Agon Bexheti

Lifelogging: You're Wearing a Camera?

The appearance of a new generation of highly portable, maybe even fashionable image-based lifelogging device has the potential to disrupt our current understanding of what is “socially acceptable” in the same way that the Kodak Camera did over a century ago. Back then, it prompted society to reflect on an individuals “right to privacy.” Soon, our lifelogging devices will require us to revisit such rights and maybe find a compromise between a right to privacy and a “right to remember.”

Monitor and understand pilgrims: data collection using smartphones and wearable devices

Each year, millions of people visit the sacred sites in Makkah and Madinah. Even though the Hajj pilgrimage is one of the biggest annual events in the world, with many of the pilgrims reporting it as a life-changing experience, quite a little is done to objectively monitor the pilgrims and to understand from the crowd and from the individual point of view what makes this event so special. We present a data collection phase of 8 days of pilgrimage in April 2013 with 41 pilgrims carrying Android smartphones and 10 pilgrims wearing two physiological sensors, namely chest belts and wrist-worn devices. We describe the data recording itself, and emphasize the problems raised and the challenges faced during the study. We provide the best practices for performing solid and efficient user studies in such a difficult environment, and give first insights towards measuring important aspects of the Hajj pilgrimage such as recognition of activities and stages, analysis of group behavior, detection of stressful situations and health monitoring of pilgrims in general.

My good old kodak: understanding the impact of having only 24 pictures to take

Todays abundance of cheap digital storage in the form of tiny memory cards put literally no bounds on the number of images one can capture with ones digital camera or camera phone during an event. However, studies have shown that taking many pictures may actually make us remember less of a particular event. In this position paper, we propose to re-introduce the paradigm of old film camera in the context of modern smartphones. The purpose is to investigate how users will behave when a significant capture limitation is imposed in a picture-taking context, and in what kind of pictures this will result. Ultimately, we are interested in the effect on memory recall of such a limitation, and describe a potential study setup that will help us explore this question.

Measuring the effect of cued recall on work meetings

Recent technological improvements allow us to capture an increasing share of our everyday experiences, e.g. holidays, shopping routines, or sports activities, and store them in a digital format. An interesting avenue to explore in this context is how reviewing such captured content can improve ones memories of the original events. In this position paper, we describe a planned experiment to investigate the impact of such captured recordings (and their subsequent review) on supporting work meetings. We provide the planned study procedure, explain the envisioned apparatus and metric, and describe the technology used to support the review activity.

Re-Live the Moment: Visualizing run experiences to motivate future exercises

Contemporary psychology theory emphasizes that people are more likely to achieve planned behavior if they are reminded of previous good experiences of that behavior. In this position paper we describe the results of a pilot study exploring the experimental in-the-wild validation of these findings in the context of run exercises. Based on todays technological improvements in data collection (advanced mobile and wearable sensors) and data visualization to capture and replay running exercise experiences, we created an experimental prototype that takes pictures during ones run and, based on the music one was listening to at the time, plays back slide shows of the experience. In an initial pilot study with 10 runners, we equipped 5 runners (the experimental group) with our prototype for 10 days and afterwards interviewed them on how the system influenced their exercise behavior.

PulseCam: Biophysically Driven Life Logging

Life logging emerged as a way to capture and remember more mainly through pictures. However, as life logging becomes increasingly mainstream, the volume of captured content also increases but our capacity for reviewing diminishes. In order to limit picture taking on such devices to only the most memorable moments, we propose a biophysical driven capture process that adapts the camera capture rate based on ones heart rate. In our prototype -- called PulseCam -- an Android smartphone worn on the body acts as the picture capture device, adjusting its capture rate based on ones heart rate as measured by an Android-based smart watch. The purpose of this work is twofold: a) we will examine the potential of PulseCam to capture pictures of significant moments and b) investigate the potential of such pictures to improve ones ability to remember. This paper introduces the general approach, describes our current prototype, and outlines the planned study design.

Merging Inhomogeneous Proximity Sensor Systems for Social Network Analysis

Proximity information is a valuable source for social network analysis. Smartphone based sensors, like GPS, Bluetooth and ANT+, can be used to obtain proximity information between individuals within a group. However, in real-life scenarios, different people use different devices, featuring different sensor modalities. To draw the most complete picture of the spatial proximities between individuals, it is advantageous to merge data from an inhomogeneous system into one common representation. In this work we describe strategies how to merge data from Bluetooth sensors with data from ANT+ sensors. Interconnection between both systems is achieved using pre-knowledge about social rules and additional infrastructure. Proposed methods are applied to a data collection from 41 participants during an 8 day pilgrimage. Data from peer-to-peer sensors as well as GPS sensors is collected. The merging steps are evaluated by calculating state-of-the art features from social network analysis. Results indicate that the merging steps improve the completeness of the obtained network information while not altering the morphology of the network.

Understanding usage control requirements in pervasive memory augmentation systems

Mobile and wearable devices allow people to capture different aspects of their life experiences (e.g. family holidays, work meetings, running activities, etc.) in the form of photos, videos, physiological data, etc. An interesting avenue to explore is the usage of such captured experiences to support and augment human memory. Experiences of different events can be used to generate retrieval memory cues in order to trigger recall of those recorded events. In addition, captured experiences can be shared with other (co-located) people of the same event. The focus of this work is on understanding the privacy challenges with regard to using and sharing captured experiences for memory augmentation purposes. With the ultimate goal of an usage control model for the protection of personal memory cues, here we provide insights on: how sharing captured experiences is different from sharing experiences in social media networks, and what are some challenges in designing an usage control model for memory cues.

Workshop on Mobile Cognition: Using Mobile Devices to Enhance Human Cognition

With the mobile phone turning into a lifelogging device alongside with the prevalence of wearables, people are able to record, store, and make sense of their daily activities. Using such insights, applications can help monitor physiological data, motivate behavior change, but also create new ways to aid human memory: mobile devices not only allow us to create records of information, but also present us with proactive reminders and instant access to information relevant to the current situation and context serving as cognition support and for retrospection. This workshop brings together practitioners, designers and researchers with the goal of exploring the requirements, challenges and possibilities of mobile cognition, i.e. how to track activities beyond the physical realm, make sense of that data and feed it back to the user in meaningful ways to augment human cognition.