Mauro Cherubini

MoviPill: improving medication compliance for elders using a mobile persuasive social game

Medication compliance is a critical component in the success of any medical treatment. However, only 50% of patients correctly adhere to their prescription regimens. Mobile and ubiquitous technologies have been proposed to tackle this challenge, mainly in the form of memory aid solutions that remind patients to take their pills. However, most of these methods do not engage patients in shifting their behavior towards better compliance. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a mobile phone-based game called MoviPill that persuades patients to be more adherent to their medication prescription by means of social competition. In a 6-week user study conducted with 18 elders, the use of MoviPill improved both their compliance to take the daily medication and also the accuracy of the drug intake time according to the prescribed time. Moreover, the improvement in the latter increased from 43% to 56% when we considered only participants that had any interest in games, which reveals the importance of applying persuasive techniques in a personalized manner. We conclude with a set of implications for the design of persuasive mobile solutions in this domain.

SocialSearchBrowser: a novel mobile search and information discovery tool

The mobile Internet offers anytime, anywhere access to a wealth of information to billions of users across the globe. However, the mobile Internet represents a challenging information access platform due to the inherent limitations of mobile environments, limitations that go beyond simple screen size and network issues. Mobile users often have information needs which are impacted by contexts such as location and time. Furthermore, human beings are social creatures that often seek out new strategies for sharing knowledge and information in mobile settings. To investigate the social aspect of mobile search, we have developed SocialSearchBrowser (SSB), a novel proof-of-concept interface that incorporates social networking capabilities with key mobile contexts to improve the search and information discovery experience of mobile users. In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory field study of SSB and outline key implications for the design of next generation mobile information access services.

Understanding near-duplicate videos: a user-centric approach

Popular content in video sharing web sites (e.g., YouTube) is usually duplicated. Most scholars define near-duplicate video clips (NDVC) based on non-semantic features (e.g., different image/audio quality), while a few also include semantic features (different videos of similar content). However, it is unclear what features contribute to the human perception of similar videos. Findings of two large scale online surveys (N = 1003) confirm the relevance of both types of features. While some of our findings confirm the adopted definitions of NDVC, other findings are surprising. For example, videos that vary in visual content - by overlaying or inserting additional information - may not be perceived as near-duplicate versions of the original videos. Conversely, two different videos with distinct sounds, people, and scenarios were considered to be NDVC because they shared the same semantics (none of the pairs had additional information). Furthermore, the exact role played by semantics in relation to the features that make videos alike is still an open question. In most cases, participants preferred to see only one of the NDVC in the search results of a video search query and they were more tolerant to changes in the audio than in the video tracks. Finally, we propose a user-centric NDVC definition and present implications for how duplicate content should be dealt with by video sharing websites.

A large-scale study of daily information needs captured in situ

The goal of this work is to provide a fundamental understanding of the daily information needs of people through a large-scale, in-depth, quantitative investigation. To this end, we have conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of information needs to date, spanning a 3-month period and involving more than 100 users. The study employed a contextual experience sampling method, a snippet-based diary technique using SMS technology, and an online Web diary to gather in situ insights into the types of needs that occur from day to day, how those needs are addressed, and how contextual, technological, and demographic factors impact on those needs. Our results not only complement earlier studies but also provide a new understanding of the intricacies of people’s daily information needs.

The "Map Trap"?: an evaluation of map versus text-based interfaces for location-based mobile search services

As the mobile Internet continues to grow, there is an increasing need to provide users with effective search and information access services. In order to build more effective mobile search services, we must first understand the impact that various interface choices have on mobile users. For example, the majority of mobile location-based search services are built on top of a map visualization, but is this intuitive design-decision the optimal interface choice from a human centric perspective? In order to tackle this fundamental design question, we have developed two proactive mobile search interfaces (one map-based and the other text-based) that utilize key mobile contexts to improve the search and information discovery experience of mobile users. In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory field study of these two interfaces - involving 34 users over a 1 month period - where we focus in particular on the impact that the type of user interface (e.g. map vs text) has on the search and information discovery experience of mobile users. We highlight the main usage results - including that maps are not the interface of choice for certain information access tasks - and outline key implications for the design of next generation mobile search services.

Interactive Artifacts and Furniture Supporting Collaborative Work and Learning

The field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) has traditionally focused on virtual learning environments and has somewhat neglected the physical environments in which students interact with each other and with their teachers. However, over the last years, scholars have devoted growing attention to the interplay between digital and physical environments. Interactive Artifacts and Furniture Supporting Collaborative Work and Learning reveals how these advances in computer science and human-computer interaction impact CSCL environments. The underlying theme of the contributions is the social affordances of physical objects, i.e. the understanding of how technology-augmented physical objects support interactions among groups in a way more intuitive or natural than traditional computers. This collection of leading researchers investigates how artifacts may trigger rich interactions among groups, which is a central quest for researchers in CSCL. Interactive Artifacts and Furniture Supporting Collaborative Work and Learning illustrates a turn in the field of CSCL and emphasizes an important message for a generation of CSCL designers and researchers.

Social tagging revamped: supporting the users' need of self-promotion through persuasive techniques

People share pictures online to increase their social presence. However, recent studies have shown that most of the content shared in social networks is not looked at by peers. Proper metadata can be generated and used to improve the retrieval of this content. In spite of this, we still lack solutions for collecting valid descriptors of content that can be used effectively in the context of social information navigation. In this paper, we propose a mechanism based on persuasive techniques to support peers in providing metadata for multimedia content that can be used for a persons self-promotion. Through an iterative design and experimentation process, we demonstrate how this methodology can be used effectively to increase ones social presence thus building more enjoyable, rich, and creative content that is shared in the social network. In addition, we highlight implications that inform the design of social games with a purpose.

Barriers and bridges in the adoption of today's mobile phone contextual services

This paper presents ethnographic observations, a diary study and a large-scale quantitative questionnaire (n=395) designed to study the reasons for adoption and refusal of context-aware mobile applications. Through a qualitative study we identify 24 user needs that these applications fulfill and 9 barriers for adoption. We found that for many of the identified needs the end-goal is not that of receiving information, thus complementing work on mobile information needs. Also, this work offers an actionable list of obstacles that prevent contextual services to reach a larger audience. Finally, our findings suggest the opportunity to develop novel mobile applications that fulfill needs in the activity and personal contextual dimensions, and that of developing an application store for feature phones.

The effects of explicit referencing in distance problem solving over shared maps

Explicit Referencing is a mechanism for enabling deictic gestures in on-line communication. Little is known about the impact of ER on distance problem solving. In this paper, we report on a study where 120 students (60 pairs) had to solve a problem collaboratively, at a distance, using chat tools that differed in the way a user may relate an utterance to the task context. Results indicate that team performance is improved by explicit referencing mechanisms. However, when Explicit Referencing is implemented in a way that is detrimental to the linearity of the conversation, resulting in the visual dispersion or scattering of messages, its use has negative consequences for collaborative work at a distance. The role of a linear message history in the collaboration mechanisms was equally important than that of Explicit Referencing.

Why Would Furniture Be Relevant for Collaborative Learning

This books presents research into “collaborative artifacts and interactive furniture”, (CAIF), i.e., interfaces embedded in everyday objects, such as tables, chairs, lamps, especially with a view to support collaborative learning . For the first two decades since the birth of the personal computer, the development of hardware has been driven by the vision of “bringing a computer to every desktop” expressed by Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, in the late 1970s. Following this vision, hardware designers and computer manufactures ordinarily constrained the form of computing to standardized flat or tower (often beige) boxes, suitable for placement on every desktop, and serving the primary function of running a wide variety of desktop software applications. In the 1990s, a trend towards miniaturization meant that smaller devices emerged, including notebooks, laptops, PDAs and other hand-held mobile devices. The advent of cell phones and mobile Internet has also led to the “mobile learning” paradigm, namely systems that engage in learning across contexts and learning with mobile devices. Recently, there has been a new shift towards what is called “roomware” (Streitz et al. 1998) : the integration of technologies into everyday artefacts, ranging from tables to walls or kitchen furniture, with interactive tables and tabletops being a particular focal point for such efforts. Roomware appears as a parallel track of research to mobile learning that sometimes that sometimes has complementary affordances; the phone can, for example, be employed as a means of inputting data to interact with furniture or interactive architectures. Within the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and the Ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) community, interest in this trend towards embedding collaborative technologies into furniture is growing. Researchers explore the elements that make up interactive spaces and the role of interactive, and effects these spaces have on collaboration. Different approaches have been implemented to support group work with adapted office spaces and room elements, but so far, at this early stage of development, none of these approaches alone offers a consistent solution to the question of how to integrate technologies in objects and environments in a way to support collaboration.