QR codes during the pandemic: Seamful quotidian placemaking

During the COVID-19 pandemic, one technology for contact tracing has come to dominate – QR codes. As a technology pioneered in Japan two decades ago and mainstreamed in China, QR codes have quickly become part of quotidian placemaking. While locations such as China have fully incorporated QR code technology into everyday contexts including public transport and mobile wallet applications, QR codes in the West were relatively overlooked. That was, until the pandemic. In this article, we examine some of the ways QR codes are being imagined and reimagined as part of public placemaking practices. In order to do so, we begin with a short history of QR codes – emerging in Japan, becoming mainstream in China and their consequent uptake globally. We then discuss the methods of our Australian study conducted during the pandemic and the seamful/seamless findings from our study. © The Author(s) 2023.

Challenges and Opportunities when Deploying a Gender STEM Intervention during a Pandemic

Women are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). There are many initiatives which have been implemented in efforts to change this imbalance, including in primary, secondary and third-level institutions. Some are supported by governments, for example, by Science Foundation Ireland in Ireland, by professional bodies, such as IEEE, and by companies. Initiatives are targeted at STEM in general, and at subsets of the discipline. In fact, there are many STEM intervention programmes worldwide from which we in software engineering can learn. The logistics around planning and implementing a STEM intervention programme are many. This is compounded when a programme must quickly pivot and change how it is provided due to external factors. While this paper presents our experience on one STEM intervention, the University of Limerick-Lero/Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D (Women in STEM, Manufacturing and Design) programme, it also discusses and describes the challenges and the opportunities that became apparent when it had to completely change how it was deployed and implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and Professional Topics • Professional Topics • Computing Education ACM Reference format: Marie Travers, Ita Richardson and Linda Higgins. 2021. Challenges and Opportunities when Deploying a Gender STEM Intervention During a Pandemic. In Proceedings of GE@ICSE conference (GE@ICSE'22). GE@ICSE, Pittsburgh. USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3524501.3527596 © 2022 ACM.

Transformative Collaborations: How a Motherscholar Research Collective Survived and Thrived during COVID-19

The COVID-19 global pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing gender-based inequities in the workforce. A research collective developed by academic mothers with young children ("motherscholars") emerged as a solution to address some of the constraints particularly faced by mothers in academia. The Motherscholar Collective was formed to research the effects of the pandemic on the work and personal lives of academic mothers with young children. Focus group interviews of participants explored how the Motherscholar Collective has provided relief from the sources of threat generated and amplified by the pandemic. Findings showed that participation in the Collective was transformative. Key themes, including flexibility, collaboration, validation, and empowerment, reflect how the Collective contributed to motherscholars' sense of authenticity as scholars by facilitating a harmonious integration of their professional and personal identities. The resulting implications for academic workplaces suggest opportunities for institutional improvement toward the end of transformational empowerment for motherscholars in academia. © 2021 Hogrefe Publishing.

Toward a Compare and Contrast Framework for COVID-19 Contact Tracing Mobile Applications: A Look at Usability

This paper reports on the progress in the project COVIGILANT, which is aimed at developing an evaluation taxonomy for Contact Tracing Applications (CTAs) for COVID-19. Specifically, this article describes the development of Usability, one pillar of the COVIGILANT taxonomy, discussing the classification and decision-making processes, and the initial model validation. The validation process was undertaken in two stages. First, we validated how the Usability pillar could be used to evaluate the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE) COVID-19 CTA. While this supported many of the attributes that we had within the Usability pillar, it also identified issues. We made amendments based on these, and undertook a second study, this time evaluating 4 CTAs used in other countries. This has led to the completion of the Usability pillar, which can now be used to evaluate global CTAs.

Digital placemaking and networked corporeality: Embodied mobile media practices in domestic space during Covid-19

In contemporary life, the mobile phone is integral to digital and material placemaking practices. In this article, drawing on ethnographic analysis conducted in Perth and Melbourne (Australia) in the first months of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, we explore how this relation has been recalibrated as an effect of 'stay-at-home' restrictions. We first provide a brief overview of our methodological and interpretative approach - drawing from postphenomenology as a useful framework for understanding the mobile-body-place relation and digital placemaking at home. Second, we consider how mobile media are 'situated' in the domestic environment. Third, through an analysis of participant narratives, we explore the concept of net locality (Gordon and de Souza e Silva (2011) through the lens of embodiment theory and suggest that the Covid-19 context has altered our experience of 'networked corporeality'. Finally, we discuss the ambiguity of digital intimacy in the decoupling of mobile media and the body as a result of a rapid increase in both screen time and time spent at home. Throughout the article, we argue that mobile media use in the home is thoroughly enmeshed in the shifting boundaries of privacy, placemaking and domestic space. We question how the placemaking functionality of mobile media, the intimate body-technology relation specific to mobile media practices and 'being-at-home' were subsequently modified by physical distancing and isolation.