Paper Reading #17: Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of InnocuousWearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment

References

Andrew Raij, Animikh Ghosh, Santosh Kumar, and Mani Srivastava.  "Privacy Risks Emerging from the Adoption of InnocuousWearable Sensors in the Mobile Environment". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios

Andrew B Raij is a Post-Doc fellow with the University of Memphis.

Animikh Ghosh spent time as a researcher at the University of Memphis.

Santosh Kumar is an associate professor at the University of Memphis.

Mani Bhushan Srivastava is a well known researcher from AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is currently a professor at UCLA.

Summary 

• Hypothesis -User concerns over privacy in terms of mobile devices due to the higher amount of personal devices that hold personal information.
• Method -The researchers divided 66 participants into two groups. One group was monitored for basic information for a week, while the other (the control group) was not monitored at all. Both groups filled out a survey at the beginning of the study to indicate their feelings on potentially private information in the next week. After the week was over, both groups again took a similar survey. Before the second survey, however, the monitored group was given the data collected on them and the conclusions drawn from that data.
• Results - The results from the second survey definitely indicated that those with a personal stake in the data expressed higher concerns about privacy than those without. The concern of those being monitored also showed increased concerns after the week. The researchers also found that the group of people the information would be given to changed the level of concern. Concern also increased when a schedule of behaviours or a timeline was created. The two main areas of concern were dealing with stress and conversations. Some were concerned that the wrong conclusions would be drawn because they wouldn't have the whole picture.
• Content - This paper discussed the growing public concern about privacy risks in the information age. The results from its study show that when the stakes are personal, the level of concern rises. The researchers proposed removing as much information from transmissions as possible.

 Discussion

This paper didn't register as a big deal for me. I purposefully keep things I want private off my cell phone and Facebook. I don't post things I don't want random people to see, for it's going to be seen, and I know that. If I have private information on my computer(s), I ensure that it has varying levels of security on it, depending on how sensitive the information is. It seems to me that especially nowadays, this study should have been relatively obvious. At any rate, if people are that concerned about privacy, they should take steps to conceal it themselves and not demand larger companies or the technology manufacturers be the ones responsible.

Paper reading #16: Classroom-Based Assistive Technology

References

Meg Cramer, Sen H. Hirano, Monica Tentori, Michael T. Yeganyan, Gillian R. Hayes. "Classroom-Based Assistive Technology". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios

Meg Cramer and Sen Hirano are both currently graduate students in Informatics at UC Irvine in the School of Information and Computer Science.

Monica Tentori is currently an assistant professor in computer science at UABC in Mexico, and is a post-doc scholar at UC Irvine.

 

Michael T. Yeganyan is an Informatics STAR Group Researcher at UC Irvine and hold an MS in Informatics.

Gillian R. Hayes is currently an assistant professor in Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine.  She also directs the STAR group.

Summary

• Hypothesis - The vSked system is an improvement over current systems to help autistic students in school.
• Method - There are three main stages in the development of vSked. During each stage, the teachers and aids were interviewed and asked to comment on the system. The students were not directly interacted with, as the demonstrated minimal communication skills. Several pieces of information were taken into account when evaluating the system, such as level of consistency and predictability in the schedule, student anxiety, and teacher awareness. The researchers analyzed data to ensure that the system was seeing to teacher and student needs.
• Results -The results were highly positive. The teachers expressed a large amount of surprise at some of the results. Students were able to learn concept much faster with the images given to them, as well as answer questions deemed too complicated due to the new system. Students were able to progress through the day's activities with much less prompting, and they were much more comfortable with the new calendar system.
• Content - This paper introduced the vSked system, which was engineered towards helping autistic students succeed in school. They tested it by introducing it to a class and interviewing the teachers about student progress and how well the students used the system. The results were positive across the board. It was noted that it was somewhat inflexible, but that it had a lot of room for changes.

 Discussion

Although I am not particularly interested in this kind of technology, this was a large step in a good direction. Helping these students succeed is a great goal. Instead of producing a new type of technology, their aim was to improve existing concepts and implementing them in a real-world environment. They were able to prove that their system was a large improvement over current systems, and it is highly possible this system will be used widely in the future.

Paper Reading #15: Madgets: actuating widgets on interactive tabletops

References

Malte Weiss, Florian Schwarz, Simon Jakubowski, and Jan Borchers.  "Madgets: actuating widgets on interactive tabletops". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios

Malte Weiss is currently a PhD student at the Media Computing Group.  His research focuses on interactive surfaces and tangible user interfaces.

Florian Schwarz is currently an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.  He received a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts.

Simon Jakubowski is currently a Research Scientist at AlphaFix. He was a research scientist at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. 

Jan Borchers is currently a professor at RWTH Aachen University.  He received a PhD in Computer Science from Darmstadt University of Technology.

Summary 

• Hypothesis - The researchers hypothesized that they could create small, light-weight physical widgets to be used on top of an interactive touch display that could modify the position of the widget.
• Method - The goal of this paper was to make an interactive tabletop that was low cost and light-weight. The realized this by using magnetic widgets and an electromagnetic array below the screen. They utilize infrared reflectors and sensors to classify a given widget and get its location. By changing polarities and strengths of the magnets below the display they are able to move the Madgets along a calculated path.
• Results - The researchers were able to construct their prototypes as well as several other types of widgets. The widgets themselves to not take long to build, although registering new controls can take considerably longer (up to 2 hours). The developers are currently working on a method to make the process faster to allow for rapid prototyping.
• Content - The authors of this paper presented Madgets, a method to integrate physical objects with the virtual world. They also demonstrated that the system can do much more with the widgets than just move them physically; they can alter their properties and make them perform much more complicated tasks, such as ring a bell or act as a physical button. The paper offers a complete description of how the system works and why it is beneficial.

 Discussion

All in all, I rather enjoyed this concept. Although it wasn't a research paper per se, it did hold some interesting ideas. While reading it I toyed with the idea of playing chess with a system such as this. This could also be useful for representing a military battle, physically representing troop movements without moving pieces inaccurately by hand. It also made me think of the hologram game in the original Star Wars movie (4th), which looked a little like chess but with monsters. Not quite the same concept, as that deals with holograms, but it did remind me of it.

Paper reading #14: TeslaTouch: electrovibration for touch surfaces

References

Olivier Bau, Ivan Poupyrev, Ali Israr, and Chris Harrison.  "TeslaTouch: electrovibration for touch surfaces". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios

The authors were all researchers at Disney Research, except for Chris Harrison who was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon.

Summary 

• Hypothesis - The researchers hypothesized that electrovibration can be used as an effective method for haptic feedback on touch surfaces.
• Method/Content - Electrovibration was created by placing a transparent electrode layer between a glass plate and a thin insulation layer. Tests ensued to find human thresholds of what they could detect with their fingers. Ten participants were tested for thresholds in frequency and amplitude. They were also asked to describe the "feeling" of each level. After the user study was conducted, they developed several applications to show off their findings. 
• Results - Users found that higher frequencies led to smoother surfaces, low frequencies to rough surfaces. It was also found that the effect of amplitude depended upon the underlying frequency. Increasing amplitude for a high frequency increased the level of smoothness, where a low amplitude low frequency vibration induced a perception of stickiness. It was also noted that while users could feel the sensation of friction, they were able to perceive the vibration at the same time. 
• Content - The paper introduced TeslaTouch, a method of tactile feedback that does not require moving or mechanical parts. They tested different levels of electrovibration and categorized user perceptions. They then compared this new technology with existing mechanical feedback and discussed its advantages over the latter. They then discussed possible practical uses for this technology.

 Discussion

This technology seems to be very close in concept to an idea I had a long time ago for a screenless feedback device. This paper was very important to me in relation to that; it gave me a few ideas. Other than that, I loved the idea of this technology; I believe it can be very useful and it progresses us further towards virtual reality environments; can you imagine a full-body suit of electrovibrations that could allow you to feel different sensations on different parts of your body? It would be an amazing experience.

Paper Reading #8: Gesture Search: A Tool for Fast Mobile Data Access

References
Yang Li.  "Gesture search: a tool for fast mobile data access". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios
Yang Li received his Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley. Li helped found the Design Use Build community while a professor at the University of Washington. He is now a Senior Research Scientist at Google.

Summary 

• Hypothesis -Yang Li theorized that some methods of phone input are inappropriate for some situations; for example, voice commands in a quiet environment is generally frowned upon. Also in some situations, touch-based typing is difficult to accomplish. The hypothesis is that Gesture Search is a better alternative to access mobile data.
• Method/Content - He developed an Android app that he made publicly available to the company (Google). The application logged user data and after a certain period was used to analyze performance. Users were not required to use it at any time and could stop using it when they wanted. However, when choosing which data to analyze, he required that the user used it at least once per week. Yang then set up a study in which he asked for users to perform certain actions on a mobile device using standard GUI interfaces. They were not told what the study was about so as to create a natural environment. 
• Results - After comparing the two types of mobile interactions, they hypothesis was supported in certain situations. Users typically used the Gesture Search for contacts, occasionally for apps, and very rarely for web pages. The majority of searches were found quickly, in under 3 seconds. The average rating for the app was 4/5 stars, with few outliers. Most users were happy with the app due to the ability to find information without going through a hierarchy of menus. 
• Content -  Yang Li developed an Android application that utilized gesture input to search through a smart phone for contacts, music, and other such information. He solves several problems of ambiguity by using a time-out method to decide whether a stroke is still the same letter. Also, he gives search results weights; when something is selected, its weight increases. With time, weights fade and they don't show at the top of the search results any longer. After developing the application, he studies people's usage of the application and compares it to GUI based operation.

 Discussion
I actually downloaded the app and used it for a while myself. It was useful occasionally, but mostly only when I was holding something in one hand. However, the biggest thing I didn't like about it was that it didn't search through files. That was the one thing I wanted it to do; finding a contact for me takes about 5 seconds anyway. However, going into a file manager, navigating through folders and scrolling through files can take a good bit of time, especially when there are many small files in the same folder. It seems to me that it would not take a huge amount of effort to extend this application to search through the phone's memory, so I was disappointed to find that it did not support this functionality.

Paper Reading #7: Performance Optimizations of Virtual Keyboards for Stroke-Based Text Entry on a Touch-Based Tabletop

References
Jochen Rick.  "Performance optimizations of virtual keyboards for stroke-based text entry on a touch-based tabletop". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios
Jochen Rick received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech. He is currently a professor at Saarland University.

Summary 

• Hypothesis - The layout of a keyboard drastically influences user performance when using stroke-based input.
  
• Method/Content - The author originally created a mathematical model of user input performance in order to compare the performance of different keyboard layouts. He created this model by means of a user study in which he collected data such as the speed of strokes in different directions and turning speed. He was able to then create a visual representation of the data. Once he had this model, he was able to find constants for each equation that represented a good scaling potential. He then applied these equations to newly created keyboard based upon this information and the standard keyboards in use (such as QWERTY and Dvorak).
• Results - The results were as expected; the optimized keyboards outperformed the standard key layouts, although the standard key layouts are effective for tap-typing. He mentioned that it was expected as these layouts were designed for typing with ten fingers, where the compact layouts were designed with one fingered strokes specifically in mind.
• Content - The author claims that there is a need for more optimized keyboard layouts based around stroke-based input. He goes into the history of keyboard layouts and the reasons behind the development of the current most common ones. He then develops a model with which to compare keyboard layouts' efficiency. After developing this model, he compares optimized keyboards to current keyboards. He then proposed new keyboard layouts that show overall improvement over current layouts.
  

 Discussion
This paper seems pretty intuitive at every point, but it seems that no one had done a study specifically on it until now. However, I'm all about efficiency, so this held my interest pretty well. I personally tap-type, so I can't relate to the stroke-based typing; however, if a good keyboard layout were implemented for stroke typing, I may give it a try. It just seemed to me originally that if I were to use a standard keyboard layout why use a different input method? I was especially interested in the hexagonal layout; that is very different from the norm and look fun to try.

Paper Reading #6: TurKit: Human Computation Algorithms on Mechanical Turk

 References
Greg Little, Lydia B. Chilton, Max Goldman, and Robert C. Miller.  "TurKit: human computation algorithms on mechanical turk". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.  ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010.

 Author Bios
Greg Little is a graduate of MIT.

Lydia Chilton is a graduate student at the University of Washington.  She has interned for Microsoft Research in Beijing.  She is also a graduate of MIT.

Max Goldman is a professor at MIT and is part of the User Interface Design Group.

Rob Miller is also a professor at MIT.  Miller is the leader of the User Interface Design Group.

Summary 

• Hypothesis - The researchers hypothesize that using TurKit they can aid in the development of algorithmic tasks for mTurk at the cost of efficiency.
  
• Method/Content - They based their design on what they called the "crash and re-run" paradigm. This is an advanced implementation of dynamic programming; in essence, it allows the expensive functions to run only once and subsequent callings of the same function simply retrieves data stored in a database. Thus when the program crashes, the user can pick and choose which functions to run again, without needing to run the entire thing.
  
• Results - The results were overall positive. The main complaints were that the scripts TurKit could run needed to be deterministic, for if it were to change with different inputs it would need to be run again anyway. Another complaint was that some users did not know of some of the features, but this also may be that they were using it in the early stages of TurKit's development, when some had not been implemented yet. They did, however, discover that the running time of all of the TurKit script is faster than nearly all of the human function calls.
• Content - TurKit is a tool that automates mTurk for ease of use and repetition. It allows users to specify which parts of the program to rerun in the event of a crash. It goes in depth for some of the features. It also describes user reactions to TurKit.
  

 Discussion
The researchers successfully developed a useful tool to help with mTurk. Its crash and re-run design paradigm complements the slow human function runtimes very well. They did state, however, that while it is useful for research, it is doubtful that it will be useful in any large-scale project. While it is hard to say whether human computational resources are truly a valuable resource are not is up to mTurk, but TurKit is indeed a useful tool to be used with mTurk. I hope they can continue their development of TurKit so they may scale the tool for large-scale projects.