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April 30, 2007
UBICOMP postdocs at University of Rochester
 Photo courtesy of ednothing |
From my Ph.D. advisor, Henry Kautz. -djp3 Multiple postdoc positions in AI, natural language understanding, machine learning, knowledge representation, and ubiquitous / pervasive computing are now available for a variety of projects at the University of Rochester. For details, please visit http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/kautz/aipostdocs.html |
Posted by djp3 at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
Congratulations Eric!
 Photo courtesy of paulworthington |
Congratulations to grad student, Eric Kabisch, on the recent publication of the following: E. Kabisch, "A Periscope for Urban Discovery and Narrative." Position paper for the workshop Imaging the City held at International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI, San Jose, CA, April 2007. |
Posted by djp3 at 8:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2007
Nomatic*Gaim is now Nomatic (for presence)
 Photo courtesy of shapeshift |
Two things have happened recently to the Nomatic*Gaim project. The first is that the architecture of the software has changed to support multiple IM clients besides gaim. The second is that under lawsuit duress, gaim has renamed themselves to pidgin. As a result, the project formerly known as Nomatic*Gaim is now renamed Nomatic (for presence). The parentheses are to differentiate it from Nomatic*Aid which is also rapidly evolving, but for now retains the same name. |
Posted by djp3 at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2007
Tangible Bits: Beyond Pixels
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This Friday, April 27, 2007, the Informatics Seminar will not be held, but instead there will be a reception in ICS2 136 at 4:00pm after the ISR Distinguished Speaker Hiroshi Ishii at 2:00pm-3:30pm in McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium. More details here Abstract: Where the sea meets the land, life has blossomed into a myriad of unique forms in the turbulence of water, sand, and wind. At another seashore between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we are now facing the challenge of reconciling our dual citizenships in the physical and digital worlds. Windows to the digital world are confined to flat square ubiquitous screens filled with pixels, or "painted bits." Unfortunately, one can not feel and confirm the virtual existence of this digital information through one's body. Tangible Bits, our vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), seeks to realize seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment by giving physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible. Guided by this vision, we are designing "tangible user interfaces" which employ physical objects, surfaces, and spaces as tangible embodiments of digital information. These involve foreground interactions with graspable objects and augmented surfaces, exploiting the human senses of touch and kinesthesia. We are also exploring background information displays which use "ambient media." Here, we seek to communicate digitally-mediated senses of activity and presence at the periphery of human awareness. Our goal is to realize seamless interfaces taking advantage of the richness of multimodal human senses and skills developed through our lifetime of interaction with the physical world. In this talk, I will present the design principles and a variety of tangible user interfaces the Tangible Media Group has presented in Media Arts, Design, and Science communities including ICC, Ars Electronica, Centre Pompidou, Venice Biennale, ArtFutula, IDSA, ICSID, AIGA, ACM CHI, SIGGRAPH, UIST, CSCW. http://tangible.media.mit.edu |
Posted by djp3 at 9:41 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2007
An Ethnographic Study of the Social Impacts of Video Blogging
The Informatics Seminar is held on Fridays at 3:00pm in ICS2 136 followed by a social hour at 4:00pm. See you there!
Abstract
In the past decade, digital technology has become widely integrated into many professional training settings, yet at present we lack a detailed understanding of how new technology alters networks of social and technology-mediated interactions present in such environments. I have been engaged in a multi-year ethnography-for-design study in a dental hygiene training program in San Diego, CA. During the project, I helped design a new clinical training laboratory, equipped with embedded digital media technology, such as flat-panel monitors, computer workstations and overhead cameras. Here, I detail the ethnographic motivations for the design of the technology integrated into the training program.
Decisions about the usefulness of a technology are socially constructed throughout the entire design and use cycles of a technology by the various actors who participate in communities of practice. Studying the cultural processes behind the appropriation of technology can help us understand how to design technology that is more likely to be appropriated and used by the community. Distributed cognition theory posits that cognitive processes extend across the traditional boundaries of the skin and the skull as various kinds of coordination are established and maintained between bodily, material, and social resources. Data from multimodal interaction can provide information about the underlying cognitive architecture. Moreover, larger patterns, like social organization and the context of activity may also be viewed as important parts of the cognitive ecology.
I will present an analysis of how a collaborative video blogging system (a ‘vlog’), used in an introductory clinical instruction course, affected the network of social and technology-mediated interactions in the training clinic. In particular, I examine how interactions with videos structured the way students and instructors worked with each other. Additionally, I report how the faculty’s appropriation of the vlog technology was influenced by the presentation of divergent methodology in the videos on the vlog.
Posted by djp3 at 3:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
Congratulations Silvia!
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Photo courtesy of paulworthington |
Congratulations to grad student, Silvia Lindtner, on the recent publication of the following: S. Lindtner, "Playful Spaces between Fantasy and Real" Position paper for the workshop Supple Interfaces held at International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI, San Jose, CA, April 2007. |
Posted by djp3 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2007
Welcome Silvia Lindtner!
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Actually Silvia has been around for a while, but today marks the first day she shows up on the website. Welcome Silvia! |
Posted by djp3 at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2007
Ubi-Soda
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Here at UCI we have been infiltrated by the thing everyone saw coming but no one really wants - ubiquitous computing ads. At the bus stop by Lee's Sandwiches there is a Pepsi ad that is Bluetooth enabled. This means that if you stand there long enough the ad will try and send your phone an ad. Out of curiosity I downloaded the ad and against many-a-security-warning I ran the java program. My phone crashed (Nokia 6600) and I never saw the very very very important message from PepsiCo, Inc. If you get it to work, leave a comment to reveal the mystery of what the program does... |
Posted by djp3 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2007
Congratulations Jennifer
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Photo courtesy of paulworthington |
Congratulations to grad student, Jennifer Rode and co-authors on the recent publication of the following:
From Mice to Men – 24 years of Evaluation in CHI (15+5) |
Posted by djp3 at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2007
Welcome Eric Kabisch!
 Photo courtesy of Nice Bunch of Girls |
Welcome Eric Kabisch, a new Ph.D. student in the Informatics department working with Paul Dourish, to LUCI! Eric is a graduate of the ACE program here at UCI. |
Posted by djp3 at 8:05 AM | Comments (0)
April 6, 2007
GreenScanner: A Mobile Phone System for Exchanging Environmental Impact Reviews of Consumer Products
ABSTRACT Everyday consumers often do not have the information they need in order to allow environmental concerns to factor into their purchasing decisions. GreenScanner is a system designed to help address this issue by allowing consumers to engage in environmentally preferable purchasing. This system has two parts: an online database of community-generated environmental impact reviews of consumer products, and a mobile phone application that allows consumers to access these reviews at a point of purchase by scanning the products’ UPC codes. The project is currently under way, and involves the development of both of these parts, as well as a campaign to encourage the usage of the system by a broad constituency of consumers. By enabling consumers to have environmental impact information at their fingertips while shopping, the GreenScanner system seeks to encourage environmentally preferable purchasing and reduce consumer waste.
The Informatics Seminar is held on Fridays at 3:00pm in ICS2 136 followed by a social hour at 4:00pm. Please join us!
Posted by djp3 at 8:00 AM | Comments (1)
April 5, 2007
Enhancing Technology-Mediated Communication: Tools, Analyses, and Predictive Models
Daniel Avrahami
Carnegie Mellon University
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Talk begins at 11:00 a.m.
Refreshments served at 10:30 a.m.
Computer Science Building 2, UC Irvine, Room 136
Abstract: For the majority of us, interpersonal communication is at the center of our professional and personal lives. With the growing distribution of business organizations and of our social networks, so grows the need for and use of communication technologies. Many of today’s communication tools, however, suffer from a number of shortcomings. For example, the inherent discrepancy between one’s desire to initiate communication and another’s ability or desire to receive it, often leads to unwanted interruptions on the one hand, or failed communication on the other. In order to address some of these shortcomings, and also in order to provide a better understanding of human behavior and the use of these tools, I have taken an interdisciplinary approach in which I combine tool-building and the creation of predictive models, with investigation and analysis of large volumes of field data.
The focus of this talk will be my recent work on Instant Messaging (IM) communication, a popular, interesting, and highly observable point on the continuum between synchronous and asynchronous communication mediums. I will start by presenting a set of statistical models that are able to predict, with high accuracy, users’ responsiveness to incoming communication. A quantitative analysis complements these models by revealing major factors that influence responsiveness, illuminating its role in IM communication. I will then describe an investigation of the effect of interpersonal relationships on IM communication, and statistical models that can predict these relationships. Finally, I will describe a tool I have created that allows users to balance their responsiveness to IM with their ability to stay on task.
Biography: Daniel Avrahami is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is advised by Professor Scott E. Hudson. Previously he received an M.S. in HCI from Carnegie Mellon. As an undergraduate he received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (HUJI). Themes present in his research include the use of machine learning for the support of interpersonal communication, design and implementation of communications solutions, and the use of field and controlled experimentation to examine communication and tools. His recent publications -- describing his work in the area of communications and interruptions, as well as in the area of physical interactive prototyping -- include papers at the CHI, CSCW, UIST, and DIS conferences, and articles in Journal of Behaviour and Information Technology (BIT) and ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ToCHI). Additional information can be found at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nx6
For more information please contact Gloria Mark at (949) 824-5955 or Marty Beach at (949) 824-2901.
Posted by djp3 at 4:44 PM | Comments (0)
April 4, 2007
Congratulations Paul!
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Photo courtesy of paulworthington |
Congratulations to Paul and co-authors on the recent publication of the following: Dourish, P., Anderson, K., and Nafus, D. 2007. Cultural Mobilities: Diversity and Agency in Urban Computing. Proc. IFIP Conf. Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT 2007 (Rio De Janiero, Brazil). |
Posted by djp3 at 6:54 AM | Comments (0)