Welcome to the May 2018 SIGCHI edition of ACM TechNews.

ACM TechNews - SIGCHI Edition is a sponsored special edition of the ACM TechNews news-briefing service focused on issues in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This service serves as a resource for ACM-SIGCHI Members to keep abreast of the latest news in areas related to HCI and is distributed to all ACM SIGCHI members the first Tuesday of every month. ACM TechNews is a benefit of ACM membership and is distributed three times per week on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays to over 100,000 ACM members from over 100 countries around the world. ACM TechNews provides timely coverage of established and emerging areas of computer science, the latest trends in information technology, and related science, society, and technology news. For more information on ACM TechNews and joining the ACM, please click. The Interactions mobile app is available for free on iOS, Android, and Kindle platforms. Download it today and flip through the full-color magazine pages on your tablet or view it in a simplified low-bandwidth text mode on your phone. And be sure to check out the Interactions website, where you can access current and past articles and read the latest entries in our ever-expanding collection of blogs.

Ride-Sharing Platforms May Be Taking the Place of Managers in the Gig Economy
Penn State News
Matt Swayne
April 25, 2018

Pennsylvania State University researchers led an international team in studying Uber drivers' discussions about the company's rating system, ride assignments, and other aspects of the ride-sharing computer platform. The team studied posts on an Uber Internet forum independent of the company that includes 93,000 active members and 150,000 discussions. The researchers focused on the most relevant posts in the advice, complaints, and technology sections from January 2014 to April 2017, finding that Uber's platform seems to perform similar roles to human managers. However, the study also revealed that drivers have little ability to voice grievances, pitch ideas to work more effectively with customers, or influence policy changes as they would with a human manager. The researchers found that Uber's platform primarily addresses the needs of people who are looking for a ride, possibly diminishing the weight of drivers’ concerns in comparison. The researchers presented their findings at the ACM CHI 2018 Conference last week in Montreal, Canada.

Full Article

Engineers Create Social Media Infrastructure for Emergency Management
Purdue University News
Kayla Wiles
April 24, 2018

Purdue University researchers have developed the Social Media Analytics and Reporting Toolkit (SMART), an online platform that enables first responders to monitor emergency situations using Tweets and Instagram posts. SMART is a browser-based platform that filters social media content according to keywords and geographic regions defined by the user. The platform was originally developed in 2012, but the Purdue researchers have added features as users tested the tool during crime investigations, the 2017 hurricanes, and large public events. The new features include a "cluster lense" and "TopoText," which visualize key words from themes the user defines with respect to a geographic area.

Full Article

UTSA Study Shows Wearable Technology Also Distracts Drivers
University of Texas at San Antonio
Joanna Carver
April 23, 2018

A study by researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) found that while a driver texting via a wearable device can marginally reduce their distraction level, that practice is ultimately just as dangerous as driving while texting with an ordinary smartphone. The researchers recruited volunteers to use a driving simulator in a laboratory that included a three-screen display, a steering wheel, and pedals. The volunteers were tasked with "driving" the simulator, while using either a smartphone or Google Glass. The researchers sent the volunteers text messages and challenged them to drive safely while receiving and responding to the messages. The researchers found that the Google Glass texts were slightly less distracting than smartphone texts, which resulted in a false sense of safety. Volunteers reported increased efficiency when using wearable devices because they responded quicker and were able to use voice-activated controls.

Full Article

Gaming Research May Unlock Secrets of 'Flow'
Missouri S&T News
Andrew Careaga
April 23, 2018

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) researchers are having students play Tetris to study how the brain works when people are experiencing "flow," a mental state involving intense concentration and focus. Traditionally, the most common way to measure flow has been through questionnaires, but the approach is not very reliable because people do not always remember precisely how they felt during an experience. In order to measure flow, as well as boredom and anxiety, in a quantitative way, the researchers put an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset on each subject to measure their brain activity while playing the tile-matching game Tetris. The researchers hope the EEG results will be able to show more precisely what happens in the brain during states of flow.

Full Article

Screen Reader Plus Keyboard Helps Blind, Low-Vision Users Browse Modern Webpages
University of Washington
Hannah Hickey
April 18, 2018

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) and Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new method of using a computer keyboard as a means of accessing tables, maps and nested lists. The new tool, called Spatial Recognition Interaction Techniques (SPRITEs), allows blind and low-vision users to navigate graphical types of websites much more successfully than with traditional screen readers. "This study demonstrates that we can use the keyboard to bring tangible, structured information back, and the benefits are enormous," says UW professor Jennifer Mankoff. The SPRITEs tool maps different parts of the keyboard to areas or functions on the screen. The tool asks users to press keys to prompt the screen reader to move to certain parts of the website. SPRITEs is part of a suite of tools the researchers are developing to help visually impaired users navigate a two-dimensional screen.

Full Article

Computers May Help K-8 Math Teachers Understand Students’ Thought Processes
eSchool News
Leslie Morris
April 18, 2018

Cornell University researchers have developed software that could help K-8 math teachers understand their students’ reasoning when grading math assignments. The Cornell team wanted to develop a system that will allow educators to spend less time trying to reconstruct what their students are thinking and more time working directly with the students, according to Cornell professor Erik Andersen. The researchers worked with a dataset of approximately 300 students solving addition and subtraction problems, and used those examples to reconstruct what the students may have been doing right or wrong. The team found 13 percent of students made clear systematic procedural mistakes, and the algorithm learned to replicate 53 percent of these mistakes in a way that seemed accurate. The ultimate goal is for the software to provide teachers with a grading solution that also will report on overall teaching outcomes and solution areas where teachers need to focus more energy.

Full Article

Getting E-mail on Your Skin is Actually a Thing Now, Thanks to Facebook
Technology Review
Rachel Metz
April 17, 2018

Facebook researchers have developed a prototype of a wearable device that creates vibrations on the arm in patterns that correlate with certain sounds. The prototype was connected to a computer that allows the wearer to select different phonemes and sample words, which can then be felt as vibrations on the arm. During a study, the researchers were able to teach volunteers to recognize four different phonemes transmitted through the cast-like device in just three minutes; over the course of more than 90 minutes of training, study participants were taught to recognize 100 words, according to Facebook researcher Ali Israr. The project, which is based on Braille and Tadoma, could eventually lead to a smart watch that delivers messages via vibrations, letting the user know what is happening without interrupting conversations or other activities.

Full Article

Waves of Touch
University of California, Santa Barbara
Sonia Fernandez
April 9, 2018

University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) professor Yon Visell has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, which he plans to use to continue his research into the physical mechanisms of human touch sensing, with the goal of developing new technologies in fields ranging from engineering and neuroscience to medicine and education. Visell, who works in the university’s RE Touch Lab, will quantitatively explore mechanisms of touch-elicited wave propagation in order to facilitate advances in technologies for haptic sensing and feedback. Visell and his colleagues are working with the NSF's Cyber Human Systems program, which has been extremely supportive in their research on haptics. "We are excited to have the opportunity to expand our knowledge of haptics, and to create new engineering systems that make use of it," he says.

Full Article

Computer System Transcribes Words Users “Speak Silently”
MIT News
Larry Hardesty
April 4, 2018

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a computer interface that can transcribe words that the user verbalizes internally, but does not actually speak aloud. The AlterEgo interface is made up of a wearable device and a connected silent-computing system. The device uses electrodes to pick up neuromuscular signals in the jaw and face that are triggered by internal verbalizations, but are undetectable to the human eye. Those signals are sent to a machine learning system that can correlate specific signals with certain words. The system also includes a pair of bone-conduction headphones, which transmit vibrations through the bones of the face to the inner ear, allowing the system to convey information to the user “silently,” without interfering with the user's auditory experience. The researchers presented AlterEgo at the ACM Intelligent User Interface conference in Tokyo, Japan, in March.

Full Article