Paper reading #35: Addressing the Problems of Data-Centric Physiology-Affect Relations Modeling

Reference Information
Title: Addressing the Problems of Data-Centric Physiology-Affect Relations Modeling
Authors: Roberto Legaspi, Ken-ichi Fukui, Koichi Moriyama, Satoshi Kurihara, Masayuki Numao, Merlin Suarez.
Venue: IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China.

Summary

Using a data-centric approach, the researchers of this paper attempted to come up with a way to use machine learning in order to define so called "affective states". Using an EEG helmet, the researchers attempted to classify, and define the different emotions that the wearer was experiencing. One of the main problems that they ran into was the size of the data set. Throughout the paper, they suggest several different changes to the algorithms used, and change in data set size, which may help improve the capabilities of the machine.

Discussion 

I don’t know what I was thinking choosing this paper. It was very hard to read. I ended up skimming through it.. I'm sure their research is interesting, but I'm not sure if anyone is going to ever know what they actually did, judging from this paper.

Paper reading #34: Facilitating Exploratory Search by Model-Based Navigational Cues"

 

Facilitating Exploratory Search by Model-Based Navigational Cues
Wai-Tat Fu, Thomas G. Kannampallil, and Ruogu Kan
University of Illinois
Presented at IUI’10, February 7–10, 2010, Hong Kong, China

 

Summary

In this paper, the authors talk about building a simulator to test the notion that unstructured social tagging may cause difficulties for searchers. The hypothesis is based on the notion that casual tagging will eventually become an incoherent mess of tags. The counter hypothesis is that tagging isn't as random as thought, and will instead follow cohesively from whichever tags are posted earliest. That is, early tagging heavily influences the tagging of later users.

The Semantic Imitation Model was designed to simulate the actions of expert and novice users across a document space assembled for the study. The results of the simulation did seem to indicate that convergence is experienced.

 

Discussion

I really don't understand some of the simulations. I would have preferred a user study. I think that would have helped the authors better illustrates some of the arguments put forward.

Paper reading #33: Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing Fine Pointing Demands

Reference Info:

Leah Findlater

UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA

 

Summary

This paper talked about different ways to aid those users who have impairments and difficulties using the conventional computer mouse. Two different methods were discussed in the paper that would help users in this area: Click-and-Cross and Visual-Motor-Magnifier. The Visual-Motor-Magnifier enables user to enlarge area of click in order to better see and control their mouse. This allows for users to click on the intended button. This reduces the amount of fine pointing.

 

Discussion

I thought this was an interesting alternative to the constraints of clicking with the mouse.. It is interesting that they had two major methods of doing this in order to adjust to different users and their needs.

Paper reading #32: DMacs: Building MultiDevice User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing and Replaying Design Actions

 

 

Reference Info:
DMacs: Building MultiDevice User Interfaces by Demonstrating, Sharing and Replaying Design Actions
Jan Meskens, Kris Luyten, Karin Coninx
UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA

Summary

This paper discusses the problem of having to design different user interfaces for different platforms for the same program. An example given is YouTube. There is a separate design for the web and telephone. The more variety of platforms, the more difficult it becomes to manually code the UI for the given program. Design tool Macros (D-Macs) is a multi-device GUI builder allowing designers to automate repetitive design actions. The main goal is to automate these transitions of UI from platform to platform in an appealing way. This tool allows developers to make a UI once and have it imported to other platforms.

Discussion

I found this an interesting article. I think it will cut down on so much time of coding extra UI for different platforms. In today's world, people want to be able to use their services in a variety of platforms and this will help us achieve that.

Paper reading #31: Raconteur: from intent to stories

 

Title: Raconteur: from intent to stories

Authors: Pei-Yu Chi, Henry Lieberman

Conference: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

 

Summary

When editing a story from a large collection of media, such as photos and video clips captured from daily life, it is not always easy to understand how particular scenes fit into the intent for the overall story. Especially for novice editors, there is often a lack of coherent connections between scenes, making it difficult for the viewers to follow the story. In this paper, we present Raconteur is a story editing system that helps users assemble coherent stories from media elements, each annotated with a sentence or two in unrestricted natural language. It uses a Commonsense knowledge base, and the AnalogySpace Commonsense reasoning technique. Raconteur focuses on finding story analogies – different elements illustrating the same overall "point", or independent stories exhibiting similar narrative structures.

Discussion

The research presented is interesting The idea did not sound novel in the beginning since this is what a movie producer essentially does: arrange consecutive pictures taken a fraction of a second apart from each other. However, after looking at the screenshots I realized that while using this tool, we can arrange our pictures in order to form a story. This can help us to remember not just the location where the picture was shot but also the events that occurred and the story surrounding the picture.

Paper reading #30: Personalized User Interfaces for Product Configuration

Reference Information

Title: Personalized User Interfaces for Product Configuration
Names of authors: Felfernig Alexander, Mandl Monika, Tiihonen Juha, Schubert Monika, Leitner Gerhard
Presentation venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary

Configuration technologies are well established as a foundation of mass customization which is a production paradigm that supports the manufacturing of highly-variant products under pricing conditions similar to mass production. A side-effect of the high diversity of products offered by a configurator is that the complexity of the alternatives may outstrip a user’s capability to explore them and make a buying decision. In this paper the authors present configuration techniques that recommend personalized default values to users. Results of an empirical study show improvements in terms of, for example, user satisfaction or the quality of the configuration process.

Discussion

This paper was interesting to read, however, it was too technical and mathematical. I got confused pretty fast.  There were no graphics or images in the paper. Overall, the idea was still very interesting though. Recommender systems are becoming more and more common on shopping websites like Amazon, or Google checkout and can be used as an excellent marketing tool.

Paper reading #29: A multi-touch enabled steering wheel: exploring the design space

Reference Information

Pfeiffer, M., et al. (2010). A multi-touch enable steering wheel -

exploring the design space.

 Proceeding of the Acm conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 3355-3360). Atlanta.

Summary

Cars are becoming more and more “smarter” thanks to the technology the cars are getting nowadays. In this paper, the researchers investigate new interaction techniques that aim to make it easier to interact with these systems while driving. The reason is because, as we get more and more technology, that means more distraction. There is a need to find a non-invasive integrative system.  The researchers in this paper suggest using the steering wheel as an additional interface surface in contrast to the standard approach of combining all functions into hierarchical menus controlled by a multifunctional controller or a touch screen .

This paper talks, in particular,  about multi-touch interaction on a steering wheel and investigates how to deal with input and output while driving and hence rotating the wheel. It describes the details of a functional prototype of a multi-touch steering wheel that is based on FTIR and a projector, which was built to explore experimentally the user experience created. In an initial study with 12 participants, it was shown that the approach has a general utility and that people can use gestures for controlling applications intuitively. The researchers investigated new interaction techniques that aim to make it easier to interact with these systems while driving.

Discussion

I think the idea of putting the controls on the streering wheel is interesting. However when I drive I don’t really look at my steering wheel. Having controls on the dashboard can cause significant driver distraction, but I think I would prefer that display method.

Paper reading #28: The Coffee Lab: Developing a public Usability Space

Reference InformationTitle: The Coffee Lab: Developing a public Usability Space
Author: Maria Karam
Presented at: CHI 2010, April 10-15,2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Summary

This paper talks about coffee shops. In particular about a lab in a public usability space situated in a coffee shop in Toronto. It's a pilot project aimed at supporting usability studies in a mixed user space, where a variety of software applications, hardware systems and other interactive technologies are put to the public for evaluation. One advantage to this approach is to facilitate the collection of usability data from a large and diverse population of potential users.
The way the lab is setup is with wired and wireless network connections, a touch screen, multiple computers to run systems, web cameras for visual input and monitoring interactions.
The target participants can be anyone from staff, performers, students, spectators and local customers who frequent the coffee shop. Two main systems that are currently part of the Coffee Lab pilot tests are the Emoti-Chair and the  iGesture. Emoti Chair is a tactile audio system while the iGesture system is used to control the music at the Coffee Lab.

The authors had five evaluation stages:  

• Exposure: The first contact the user has with the technology.

• Experience: Researchers' interactions with the user while they are gaining experience with the system. Second stage participants often provide valuable feedback or report problems, if any.

• Experiment: Laboratory style experiments

• Extension: This stage offers an in-depth look at one or more users over time, providing a more detailed perspective of the user's interactions.

• Exploration: This stage occurs once the system has been evaluated, or when the research is between stages. Participants may leave feedback or provide comments.

Discussion

This was an interesting paper to read. The idea of using a coffee shop as a test location, rather  than the conventional lab is quite ingenious. I never would have thought that was possible, much less the owners of the coffee shop accepting to cooperate with the experiment. Coffee shops attract all kinds of people from various backgrounds who have different type of moods, so the authors can benefit from a wide pool of people.

Paper reading #27: Early Explorations of CAT: Canine Amusement and Training



Reference information

Title: Early Explorations of CAT: Canine Amusement and Training

Authors: Chadwick Wingrave, Todd Langston, Jeremy Rose and Joseph LaViola Jr.

Presentation: 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary

The paper talks about an application that has the potential to improve human-canine relations. The authors emphasize on developing software tools that can motivate humans to spend time with their canine in a healthy and informative environment. They have also developed some prototype games that are calm, healthy and enjoyable both for canine and humans.

This Canine Amusement and Training project aims to reclaim time for the human canine bond. Humans need to be entertained and taught how to interact with their canine. The system consists of 55" LCD TV, a projector and Wii(NINTENDO) remotes to track the position of the canine. The projector is mounted on a roof and an image is projected on the floor for the canine to see. The Wii-mote(remote) is attached on the back of the canine. A number of games, ranging from easy to more difficult can be designed.

Discussion

This paper was interesting to read. The first time I had heard about it was in class at the beginning of the semester. I just recalled it, and decided to read about it for extra credit.

I personnally would not use this system as I don't have a dog, but I could see this as a useful application.

The paper only talks about games that instructs the canine to sit, stand and stay calm though. It may perhaps be made more fun if better games are designed that involve activities like chasing an object, etc.

Paper reading #26: Sequential art for science and CHI

 

Title: Sequential Art for Science and CHI

Author: Duncan Rowland

Presentation Venue: CHI 2010: Monsters Attack! April 10-15, 2010 Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Summary

This paper illustrates how interactive tools that can generate sequential art can be used for entertainment, and  learning. The paper is presented in a comic book format to emphasize and highlight the communicative capabilities of the medium.

 

The author provides two examples. In the first example, primary school students documented a practical science session through the creation of a photo-story and in the second, participants in a study on the biological nature of thrill created a souvenir photo-story. The author argues that since the world we live in is visual, learning experience  should also stress on graphics and visual techniques. The paper suggests that sequential art offers unique mechanisms of communication that can find application in science, for example, in ethnographic work. The visual form can be both engaging and rapidly digested.

Discussion

 

I liked this paper, it was real short and straight to the point. It's not a paper by conventional means. Nevertheless, I agree with the author's point of view. I think I would like this method of learning. It definitely looks more appealing than learning froma a boring thick 200 page book.  

 

This method might not work for everyone though, and so, it should complement, not replace the traditional method of learning i.e. books. I'm sure it will immensely benefit audio-visual learners, who form the majority of the population

 

Reference Information

Full Blog: Living With Complexity

Discussion


Norman provides a lot of good examples throughout all the chapters. This is true about all his books. His books are always insightful, and detailed, however I did get bored when reading the chapters.in this particular book.  Perhaps I don't appreciate the material enough. Design of Everyday Things was by far my favourite amongst the Norman books.

I do have to take my hat off to him because his analysis is thorough all the time, and he really went out of his way to explain what complexity was, its causes, and the different types of complexity you have.

Full Blog: Why We Make Mistakes

Discussion

In the conclusion of his book, Hallinan gives some advice on how the readers can apply the ideas presented in his book to their lives. Some of the things he recommends we keep in mind are:

1. Think small
2. Calibration can be taught
3. Creating a written record helps a person fend off the rose-colored-glasses of hindsight bias
4. In some cases it will be important to look for and even expect failure
5. Don’t be set in your ways
6. Slow down
7. Be aware of the anecdote (he references NutriSystem here)
8. Get plenty of sleep
9. Be happy

Hallinan concludes by discussing how money does not eliminate mistakes and is not the currency of life.

I have to say that I enjoyed this book. It was a good change from reading the other Norman books. In particular, I like how the author illustrates all his claims with interesting examples. I especially liked the Conclusion, because Hallinan does a great job of summarizing his ideas.I personally think this book will be beneficial in helping us better understand mistakes we make in our respective fields.

Full Blog: Media Equation

Discussion


Part 3 was also interesting as it discussed a computer’s perceived personality which was a novel idea to me. It was neat to read about how even a simple trait like dominance and submission could have such a profound impact on the user. As the researchers note, these findings also back the findings described in the other two papers about how people respond socially to a computer. Part 1 was quite fun to read. In particular about how people would give intimate comments about computers.  I really enjoyed reading about the studies described and how weird we can sometimes be when presented in front of a computers.

I thought the paper in Part 2 was a good paper to read after the one in part 1.It went in further detail and explored the studies of part 1. Doing this validated what we read in the first part. In hindsight, it is simple to interact with a computer the way we do with people. However, some people can get carried away while interacting with their computers, and in that case I believe that person is exagerating.

Full Blog: Things that Make Us Smart

Discussion

This was another assignment on a Norman book. I thought I was going to find the same recurring themes as in Design of Everyday Things, however I did find some interesting points developped in this book. Thanks to Norman, I feel I have learned some more useful tools that I'll definetely be trying out the next I have to work on some design project.

Book Reading #52: Living With Complexity

Chapter 3Summary
In chapter 3 Norman discusses how things get more complicated as the number of items increases. He provides remembering passwords as an example. He also discusses the “scaling problem,” something that works well with only a few cases, but often fails as the number grows. He finally mentions how in an ideal world we would not need signs and how too much information makes things complicated.

Chapter 4
Summary
Chapter 4 focuses on social signifiers, indicators in the environment that allow people to navigate in otherwise complex and confusing environments. These signifiers are referred to as “perceived affordances” by some.

Book Reading #51: Living With Complexity

Chapter 1Summary
The first chapter serves as an introduction to complexity. Norman differentiates between things being complex and the idea of things being complicated . He discusses keys to coping with complexity, and also brings up how some complicated systems occur as a result of poor design and he provides several examples of how we like complexity in certain instances.

Chapter 2
Summary
In chapter 2 Norman brings up the idea of the conceptual model, and how it helps to simplify the complexities of different systems. Norman discusses “featuritis,” adding more and more features, and explains how complexity is in the mind of the beholder.

Book Reading #50: Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 12Summary
In chapter 12, Hallinan discusses constraints and affordances. He defines constraints as “simple mental aids that keep us on the right track by limiting our alternatives.” He defines affordances as “clues to how a thing can be used.”

He discusses the technique by which different organizations name things and gives two examples: prescription drug names and identifiers that pilots use.

Chapter 13
Summary
In chapter 13 Hallinan begins with an example of two people who moved to L.A. and then ended up moving back to Wisconsin. He uses this example to show how people mispredict how they will feel about important life decisions in the future because they focus on relatively minor factors.

Book Reading #49: Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 10Summary
Chapter 10 focuses on how people tend to believe they are above average. Hallinan sites many examples of this: golfing, and credit card rates. Hallinan then discusses calibration, the difference between a person’s actual and perceived abilities. He discusses that calibration tends to be poor, but weather forecasts are well calibrated. The power of feedback is also discussed.

Hallinan also notes that as a task gets harder, people tend to be even more overconfident.

Chapter11
Summary
In chapter 11, Hallinan discusses how even professionals have difficulty in knowing how good or bad they are at something. He also discusses how experts become experts by practicing, starting at a young age and creating a library of specialized knowledge within the mind.

Book Reading #48: Media Equation

Media Equation Papers



Part 1
Summary
This paper discusses how people tend to apply social rules to computers and have certain expectations of their computers. Three main experiments were performed with different setups. All of these experiments helped to show how people react to computers by applying social interactions between people to how they interact with their computers.

The authors  then explored alternative explanations for their findings. They discuss anthropomorphism, the act of believing something is essentially human. They also discuss how some believe people aren’t reacting to the computer but to the programmer. They then discuss the methods of their experiments.


Part 2
Summary
The second paper further explores the ideas in the first and sites that the reason that people act the way they do with computers has to do with how commonplace and easy it is to generate such responses. The paper describes five experiments. Some items tested are: how a person will be polite to the computer, whether a person will apply the notion of ‘self’ and ‘other’ to the computer, how a person distinguishes between ‘self’ and ‘other,’ whether or not they will apply gender stereotypes to computers and why people act the way they do with computers.
The researchers concluded by saying that the computer-human relationship is a social one.

Part 3
Summary
This paper explores the idea of creating a personality for a computer, the minimum set of cues needed to make the personality and how powerful the effects of the personality are on the user.
The researchers concluded by saying that it is easier than expected to manipulate a personality even in its simplest form and that these findings also imply that humans respond socially to computers.

Book Reading #47: Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 8Summary
Chapter 8 focuses on a person’s desire to keep things organized in memory. Hallinan begins with several examples to demonstrate this: people drawing the Seine River straighter than it actually is and stating where Reno, Nevada is in relation to San Diego.
Hallinan also explains that who the person is will affect how he or she remembers things.

Chapter 9
Summary
Chapter 9 discusses the relationship between overconfidence and perceived risk. The  author also discusses how women seem to have less confidence than men in several areas. Examples he gives includes getting lost while driving, selling back lottery tickets and fixing bugs in a spreadsheet.

Book Reading #46: Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 6Summary
In chapter 6, Hallinan discusses framing. Framing is how we look at things. He uses, noticeably the example of a certain wine depending on the music being played. Hallinan also writes about multiple-unit pricing and the impact it has on shoppers. In seeing the tag, “4 for $2,” the number, 4, acts as an anchor that makes the shopper more likely to buy four of the item rather than just one or two.

Chapter 7
Summary
In chapter 7 Hallinan begins by showing us some examples of how we skim material and how this ability to skim comes with a trade-off: details are overlooked.
Hallinan also discusses the importance of the context we are in when recognizing and remembering information.

Book Reading #45: Things That Make Us Smart

Chapter 3Summary
Chapter 3 deals with external aids, in particular the paper, and the pen. These make us smart. Norman discusses cognitive artifacts and how they help people keep track of complex events. He defines two ingredients for a representational system: the represented world and the representing world.


Chapter 4
Summary
In chapter 4 Norman continues his discussion about artifacts and things to consider when fitting the artifact to the person. He differentiates between surface artifacts and internal artifacts. He also mentions how technology has affordances and uses voice-messaging systems as an example of a technology that in some instances forces a medium into usage that violates the affordances and gets in the way.

Book Reading #44: Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 4Summary
Chapter 4 discusses remembering actions with rose-colored glasses. When remembering things that we do and say, we tend to make ourselves sound better than we actually are. Hallinan presents several examples: students remembering their grades as being better than they were and remembering good grades more than the bad grades, the Watergate scandal and how John Dean remembered the events entirely differently than how they really happened. He also gives the example of how gamblers remember their losses as near-wins rather than defeats .


Chapter 5
Summary
In chapter 5 Hallinan discusses the myth of multitasking. Multitasking slows us down, and can cause us to forget what we are doing and creates a need for downtime, the time it takes to refocus on a task. The author provides examples of a pilot, a bus driver and drivers in general who do other tasks (like texting, talking on the phone or fiddling with a GPS) while driving.

Book Reading #43: Things That Make Us Smart

Chapter 1Summary
In this first chapter, the author discusses how technology should be more focused on the human. Technology usually has pros, but on the flip side, can contribute to making a person less smart. In particular, he explains how technology that is designed to aid people more often confuses people and interferes with thought processes. He differentiates between hard sciences and soft sciences .He finally discusses two types of cognition: experiential and reflective.

Chapter 2
Summary
In chapter 2, Norman discusses the uninformative aspect of museums. He revisits experiential and reflective cognition and discusses how technology needs to strike a balance between the two rather than forcing users to one extreme or the other. Norman also defines three types of learning: accretion, tuning, and restructuring. The first two are experiential modes and the third is reflective. He also defines optimal flow, the peak experience where the mind is entirely involved.

Ethnography Results: Week 8

Performed with Jaideep

Ethnography Results: Week 7

Performed in Part with Jaideep

Paper reading #25: Tagsplanations: explaining recommendations using tags

Comments

Reference InformationTitle: Tagsplanations: explaining recommendations using tags
Authors: Jesse Vig, Shilad Sen, John Riedl
Presentation Venue: IUI 2009: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces; February 8-11, 2009; Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

Summary

In this paper, the authors talk about Tagsplanations: a design implemented on a movie recommender website. Not only are recommendations made to users but, these recommendations are also in turn explained for(i.e.: Why was a certain recommendation given). They discuss an algorithm used to determine tag relevance and tag preference and present a study to see how users like tagsplanations. If an item is similar in feature, for example,  the relevance would be high, but if the user preferred a certain type of item or brand, the preference would be high.

To test the implementation of tagsplanations, the researchers used MovieLens, a movie recommendation site. They computed tag preference based on user behavior (by movie ratings in their MovieLens implementation).

An experiment was also conducted in order to see how users responded to the different types of recommendations.  The conclusions were that tag preference was more important than tag relevance.  Concerning effectiveness, the two were about the same.  For mood compatibility, relevance was rated higher.

Discussion

I thought this paper was interesting and relevant. In looking at their interface, I think they’ve done a good job presenting their information in a concise and straightforward way.

The research reminded me of recommendation systems like Amazon, and Google. I can easily see this design as benefiting to users. The authors explained their motivations well and provided an in-depth user study. For future works the researchers mentioned possibly making a way in which users can inform the system when it is wrong and the system can inform users when different actions impact the results they receive. They also mentioned exploring other techniques to estimate tag preference.

Paper reading #24: Have a say over what you see: evaluating interactive compression techniques

Comments

 
Reference Information
Title: Have a say over what you see: evaluating interactive compression techniques
Authors: Simon Tucker, Steve Whittaker
Presentation Venue: IUI 2009: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces; February 8-11, 2009; Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

Summary

This paper discusses Interactive Compression techniques that allow a user to remove information in documents they do not wish to see and making important information more visible.

Some of the different compression techniques explored are Word Excision(removing unimportant words by replacing them with periods), Utterance Excision(removing utterances and replacing them with white space), Highlighting Words(marking important words), Highlighting Utterances( marking important utterances), Keyword Context(use Utterance Excision but leave one word in place and grayed-out to let the user know the utterance is there), Fish-eye View(split the screen into five views that display certain things such as important words).

After an initial user study, the authors found that two most successful compression techniques were Word Excision and Word Highlighting. They performed another more in-depth study on these two specific techniques.

Their results showed that Word Excision and Word Highlighting allowed the users to extract the important information from documents more effectively even with the presence of an occasional error from the algorithm

Discussion
While reading this paper, I could not help myself thinking about how useful a tool this software would be with all the HCI reading assignments we have had.
Areas of future study that the researchers mention include improving their algorithms and exploring other ways to determine which parts of the document are important. They also want to test their system on other types of documents.

Paper reading #23: Improving meeting summarization by focusing on user needs: a task-oriented evaluation

Comments

Reference Information
Title: Improving meeting summarization by focusing on user needs: a task-oriented evaluation
Authors: Pei-Yun Hsueh, Johanna D. Moore
Presentation Venue: IUI 2009: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces; February 8-11, 2009; Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

Summary

In this paper, the authors discuss a method of improving the summarization of meetings.

Much work on meeting browsers and search structures have been done that allow people to search for a specific part of the meeting, but often the most important part of the meeting is a decision that is made.  

The researchers discuss two types of summaries. The first provides a general summary of the meeting and is the type of summary produced by current. The second provides a more decision-focused summary that is shorter than the general summary.

The researchers performed a study in which they provided participants with four meetings through a Meeting Browser Interface. They asked the participants to summarize the decisions made in the meetings. Participants were randomly assigned one of four summary displays that were embedded into the browser interface that presented different information about the meeting.

The researchers found that displaying decision-focused summaries were more effective and helped users get a better overview of the meeting. However, it was found that decision-focused summaries written manually were still more effective than the ones generated by the algorithm.

Discussion
I think this research could be very useful for people who miss meetings or want to review meetings after they have occurred. Future studies suggests that the researchers will focus on further improving the algorithm and run more experiments on meetings that are more and less structured to better identify the strengths and weaknesses in their current algorithm.

Paper reading #22: User-oriented document summarization through vision-based eye-tracking

Comments

Reference Information

Reference Information
Title: User-oriented document summarization through vision-based eye-tracking
Authors: Songhua Xu, Hao Jiang, Francis C.M. Lau
Presentation Venue: IUI 2009: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces; February 8-11, 2009; Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

Summary

In this paper, the researchers seek to create an algorithm that allows eye-tracking to aid in summarizing documents for users. Their approach is by estimating the average time spent on a single word in the documents the user is reading and extrapolating that data into the likely-hood the user will find a sentence interesting. Equipment used consists in a web-cam, and the document viewer the authors made. After this setup, the user can start reading. They restrict the algorithm to only output a percentage of the sentences given the most attention. The percentage is based on the size of the document. 

The researchers compare their results of summarization to two popular methods of summarization - Microsoft Word AutoSummarize and the MEAD summerizer system.  The experiment involves using sets of literature from science and leisure

The researchers found that their algorithm could create more personalized summaries based on the user’s interests, especially for the entertainment/leisure articles, than the other two algorithms could.

 Discussion

This paper was really interesting to read. I appreciated the work presented, and the ideas put forward. They didn’t give much information on how the users responded to their system though. They just said it was better than the others.

The researchers note that in future studies they would like to make it so that their algorithm can work even on articles that the user has not read They also mention improving the overall algorithm and implementing a training system by allowing for feedback from the user to improve summarization.

 

Paper reading #21: Towards maximizing the accuracy of human-labeled sensor data

Comments

Reference InformationTitle: Towards maximizing the accuracy of human-labeled sensor data
Authors: Stephanie L. Rosenthal and Anind K. Dey
Presentation Venue: IUI 2010: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces; February 7-10, 2010; Hong Kong, China

Summary

In this paper, the authors discuss the impact that different amounts of information have on people when they label things. They discuss 5 main types of information given to labelers such a: Different amounts of contextual information, High and low level explanations, Prediction, User Feedback, and Level of uncertainty.

A study was conducted by the authors where they used the wizard-of-oz technique and presented labelers with varying amounts of information to test their labeling accuracy. They also focused on the differences between people labeling data they had not seen before and their own data.

After the study, they found that the five types of information had a positive affect on the labelers, because it gave them more information or helped to direct their thought processes.

Finally, the researchers found that whether the labeler was familiar with the had no impact on the accuracy of the label.

Discussion
The was one of those papers where I feel, if you do not have some type of background about the subject, you will be left in the dark. This paper was hard to follow, in my opinion. Nonetheless, the idea of labeling and the accuracy to which people do so was interesting. Either than that, I don't quite get the usefulness of this study.  I didn't understand why they were doing it as they did not have a good explanation in any part of the paper. 

Paper Reading #20: Designing a thesaurus-based comparison search interface for linked cultural heritage sources

Comments

Reference Information

Title: Designing a thesaurus-based comparison search interface for linked cultural heritage sources

Authors: Alia Amin, Michiel Hildebrand, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Lynda Hardman

Presentation Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces ;
February 7-10, 2009;

Hong Kong, China

Summary

 
This paper talks about comparison search, namely in the cultural heritage domain. The authors started with a preliminary study on experts trying to compare sets of artworks. From this study, the authors were able to identify certain areas of concern like name aliases, multiple languages, multiple terms, comparing many sets of data, single and multiple property comparison.  A thesaurus based algorithm solution is proposed in order to categorize data.  The uses are: learning about collections, planning exhibitions, and qualitative comparison.  They use a program called LISA in order to implement this. This paper mainly discusses the interface of the system and the interaction with it.
Some selection and comparison challenges mentioned are Searching artworks, Selecting artworks, and Comparing artworks. LISA was implemented on top of ClioPatria, a web-based application for searching through heterogeneous sets of data.

The researchers did two studies.  The first study was to get a grasp on problems experts have when doing comparison studies, and to determine the realistic use of comparisons.  The second study was to test a thesaurus-based comparison module that would be able to search, select, and compare different artifacts in cultural heritage.

LISA's ease of use was compared with RKDimages, a widely-used online cultural heritage archive. They found that overall LISA was easier to use than RKDimages, especially when it came to searching for many artworks and selecting artworksFuture works seem to indicate working on a better implementation of the auto-complete ability, supporting interactivity visualizations, and providing bookmarking and search history storage.

Discussion

 

I found this paper somewhat interesting. The target audience seems defined to art experts. Nonetheless,   the idea of using a Thesaurus to assist in search could be really useful. . It looked easy to use and looked self-explanatory.  One thing they could do for future projects would be to expand their domain to a different field.

Paper Reading #19: Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction

Comments

Evin Schuchardt

Cindy Skach

Reference Information

Title: Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction

Authors: Yujia Cao  University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
              Angela Mahr  German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Saarbrücken, Germany
              Sandro Castronovo  German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Saarbrücken, Germany
             Mariët Theune  Universtiy of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
            Christoph Stahl  University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany
             Christian A. Müller  German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Saarbrücken, Germany

Presentation Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces ;
February 7-10, 2009;

Hong Kong, China

Summary

In this paper the authors discuss Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, and their use today. The user interface (the warning presentation), as the authors explain is "crucial to a successful danger avoidance". The authors have decided to perform a user study to investigate different types of warning presentations. This is mainly done by using a scenario of emergent road obstacles. The authors relate warning presentations with situation awarenes (SA) theory. Situation Awareness, the authors explain, has three hierarchical phases for a driver: perception of elements in the environment, interpretation and comprehension of the elements, and finally predicton of the future state of the environment.

The researchers considered two presentation factors: Modality, and Level of Assistance. Modality had 4 variants: speech warning, visual and speech warning with blinking cue, and visual warning with sound cue. The level of assistance varied with the presence or absence of Action Suggestions(i.e: change lanes’). For their experiment, the authors used simulation sofware that they put in a Mercedes-Benz. Scenes were projected of a highway with two lanes, with no "surrounding" vehicles. Visual warnings were displayed on a screen to the right of the steering wheel, and audio was fed through a speaker.  

The authors used different types of obstacles like fallen trees, rocks, lost cargo, or a broken-down vehicle appearing. These were described to the driver with the following parameters: type, location, distance from obstacle. Some setups they tested were:

Discussion

This paper presented interseting ideas. I was curious to know how one could test such a system, however the authors have managed a thorough experiment. The findings from the authors were interesting, and they corresponded to my predictions. As drivers often listen to music, I had a hard time seeing how to incorporate an auditory warning signal without disrupting a driver's listening experience. The researchers plan in the future to use a head-down display rather than a projected displayed on a vehicle's windshield.

• Visual warning with a blinking red bar
• Visual warning with an auditory signal
• Visual warning supplemented with speech
• Speech-only warnings

Results: Overall, the researchers found that adding warnings enhanced drivers' reaction time. For example, auditory warning aided in braking faster. As far as feedback from users, they expressed how they liked the assisstance provided, and found it useful. The authors also explained that a visual warning worked the best on drivers, and auditory warnings less so. The authors do explain, however, that a survery performed after their experiment revealed a preference for a beep rather than a bliking red bar, and that a visual warning without sound wasn't very popular.

Paper Reading #18: Speeding pointing in tiled widgets: understanding the effects of target expansion and misprediction

Comments
Shena Hoffman
Evin Schuchardt

Reference Information

Title: Speeding pointing in tiled widgets: understanding the effects of target expansion and misprediction

Authors:  Jaime Ruiz  University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada 
               Edward Lank  University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada 

        

Presentation Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces ;
ACM

New York, NY, USA ©2010

Summary

In this paper, the authors discuss a pointing facilitation technique, in addition to their desire to improve the time it takes a user to reach his/her pointing target when using a graphic interface. In particular, they wish to remedy tiled-like target arrangements via widget target expansion. We can give the example of the font and point size selection widgets, common in word processing programs like Microsoft Word.  A common problem that researchers face is the limited amount of screen space around tiled targets. Expansion of a target results in less available surface, and affects neighboring targets. Occlusion and displacement, the authors say, are two problems that can occur when a target is expanded. In this paper, the researchers have relied on previous work for single target expansion, to guide their design. The technique the authors have focused on is a technique for predicting where a user will select in real time. It is called kinematic endpoint prediction (KEP). The way it works is that it “uses the motion profile of a user to define a region of interest on the display.”

The researchers have performed two experiments to test the possibility of using KEP for multiple selected target expansion. In their first experiment, they tested to see expanding a certain set of targets'. In addition target displacement was assessed. Target displacement is the result of targets near the expanded targets shifting their positions to make room for the expanded target. They presented users with a random set of pointing tasks with some tasks using expansion with a simulated predictor said to be highly accurate and some using no expansion. There were seven possible tiles to select.

In the second experiment they used a similar setup, however in this case, the aim was to use the KEP algorithm to predict which targets should be expanded. The target arrangement used on the screen was different because the entire computer screen was filled with targets rather than just displaying seven targets.

Some of the findings of the two experiments were that:

• Target expansion does improve pointing and selecting performance, but better when there is a small set of targets.
• A minimum requirement for a target technique to be useful is an accuracy greater than 56.5 percent.
• There is a limit to how much a target can shift when expanded. As Fitt's Law explains, increase in distance reduces the likelihood of a user pinpointing his/her desired target.

DiscussionI liked this paper. The authors are trying to improve graphic interfaces by diminishing the time it takes a user to select their desired target. Current programs such as Microsoft Word that use the Ribbon style display, have organized targets in an intuitive way, however the sheer amount of widgets, and options eventually gets tiresome, especially when you are looking for a new widget. The authors' experiments were thoroughly explained, and the data they gathered was well analyzed. The technique the authors are trying to improve is very important as this is a very common task performed by users of graphic interfaces; therefore improving pointing performance by even a small margin can greatly improve a user’s productivity with graphical user interfaces.

Paper Reading # 17: A code reuse interface for non-programmer middle school students

Comments

Cindy Skach
Evin Schuchardt

Reference Information

Title: A code reuse interface for non-programmer middle school students

Authors: Paul A. Gross  Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA 
              Micah S. Herstand  Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA 
              Jordana W. Hodges  The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA 
              Caitlin L. Kelleher  Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA 
           

Presentation Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces; 
ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010

Summary

In this paper, the authors discuss an interface that allows non programmers (i.e: middle school students) to reuse code without requiring prior programming knowledge.  The interface is implemented for the Looking Glass IDE; the next version of storytelling Alice. Alice was a freeware object-oriented educational programming language with an integrated development environment (IDE) developed in the late nineties.

The way the environment is initially set up is with stories upon which functionality can be added. They give the example of a virtual girl, Melley, whose task is to develop super strength and knock a house over. After finding a similar story from a library(i.e: an agent who jumps at an "evil" doctor and knocks him down.), the user has to "steal" the story's Actionscript which starts the reuse process. The action occurring is then recorded. Provided with helper tools, the user can select the relevant code that will be used in his/her own story. To integrate the new code within the current story, the user must specify the taget actors of the script. In the example given, Melley would carry out the agent's task, and the house would carry out the "evil" doctor role. Hence, when the new script is played, you see Melley jumping, and knocking down a house just like we wanted. To resolve the possible issue of mapping actions to objects of different sizes the user has to reference subparts by name and choose more subparts if there is no match. 

A user study was performed with 47 students. The grade pool was from sixth to eighth grade. The students were given a tutorial, and then examples. They also were asked for feedback after usage. Students worked in groups and showed each other their animations. This encouraged them to reuse animations. 77% of the actions used in the animation contained more than five lines of code. Finally, the students took a quiz at the end of the study. They found that students who tried tinkering with the given code, rather than copying it, performed well on the quizzes.

Discussion

This paper was interesting. I always regretted not being exposed to programming concepts before arriving to college. With regards to the aforementioned program, Alice, I had read, and seen videos about it before. I believe it stems from Carnegie Mellon, and is related to the late Randy Pausch's research, if my memory serves me right. I actually tried the Alice program about two years back and liked it, so I'm on board with this present research.

Full Blog: Coming of Age in Samoa



Author: Margaret Mead

Book: Coming of Age in Samoa

Summary

In this book, the author starts by giving us the historical and sociological context of her work. She then states the general state of the american youth in the United States in the post first World War era. She evokes the overall sense of unease, and the difficulty of youth in their transition through adolescence. Attempting to understand the origins of the problems, she offeres us her anthropological background, and the anthropological method which is the study of another less complex civilization to extrapolate an explanation. The civilization she decides to study are the Samoan people. In  particular the samoan adolescent girl.

She proposes to explore two main questions:

• Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization?
• Under differenct conditions does adolescence present a different  picture?

From then, she gives a detailed description, about her experience in Samoa, and what conclusions she draws from that experience.
The summaries of the chapters of the book can be found in my previous blog entries.  At end, she answers the questions she posed at the beginning, and we can draw from her answers, that adolescence does differ based on location, culture, and morals.

Discussion

I felt this was good exposure to an ethnographic work. When reading Mead's book, one clearly sees that she put a lot of thought into her methodology, and study approach. This reflects in the amount of detail that can be found in the book when it comes to the Samoan people. I admit I'm usually for less description with books, but given that it's part of an ethnography, I can understand the need to do a thorough study. The only thing I did not appreciate, nor understand, was the need to go into details with Samoan sex practices. That's a little invasive in my opinion. Apart from that, I'm not sure why this book invited a lot of criticism. In the context of HCI, the only thing I think Mead teaches us, is that as program designers, we sometimes need to take a step back and consider another perspective in order to understand the way we do things.

Paper Reading #16: Using fNIRS brain sensing in realistic HCI settings: experiments and guidelines

Comments

Cindy Skach
Erin Schuchardt

Reference Information

Title: Using fNIRS brain sensing in realistic HCI settings: experiments and guidelines

Authors:Erin Treacy Solovey  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
             Audrey Girouard  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
             Krysta Chauncey  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
             Leanne M. Hirshfield  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
             Angelo Sassaroli  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
             Feng Zheng  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
             Sergio Fantini  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
             Robert J.K. Jacob  Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 

Presentation Venue: UIST 2009: 22nd annual ACM  symposium on User interface software and technology; Date: 2009;
Location: New York, NY, USA

Summary
This paper deals with Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). In a nutshell, fNRIS measures the oxygen content of blood in the brain. It sends near-infrared light through the skull to a depth of 1.5 - 3 cm. This light is absorbed by both oxygenated hemoglobin and un-oxygenated hemoglobin and reflected back to sensors located near the light source. The data received from the sensors creates a cognitive state, which describes which sections of the brain are active.

 

As background, the authors give us some of the brain imaging techniques in use today:

• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) which is very effective in neural imaging, however does not do a good job when it comes to head movement. The slightest head movement results in corrupted images. In addition, the use of magnetic fields forbids the use of metal objects near the head.

 

• Electroencephalography (EEG). It also falls short as a viable solution because it requires participants to put gel in their hair. Since fNIRS does not require gel and is portable, the researchers believe it is the best brain imaging technique to be used in HCI.

Some historical background given by the paper reveals that brain imaging devices have been traditionally designed for disabled users, many of which paralyzed to receive special training. For the uses of HCI, the aim is to implement some type of cognitive control system. This explains the need to make the current available technology portable, and catered to things like head movement. A series of experiments have been performed to test the effects of these different sources of interference called artifacts. They focused on reading brain activity while the subject did nothing, used the mouse, used the keyboard, moved its head, made facial expressions.

They found that using the mouse and keyboard produced little or no interference with the fNIRS reading, where as head movement and facial expressions made the readings incomprehensible.

Based on these findings during the experiments the team outlined a set of guideline for using fNIRS in HCI. Future improvements may include using a chin rest so major head movements can be avoided and adding an accelerometer to the device so that head movements can be detected.

Discussion

This paper gave me a good introduction to brain imaging though I am a Computer Engineering major. This is a multidisciplinary project, that presents some good methods for reducing noise in fNIRS data. As mentioned in the paper, issues like a person's head movement will need to be resolved though. I do feel, however, that the authors of this paper have done effective work in laying down the foundation for future work on fNIRS. Future work, from this point, should be interesting. I am eager to see if we will ever be able to control our computers solely from the mind.