-Exploring textile-based electro-tactile display for less distracted mobile multitasking

(Seungyon Claire Lee, Thad Starner)

Mobile multitasking is everywhere. Some people answer the phone call while walking in the street. The other people check the e-mail while driving a car. Due to the limited resources, people have to shift their visual attention between tasks frequently when they use mobile devices while on-the-go.

EMMA explores wearable electro-tactile displays which is designed to facilitate less distractive alert system. The grid of textile-based electrodes is cross stitched with conductive thread and embeeded in a wristband interface. It provides appropriate alert without interrupting primary task of mobile users. The highest resolution of EMMA corresponds to 14x14 pixels in 1 inch square.

-Exploring Soft Buttons Input Usability of Mobile Devices with Touch Screen

(Seungyon Claire Lee, Shumin Zhai, John Barton: Internship Research, IBM Almaden Research Center)

Despite the concerns on the lack of tactile feedback, touch screens with soft buttons gain popularity in the market. This study compares various soft buttons in touch screens with traditional physical hard buttons regarding augmentation, mode of touch and button size.

- Augmentation: How much audio and vibrato-tactile feedback can help the performance?
- Mode of touch: Does the sensor type (resistive vs. capacitive) affect the performance?
- Button size: Does the button size in each sensor type affect the performance?

-Tap-based one-handed text input method using sequential finger taps

(Seungyon Claire Lee, Mark Newman, Kurt Partridge : Internship Research, Palo Alto Research Center)

Paradiddle is a tap-based one-handed text entry method. It is designed to support mobile and wearable text entry in the multi-tasking situation where total time to enter text (text input latency) is as important as raw time for text input (text input bandwidth).

The mobile electronic devices which extend the computing environment outside of the desktop enables multi-tasking situation in our everyday lives. The requirement for mobile text entry in this situation is varied, and depends on the use's environment, concurrent activities, and the purpose since, as stated by Paul Dourish as "ecological perspective", human cognition is located in a contextually appropriate manner involving the organism, action, and the environment as a whole rather than limited as a single neural phenomenon.

The method allows users to type text through sequential finger taps in one hand. The buttonless sensing surface that we implement aims to enalbe typing without visual attention. As the device miniaturization is important to mobile devices, the noble and flexible text entry interface of Paradiddle is expected to optimize miniaturized device size (outer interface) and users' physical limitations and capabilities (inner interface) since it uses users' hand and fingers as a variable to customize the outer interface.

- Gesture-based American Sign Language (ASL) game for Deaf children

(Seungyon Claire Lee, Valerie Henderson, Thad Starner, Helen Brashear, Harley Hamilton)

90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who may not be fluent in sign language. These children's first expose to their first language (American Sign Language) often occues at preschool, not at home from birth. Since early childhood is a critical period for language acquisition, this linguistic delay is known as a serious issues on deaf childrens' linguistic development.

CopyCat/Castle Quest are gesture-based American Sign Language (ASL) games designed to support deaf children's ASL learning while they play the game. Player's signed gesture, which is captured by the colored-gloves and wrist-mounted accelerometers, is the main input method to direct the game. In collaboration with Atlanta Area School for the Deaf (AASD), we conducted user studies to obtain children's feedback and gesture data to train the gesture recognition engine that we are currently developing.

The game aims to encourage deaf children to be engaged in ASL as easily and frequently in enjoyable manner. For more information, please visit our official copyCat/Castle Quest website.

Visit my old home to see previous portfolio. Most of them are projects done while I was an M.S. in HCI student at Georgia Tech. The old home also has a link to the "older" home, syndromescape.com, which has some visual and architectural projects.