Concept: We are interested in developing technology to aid in the blight of families divided by distance. We look at the case of Latino immigrants as an example of cultural and emotional dependence on their friends and family abroad. Our goal is to aid in the acculturation process of immigrant families in the United States. We have identified overlapping points of interest in acculturation, technology on the fringe, and the immigration of Latinos. Though both a pilot study and our ongoing work we illustrate our findings. Our findings to date have shown two things: first that use of technology is proportional to the level of adjustment in their new home in the United States, and second we show how there are several different segments of this population with diverse characteristics. Being that face-to-face contact is at a minimum, technology becomes even more important to build and maintain one’s social network in these new growth areas. The Pittsburgh area is a new growth area for Latino immigrants, which means that the population is so spread out that they do not have a community to turn to. We are looking at immigrants’ adaptation to their new environment by appropriating technologies to maintain, build and extend their social networks as they work toward citizenship or whatever their chosen goal may be. We are interested in understanding how technology might be developed to help immigrants’ adjustment to their new lives in the United States. We present a model for designing technology for this audience.
Tags: design research, ethnography, graduate research, research
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Last Updated: 2012/01/15 2:36pm
Concept: Robots are complex and difficult to understand. It is important to take particular precautions in the design process to avoid rejection, confusion, discomfort and other ill effects. We advocate sensemaking as a holistic solution to the design of human-robot interaction. We describe sensemaking and enumerate a series of interface variables that can be applied to HRI. We explore one of the most important aspects, robotic motion, and apply this framework in the domain of motion. Our results indicate that the design of motion may not be as important as the design of form and or appearance for this particular robot platform
Tags: design research, graduate research, HCI, research, social robotics
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Last Updated: 2012/01/15 2:35pm
Concept: Personal-Public Displays - a class of devices that presents actionable personal information not only to the user, but also to the public, including friends, family, colleagues, neighbors and even strangers. Six properties are outlined that we believe are important for such information displays to embody. These build on two well-established methods for inducing behavior change: presenting pertinent information at the point-of-decision and leveraging social influence. To investigate the effectiveness of our concept, we have chosen a popular, but challenging target: motivating physical activity. This led to the development of Pediluma, a shoe accessory that tracks and visualizes the wearer’s physical activity by varying the intensity of a lighted housing. Results from a two-week, seventeen-participant user study indicated people wearing our device significantly increased their physical activity.
Tags: build, collaboration, design, design research, graduate research, HCI, research
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Last Updated: 2012/01/15 2:38pm
