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Despite efforts towards pervasive, high-speed broadband connectivity, users worldwide continue to experience a persistent multinetwork reality–a reality of intermittent Internet access over multiple networks of varying capacities across space and time. In this late-breaking work, we investigate the challenges users face while using different Internet-based services and the mitigating strategies they adopt to overcome those challenges in a multinetwork reality. In addition, we also investigate how users envision software-based interventions that might augment their existing strategies and help them better manage their activities in a multinetwork reality. Finally, based on our findings from a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, we explore a two-dimensional design space defined by cognitive and resource costs and discuss directions for future work. 

Disruption to routines is an increasingly common part of everyday life. With the roots of some disruptions in the interconnectedness of the world and environmental and socio-political instability, there is good reason to believe that conditions that cause widespread disruption will persist. Individuals, communities, and systems are thus challenged to engage in resilience practices to deal with both acute and chronic disruption. Our interest is in chronic, everyday resilience, and the role of both technology and non-technical adaptation practices engaged by individuals and communities, with a specific focus on practices centered in nature. Foregrounding nature's role allows close examination of environmental adversity and nature as part of adaptivity. We add to the CSCW and HCI literature on resilience by examining long-distance hikers, for whom both the sources of adversity and the mitigating resilience processes cut across the social, the technical, and the environmental. In interviews with 12 long-distance hikers we find resilience practices that draw upon technology, writ large, and nature in novel assemblages, and leverage fluid configurations of the individual and the community. We place our findings in the context of a definition for resilience that emphasizes a systems view at multiple scales of social organization. We make three primary contributions: (1) we contribute an empirical account of resilience in a contextual setting that complements prior CSCW resilience studies, (2) we add nuance to existing models for resilience to reflect the role of technology as both a resilience tool and a source of adversity, and (3) we identify the need for new designs that integrate nature into systems as a way to foster collaborative resilience. This nuanced understanding of the role of technology in individual and community resilience in and with nature provides direction for technology design that may be useful for everyday disrupted life. 

Background While there are thousands of behavioral health apps available to consumers, users often quickly discontinue their use, which limits their therapeutic value. By varying the types and number of ways that users can interact with behavioral health mobile health apps, developers may be able to support greater therapeutic engagement and increase app stickiness. Objective The main objective of this analysis was to systematically characterize the types of user interactions that are available in behavioral health apps and then examine if greater interactivity was associated with greater user satisfaction, as measured by app metrics. Methods Using a modified PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) methodology, we searched several different app clearinghouse websites and identified 76 behavioral health apps that included some type of interactivity. We then filtered the results to ensure we were examining behavioral health apps and further refined our search to include apps that identified one or more of the following terms: peer or therapist forum, discussion, feedback, professional, licensed, buddy, friend, artificial intelligence, chatbot, counselor, therapist, provider, mentor, bot, coach, message, comment, chat room, community, games, care team, connect, share, and support in the app descriptions. In the final group of 34 apps, we examined the presence of 6 types of human-machine interactivities: human-to-human with peers, human-to-human with providers, human-to–artificial intelligence, human-to-algorithms, human-to-data, and novel interactive smartphone modalities. We also downloaded information on app user ratings and visibility, as well as reviewed other key app features. Results We found that on average, the 34 apps reviewed included 2.53 (SD 1.05; range 1-5) features of interactivity. The most common types of interactivities were human-to-data (n=34, 100%), followed by human-to-algorithm (n=15, 44.2%). The least common type of interactivity was human–artificial intelligence (n=7, 20.5%). There were no significant associations between the total number of app interactivity features and user ratings or app visibility. We found that a full range of therapeutic interactivity features were not used in behavioral health apps. Conclusions Ideally, app developers would do well to include more interactivity features in behavioral health apps in order to fully use the capabilities of smartphone technologies and increase app stickiness. Theoretically, increased user engagement would occur by using multiple types of user interactivity, thereby maximizing the benefits that a person would receive when using a mobile health app. 

Needed improvements to mobile broadband deployment require more accurate mapping of mobile coverage, especially in rural and tribal areas. 

Researching and designing Internet infrastructure solutions in rural and tribal contexts requires reciprocal relationships between researchers and community partners. Methodologies must be meaningful amid local social textures of life. Achieving transdisciplinarity while relating research impacts to partner communities takes care work, particularly where technical capacity is scarce. The Full Circle Framework is an action research full stack development methodology that foregrounds reciprocity among researchers, communities, and sovereign Native nations as the axis for research purpose and progress. Applying the framework to deploy television white space infrastructure in sovereign Native nations in northern New Mexico reveals challenges for rural computing, including the need to design projects according to the pace of rural and tribal government workflows, cultivate care as a resource for overworked researchers and community partners, and co-create a demand for accurate government data around Internet infrastructures in Indian Country and through rural counties.