We are excited to announce that the Human AI-Teaming (HAT Team) here at OPTIC Lab has a paper being published at the 54th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Social Systems, Computer Society Press! The paper is Online-Computer-Mediated Interviews and Observations: Overcoming Challenges and Establishing Best Practices in a Human-AI Teaming Context. The paper is about how to conduct meaningful online qualitative research. While conducting their research for the Human AI-Teaming project, they learned nuanced ways to properly collect interview and observational data while screen sharing. They wrote this paper to guide others to successfully collect qualitative data when the research news to be conducted  solely online.

Prior research has shown it is feasible to conduct online interviews and observations. However, it is limited in regards to explaining how to interact with participants when conducting fully mediated research with screen-sharing and video. This study, conducted during early phases of COVID-19, included 45 interviews with 15 tweet-annotators working with an emergency response organization. This method contribution uses cues-related and surveillance theories to reveal challenges and best practices when asking research participants to share their screen, be on video, and participate in a multiple-interview study. The findings suggest that researchers conducting online-mediated research should be prepared to provide technical support for the devices and interfaces participants use during the study, find ways to “see” beyond what is on the mediated screen, and consider ethical issues not often discussed. 

In addition to the paper, an output of the HAT team research is two brief training videos useful for other researchers. 

Getting Meaningful Data  from Mediated Qualitative Research 

Check out the video above to think outside the box when collecting observation and interview data online. The video discusses building trust, and ways to collect more robust data while experiencing mediated conversations. It also discusses how to design an interview schedule, share informed consent documents, and build rapport in a reduced cues environment.

Meeting Research Participants Online

The video above provides an overview of how to contact, schedule, and explain the technical participation requirements to participants who will be part of a mediated research study. It discusses screen sharing, using multiple researchers, and the importance of conducting multiple interviews with the same participants. Choosing scheduling software is particularly important because the interviews occur in people’s homes and often outside typical work hours.

If you would like to see the full paper presentation, feel free to watch this longer (11.5 minutes) video here, or read the paper here.

We also want to acknowledge that this work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation [award # 2029692, 2029698, & 2029719] RAPID/Collaborative Research: Human-AI Teaming for Big Data Analytics to Enhance Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Additionally, the project was supported by The University of Texas Good Systems Bridging Barriers Project supporting interdisciplinary research.

Congratulations, again, HAT team. We are so excited to see the positive effects of your findings, paper, and videos!