Welcome to the August 2015 SIGCHI edition of ACM TechNews.
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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE
SIGCHI Remembers John Karat
Association for Computing Machinery (07/31/15)
ACM SIGCHI Executive Committee member John Karat has passed away, leaving behind a legacy that includes chairmanship of the International Federation for Information Processing Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13). Karat also was North American editor for the journal "Behaviour and Information Technology", and editor-in-chief of the Kluwer Academic Publishers series on HCI. In addition, he participated in ACM CHI and DIS, and in the IFIP INTERACT conferences in the HCI field. Karat also served as a research staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His HCI research covered subjects such as privacy, personalization, and information management. During his tenure at IBM Development and Research, he strove to create research-based guidelines and principles for user interface design, researched and advised on design collaboration, and researched and developed speech-based systems and early electronic medical record systems. As co-leader of the IBM Privacy Research Institute, Karat worked to promote the importance of privacy issues in IT worldwide. He also worked to advance industry/academia collaboration as project leader for an open collaborative research initiative in privacy and security policy management with Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, and Imperial College London. Karat was a recipient of the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award and was designated a Distinguished Scientist by ACM, in addition to many honors from IFIP and TC13.
A Health-Tracking App You Might Actually Stick With
Technology Review (07/28/15) Rachel Metz
The MyBehavior application designed by researchers at Cornell and Michigan State universities could help users make and stick with health and fitness changes to their routines by logging where and when they are active and stationary, along with their food intake. Cornell professor Tanzeem Choudhury says MyBehavior attempts to create achievable goals that integrate with users' habits, as well as adjusting to their routine changes over time. "That adaptive nature helps you climb the ladder at your own pace," she says. A 14-week study involving 16 people who used the app on Android smartphones was recently conducted. Choudhury notes MyBehavior users burned 45 more calories and ate 150 fewer calories daily. MyBehavior automatically tracks running, walking, and sitting with the phone's accelerometer and global-positioning system, combining that data with its algorithms to produce health and fitness suggestions the user is likely to try. Users can log food by capturing a photo of what they are eating and uploading it to the app's server, where a group of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers can label it and ascertain its caloric content, among other attributes. MyBehavior then uses that information to suggest other foods the user may want to eat.
'No UI' Design's Next Move: Fake UI
Fast Company (07/21/15) John Pavlus
University of Michigan human-computer interaction researcher Eytan Adar believes the current era of smart systems offers more opportunities to implement what he terms "benevolent deception" in user interface (UI) design than ever before. He envisions a widening chasm between how people think a thing works and how it actually functions, and the mounting tensions this creates in turn gives rise to more scenarios "where deception is used to resolve these gaps." On the other hand, researcher Timo Arnall contends dishonesty or obfuscation of a system's actual functionality adversely impacts its practical effectiveness. He says designing systems with placebo UIs "doesn't address the core concerns and problems of our age that are really about how we represent large, invisible, and complex software systems in ways that make sense to the millions of people that use them." Meanwhile, BERG CEO Matt Webb says the ideal automated/smart system will offer an interface that serves as both medium and mechanism, in the sense that it can be both communicated with and manipulated in a context-appropriate manner. He describes placebo UIs as a bandage over "broken heuristics" in smart systems, and calls them "the best of all terrible worlds short of fixing the underlying problem with the system." Webb says ascribing personalities to smart system settings or configurations could be one solution to this challenge.
AT&T Awards $100K for Tech to Help People With Disabilities
CNet (07/27/15) Marguerite Reardon
The winners of the Connect Ability Challenge, a joint project of AT&T and New York University's Ability Lab, which sought to encourage app developers to create accessibility tools for disabled people from commercially available technology, recently were announced. "The beauty of the contest is that the solutions the developers came up with are super simple, affordable, and use technology, like the Android and iOS operating systems, that everyone is already using," says AT&T's Neil Giacobbi. AT&T awarded $100,000 to the winners, with the $25,000 grand prize going to the Kinesic Mouse program, which enables people to operate their PCs hands-free by using a three-dimensional camera that detects facial expressions. Kinesic Mouse developer Markus Proell says the tool adapts software and hardware originally designed for gaming. A $10,000 prize was awarded to Enlight developers for a smartphone app that exploits existing iBeacon technology in stores and other public places so visually-impaired users can scan their surroundings with their mobile devices to help them navigate. Giacobbi says the growing pervasiveness and increasing affordability of mobile technology will make it easier for developers to create solutions for the disabled. "We've just scratched the surface in terms of using existing technology to help people with disabilities," he notes.
CCS Professor Named Recipient of 2015 Yahoo FREP Award
NJIT News Room (07/30/15) Shydale James
New Jersey Institute of Technology College of Computing Sciences professor and human-computer interaction (HCI) expert D. Yvette Wohn has won a 2015 Yahoo Faculty Research and Engagement Program (FREP) Award. The director of the Social Interaction Lab says her area of concentration "is on the human or social component of [HCI] sustainability. I try to understand how people use social systems such as social media, games, or mobile apps, what the social and psychological effects of using this technology are, and design new technologies to improve people's well-being." She notes a significant portion of modern HCI research explores technology adoption and short-term utilization, but understanding why people continue to engage with technology over a long period of time entails different socio-psychological mechanisms. Wohn says this has serious ramifications when designing a system intended for long-term use. "My work is grounded in theory and fundamentally about understanding the relationship between humans and technology, so conducting research in different technology contexts is extremely important," she says. "I'm particularly interested in technology for well-being; understanding gaming--a form of entertainment--is a small piece of understanding the bigger picture." Wohn sees the FREP award as a validation of the value of her work to the industry.
DARPA Hired a Jazz Musician to Jam With Their Artificially Intelligent Software
Tech Insider (07/27/15) Guia Maria Del Prado
Jazz musician and computer scientist Kelland Thomas, a professor at the University of Arizona, believes jazz music can help improve communication between humans and computers. Backed with funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Communicating with Computers program, Thomas and colleagues plan to build a database of transcribed musical performances by the best jazz improvisers. The team then will use machine-learning techniques to train an artificial intelligence (AI) system on the database. Eventually, the AI system will learn to analyze and identify musical patterns from transcription, and will use this knowledge to compose and play live, original music. Musicians build their knowledge base by practicing, listening, learning, and studying, and "the thing we're proposing to do is analogous to the way a human learns," Thomas says. He plans to build a machine that can improvise alongside a human musician within five years. Convincing creativity by computers could make collaboration with humans smoother and more efficient, Thomas says. "In my mind, jazz and improvisation in music represent a pinnacle of human intellectual and mental achievement," he notes. "The ability to, on the fly and in the moment, create melodies that are goal-directed, that are going somewhere, doing something, and evincing emotion in the listener, is really, really amazing."
Computer Interface Helps Disabled Patients
Plymouth University (07/20/15) Alan Williams
Plymouth University researchers developed a brain-computer music interface (BCMI) to enable interaction between patients from London's Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability (RHN) and a string quartet. The BCMI supports control of musical systems by disabled users via brainwave transmissions read by electrodes placed on the user's scalp. Each of the four patients linked to the BCMI generates the musical sections to be performed by the ensemble in real time. Four options of musical phrases are displayed before the participants on a panel, and they can choose the option they want by staring at flashing lights next to them. The interface detects which phrase has been selected by each participant and sends the phrases to the ensemble to perform. The project is led by professor Eduardo Miranda with Plymouth's Interdisciplinary Center for Computer Music Research, in collaboration with Plymouth student Joel Eaton and the RHN's Julian O'Kelly and Sophie Duport. Miranda notes the project with RHN has been under development for about four years, and the research "is giving people an opportunity to put their physical impediments aside, and use music to communicate in ways that would not normally be possible because of their medical conditions."
The Power of Translation
National Science Foundation (07/22/15) Jessica Arriens
The Institute for Disabilities Research and Training (IDRT) has used funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research program to develop translation software and assistive technologies to span the gap between English and American Sign Language (ASL). The institute also has adapted these technologies for use in Morocco via an alliance between NSF and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Among the IDRT's tools is software with a comprehensive translation database, which enables users to enter English words or sentences, and see images and video of how to express it in ASL. "Translation between native spoken and sign languages involves not only analyzing linguistic differences, but also rendering translation from one cognitive processing modality [auditory] to another [visual]," notes Ecole National de l'Industrie Minerale professor Abdelhadi Soudi. IDRT CEO Corinne Vinopol, in collaboration with Soudi, created the assistive software in use in Morocco, with funding provided by Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER), which connects NSF-funded, U.S.-based researchers with researchers in developing nations. The technology functions as a real-time translation device and an instructional tool, rendering Standard Arabic as Moroccan Sign Language (MSL) and offering resources such as games and quizzes to help students and parents learn MSL. A second PEER award supported development of an MSL thesaurus, which will enable users to describe signs and find the Arabic word counterpart.
University of Bath Researchers to Use Gaming Technology to Help Amputees Walk Again
Bath Chronicle (07/27/15) Anne Moore
The University of Bath's new Center for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research, and Applications (CAMERA) aims to employ gaming technology to restore walking ability to amputees. In collaboration with the university's Department for Health, CAMERA's Darren Cosker is using motion-capture technology used by the gaming and film industries to animate digital characters by having actors wear a special suit covered with spots tracked by high-resolution cameras. "We're aiming to develop this technology further--using advances in computer vision and graphics--so that obtrusive motion-capture suits required for accurate human body motion analysis will no longer be required," Cosker says. "This will mean that actors can be filmed in costume, athletes' performance can be assessed in a normal training session, and amputee patients can have clinical physiotherapy assessments in their own homes." The CAMERA researchers will work with current and former soldiers who have undergone amputations and suffer from osteoarthritis, analyzing their movements with prosthetic limbs and feeding that information into the design of better prostheses. "Working with colleagues in computer science and other external industries, we will develop the evidence-base for new and innovative solutions to complex societal challenges," says the University of Bath's James Bilzon.
Data-Driven Design
MIT News (07/14/15) Peter Dizikes
The international Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management (CUPUM) conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was a showcase for how researchers are tapping greater volumes of information to help cities expand, improve transportation, and prepare for climate change and potential catastrophes. "The challenges and opportunities the planet faces have converged in cities," said Assaf Biderman, associate director of MIT's Senseable City Lab, in one of the conference's keynote talks. Many papers presented at CUPUM addressed topics such as transportation and urban information infrastructures. MIT professor Sarah Williams' work focused on digital tracking of matatus (minibuses used as group taxis) in Nairobi, Kenya, which enabled her team to issue Nairobi's first-ever map of matatu routes. A study from Edgar Blanco with MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics analyzed the types of commerce in Lisbon and Singapore's urban districts to ascertain their ideal space and road requirements. "What we think is going to be the future is a set of four or five archetype models of cities across the world," Blanco says. Some CUPUM discussions highlighted social justice and urban life, with some researchers suggesting "smart" technologies might put well-off urban segments, and not entire populations, at an advantage. MIT professor Joseph Ferreira says, "we're still learning how the information technologies are changing our behavior, our understanding of what people are doing, and our capacity to enable people to do better what they want to do.”
Many Mobile Health Apps Neglect Needs of Blind Users
UW Today (07/16/15) Jennifer Langston
Mobile health (mHealth) applications--health tracking sensors that link with smartphone apps--all too often ignore the needs of vision-impaired users, according to a University of Washington (UW) review of nine commercial mHealth apps reported in the "Journal on Technology & Persons with Disabilities." None of the nine iPhone mHealth apps, which are designed to upload data from blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring devices, fulfilled all of the seven criteria the researchers developed that would make them fully usable to blind people. "We wanted to see if these health applications would be out-of-the-box accessible, and most really weren't," says UW doctoral student Lauren Milne, the study's lead author. The researchers cite accessibility lapses such as improperly labeled buttons, and confusing layouts that perform poorly with iPhone VoiceOver or Android TalkBack services. They also say it would be a simple matter for developers to make mainstream health sensors fully accessible to blind smartphone users, chiefly by following accessibility guidelines established by Apple and the federal government. "If people just used the basic widgets and things that Apple provides, they'd have better results," says UW professor Richard Ladner, who leads multiple projects to make technologies more broadly accessible. "But the number of app developers has increased, and most of them are thinking about trying to make things pretty. They're not thinking about all the users."
PROSPERITY4ALL: Access to Technology for Everyone
CORDIS News (07/13/15)
The European Union's PROSPERITY4ALL project is developing a "behind-the-screens" cloud-based infrastructure to widen Internet and information and communications technology (ICT) accessibility to special-needs users. "By prosperity for all, we mean that the different stakeholders who offer accessible technologies also benefit from the setting up of this technical and social infrastructure," says project coordinator Matthias Peissner. PROSPERITY4ALL builds on the CLOUD4ALL project, which developed preference management tools for people with special needs to auto-configure their computers, tablets, and smartphones. CLOUD4ALL users were able to set up a common preference set or "key" retained in the cloud, which contains pre-selected personal preferences. The key delivers access to any compatible device, anywhere, while enabling users to see information presented in the way they prefer. PROSPERITY4ALL seeks to distribute such technology via three interlinked platforms, including the searchable, online "unified listing" catalog providing special-needs users with a broad spectrum of assistive products and services; the "developerSpace" for matching software with product developers through a portal, giving them access to various resources, and the "openMarketplace," a commercial platform where solutions can be offered globally. "You could say PROSPERITY4ALL is the European contribution to the wider global initiative to ensure that in some form or other, the whole world population has direct access to technology, devices, services, and the Internet," Peissner says.
Is Edge Computing Key to the Internet of Things?
Government Technology (07/14/15) Colin Wood
The emergence of edge computing is helping to enable the Internet of Things (IoT), as pushing computing power to the fringes of a network addresses many of the most intractable problems for computing infrastructure and robotics. An example of an IoT-like pilot with edge computing is Mesa, AZ's experimentation with new sensors that tie city infrastructure and citizens' property more intimately via a traffic program that counts cars, as well as visualizing traffic patterns and each vehicle's destination. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Ryan LaMothe says researchers there are tackling two main challenges with edge computing. The first concerns inferential controls, or the capacity of a device to infer things about its surroundings and communicate with infrastructure controlled by other entities. The second challenge involves eliminating humans from the loop while guaranteeing people can exploit the IoT in a controlled and constructive manner. Argonne National Laboratory's Pete Beckman speculates edge computing could give cities instrumented infrastructure by giving "dumb logger" sensors the processing capability to act in real time based on the data they collect. Beckman and colleagues also developed the Waggle edge computing platform, which is used by Chicago's Array of Things IoT pilot to investigate how device networks can be used to improve a city's intelligence.
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