Current Researchers: Jed Brubaker, Janet Vertesti, Paul Dourish, Niraj Desai, and Gillian Hayes

The mass adoption of Social Networking Sites (SNS) includes the growing presence of representing individuals who are no longer alive. However, the death of a user does not result in the elimination of his or her account nor the profile’s place inside a network of digital peers. Indeed, friends’ use of a user’s profile postmortem to say last goodbyes, share memories, and coordinate funereal arrangements is a well known, if not frequently discussed.

Focusing on death brings to bear three important themes for social networks and the representation of identity for their users: embodiment, representation, and temporality. Embodiment particularly concerns the way that data objects and digital representations “stand for” human bodies. It encapsulates issues of access, issues of ownership, issues of management, issues of presence, issues of personhood, and issues of participatory status, both at the technical level and at the social. Representation invokes the traditional considerations of online identity, the presentation of self, and the crafting of acceptable personas as well as consideration of the ways in which records are created with specific purposes and representations in mind. Representation relates to embodiment in that it speaks to the relationship that holds between the data object and the human body, but it incorporates too the active, purposive, strategic practices of re-present-ing, that is, of making something present again, with particular ends in mind. Temporality concerns the notion of “lifecycles” as it has been applied in system development—the circumstances under which digital systems come into being, are put to use, and are taken out of service. The life of a user and the life of that user’s data are frequently not the same, an issue particularly acute when considering the continuation of dead user profiles in SNS.

Research Team: Sen Hirano, Leslie Liu, Sunyoung Park, Natalie Rich, Sheba George (CDU), Dini Baker (EDAC/CHOC)

PIs: Gillian Hayes, Karen Cheng (CDU)

Premature birth is associated with long term health impairments including neurological and cognitive deficiencies, chronic lung disease, and altered growth patterns of lean, fat, and bone tissues. Furthermore, parents of premature infants may experience excessive stress, post-partum depression, and other challenges associated with the birth of and caring for their child.

We are designing, developing, and deploying an innovative and feasible mobile solution for collecting infant and caregiver ODLs, sharing these data with their providers, and visualizing and summarizing these data for both the parents and clinicians caring for these children. This system, FitBaby, has been shown to be helpful in preliminary pilot studies, and now we are expanding its capabilities. Candidate ODLs include length and weight of the baby, feeding and sleeping schedules, and self-reported data about infant well-being and caregiver stress.  We are using a participatory design approach that includes clinicians, parents, social workers, and other relevant stakeholders.  This work includes ongoing collaboration with the UCI Medical Center Department of Pediatrics and Information Services Department to overcome clinical and technical challenges in our design, development, and evaluation as well as in planning for long-term impacts to the clinical workflow.

Watch a talk Gillian gave at Microsoft Research that covers some of the autism and FitBaby work:  http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=121512

Check out our posts on the Robert Wood Johnson Project HealthDesign Blog:

The relationship between ADLs and ODLs (this one is in Spanish too!)

Are there ODL’s in Diapers?

An introduction to our team

Current Researchers: Michael Yeganyan, David Schramm, Meg Cramer, Monica Tentori and Gillian Hayes

Past Collaborators: Sen Hirano, Gabriela Marcu, Mohamad Monibi, David Nguyen

Project: Visual schedules and choice boards are tools used in current best practices for helping children with autism and other special needs. These non-verbal kids need help communicating their choices, understanding time and activities, and so on. We are working with Windows SmartPhone, Linux small displays, and large touchscreen-enabled platforms to develop solutions that ease these burdens, provide logging and visualizations of data, and help automate some of the features of using these communication techniques.

We are also investigating how novel recording technologies, like the Microsoft SenseCam can be used to augment communication between non-verbal children with autism and their caregivers – including both parents and teachers.

Watch a talk Gillian gave at Microsoft Research that covers some of the autism and FitBaby work:  http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=121512

This work is supported in part by technical assistance and equipment through a collaboration with Microsoft Reserach Cambdridge.

This work is supported by AutismSpeaks Innovative Technologies For Autism program, a generous equipment donation from Nokia Research Palo Alto, and an NSF CAREER award.

The vSked and SenseCam for Autism projects will be presented at IMFAR 2008 in Chicago.

This work was presented at IDC as a poster at the main conference and at the Design for Children with Special Needs Workshop:

The vSked and SenseCam for Autism projects will be presented at IMFAR this year in Chicago.

This work was presented at IDC as a poster at the main conference and at the Design for Children with Special Needs Workshop:

vSked: Interactive Visual Scheduling Systems
Gillian R. Hayes
David Nguyen
Michael Yeganyan
Sen Hirano
Gabriela Marcu

SenseCam
Gillian R. Hayes
Gabriela Marcu

Mocotos:  Mobile Communications Tools for Children with Special Needs
Mohamad Monibi
Gillian R. Hayes

Interactive and Intelligent Visual Communication Systems
Gillian R. Hayes
Donald J. Patterson
Mohamad Monibi
Sam Kaufman

This work was also presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research as a poster:

Design of Interactive Visual Scheduling Systems
Sam Kaufman
Donald J. Patterson
Gillian R. Hayes

Research Team: Jed Brubaker, Ellie Harmon

PIs: Paul Dourish, Melissa Mazmanian

This project is directly concerned with issues of scale in social-computational systems. How can we exploit the power of contemporary networks to bring people together to act and operate at scale? In particular, can we draw lessons from sociological investigations of social movements to turn current interests in social media and social networking into larger-scale actions? In his book on “smart mobs,” Rheingold (2002) documents the role of mobile technologies as coordinative tools in large-scale social action; although in most of the cases he documents, technology is used to support real-time coordination of existing interesting groups. Our question is, can social media help to engender those social interest groups and social movements on a large scale over time?

We are performing a a mixed-method investigation of social-computational systems, combining:

• The deployment and iterative refinement of a prototype technology for personal reflection in environmental sustainability, designed along lines suggested by research in social movements and media discourse;
• Quantitative assessment of the growth and development of participation in the communities linked by this system and relations to the structural properties of social networks and temporal aspects of information flow;
• Qualitative examination of the processes of identification with and enrollment into a social movement through the sharing of participation and resources for situating oneself within.

Congratulations to the stellar (no pun intended) undegraduate students who recently got funding for summer research:

Ryan Wallace, ”Evaluating Innovative Technologies for Supporting the Needs of Children with Autism”

Jared Haren, “Visualizing Personal Digital Traces Using Mobile Phone Logs”

Alex Bretana, “Understanding and Envisioning Ubiquitous Computing Systems in Volunteer Management and Coordination”

Chris Combs, “Evaluation of Health Information Systems at UC Irvine Medical Center”

Tom Lilleho, “Developing a Storytelling Game to Enhance the Social Skills of Children with Autism”

For more information on UCI’s undergraduate research program, check out http://www.urop.uci.edu/.

Our paper on the design of a mobile tool based on the Social Compass Curriculum was accepted for publication at this year’s Ubicomp conference. The citation and abstract are below…. look for the camera ready version of the paper to show up on our publications page as soon as it is done.

Tentori, M. and Hayes, G.R. Designing for Interaction Immediacy
to Enhance Social Skills of Children with Autism To Appear Proc Ubicomp 2010. Copenhagen, Denmark. September 26-29, 2010.

Abstract:

Children with autism often require therapeutic interventions to support engagement in effective social interactions in different contexts. In this paper, we present the results of a study conducted in three public schools that use an educational and behavioral intervention for the instruction of social skills in changing situational contexts and ongoing social interactions. The results of this study led to the concept of interaction immediacy to help children maintain appropriate spatial boundaries, reply to conversation initiators, disengage appropriately at the end of an interaction, and identify potential communication partners. We describe design principles for Ubicomp technologies to support interaction immediacy and present an example design. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, we present an understanding of social skills in mobile and dynamic contexts. Second, we introduce the concept of interaction immediacy and show its effectiveness as a guiding principle for the design of Ubicomp applications.

Ever wondered if Pippin has Wifi? Does the campus Starbucks take gift cards if so, then “UCI Dining” is the app for you!

UCI Dining has just been named one of six finalists from across the nation in the Google “Juicy Ideas Collegiate Competition.” Teams from MIT, Stanford, and University of Washington are among the other finalists.

UCI Dining grew out of experience gained in Informatics 133 and some student munchies.

Congratulations to Jared Haren and Adrian Guzman and Sabel Braganza

vSked: An Interactive Visual Schedule System for use in Classrooms for Children with Autism
Michael T. Yeganyan, Meg Cramer, Lou Anne Boyd and Gillian R. Hayes

Children with autism often experience substantial challenges in understanding, structuring, and predicting the activities in their daily lives. The use of symbols to represent a series of activities, also known as visual schedules, have been shown to be an effective intervention technique for helping individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In this paper, we describe the design and technical architecture for vSked, an interactive visual scheduling tool that allows group interactivity with content generated through end-user programming. We also outline a scenario that demonstrates how vSked extends the benefits of traditional visual schedules through both interactivity and automatic logging of use. This scenario also indicates the type of experience a user might have during a demonstration session.

This highly competitive program comes with three years of funding.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing

Call for Papers:  Theme Issue on Technologies for Autism

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), also known as Pervasive Development Disorder, includes impairments in social interaction, communication—both verbal and non-verbal—and stereotypical or repeated behavior, interests and activities. A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control using data from the United States in 2006 indicated a rise in prevalence of ASD to 1 in 110 children: 1 in 70 boys and 1 in 310 girls.  Individuals across the Spectrum can potentially benefit from the use of novel computing technologies, including assistive and augmentative technologies, social computational systems, sensing and context-aware systems, capture and access applications, wearable systems, and more.

This special issue calls for original research and methodology papers on the integration of personal and ubiquitous computing technologies in support of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The purpose of this special issue is to bring together a set of research papers that will (1) advance our understanding of technologies for autism, (2) discuss the role of technology in supporting individuals with ASD, their friends and families, and (3) provide examples of effective technologies for autism. Through this special issue, we hope to bring together a diverse set of researchers working in autism, pediatrics, computer science, cognitive science, education, sociology, psychology, anthropology, information science, and more.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

* Empirical studies exploring issues related to autism that might be amenable to technological intervention;

* Empirical studies of technologies in use to support individuals with ASD;

* Methodologies for conducting research on technologies for autism;

* New designs and technologies that support individuals with ASD, their friends, relatives, co-workers, and acquaintances;

* Evaluation techniques for technologies for autism;

* Case studies on the deployment and long-term use of technologies for autism.

Important Dates:

* Papers to be submitted: August 16, 2010

* Peer reviews completed: November 16, 2010

* Revisions completed and submitted: January 1, 2011

* Publication date: March/April 2011

Length of the paper: 15-30 manuscript pages (double spaced)

Guest Editors:

* Gillian Hayes, University of California, Irvine

* Karrie Karahalios, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

To submit your paper, please email it in PDF format to gillianrh@ics.uci.edu and kkarahal@cs.uiuc.edu

Information about Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing

Editor-in-Chief: Peter Thomas

Journal web site: http://www.springer.com/computer/hci/journal/779

http://www.facebook.com/personalubicomp