Julie A. Kientz

Heuristic evaluation of ambient displays

We present a technique for evaluating the usability and effectiveness of ambient displays. Ambient displays are abstract and aesthetic peripheral displays portraying non-critical information on the periphery of a users attention. Although many innovative displays have been published, little existing work has focused on their evaluation, in part because evaluation of ambient displays is difficult and costly. We adapted a low-cost evaluation technique, heuristic evaluation, for use with ambient displays. With the help of ambient display designers, we defined a modified set of heuristics. We compared the performance of Nielsens heuristics and our heuristics on two ambient displays. Evaluators using our heuristics found more, severe problems than evaluators using Nielsens heuristics. Additionally, when using our heuristics, 3-5 evaluators were able to identify 40--60% of known usability issues. This implies that heuristic evaluation is an effective technique for identifying usability issues with ambient displays.

The Georgia Tech aware home

The Aware Home Research Initiative (AHRI) at Georgia Tech is devoted to the multidisciplinary exploration of emerging technologies and services based in the home. Starting in 1998, our collection of faculty and students has created a unique research facility that allows us to simulate and evaluate user experiences with off-the-shelf and state-of-the-art technologies. With specific expertise in health, education, entertainment and usable security, we are able to apply our research to problems of significant social and economic impact.

Randomized, controlled pilot trial of a smartphone app for smoking cessation using acceptance and commitment therapy.

BACKGROUND There is a dual need for (1) innovative theory-based smartphone applications for smoking cessation and (2) controlled trials to evaluate their efficacy. Accordingly, this study tested the feasibility, acceptability, preliminary efficacy, and mechanism of behavioral change of an innovative smartphone-delivered acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) application for smoking cessation vs. an application following US Clinical Practice Guidelines. METHOD Adult participants were recruited nationally into the double-blind randomized controlled pilot trial (n=196) that compared smartphone-delivered ACT for smoking cessation application (SmartQuit) with the National Cancer Institutes application for smoking cessation (QuitGuide). RESULTS We recruited 196 participants in two months. SmartQuit participants opened their application an average of 37.2 times, as compared to 15.2 times for QuitGuide participants (p<0001). The overall quit rates were 13% in SmartQuit vs. 8% in QuitGuide (OR=2.7; 95% CI=0.8-10.3). Consistent with ACTs theory of change, among those scoring low (below the median) on acceptance of cravings at baseline (n=88), the quit rates were 15% in SmartQuit vs. 8% in QuitGuide (OR=2.9; 95% CI=0.6-20.7). CONCLUSIONS ACT is feasible to deliver by smartphone application and shows higher engagement and promising quit rates compared to an application that follows US Clinical Practice Guidelines. As results were limited by the pilot design (e.g., small sample), a full-scale efficacy trial is now needed.

Pervasive Computing and Autism: Assisting Caregivers of Children with Special Needs

Pervasive computing technologies can support children with autism and their caregivers. Work continues on systems that aid record collection and analysis, decision making, communication, and assessment of childrens internal states

Farther than you may think: an empirical investigation of the proximity of users to their mobile phones

Implicit in much research and application development for mobile phones is the assumption that the mobile phone is a suitable proxy for its owners location. We report an in-depth empirical investigation of this assumption in which we measured proximity of the phone to its owner over several weeks of continual observation. Our findings, summarizing results over 16 different subjects of a variety of ages and occupations, establish baseline statistics for the proximity relationship in a typical US metropolitan market. Supplemental interviews help us to establish reasons why the phone and owner are separated, leading to guidelines for developing mobile phone applications that can be smart with respect to the proximity assumption. We show it is possible to predict the proximity relationship with 86% confidence using simple parameters of the phone, such as current cell ID, current date and time, signal status, charger status and ring/vibrate mode.

Personality and persuasive technology: an exploratory study on health-promoting mobile applications

Though a variety of persuasive health applications have been designed with a preventive standpoint toward diseases in mind, many have been designed largely for a general audience. Designers of these technologies may achieve more success if applications consider an individual’s personality type. Our goal for this research was to explore the relationship between personality and persuasive technologies in the context of health-promoting mobile applications. We conducted an online survey with 240 participants using storyboards depicting eight different persuasive strategies, the Big Five Inventory for personality domains, and questions on perceptions of the persuasive technologies. Our results and analysis revealed a number of significant relationships between personality and the persuasive technologies we evaluated. The findings from this study can guide the development of persuasive technologies that can cater to individual personalities to improve the likelihood of their success.

Lullaby: a capture & access system for understanding the sleep environment

The bedroom environment can have a significant impact on the quality of a persons sleep. Experts recommend sleeping in a room that is cool, dark, quiet, and free from disruptors to ensure the best quality sleep. However, it is sometimes difficult for a person to assess which factors in the environment may be causing disrupted sleep. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and initial evaluation of a capture and access system, called Lullaby. Lullaby combines temperature, light, and motion sensors, audio and photos, and an off-the-shelf sleep sensor to provide a comprehensive recording of a persons sleep. Lullaby allows users to review graphs and access recordings of factors relating to their sleep quality and environmental conditions to look for trends and potential causes of sleep disruptions. In this paper, we report results of a feasibility study where participants (N=4) used Lullaby in their homes for two weeks. Based on our experiences, we discuss design insights for sleep technologies, capture and access applications, and personal informatics tools.

At the Flick of a Switch: Detecting and Classifying Unique Electrical Events on the Residential Power Line (Nominated for the Best Paper Award)

Activity sensing in the home has a variety of important applications, including healthcare, entertainment, home automation, energy monitoring and post-occupancy research studies. Many existing systems for detecting occupant activity require large numbers of sensors, invasive vision systems, or extensive installation procedures. We present an approach that uses a single plug-in sensor to detect a variety of electrical events throughout the home. This sensor detects the electrical noise on residential power lines created by the abrupt switching of electrical devices and the noise created by certain devices while in operation. We use machine learning techniques to recognize electrically noisy events such as turning on or off a particular light switch, a television set, or an electric stove. We tested our system in one home for several weeks and in five homes for one week each to evaluate the system performance over time and in different types of houses. Results indicate that we can learn and classify various electrical events with accuracies ranging from 85-90%.

Designing Capture Applications to Support the Education of Children with Autism

We explore the social and technical design issues involved in tracking the effectiveness of educational and therapeutic interventions for children with autism (CWA). Automated capture can be applied in a variety of settings to provide a means of keeping valuable records of interventions. We present the findings from qualitative studies and the designs of capture prototypes. These experiences lead to conclusions about specific considerations for building technologies to assist in the treatment of CWA, as well as other fragile demographics. Our work also reflects back on the automated capture problem itself, informing us as computer scientists how that class of applications must be reconsidered when the analysis of data in the access phase continually influences the capture needs and when social and practical constraints conflict with data collection needs.

Opportunities for computing technologies to support healthy sleep behaviors

Getting the right amount of quality sleep is a key aspect of good health, along with a healthy diet and regular exercise. Human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers have recently designed systems to support diet and exercise, but sleep has been relatively under-studied in the HCI community. We conducted a literature review and formative study aimed at uncovering opportunities for computing to support the important area of promoting healthy sleep. We present results from interviews with sleep experts, as well as a survey (N = 230) and interviews with potential users (N = 16) to indicate what people would find practical and useful for sleep. Based on these results, we identify a number of design considerations, challenges, and opportunities for using computing to support healthy sleep behaviors, as well as a design framework for mapping the design space of technologies for sleep.