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| [Potential HCI Research Opportunities] [Past Research Projects] Problem Based Learning Web Application The Biomedical Engineering (BME) program at Georgia Tech recently started a Problem Based Learning (PBL) program. In Problem Based Learning, students learn problem solving skills and domain knowledge by solving a complex, real-world problem in groups of 6-10. Written by Georgia Tech faculty, the problems relate to current research in a wide range of fields. The PBL program needs a web application to allow students, faculty, and outside observers to search for and view the problems and the resulting student solutions. I will create a web site and web application that will let both students and faculty retrieve the problems, the solutions, and the general overview information about the PBL program. Student Email: baumas@cc.gatech.edu Auditory Cues to Enhance Performance under Distraction My Master's project involves looking at how adding earcons to the interfaces of mobile devices such as cell phones or GPS systems might help the user interact with these devices more quickly and easily while he is in a highly distracting environment that demands a lot of attention. This research has practical applications in that in spite of recent legislation in some states that prohibits talking on cellular phones and driving, there are still many people who have this dangerous habit (including myself!). Student Email: kbevis@cc.gatech.edu Tools for Prototyping Augmented Reality I am currently working with Blair MacIntyre on tools that support quick prototyping of augmented reality experiences. The goal of my work is to create or enhance a tool like Macromedia Director. The tool will allow non-computer-programmer media artists to envision and plan out augmented reality spaces. Analogous to this, filmmakers use storyboarding and modeling to convey ideas and plan out production methods. Student URL: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~steven/ Design of brain-wheelchair interfaces to facilitate independent navigation I work with Dr. Melody Moore and Lisa Hunt on the Aware Chair project. As described by Lisa Hunt, "the Aware Chair Project employs a power wheelchair as a mobile platform for context-aware computing which integrates a communication and environmental control system. A very unique aspect of the Aware Chair is that it will be controlled neurally, directly from the user's brain signals, by using a noninvasive (scalp electrode) EEG and the standard BCI2000 system" (see link to website below). The goal of the Aware Chair Project is to enable users with physical disabilities to communicate as well as control and navigate their environment. I am currently working on the design of brain-wheelchair interfaces that will facilitate users' independent navigation of the wheelchair through a home environment. An important consideration for interface design in this context is facilitating navigation with very low-bandwidth input (e.g. 10 bits per minute) of the sort accomplished with current neural control systems. I plan to develop prototypes of the most promising interface designs and (hopefully) run user tests to evaluate them. Student Email: rfithian@cc.gatech.edu Live - Virtual Training Integration I am working with Blair MacIntyre ways to use Augmented Reality to support the integration of virtual and constructive simulation with real-world training exercises. The goal of the project is to allow soldiers in several geographically separated locations to conduct distributed training exercises to optimize available training resources. The integration of these training venues would allow soldiers in the physical world to "see" and interact with events happening concurrently in the virtual world. Student Email: gordonr@cc.gatech.edu Dude's Magic Box I am working with PhD student Jim Rowan on Dude's Magic Box, which is a device that will allow children and their grandparents to nurture close relationships despite physical distance. Children will be able to construct stories and communications by photographing toys, drawings, etc., and adding sound and text to create media-rich messages. Using this technology we can replace the act of "going to Grandma's" with "transmitting to Grandma" in a fun and creative medium. My role in this project is to design, build and evaluate a prototype of the physical device as well as the product interface which will be displayed in the Aware Home. Student Email: jisaacs@cc.gatech.edu Aware Chair The Aware Chair Project employs a power wheelchair as a mobile platform for context-aware computing which integrates a communication and environmental control system. A very unique aspect of the Aware Chair is that it will be controlled neurally, directly from the user's brain signals, by using a noninvasive (scalp electrode) EEG and the standard BCI2000 system. The Aware Chair project is intended to facilitate communication and environmental control for people with severe physical disabilities by detecting and recording significant aspects of the user's environment, such as who is in the room, what time of day it is, and history of interaction with conversational partners. Algorithms are used to narrow the range of selection possibilities in an intelligent manner to present the user with the most appropriate choices for conducting a conversation or controlling the environment (such as lights, television, or radio). For the communication system, we are incorporating word prediction strategies, conversation prediction strategies and contextual information in order to enhance communication speed. For the environmental control system, we are researching and developing neurally controlled interfaces to existing commercial environmental control technologies such as infrared controllers and X10. It is currently an ongoing project, under Dr. Moore's guidance, at Georgia State University's Brain-lab. Student email: lmhunt@bellsouth.net Population Segment Guide - Technology Supporting Web Usability My Master's project involves creatin software that designers can use to make their Web sites compatible with the different characteristics of the user population. This involves paying attention to, and incorporating into the design, methodologies regarding the presentation of displayed information (such as color, metaphors, icons, and symbols). Knowing the characteristics of a web site's users is important to properly presenting information to that user. Well-presented information is that which the user more quickly understands, and thus more fully processes and better remembers. There is a growing demand for businesses to find a way to convert their Web sites to reach segments of the population effectively.
Student Email: catherinejamal@hotmail.com Mobile Accessibility Guide The project involves the design, development and evaluation of a Mobile Accessibility Guide, a location-aware mobile wireless application to help find disability specific services and locate accessible places. It is a 5-year project at the GCATT (Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology), funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, US Department of Education, listed under the Wireless RERC (Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center). The focus group for the project is wheelchair restricted individuals at the Shepherd Center, a catastrophic care hospital in Atlanta. The project requires me to perform heuristic evaluations, interviews, needs analyses, surveys, task analyses, and think-alouds to design and assess the usability of the interface and also do software programming for development. Student Email: meghnakrishnan@hotmail.com Interactive Web-Enhanced DVD Critical Authoring Environment A project involving making a system that enables people, especially movie critics, to make commentaries and annotations for a specific movie - further enhancing that experience by using the movie's DVD media and the Internet to make it as interactive and seamless as possible as well as easy to access. This will be a sub part of an ongoing project with The American Film Institute at the LCC department at Georgia Tech. The project will be made by following a standard design methods (user requirements, prototyping etc.) and usability testing with expected end-users. Technologies used include Interactual Web-enhanced DVD API, Interactual PCFriendly DVD Player, ASP.NET for creating dynamic websites to support the interaction and content rendering and Microsoft SQL-Server 2000 for data management.
Student Email: thor@cc.gatech.edu Display Enhanced Testing for Concussions and mTBI (DETECT) I helped with the design of a portable, immersive, diagnostic system for neuropsychological testing to detect the severity of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Such a device can be used in the field, such as sideline assessment of concussion in sports, emergency department evaluations, or military applications. I shortened and computerized three neuropsychological tests that are known to be sensitive for detecting mTBI in a traditional environment. I conducted an experiment on healthy undergraduate students to test the immersiveness of the system. Currently, additional experiments are being conducted on actual mTBI patients at Emory University Hospital. The next step involves a refinement of the current hardware and software design and validation of the tests in clinical populations with known TBI (cognitively impaired post TBI rehabilitation patients).
Student Email: miskelly@cc.gatech.edu The Kimura: Office of the Future project I am working with Dr.Elizabeth Mynatt to study users perceptions of tasks on a computer. We are currently designing a study to understand how users perceive tasks on their desktop computer and what task management strategies they adopt. We are especially interested in the relationship between email and their task perception.
Student Email: rnair@cc.gatech.edu Augmented Reality Video Game Marleigh will be working with Dr. Blair MacIntyre in the field of augmented reality video games. The outcome of the project will be a working AR game using DART: The Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit to be presented at the Game Developer's Conference in 2005. The initial idea - working title: "Butterfly Effect" - has the player catching virtual butterflies. The player performs transformations on the coordinate plane to rotate the world and bring the butterflies into reach.
Student Email: marleigh@cc.gatech.edu Mobile Text Entry on Tractors and Farm Equipment John Deere has asked my lab to help them design a text entry system to be used on their tractors and farm equipment. Since this needs to support jitter-free operation despite rough terrain, the input device is a rotary knob mounted on a panel. As the user turns the knob, a cursor smoothly moves across the letters and numbers on the display. When the desired symbol is under the cursor, pressing a button will select it. Our first experiments are designed to parse the task into visual scan time of the display and motor control time of the cursor. Knowing the relationship between these will inform the display design and the design of future experiments. We are varying 2 factors: the shape of the display (rectangular, oval, others) and the arrangement of letters on the display (QWERTY, alphabetic, and an arrangement tuned using Fitts Law and optimized to the frequency of letter combinations in English. Since my lab specializes in the abilities of older adults, we are testing both older and young adults. A great paper to learn how people might tune a keyboard using Fitts Law is: Soukoreff, R. W. & MacKenzie, S, (1995). Theoretical Upper and Lower Bounds on Typing Speed Using a Stylus and Soft Keyboard
Student Email: markrichman@lycos.com Facilitating Machine to Human Communication in a Food Processing Facility Due to the low profit margins and high turn over rate in the food processing industry, there are always efforts to try to eliminate the number of personnel required to produce a safe, high-quality product. Currently in the poultry industry there are several USDA inspectors and trimmers per processing line. The task of eliminating faulty birds is a tedious process, and due to the low percentage of defective and diseased birds, the trimmers' time is not well utilized. The project is in conjunction with Dr. Jennifer Ockerman of GTRI and Dr. Blair Macintyre. We are working on comparing the efficiency of three different prototypes: auditory, augmented reality and laser and testing how well these can perform in place of the USDA Inspector.
Student Email: kedar@cc.gatech.edu TGarden The TGarden is a responsive media space collaboratively built by a consortium of artists and engineers in the domains of performance, visual and fabric art, wearable computing, realtime media synthesis and media choreography. It is designed for people (TGarden players) to play in informal and improvisatory social settings. How can we build play environments that reward repeated visits and ad hoc, social activity? My project is to design ways to appropriately evaluate the expressive and intersubjective power of such play environments. This research draws on techniques from experimental theater transplanted to everyday social space; theories of public space ranging from urban planners to playground designers; and evaluation methods from other disciplines such as social pychology, anthropology (ethnography), and art.
Student Email: harrycs@cc.gatech.edu InfoCanvas Design Tool The InfoCanvas creates an eye-appealing addition to a work environment that allows for a multitude of information to be monitored with minimal cognitive effort. The InfoCanvas is a kind of "virtual painting" in which elements on the canvas change state and move according to the state of information of interest to a person. Currently, canvases are custom-made on a per-user basis based on the user's requirements. Allowing users themselves to lay out and define how images on the canvas change in an intuitive, user-friendly manner is a challenging HCI problem. I am developing a methodology along with a graphical editing tool to allow users to create and edit InfoCanvases easily without requiring programming intervention. Advisor: John Stasko (stasko@cc.gatech.edu)
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