Lauren Westendorf

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.

BacPack: Exploring the Role of Tangibles in a Museum Exhibit for Bio-Design

We present BacPack, a tangible museum exhibit for exploring bio-design. BacPack utilizes tangible tokens on a large multitouch table display to allow visitors the opportunity to participate in a playful bio-design activity-engineering bacteria for sustaining life on Mars. To understand the role of tangible tokens in facilitating engagement and learning with the exhibit, we developed and evaluated two versions of BacPack: one with tangible tokens and one that consists of only multitouch interaction. Results from an evaluation in the Tech Museum of Innovation indicate that tangible tokens provide additional opportunities for collaborative problem solving and impact learning through support for tinkering and experimentation. We discuss design considerations for exhibits that facilitate creative engagement and exploration with biology.

Communicating Personal Genomic Information to Non-experts: A New Frontier for Human-Computer Interaction

Communicating Personal Genomic Information to Non-experts: A New Frontier for Human-Computer Interaction

BacToMars: Creative Engagement with Bio-Design for Children

We present BacToMars, an educational video game that engages elementary school children in a bio-design activity. We describe its design and implementation, and discuss design considerations for developing playful and developmentally-appropriate interactive activities, which enable children to grasp complex scientific concepts and apply bio-design to solve problems. We share results from preliminary evaluation, and describe next steps in our investigation.

Towards Understanding Collaboration around Interactive Surfaces: Exploring Joint Visual Attention

In this abstract, we present a novel method for exploring the visual behavior of multiple users engaged in a collaborative task around an interactive surface. The proposed method synchronizes input from multiple eye trackers, describes the visual behavior of individual users over time, and identifies joint attention across multiple users. We applied this method to analyze the visual behavior of four users collaborating using a large-scale multi-touch tabletop.

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.

Understanding Gaming Perceptions and Experiences in a Women's College Community

Recent trends in gaming diversification have shown that women are both an increasingly significant pool of consumers and game producers, and regular victims of misogynistic harassment. Such observations stress the importance of investigating the complex relationships of women and gaming. In this paper, we draw upon perspectives from Feminist HCI to extend the current knowledge of issues in gaming that are specific to women. We present results from a mixed-methods study with 327 participants who are students and alumnae of a womens college. Our findings shed light on the complex relationships of women with games, with other gamers, and with gaming culture and industry. The results also indicate that in some cases gender-related negative experiences of gaming have lasting impact on the participation and self-confidence of young women. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the design of games, game development education, and for the study of gaming.

Evaluating Learning with Tangible and Virtual Representations of Archaeological Artifacts

Technological advances offer new methods of representing physical objects in tangible and virtual forms. This study compares learning outcomes from 61 students as they interact with ancient Egyptian sculptures using three increasingly popular educational technologies: HoloLens AR headset, 3D model viewing website (SketchFab), and plastic extrusion 3D prints. We explored how differences in interaction styles affect the learning process, quantitative and qualitative learning outcomes, and critical analysis.

Classroom Activity for Critical Analysis of News Propagation Online

We present an educational activity for college students to think critically about the truthfulness of news propagated in social media. This activity utilizes TwitterTrails, a visual tool to analyze Twitter claims, events, and memes. This tool provides views such as a propagation graph of a storys bursting activity, and the co-ReTweeted network of the more prominent members of the audience. Using a response and reflection form, students are guided through these different facets of a story. The classroom activity was iteratively designed over the course of three semesters. Here, we present the learning outcomes from our final semesters evaluation with 43 students. Our findings demonstrate that the activity provided students with both the conceptual tools and motivation to investigate the reliability of stories in social media. Our contribution also includes access to the tool and materials to conduct this activity. We hope that other educators will further improve and run this activity with their own students.

ARtLens: Enhancing Museum Visitors' Engagement with African Art

We present ARtLens, an Augmented Reality application for the Microsoft HoloLens, which allows museum visitors to actively interact with and learn about artifacts. We designed ARtLens to enhance learning and engagement with museum collections while keeping the focus on the original artifact. ARtLens provides context for an artifact by supplying audio and visual information, and guides visitors in exploring the original artifact. It also allows users to directly manipulate, using gesture-based interactions, holographic representations of related artifacts next to original artifacts in the gallery. We intend to study the impact of ARtLens on object-based learning and engagement of museum visitors in an African Art gallery.