Johanna Okerlund

SynFlo: A Tangible Museum Exhibit for Exploring Bio-Design

We present SynFlo, a tangible museum exhibit for exploring bio-design. SynFlo utilizes active and concrete tangible tokens to allow visitors to experience a playful biodesign activity through complex interactivity with digital biological creations. We developed two versions of SynFlo: one that combines active tokens with real concrete objects (i.e. labware) and one that consists of only abstract active tokens. Results from an evaluation in a museum indicate that both systems support learning. We discuss design choices for biology education tools to overcome confounders of biology and facilitate positive engagement and learning.

Informing the Design of Direct-to-Consumer Interactive Personal Genomics Reports

Background In recent years, people who sought direct-to-consumer genetic testing services have been increasingly confronted with an unprecedented amount of personal genomic information, which influences their decisions, emotional state, and well-being. However, these users of direct-to-consumer genetic services, who vary in their education and interests, frequently have little relevant experience or tools for understanding, reasoning about, and interacting with their personal genomic data. Online interactive techniques can play a central role in making personal genomic data useful for these users. Objective We sought to (1) identify the needs of diverse users as they make sense of their personal genomic data, (2) consequently develop effective interactive visualizations of genomic trait data to address these users’ needs, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the developed visualizations in facilitating comprehension. Methods The first two user studies, conducted with 63 volunteers in the Personal Genome Project and with 36 personal genomic users who participated in a design workshop, respectively, employed surveys and interviews to identify the needs and expectations of diverse users. Building on the two initial studies, the third study was conducted with 730 Amazon Mechanical Turk users and employed a controlled experimental design to examine the effectiveness of different design interventions on user comprehension. Results The first two studies identified searching, comparing, sharing, and organizing data as fundamental to users’ understanding of personal genomic data. The third study demonstrated that interactive and visual design interventions could improve the understandability of personal genomic reports for consumers. In particular, results showed that a new interactive bubble chart visualization designed for the study resulted in the highest comprehension scores, as well as the highest perceived comprehension scores. These scores were significantly higher than scores received using the industry standard tabular reports currently used for communicating personal genomic information. Conclusions Drawing on multiple research methods and populations, the findings of the studies reported in this paper offer deep understanding of users’ needs and practices, and demonstrate that interactive online design interventions can improve the understandability of personal genomic reports for consumers. We discuss implications for designers and researchers.

Exploring the Use of Google Glass in Wet Laboratories

We present results from an exploratory field study of using Google Glass for training future scientists in wet laboratory work. Our goal is to investigate the potential of Glass for mitigating challenges of laboratory work and for increasing the confidence and efficiency of novice researchers. Our findings indicate how Glass is used in laboratory settings and highlight potential uses for Glass including hands-free interaction with experimental protocols and process documentation. We also discuss technical and usability limitations of using Glass in laboratory settings.

Eugenie: Multi-Touch and Tangible Interaction for Bio-Design

We present a case study of applying TEI research to a data-intense scientific workflow that requires the exploration of large datasets through the construction of complex queries. We describe our two-year-long effort and design iterations of Eugenie, an interface for helping synthetic biologists through the collaborative and intricate process of bio-design. We introduce new interaction techniques for browsing large data sets and for constructing complex queries with active tangible tokens and an interactive tabletop. We also discuss challenges and opportunities for applying TEI to support data-driven inquiry.

Social Annotation Valence: The Impact on Online Informed Consent Beliefs and Behavior.

Background Social media, mobile and wearable technology, and connected devices have significantly expanded the opportunities for conducting biomedical research online. Electronic consent to collecting such data, however, poses new challenges when contrasted to traditional consent processes. It reduces the participant-researcher dialogue but provides an opportunity for the consent deliberation process to move from solitary to social settings. In this research, we propose that social annotations, embedded in the consent form, can help prospective participants deliberate on the research and the organization behind it in ways that traditional consent forms cannot. Furthermore, we examine the role of the comments’ valence on prospective participants’ beliefs and behavior. Objective This study focuses specifically on the influence of annotations’ valence on participants’ perceptions and behaviors surrounding online consent for biomedical research. We hope to shed light on how social annotation can be incorporated into digitally mediated consent forms responsibly and effectively. Methods In this controlled between-subjects experiment, participants were presented with an online consent form for a personal genomics study that contained social annotations embedded in its margins. Individuals were randomly assigned to view the consent form with positive-, negative-, or mixed-valence comments beside the text of the consent form. We compared participants’ perceptions of being informed and having understood the material, their trust in the organization seeking the consent, and their actual consent across conditions. Results We find that comment valence has a marginally significant main effect on participants’ perception of being informed (F2=2.40, P=.07); specifically, participants in the positive condition (mean 4.17, SD 0.94) felt less informed than those in the mixed condition (mean 4.50, SD 0.69, P=.09). Comment valence also had a marginal main effect on the extent to which participants reported trusting the organization (F2=2.566, P=.08). Participants in the negative condition (mean 3.59, SD 1.14) were marginally less trusting than participants exposed to the positive condition (mean 4.02, SD 0.90, P=.06). Finally, we found that consent rate did not differ across comment valence conditions; however, participants who spent less time studying the consent form were more likely to consent when they were exposed to positive-valence comments. Conclusions This work explores the effects of adding a computer-mediated social dimension, which inherently contains human emotions and opinions, to the consent deliberation process. We proposed that augmenting the consent deliberation process to incorporate multiple voices can enable individuals to capitalize on the knowledge of others, which brings to light questions, problems, and concerns they may not have considered on their own. We found that consent forms containing positive valence annotations are likely to lead participants to feel less informed and simultaneously more trusting of the organization seeking consent. In certain cases where participants spent little time considering the content of the consent form, participants exposed to positive valence annotations were even more likely to consent to the study. We suggest that these findings represent important considerations for the design of future electronic informed consent mechanisms.

Live Programming of Mobile Apps in App Inventor

MIT App Inventor is a programming environment that lowers the barriers to creating mobile apps for Android devices, especially for people with little or no programming experience. App Inventor apps for a mobile device are constructed by arranging components with a WYSIWYG editor in a computer web browser, where the development computer is connected to the device by WiFi or USB. The behavior of the components is specified using a blocks-based graphical programming language. A key feature in making App Inventor accessible to beginning programmers is live programming: developers interact directly with the state of the evolving program as it is being constructed, and changes made in the web browser are realized instantaneously in the running app on the device. This paper describes the live programming features of App Inventor and explains how they are implemented.

Eugenie: gestural and tangible interaction with active tokens for bio-design

We present a case study of a tangible user interface that implements novel interaction techniques for the construction of complex queries in large data sets. Our interface, Eugenie, utilizes gestural interaction with active physical tokens and a multi-touch interactive surface to aid in the collaborative design process of synthetic biological circuits. We developed new interaction techniques for navigating large hierarchical data sets and for exploring a combinatorial design space. The goal of this research is to study the effect of gestural and tangible interaction with active tokens on sense-making throughout the bio-design process.