Shadbolt, Nigel R (2015) WWW 2015 Companion
Social Personal Data Stores: The Nuclei of Decentralised Social Machines
Personal Data Stores are among the many efforts that are currently underway to try to re-decentralise the Web, and to bring more control and data management and storage capability under the control of the user. Few of these architectures, however, have considered the needs of supporting decentralised social software from the user’s perspective. In this short paper, we present the results of our design exercise, focusing on two key design needs for building decentralised social machines: that of supporting heterogeneous social apps and multiple, separable user identities. We then present the technical design of a prototype social machine platform, INDX, which realises both of these requirements, and a prototype heterogen - Bootstrapping the next Generation of Social Machines Murray-Rust, Dave and Robertson, David (2015) Crowdsourcing: Cloud-based Software Development
Bootstrapping the next Generation of Social Machines
The term “social machines” denotes a class of systems where humans and machines interact so that computational infrastructure supports human creativity. Flagship examples such as Wikipedia and Ushahidi demonstrate how computational coordination can enhance information sharing and aggregation, while the Zooniverse family of projects show how social machines can produce scientific knowledge. These socio-technical systems cannot easily be analysed in purely computational or purely sociological terms, and they cannot be reduced to Turing machines. Social machines are used in the creation of software, from software crowdsourcing projects such as TopCoder and oDesk, to distributed development platforms such at GitHub and Bitbucket . Hence, social machines are increasingly used to create the software infrastructure for new social machine. However, social machine development is a more complex process than software development, as the community must be “programmed” as well as the machines. This leads to development in the context evolving and unknown requirements, and having to deal with more sociological concepts than formal systems designers usually work with. We hence model the process using two coupled social machines: the target social machine , with whatever purposes the creators envisions, and the development social machine which is used to create it. As an example, oDesk can form part of a development social machine which might be used to create a target social machine, e.g. “the next Facebook”. In this chapter, we describe a formalism for social machines, consisting of i) a community of humans and their “social software” interacting with ii) a collection of computational resources and their associated state, protocols and ability to analyse data and make inferences. We draw on the ideas of ‘desire lines’ and ‘play-in’ to argue that top down design of social machines is impossible, that we hence need to leverage computational support in creating complex systems in an iterative, dynamic and emergent manner, and that our formalism provides a possible blueprint for how to do this. - A Collaboration Model for Community-Based Software Development with Social Machines Murray-Rust, Dave and Scekic, Ognjen and Papapanagiotou, Petros and Truong, Hong-linh and Robertson, David and Dustdar, Schahram (2015) EAI Endorsed Transactions on Collaborative Computing
A Collaboration Model for Community-Based Software Development with Social Machines
Crowd sourcing is generally used for tasks with minimal coordination, providing limited support for dynamic reconfiguration. Modern systems, exemplified by social machines, are subject to continual flux in both the client and development communities and their needs. To support crowd sourcing of open-ended development, systems must dynamically integrate human creativity with machine support. While workflows can be used to handle structured, predictable processes, they are less suitable for social machine development and its attendant uncertainty. We present models and techniques for coordination of human workers in crowd sourced software development environments. We combine the Social Compute Unit—a model of ad-hoc human worker teams—with versatile coordination protocols expressed in the Lightweight Social Calculus. This allows us to combine coordination and quality constraints with dynamic assessments of end-user desires, dynamically discovering and applying development protocols. - Lichtsuchende : Exploring the Emergence of a Cybernetic Society Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2015) Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design, 4th International Conference, EvoMUSART 2015 (LNCS 9027)
Lichtsuchende : Exploring the Emergence of a Cybernetic Society
In this paper, we describe Lichtsuchende, an interactive installation, built using a society of biologically inspired, cybernetic creatures who exchange light as a source of energy and a means of communication. Visitors are invited to engage with the installation using torches to influence and interact with the phototropic robots. As well as describing the finished piece, we explore some of the issues around creating works based on biologically inspired robots. We present an account of the development of the creatures in order to highlight the gulfs between conceptual ideas of how to allow emergent behaviours and the manners in which they are implemented. We also expose the interrelations and tensions between the needs of the creatures as they emerge and the needs of the creators, to understand the duet between the cyber-organisms and their initiators. Finally, we look at the ways in which creators, robots and visitors are enrolled to perform their functions, so that the network of activity can be woven between all parties. - Lichtsuchende: A Society of Cybernetic, Phototropic Sunflowers Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2015) Creativity and Cognition 2015
Lichtsuchende: A Society of Cybernetic, Phototropic Sunflowers
Lichtsuchende is an interactive installation, built using a society of biologically inspired, cybernetic creatures who exchange light as a source of energy and a means of communication. Visitors are invited to engage with the installationusing torches to influence and interact with the phototropic robots. The embodied algorithms give rise to emergent behaviours with communicative and emotional resonance, allowing a duet between the humans and the cybernetic beings. - Privacy by Obfuscation with Personal Data Management Architectures: Possibilities and Constraints Murray-Rust, Dave and O’Hara, Kieron and Oswald, Marion and Van Kleek, Max and Shadbolt, Nigel (2015) Web Science 2015
Privacy by Obfuscation with Personal Data Management Architectures: Possibilities and Constraints
In this position paper, we discuss legal and technical aspects of protecting privacy using Personal Data Management Architectures (PDMAs), which include, but are not limited to Personal Data Stories and Personal Information Management Services. We argue that providing false information on occasion is a common strategy online and offline for people to protect their privacy and determine their representation in the world, and we discuss some empirical findings to that effect. We describe a potential, and technically-feasible, ecosystem of digital practices and technologies to facilitate this practice, and consider what legal frameworks would be required to support it. - On Wayfaring in Social Machines Murray-Rust, Dave and Tarte, Ségolène and Hartswood, Mark and Green, Owen (2015) WWW ’15 Companion Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web
On Wayfaring in Social Machines
In this paper, we concern ourselves with the ways in which humans inhabit social machines: the structures and techniques which allow the enmeshing of multiple life traces within the flow of online interaction. In particular, we explore the distinction between transport and journeying, between networks and meshworks, and the different attitudes and modes of being appropriate to each. By doing this, we hope to capture a part of the sociality of social machines, to build an understanding of the ways in which lived lives relate to digital structures, and the emergence of the communality of shared work. In order to illustrate these ideas, we look at several aspects of existing social machines, and tease apart the qualities which relate to the different modes of being. The distinctions and concepts outlined here provide another element in both the analysis and development of social machines, understanding how people may joyfully and directedly engage with collective activities on the web. - Worker-Centric Design for Software Crowdsourcing: Towards Cloud Careers Murray-Rust, Dave and Scekic, Ognjen and Lin, Donghui (2015) Crowdsourcing: Cloud-based Software Development
Worker-Centric Design for Software Crowdsourcing: Towards Cloud Careers
Crowdsourcing is emerging as a compelling technique for the cost-effective creation of software, with tools such as ODesk and TopCoder supporting large scale distributed development. From the point of view of the commissioners of software, there are many advantages to crowdsourcing work—as well as cost, it can be a more scalable process, as there is the possibility of selecting from a large pool of expertise. From the point of view of workers, there is a different set of benefits, including choice of when and how to work, providing a means to build a portfolio, and a lower level of commitment to any particular employer. The crowdsourcing of software development—in common with some other activities such as design—represents an alternative to existing mechanisms that require skilled workers. However, if crowdsourcing were to replace traditional employment for a significant proportion of software developers, the reduced levels of commitment between workers and commissioners could prove problematic for workers over time. In this paper, explore three areas of interest: (i) trust and reputation development; (ii) team selection and team building; (iii) contextualisation of the work carried out. By drawing together work in these areas from the point of view of workers rather than commissioners, we highlight some of the incipient issues with the growth of crowdsourced labour. We also explore ways in which crowdsourcing of software development—and other skilled practices—differers from microtasking.
2014
- Analysing Uncertainties in Climate Change Impact Assessment across Sectors and Scenarios Brown, Calum and Brown, Evan and Murray-Rust, Dave and Cojocaru, George and Savin, Cristina and Rounsevell, Mark D.A. (2014) Climatic Change
Analysing Uncertainties in Climate Change Impact Assessment across Sectors and Scenarios
Many models have been developed to explore the likely consequences of climate change. These models tend to focus on single physical or socio-economic sectors and their processes, and neglect the many feedbacks that occur between the different components of the real world. To overcome this problem, models are increasingly being combined in integrated assessment platforms (IAPs), of which the CLIMSAVE IAP is an example, modelling cross-sectoral impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change in Europe by combining 10 different meta-models that focus on specific sectors. Where models are combined in this way, however, attention must be given to the potential errors and uncertainties that integration might introduce. We present a quantitative uncertainty analysis of selected outputs of the CLIMSAVE IAP based on creating and sampling from probability density functions (PDFs) of each of the IAP’s input variables to take account of model and scenario uncertainty. We find limited uncertainties in aggregate outputs of the IAP, which allow specific impacts to be predicted with definable levels of confidence. However, we also find substantial overlap between different socio-economic scenarios at the European scale, suggesting that changes to socio-economic conditions cannot reliably overcome climate-related uncertainty. Nevertheless, there is evidence that particular adaptation actions may significantly alter the impacts of climate change, especially at local or national scales. - Experiments in Globalisation, Food Security and Land Use Decision Making Brown, Calum and Murray-Rust, Dave and van Vliet, Jasper and Alam, Shah Jamal and Verburg, Peter H. and Rounsevell, Mark D. (2014) PLoS ONE
Experiments in Globalisation, Food Security and Land Use Decision Making
The globalisation of trade affects land use, food production and environments around the world. In principle, globalisation can maximise productivity and efficiency if competition prompts specialisation on the basis of productive capacity. In reality, however, such specialisation is often constrained by practical or political barriers, including those intended to ensure national or regional food security. These are likely to produce globally sub-optimal distributions of land uses. Both outcomes are subject to the responses of individual land managers to economic and environmental stimuli, and these responses are known to be variable and often (economically) irrational. We investigate the consequences of stylised food security policies and globalisation of agricultural markets on land use patterns under a variety of modelled forms of land manager behaviour, including variation in production levels, tenacity, land use intensity and multi-functionality. We find that a system entirely dedicated to regional food security is inferior to an entirely globalised system in terms of overall production levels, but that several forms of behaviour limit the difference between the two, and that variations in land use intensity and functionality can substantially increase the provision of food and other ecosystem services in both cases. We also find emergent behaviour that results in the abandonment of productive land, the slowing of rates of land use change and the fragmentation or, conversely, concentration of land uses following changes in demand levels. - Globalisation, Regionalisation and Behavioural Responses of Land Use Agents Brown, Calum and Murray-Rust, Dave and Vliet, Jasper Van and Alam, Shah Jamal and Verburg, Peter H. and Rounsevell, Mark (2014) Multi-Agent-Based Simulation XIV
Globalisation, Regionalisation and Behavioural Responses of Land Use Agents
The global land system is under intense pressure from human demands for a range of different services. Neo-classical economic theory suggests that globalised free trade is the most efficient way of handling these demands, allowing maximum productivity and specialisation of supply. However, political responses are often protectionist in nature, designed to ensure continuity of land uses and the regional production of multiple services. We investigate the implications of both globalisation and regionalisation of demand for the efficiency and productivity of land uses and, using an agent-based model of land use change, how realistic forms of human behaviour can strengthen, weaken or alter these implications. We show that ‘rational’ productive agents tend towards optimal land use configurations under globalised systems, but that ‘irrational’ behaviour yields superior results under regionalisation. Finally, the adoption of multifunctional land uses is found to be a strong and effective emergent property of agent populations under regional demand. - A Simple Global Food System Model Jiang, Li and Cui, Xuefeng and Xu, Xia and Jiang, Yuan and Rounsevell, Mark and Murray-Rust, Dave and Liu, Yinghui (2014) Agricultural Economics (Czech Republic)
A Simple Global Food System Model
In this study, we develop a simple dimension model to construct the food system in response to the population growth, the land use change and various socio-economic developments. The model simulates the consumption and production of agricultural goods in the individual countries, and maintains the global balance of food through the international trade flows between countries. Although there are some biases in the model results at the country levels, we suggest that such a simple model is feasible for simulating the global food supply system and assessing the uncertainties coming from various environmental and socio-economic factors. - A Collaboration Model for Community-Based Software Development with Social Machines Murray-Rust, Dave and Scekic, Ognjen and Truong, Hong-Linh and Robertson, Dave and Dustdar, Schahram (2014) Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing (CollaborateCom), 2014 International Conference On
A Collaboration Model for Community-Based Software Development with Social Machines
Today’s crowdsourcing systems are predominantly used for processing independent tasks with simplistic coordination. As such, they offer limited support for handling complex, intellectually and organizationally challenging labour types, such as software development. In order to support crowdsourcing of the software development processes, the system needs to enact coordination mechanisms which integrate human creativity with machine support. While workflows can be used to handle highly structured and predictable labour processes, they are less suitable for software development methodologies where unpredictability is an unavoidable part the process. This is especially true in phases of requirement elicitation and feature development, when boththe client and development communities change with time. In this paper we present models and techniques for coordination of human workers in crowdsourced software development environments. The techniques augment the existing Social Compute Unit (SCU) concept—a general framework for management of ad-hoc human worker teams—with versatile coordinationprotocols expressed in the Lightweight Social Calculus (LSC). This approach allows us to combine coordination and quality constraints with dynamic assessments of software-user’s desires, while dynamically choosing appropriate software development coordination models. - Combining Agent Functional Types, Capitals and Services to Model Land Use Dynamics Murray-Rust, D. and Brown, C. and van Vliet, J. and Alam, Shah Jamal and Robinson, D. T. and Verburg, P. H. and Rounsevell, M. (2014) Environmental Modelling and Software
Combining Agent Functional Types, Capitals and Services to Model Land Use Dynamics
Models of land use change are becoming increasingly complex as they attempt to explore the effects of climatic, political, economic and demographic change on land systems and the services these systems produce. ’Bottom-up’ agent based models are a useful method for exploring the effects of local processes and human behaviour, but are generally limited to small spatial scales due to the complex parameterisations involved. Conversely, ’top-down’ land allocation models can be applied at large spatial scales, but are less adept at accounting for human behaviour and non-economic factors such as the supply of ecosystem services. Models that combine the strengths of these two approaches are required for the advancement of land use science. Here, we present an agent based land use modelling framework designed to be run over large spatial extents and to be capable of accounting for relevant forms of human behaviour, variations in land use intensities, multifunctional ecosystem service production and the actions of institutions that affect land use change. We give a full description of this framework, called CRAFTY (Competition for Resources between Agent Functional TYpes), and provide details of how it can be applied and extended, including some simple examples of its ability to model important processes of land use change. These include changes in demand for and supply of ecosystem services, variation in land use intensity and multi-functionality, and heterogeneous behaviour amongst land managers. - A Graphic Novel Based Approach to Large Scale Elicitation of Normative Future Scenarios Murray-Rust, Dave and Houtkamp, Joske and Metzger, Marc and Riviere, Inge La and Pérez-Soba, Marta and Jensen, Anne and Paterson, James (2014) CrowdUI 2014
A Graphic Novel Based Approach to Large Scale Elicitation of Normative Future Scenarios
Scenario analysis has emerged as a necessary component of understanding and modelling large scale future developments in socio-political systems. Within scenario work, “Visions” are normative scenarios crafted by stakeholders, and are used to explore desired futures and their implications. Where traditional stakeholder engagement tools such as workshops and focus groups allow the development of visions with small groups of people, widespread connectivity allows engagement with the public at large through crowdsourcing techniques.Using crowdsourcing methodologies to elicit future desires requires an approach which differs from human computation, collaborative workshop based methods and the standard preference elicitation techniques used in crowdsourcing opinions. Rather than asking “Which of these options do you prefer?” it is necessary to engage participants with the question of “What kind of world would you like to live in?”. As such, contextualisation of the activity is crucial - participants must be able to think creatively as well as analytically, and the difference between expectation and desire must be made clear.In this paper we outline the design of a web-based vision development system based on the creation of storyboards for future life stories, targeted at young Europeans. Rather than answer a set of survey questions, participants are asked to graphically imagine a narrative for their future selves, relating to different aspects of their living and working lives. The use of graphical elements aids in both engaging with young people, and easing accessibility for participants of multiple languages. We blend the use of pre-selected images and freeformtext to support both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the visions created. This system is being used in the context of an EU-wide research project which seeks to understand the way our landscapes are changing and how society relates to these changes; as such, it serves a dual purpose as a publicengagement tool as well as a source of scientific data. The tool created is open source, and can be re-purposed for other experiments. - LSCitter: Building Social Machines by Augmenting Existing Social Networks with Interaction Models Murray-Rust, Dave and Robertson, Dave (2014) Proceedings of the Companion Publication of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web Companion
LSCitter: Building Social Machines by Augmenting Existing Social Networks with Interaction Models
We present LSCitter, an implemented framework for supporting human interaction on social networks with formal models of interaction, designed as a generic tool for creating social machines on existing infrastructure. Interaction models can be used to choreograph distributed systems, providing points of coordination and communication between multiple interacting actors. While existing social networks specify how interactions happen—who messages go to and when, the effects of carrying out actions—these are typically implicit, opaque and non user-editable. Treating interaction models as first class objects allows the creation of electronic institutions, on which users can then choose the kinds of interaction they wish to engage in, with protocols which are explicit, visible and modifiable. However, there is typically a cost to users to engage with these institutions. In this paper we introduce the notion of "shadow institutions", where actions on existing social networks are mapped onto formal interaction protocols, allowing participants access to computational intelligence in a seamless, zero-cost manner to carry out computation and store information. - An Open Framework for Agent Based Modelling of Agricultural Land Use Change Murray-Rust, Dave and Robinson, Derek T. and Guillem, Eleonore and Karali, Eleni and Rounsevell, Mark (2014) Environmental Modelling and Software
An Open Framework for Agent Based Modelling of Agricultural Land Use Change
There is growing interest in creating empirically grounded agent based models (ABMs) to simulate land use change at a variety of spatio-temporal scales. The development of land use change models is challenging, as there is a need to connect representations of human behavioural processes to simulations of the biophysical environment. This paper presents a new agent-based modelling framework (Aporia) that has the goal of reducing the complexity and difficulty of constructing high-fidelity land use models. Building on earlier conceptual developments for modelling land use change and the provision of ecosystem services, Aporia was designed to be modular, flexible and open, using a declarative, compositional approach to create complex models from subcomponents. The framework can be tightly or loosely coupled with multiple vegetation models, it can be set up to evaluate a range of ecosystem service indicators, and it can be calibrated for a range of different landscape-scale case studies and modelling styles. The framework is released under an Open Source licence, and can be freely re-used and modified to form the basis of new models. We illustrate this with two case studies implemented using Aporia, exploring different socio-economic scenarios and behavioural characteristics on the land use decisions of Swiss and Scottish farmers. We also discuss the benefits of frameworks in terms of their flexibility, expandability, verification and transparency. - Social Palimpsests - Clouding the Lens of the Personal Panopticon Murray-Rust, Dave and van Kleek, Max and Dragan, Laura and Shadbolt, Nigel (2014) Digital Enlightenment Yearbook 2014
Social Palimpsests - Clouding the Lens of the Personal Panopticon
The use of personal data has incredible potential to benefit both society and individuals through increased understanding of behaviour, communication and support for emerging forms of socialisation and connectedness. However, there are risks associated with disclosing personal information, and present systems show a systematic asymmetry between the subjects of the data and those who control and manage the way that data is propagated and used. This leads to a tension between a desire to engage with online society and enjoy its benefits on one hand, and a distrust of those with whom the data is shared on the other. In this chapter, we explore a set of obfuscation techniques which may help to redress the balance of power when sharing personal data, and return agency and choice to users of online services. - An Open System for Social Computation Robertson, David and Moreau, Luc and Murray-Rust, Dave and O’Hara, Kieron (2014) DEF YEARBOOK 2014 - Social Networks and Social Machines, Surveillance and Empowerment
An Open System for Social Computation
Part of the power of social computation comes from using the collectiveintelligence of humans to tame the aggregate uncertainty of (otherwise) low veracity data obtained from human and automated sources. We have witnessed a surge in development of social computing systems but, ironically, there have been few attempts to generalise across this activity so that creation of the underlying mechanisms themselves can be made more social. We describe a method for achieving this by standardising patterns of social computation via lightweight formal specifications (we call these social artifacts) that can be connected to existing internet architectures via a single model of computation. Upon this framework we build a mechanism for extracting provenance meta-data across social computations.
2013
- Probabilistic Estimation of Future Emissions of Isoprene and Surface Oxidant Chemistry Associated with Land Use Change in Response to Growing Food Needs Hardacre, Catherine and Palmer, Paul and Baumanns, Kerstin and Rounsevell, Mark and Murray-Rust, Dave (2013) Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Probabilistic Estimation of Future Emissions of Isoprene and Surface Oxidant Chemistry Associated with Land Use Change in Response to Growing Food Needs
We quantify the impact of land-use change, determined by our growing demand for food and biofuel production, on isoprene emissions and subsequent atmospheric oxidant chemistry in 2015 and 2030, relative to 1990, ignoring compound climate change effects over that period. We estimate isoprene emissions from an ensemble (n = 1000) of land-use change realizations from 1990–2050, broadly guided by the IPCC AR4/SRES scenarios A1 and B1. We also superimpose land-use change required to address projected biofuel usage using two scenarios: (1) assuming that world governments make no changes to biofuel policy after 2009, and (2) assuming that world governments develop biofuel policy with the aim of keeping equivalent atmospheric CO2 at 450 ppm. We present the median and interquartile range (IQR) statistics of the ensemble and show that land-use change between -1.50 \texttimes 1012 m2 to +6.06 \texttimes 1012 m2 was found to drive changes in the global isoprene burden of -3.5 to +2.8 Tg yr-1 in 2015 and -7.7 to +6.4 Tg yr-1 in 2030. We use land-use change realizations corresponding to the median and IQR of these emission estimates to drive the GEOS-Chem global 3-D chemistry transport model to investigate the perturbation to global and regional surface concentrations of isoprene, nitrogen oxides (NO+NO2), and the atmospheric concentration and deposition of ozone (O3). We show that across subcontinental regions the monthly surface O3 increases by 0.1–0.8 ppb, relative to a zero land-use change calculation, driven by increases (decreases) in surface isoprene in high (low) NOx environments. At the local scale (4^∘ \texttimes 5^∘) we find that surface O3 increases by 5–12 ppb over temperate North America, China and boreal Eurasia, driven by large increases in isoprene emissions from short-rotation coppice crop cultivation for biofuel production. - Agent-Based Modelling of Land Use Dynamics and Residential Quality of Life for Future Scenarios Murray-Rust, Dave and Rieser, Verena and Robinson, Derek T. and Miličič, Vesna and Rounsevell, Mark (2013) Environmental Modelling and Software
Agent-Based Modelling of Land Use Dynamics and Residential Quality of Life for Future Scenarios
Current LUCC research employs scenario-based analysis to explore possible future trends and impacts by defining a coherent set of plausible future socio-economic development pathways. Typically, computational models are therein used to interpret qualitative future storylines in terms of quantitative future changes. This paper addresses these challenges and illustrates some of the advantages of a scenario-based approach using an Agent-Based Model (ABM). Storylines are shown to be useful in integrate a broad variety of knowledge sources, such as subjective expert judgement and results from other (integrative) models, which rely on a similar set of assumptions about the future. The advantages of ABMs are demonstrated for interpreting future scenarios in the context of spatial and temporal variations in socio-ecological outcomes based on heterogeneous individual behaviour. For example, ABMs are shown to enable potential hotspots of future development and LUCC to be identified. Furthermore, a procedure is presented for downscaling and interpreting storylines from general qualitative trends to local quantitative parameters within an ABM framework. This framework is applied to the Municipality of Koper, Slovenia, where the future impacts of LUCC on the loss of agricultural land and residential quality-of-life are simulated. The results are compared to a " business-as-usual" baseline and it is shown that industrial and commercial development has the greatest impact on the loss of high quality agricultural land across all scenarios. Furthermore, the model indicates an increase in inequality in the perceived quality-of-life of residential households, with new households achieving higher quality-of-life than existing residents. - The Declaratron: Semantic Specification for Scientific Computation Using MathML Murray-Rust, Dave and Murray-Rust, Peter (2013) Workshops and Work in Progress at CICM
The Declaratron: Semantic Specification for Scientific Computation Using MathML
We introduce the Declaratron, a system which takes a declarative approach to specifying mathematically based scientific computation. This uses displayable mathematical notation (Content MathML) and is both executable and semantically well defined. We combine domain specific representations of physical science (e.g. CML, Chemical Markup Language), MathML formulae and computational specifications (DeXML) to create executable documents which include scientific data and mathematical formulae. These documents preserve the provenance of the data used, and build tight semantic links between components of mathematical formulae and domain objects–in effect grounding the mathematical semantics in the scientific domain. The Declaratron takes these specifications and i) carries out entity resolution and decoration to prepare for computation ii) uses a MathML execution engine to run calculations over the revised tree iii) outputs domain objects and the complete document to give both results and an encapsulated history of the computation. A short description of a case study is given to illustrate how the system can be used. Many scientific problems require frequent change of the mathematical functional form and the Declaratron provides this without requiring changes to code. Additionally, it supports reproducible science, machine indexing and semantic search of computations, makes implicit assumptions visible, and separates domain knowledge from computational techniques. We believe that the Declaratron could replace much conventional procedural code in science.
2012
- Data and Models for Exploring Sustainability of Human Well-Being in Global Environmental Change Deffuant, G. and Alvarez, I. and Barreteau, O. and Jabot, F. and Rougé, C. and de Vries, B. and Edmonds, B. and Gilbert, N. and Gotts, N. and Janssen, S. and Hilden, M. and Kolditz, O. and Murray-Rust, D. and Smits, P. (2012) European Physical Journal - Special Topics
Data and Models for Exploring Sustainability of Human Well-Being in Global Environmental Change
This position paper proposes a vision for the research activity about sustainability in global environmental change (GEC) taking place in the FuturICT flagship project. This activity will be organised in an "Exploratory", gathering a core network of European scientists from ICT, social simulation, complex systems, economics, demographics, Earth system science. These research teams will collaborate in building a self-organising network of data sources and models about GEC and in using new facilities fostering stakeholder participation. We develop examples of concrete directions for this research: world wide virtual population with demographic and some economic descriptors, ecosystem services production and distribution, governance systems at various scales. - Thawing Colours: Dangling from the Fuzzy End of Interfaces Murray-Rust, Dave and von Jungenfeld, Rocio (2012) Physicality 2012 - Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Physicality
Thawing Colours: Dangling from the Fuzzy End of Interfaces
In this paper we present Thawing Colours, a tactile, visual and sonic installation, which uses suspended spheres of melting ice to paint on surfaces, woollen strings to provide a means of interaction, and concatenative synthesis–the stitching together of many small fragments of sound–to provide a digitally mediated response to motion and vibration by resynthesizing the input sound using a corpus of pre-prepared sounds. In one sense, it is an evolving, site-specific physical installation, a painter or designer that produces images over the course of several days. With some intellectual license, it can be taken as a naturalistic interface for querying a database of sounds, or as a particularly large and unwieldy musical instrument. It is literally a fuzzy interface, with boundaries extending out through the fibres of the woollen strands used to attach coloured balls of ice, and through the supporting cables into the foundations of the building, and through the fingers, palms, and bodies of the participants. We argue that there is a niche for interfaces that are whimsical, ludic and exploratory, and that as part of exploring this niche, we can take an ecosystemic view on interfaces: embracing their physical properties, their situation in an environment, and the byproducts and feedbacks therein. - Linking Science and Arts: Intimate Science, Shared Spaces and Living Experiments Perelló, J. and Murray-Rust, D. and Nowak, A. and Bishop, S.R. (2012) European Physical Journal - Special Topics
Linking Science and Arts: Intimate Science, Shared Spaces and Living Experiments
We aim to move beyond the idea of art as a tool for communicating science, towards a truly interdisciplinary practice where art and public engagement are a fundamental part of the way that science is carried out as promoted by the FuturICT project. Artistic exploration can have a scientific impact when artists act as designers, catalyzers and coordinators of experiments, which scientists interpret and respond to. We propose the creation of a travelling show, consisting of a set of core exhibits and ’living experiments’: interactive, evolving pieces which blend artistic experience and scientific research. We also propose the creation of a new production oriented, distributed, inter-institutional research centre, focused on developing parallel relations between artistic practice and diverse fields of science. All these initiatives will be aligned with different areas of the FuturICT project, using different aspects of the Living Earth Simulator, Planetary Nervous System, and Knowledge Accelerator to support the creation of rich, interactive, collaborative experiences and in close contact with the educational and participatory platforms of FuturICT. - Modelling the Impacts of Land System Dynamics on Human Well-Being: Using an Agent-Based Approach to Cope with Data Limitations in Koper, Slovenia Robinson, D. T. and Murray-Rust, D. and Rieser, V. and Milicic, V. and Rounsevell, M. (2012) Computers, Environment and Urban Systems
Modelling the Impacts of Land System Dynamics on Human Well-Being: Using an Agent-Based Approach to Cope with Data Limitations in Koper, Slovenia
To cope with data limitations and to provide insight into the dynamics of LUCC for local stakeholders in the Municipality of Koper, Slovenia, we constructed an ABM (loosely defined) that integrates utility theory, logistic regression, and cellular automaton-like rules to represent the decision-making strategies of different agents. The model is used to evaluate the impact of LUCC on human well-being, as represented by the provision of highly productive agricultural soil, the extent of noise pollution, and quality-of-life measurements. Results for the Municipality of Koper show that, under a range of model assumptions, (1) high quality agricultural soils are disproportionately affected by urban growth, (2) aggregate resident quality of life increases non-linearly with a change in development density, (3) some drivers of residential settlement produce non-linear preference responses, and (4) clustering industrial development had a beneficial impact on human well-being. Additional novel contributions include the incorporation of noise pollution feedbacks and an approach to empirically inform agent preferences using a conjoint analysis of social survey data. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. - From Actors to Agents in Socio-Ecological Systems Models Rounsevell, M. D. A. and Robinson, D. T. and Murray-Rust, D. (2012) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
From Actors to Agents in Socio-Ecological Systems Models
The ecosystem service concept has emphasized the role of people within socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this paper, we review and discuss alternative ways of representing people, their behaviour and decision-making processes in SES models using an agent-based modelling (ABM) approach. We also explore how ABM can be empirically grounded using information from social survey. The capacity for ABM to be generalized beyond case studies represents a crucial next step in modelling SESs, although this comes with considerable intellectual challenges. We propose the notion of human functional types, as an analogy of plant functional types, to support the expansion (scaling) of ABM to larger areas. The expansion of scope also implies the need to represent institutional agents in SES models in order to account for alternative governance structures and policy feedbacks. Further development in the coupling of human-environment systems would contribute considerably to better application and use of the ecosystem service concept. - Challenges for Land System Science Rounsevell, M.D.A. and Metzger, M.J. and Murray-Rust, D. and Pedroli, B. and Pérez-Soba, M. and Erb, K.-H. and Haberl, H. and Gramberger, M. and Busck, A.G. and Kristensen, S. and Reenberg, A. and Kuemmerle, T. and Lavorel, S. and Lindner, M. and Wolfslehner, B. and Lotze-Campen, H. and Popp, A. and Vadineanu, A. and Verburg, P.H. (2012) Land Use Policy
Challenges for Land System Science
While considerable progress has been made in understanding land use change, land system science continues to face a number of grand challenges. This paper discusses these challenges with a focus on empirical land system studies, land system modelling and the analysis of future visions of land system change. Contemporary landscapes are contingent outcomes of past and present patterns, processes and decisions. Thus, empirical analysis of past and present land-use change has an important role in providing insights into the socio-economic and ecological processes that shape land use transitions. This is especially important with respect to gradual versus rapid land system dynamics and in understanding changes in land use intensity. Combining the strengths of empirical analysis with multi-scale modelling will lead to new insights into the processes driving land system change. New modelling methods that combine complex systems thinking at a local level with macro-level economic analysis of the land system would reconcile the multi-scale dynamics currently encapsulated in bottom-up and top-down modelling approaches. Developments in land use futures analysis could focus on integrating explorative scenarios that reflect possible outcomes with normative visions that identify desired outcomes. Such an approach would benefit from the broad and in-depth involvement of stakeholders in order to link scientific findings to political and societal decision-making culminating in a set of key choices and consequences. Land system models have an important role in supporting future land use policy, but model outputs require scientific interpretation rather than being presented as predictions. The future of land system science is strongly dependent on the research community’s capacity to bring together the elements of research discussed in the paper, via empirical data collection and analysis of observed processes, computer simulation across scale levels and futures analysis of alternative, normative visions through stakeholder engagement.
2011
- Conceptualising the Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems through Ecosystem Services and Agent-Based Modeling Murray-Rust, D. and Dendoncker, N. and Dawson, T.P. and Acosta-Michlik, L. and Karali, E. and Guillem, E. and Rounsevell, M. (2011) Journal of Land Use Science
Conceptualising the Analysis of Socio-Ecological Systems through Ecosystem Services and Agent-Based Modeling
In this article we present a conceptual model for analysing socio-economic systems using agent-based modelling, with ecosystem services as the focus of analysis. This is designed to allow the development of integrated models of human land managers, the landscapes which they manage and certain species of interest which live in these landscapes. We argue that in order to understand the effect of humans on the landscape and ES provision, we must take into account the preferences and priorities which they have; it is necessary to firmly embed their models into a rich socio-ecological model context, while taking into account the idiosyncrasies of human decision making. This requires a rich representation of plant and animal responses to human actions, in order to provide dynamic feedback on the results of courses of action and move beyond the static indicator frameworks commonly used. After exploring possible implementations of parts of the conceptual model, we conclude that it will provide a useful tool for analysing the effects of human behaviour on ecosystem services. - Towards a Model of Musical Interaction and Communication Murray-Rust, Dave and Smaill, Alan (2011) Artificial Intelligence
Towards a Model of Musical Interaction and Communication
In this paper we argue there is a need for a formalised description of musical interaction, which allows reasoning about the musical decisions of human and computational players. To this end, we define a simple model of musical transmission which is amenable to distribution among several musical agents. On top of this, we construct a model of musical perception, based on analysis functions from the musical surface to values on lattices. These values are then used to construct a musical context, allowing for a music-oriented version of concepts such as common ground. This context allows for the interpretation of individual musical output as a stream of discrete actions, with the possibility of constructing sets of performative actions, analogous to those used in Speech Act Theory. This allows musical agent systems to construct output in terms of a communicative dialogue, and should enable more responsive, intelligent participation from these virtual musicians. Finally, we discuss a prototype system which implements these concepts in order to perform piano duets with human performers, and discuss how this theory can be seen as a better defined extension of previous theories.
2009
- Integrating VR, GIS and Agent Based Model to Simulate Regional Residential Demand Changes Zhang, Leshan and Murray-rust, Dave and Li, Wen and Fontaine, Corentin M. and Rounsevell, Mark and Chen, Ge (2009) 2009 2ND IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, VOL 4
Integrating VR, GIS and Agent Based Model to Simulate Regional Residential Demand Changes
Urban dynamic modeling has been identified as one of the most complicated processes in geo-simulation. New theories and applications are expected to facilitate understanding urban dynamics and complexities. In this paper, we present a tightly integrated system applied in this context, by coupling the newly developed modeling techniques in geo-simulation: agent-based modeling (ABM) and an advanced framework in computer science: VR-GIS integrated platform. The result system has demonstrated with some practical advantages: 1) the urban dynamic model is more operational and realistic through running in real-world based 3D environment; 2) it provides a testing platform for model calibration, validation, and drawing conclusions; 3) due to the richness in representation and interaction, it is desirable for communication and decision-making support in urban planning.
2006
- MAMA: An Architecture for Interactive Musical Agents Murray-Rust, David and Smaill, Alan and Edwards, Michael (2006) ECAI 2006, PROCEEDINGS
MAMA: An Architecture for Interactive Musical Agents
In this paper, we present MAMA - an architecture for interactive musical agents. This system uses a theory of Musical Acts, based on Speech Act Theory to support the agents interaction. We discuss the basics of a representation language which these agents can use to represent and reason about music. We present a case study system based on these ideas, and discuss its ability to support distributed execution of a minimalist score.(4)
2005
- Musical Acts and Musical Agents Murray-Rust, D. S. and Smaill, A. (2005) Proceedings of the 5th Open Workshop of MUSICNETWORK
Musical Acts and Musical Agents
In this paper we present a proposed system for creating a group of Musical Agents, who treat music making as a social, communicative process. Drawing on the ideas of Speech Act Theory, we develop an analogous theory of Musical Acts. We use this theory to develop a model of a musical agent system which acts as musical middleware to human composers. - VirtuaLatin - Towards a Musical Multi-Agent System Murray-Rust, D and Smaill, A and Maya, M C (2005) ICCIMA 2005: Sixth International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Multimedia Applications, Proceedings
VirtuaLatin - Towards a Musical Multi-Agent System
This project investigates the use of multi-agent systems for musical accompaniment(1). It details the construction and analysis of a percussive agent, able to add timbales accompaniment to pre-recorded salsa music. We propose, implement and test a novel representational structure directed towards latin music, and develop a music listening system designed to build up these high level representations. We develop a generative system which uses expert knowledge and high level representations to manage a set of behaviours which combine and alter templates in a musically sensitive manner.Overall, we find that the agent is capable of creating accompaniment which is indistinguishable from human playing to the general public, and difficult for domain experts to identify.