How do I join the study?

Contact the lead researcher, Alex Eady, by email: alex.eady@carleton.ca
With subject line: “Participate in Mobile Flex study”

What are we studying?

This study evaluates mobile device concepts that use touchscreens and deformable interactions (e.g., bending or squeezing as device input).
It is a one-on-one, collaborative research session that lasts approximately 60 minutes. We’ll connect via video conference software (e.g., Teams, Zoom, Meet).

We offer $20CAD as compensation for participating in a session.

To participate, you must:

Work in one of these areas or similar:
- Usability and User Experience,
- Accessibility, Ergonomics, Physical or Occupational Therapy,
- Mobile Device and Interaction Design,
- Emerging Interactive Technologies,
Be able to join a Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet video conference.
Be able to operate a smartphone with your hands.
Be comfortable speaking in English

Detailed information to help you decide if you’d like to participate

Participating in the Concept Exploration Session

During the session, we will explore the device and interaction concepts together in a collaborative exercise with the aim of drawing on your expertise to identify issues with or opportunities to improve the device and interaction design concepts.

Video recording: You do not have to consent to recording to participate and it is not required to have your camera on during the session. We will ask your consent to record the session when it begins. We use video conference software’s built-in recording functions. We ask to record you working in the digital whiteboard and discussing the prototypes so we can review the session to inform our research, illustrate publications, and in promotional materials (e.g., images on our lab website). To protect your privacy, we crop or blur media to hide faces, but there is still a risk that you may be identifiable.

Transcription: We create transcriptions, a written copy of what was said in the session, to help in our research. We remove your name and replace it with a pseudonym (e.g. participant A) in the transcription. We use a software service, Trint, to transcribe recoded audio. We upload our recordings to their servers to create transcriptions and remove those files afterwards.

Continued participation: we may ask, at the end of the session, if you are interested in participating in a second session with another set of prototypes. Continued participation is optional. If you are interested, we will keep your name and email on file during the study period so we can contact you. After the study is concluded, we will delete your contact information and remove your name from our data.

Withdrawing from the study: You have the right to end your participation at any time during the session for any reason. To withdraw, inform the researcher you do not wish to continue. If you withdraw, we stop collecting data and any information gathered will be destroyed and not used in the research.

Within 10 days following the study session, you may withdraw your data (contact info, recorded video, and notes from the session) for any reason by contacting the researcher or academic supervisor, we will destroy the data and will not use it in the research.

Following this, you may still request that your original data be discarded, but it is not possible to remove data that has been used in analysis, has informed design iterations, or used in publications.

Compensation/Incentives: if you take part in the study session you will be compensated with a $20 email money transfer or e-gift card for an e-retailer (e.g., amazon.ca). You will still be compensated if you withdraw after the study session has begun.

Risks and Impacts of participating

We do not anticipate any risks to participating in this study. We ask questions on the topic of mobile device design, use, and usability and we do not aim to gather or retain data of a personal or compromising nature.

Participant data use, protection, retention: Research data is only accessible to the research team for this study. Research data includes materials like notes and recordings collected during the session. Data is stored in Citrix Sharefile, a secured service maintained by Carleton University on its own local servers.

Until the end of the data collection period (10 days following the session), data is associated with your first name and email. Afterwards, this information is replaced by a pseudonym (e.g., participant A). We also record your area of work/expertise (e.g., user experience researcher), but we do not ask for or record your job title or place or employment.

We discard un-edited video (e.g., with your face visible) after 1 year. Your de-identified data, like edited or cropped video and images as well as notes that have been assigned pseudonyms will be stored indefinitely and be accessible to the Lead Researcher and Research Supervisor.

Confidentiality: We treat your personal information as confidential, though absolute privacy cannot be guaranteed. No information that discloses your identity will be released or published without your specific consent. Research records may be accessed by the Carleton University Research Ethics Board to ensure continuing ethics compliance.

New information during the study: In the event of changes that could affect your decision to continue participating in this study, you will be promptly informed and we will re-confirm your consent to participate.

No waiver of your rights: When you give consent to participate you are not waiving any rights or releasing the researchers from any liability.

Ethics review

This research has been cleared by Carleton University Research Ethics Board-B (Clearance #116715).

If you have any ethical concerns with the study, please contact Carleton University Research Ethics Board (by phone at 613-520-2600, ext. 4085 or by email at ethics@carleton.ca).

PLEASE NOTE: During Covid, the Research Ethics Staff are working from home without access to their Carleton phone extensions. Accordingly, until staff return to campus, please contact them by email.