Speakers: Karri-Pekka Laakso, Lead Designer (Interaction), Reaktor and Prof. Antti Honkela, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki and Coordinator of Research Programme in Privacy-preserving and Secure AI, Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI)
The session on June 11th introduces the role of interaction design and data science for Contact Tracing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lead Designer in Interaction at Reaktor, Karri-Pekka Laakso talks about the design of Ketju Contact Tracing app, a prototype project, and a pilot study conducted in Vaasa. He particularly showcases the challenges from design and technological to the legal and social.
Building on the topic, Professor Antti Honkela, with a vast experience in Privacy-Preserving and Secure AI, is giving an overview of the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI), focusing on research challenges in contact tracing and methods from a statistical and machine learning perspective.
Prof. Antti also mentioned an emerging EIT Digital initiative to develop Anonymous COVID-19 Contact Tracing through Physical Tokens, which offers an opportunity for conducting critical and innovative design and research that can be quite impactful as an alternative to deal with the current privacy and security challenges of mobile-based contact tracing. Another useful insight shared by the Professor is that he believes from his experience more data is needed to monitor the Coronavirus epidemic. In his article published on the FCAI website he shared how this epidemic is being monitored with the help of mathematical models applied on data related to hospitalizations and infections. Social scientists have applied a method where respondents are instructed to randomly flip the response to a yes/no question with a known probability. With this technique there is a possibility to build a contact tracing app in respect to users’ privacy. To prove useful, Prof. Antti recommended for it to be used by the majority of the population.
We suggest the following readings and resources to familiarize yourself with the topic:
Alex Berke and Kent Larson. 2020. Contact Tracing Technologies: Methods and trade-offs. City Science group. MIT Media Lab, Brief Summary.
Andrew Crocker, Kurt Opsahl, and Bennett Cyphers. The Challenge of Proximity Apps For COVID-19 Contact Tracing, Blog Post, Electronic Frontier Foundation. April 10, 2020.
More readings and resources can be accessed here.
Human-Centred Research and Design in Crisis 
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