Anne Marie Piper

SIDES: a cooperative tabletop computer game for social skills development

This paper presents a design case study of SIDES: Shared Interfaces to Develop Effective Social Skills. SIDES is a tool designed to help adolescents with Aspergers Syndrome practice effective group work skills using a four-player cooperative computer game that runs on tabletop technology. We present the design process and evaluation of SIDES conducted over six months with a middle school social group therapy class. Our findings indicate that cooperative tabletop computer games are a motivating and supportive tool for facilitating effective group work among our target population and reveal several design lessons to inform the development of similar systems.

Tabletop displays for small group study: affordances of paper and digital materials

In this paper we compare the affordances of presenting educational material on a tabletop display with presenting the same material using traditional paper handouts. Ten pairs of undergraduate students used digital or paper materials to prepare for exams during four one-hour study sessions over the course of a term. Students studying with the tabletop display solved problems on their own before resorting to answer keys and repeated activities more often than students studying with paper documents. We summarize study activities and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each medium.

Mediating Group Dynamics through Tabletop Interface Design

A Stanford University research group explores how design alternatives for tabletop interfaces can impact group dynamics to promote effective teamwork. They built and evaluated a series of novel prototypes that explore multi-user coordination policies and cooperative gesturing, encouraging equitable participation in educational tasks and supporting social skills development for special-needs populations

Exploring the accessibility and appeal of surface computing for older adult health care support

This paper examines accessibility issues of surface computing with older adults and explores the appeal of surface computing for health care support. We present results from a study involving 20 older adults (age 60 to 88) performing gesture-based interactions on a multitouch surface. Older adults were able to successfully perform all actions on the surface computer, but some gestures that required two fingers (resize) and fine motor movement (rotate) were problematic. Ratings for ease of use and ease of performing each action as well as time required to figure out an action were similar to that of younger adults. Older adults reported that the surface computer was less intimidating, less frustrating, and less overwhelming than a traditional computer. The idea of using a surface computer for health care support was well-received by participants. We conclude with a discussion of design issues involving surface computing for older adults and use of this technology for health care.

Supporting medical conversations between deaf and hearing individuals with tabletop displays

This paper describes the design and evaluation of Shared Speech Interface (SSI), an application for an interactive multitouch tabletop display designed to facilitate medical conversations between a deaf patient and a hearing, non-signing physician. We employ a participatory design process involving members of the deaf community as well as medical and communication experts. We report results from an evaluation that compares conversation when facilitated by: (1) a digital table, (2) a human sign language interpreter, and (3) both a digital table and an interpreter. Our research reveals that tabletop displays have valuable properties for facilitating discussion between deaf and hearing individuals as well as enhancing privacy and independence. The contributions of this work include initial guidelines for cooperative group work technology for users with varying hearing abilities, discussion of benefits of participatory design with the deaf community, and lessons about using dictated speech on shared displays.

Understanding digital and material social communications for older adults

Online technologies are promising for helping older adults maintain social connectedness, particularly with younger people, yet many older adults resist or participate minimally in the mainstream technologies used by younger members of their social network. We present results from an interview study involving 22 older adults (age 71-92) to understand communication preferences and values related to social media. Seniors articulate many concerns with online social media, including the time required for legitimate participation, the loss of deeper communication, content irrelevance, and privacy. Additionally, older adults engage in social practices that could be supported by online social technologies, but they rarely use such tools. The theme of material social communications emerges from our data, and we examine this in context of online social media. We conclude with design considerations for the development of social media for older adults, and as part of this we describe the notion of bridging technologies as a framework for intergenerational communication design.

Exploring affective communication through variable-friction surface haptics

This paper explores the use of variable friction surface haptics enabled by the TPad Tablet to support affective communication between pairs of users. We introduce three haptic applications for the TPad Tablet (text messaging, image sharing, and virtual touch) and evaluate the applications with 24 users, including intimate couples and strangers. Participants used haptics to communicate literal texture, denote action within a scene, convey emotional information, highlight content, express and engage in physical playfulness, and to provide ones partner with an experience or sensation. We conclude that users readily associate haptics with emotional expression and that the intimacy of touch in the contexts we study is best suited for communications with close social partners.

Why would anybody do this?: Understanding Older Adults' Motivations and Challenges in Crowd Work

Diversifying participation in crowd work can benefit the worker and requester. Increasing numbers of older adults are online, but little is known about their awareness of or how they engage in mainstream crowd work. Through an online survey with 505 seniors, we found that most have never heard of crowd work but would be motivated to complete tasks by earning money or working on interesting or stimulating tasks. We follow up results from the survey with interviews and observations of 14 older adults completing crowd work tasks. While our survey data suggests that financial incentives are encouraging, in-depth interviews reveal that a combination of personal and social incentives may be stronger drivers of participation, but only if older adults can overcome accessibility issues and understand the purpose of crowd work. This paper contributes insights into how crowdsourcing sites could better engage seniors and other users.

A Wizard-of-Oz elicitation study examining child-defined gestures with a whole-body interface

This paper explores the use of a guessability study to examine child-defined gestures with Kinect. Applying a Wizard-of-Oz approach, gestures were elicited from six children (age 3--8) through a series of 22 task stimuli including object manipulation, navigation-based tasks, and spatial interaction. Gestures were video recorded, transcribed, and coded by three researchers employing an inductive, qualitative method of analysis. Five themes emerged from the data: (1) the influence of 2D touchscreens on childrens interactions in 3D, (2) the role of contextual cues in designing a stimuli set, (3) individual preferences for dominant styles of interaction, (4) different approaches children employ to simulate the same object path, and (5) and allocentric versus egocentric approaches for manipulating objects on screen. While we did not achieve strong consensus among all of the gestures produced by children in our study, our results provide a basis for further refinement of the stimulus set and methodology used for future work examining child-defined gestures for whole-body interfaces.

TAP & PLAY: an end-user toolkit for authoring interactive pen and paper language activities

Hybrid paper-digital interfaces are a promising approach for supporting language activities. The familiarity of pen and paper makes it a particularly attractive media for many user groups, including young children. Digital pens enhance interaction with traditional paper content by playing and recording audio and recognizing handwriting and gestures. Currently, generating custom interactive paper documents involves some programming, limiting its use by many user groups (e.g., educators and families) who might especially benefit from application of hybrid paper-digital interfaces in their practices. To address this need, we developed an end-user Toolkit for Authoring Pen and Paper Language Activities (TAP & PLAY). This paper describes the iterative development of the toolkit, its accessibility for novice non-technical users, and use in three different contexts for early language learning. We demonstrate and document the systems usability, generality, and utility for people who want to create and tailor their own custom interactive paper-based language activities.