Meghan Allen

The Field Evaluation of a Mobile Digital Image Communication Application Designed for People with Aphasia

PhotoTalk is an application for a mobile device that allows people with aphasia to capture and manage digital photographs to support face-to-face communication. Unlike any other augmentative and alternative communication device for people with aphasia, PhotoTalk focuses solely on image capture and organization and is designed to be used independently. Our project used a streamlined process with three phases: (1) a rapid participatory design and development phase with two speech-language pathologists acting as representative users, (2) an informal usability study with five aphasic participants, which caught usability problems and provided preliminary feedback on the usefulness of PhotoTalk, and (3) a one-month field evaluation with two aphasic participants followed by a one-month secondary field evaluation with one aphasic participant, which showed that they all used it regularly and relatively independently, although not always for its intended communicative purpose. Our field evaluations demonstrated PhotoTalks promise in terms of its usability and usefulness in everyday communication.

Involving domain experts in assistive technology research

Teams engaging in assistive technology research should include expertise in the domain of disability itself, in addition to other areas of expertise that are more typical in human–computer interaction (HCI) research, such as computer science and psychology. However, unexpected problems can arise when HCI researchers do not adequately plan the involvement of domain experts in a research project. Although many research teams have included domain experts when designing assistive technologies, there has been little work published on how to best involve these experts in the research process. This paper is a first step towards filling that void. Based on the authors’ own experiences involving domain experts in research, as well as those documented in the literature, five types of domain experts and three broad roles that domain experts can play are identified, and five guidelines for their involvement are presented. This analysis will be useful to anyone in the assistive technology and universal accessibility communities, especially those who are in the early stages of conducting research in this area. It is intended to lay the foundation of best practices for involving domain experts in assistive technology research.

The design and field evaluation of PhotoTalk: a digital image communication application for people

Talk is an application for a mobile device that allows people with aphasia to capture and manage digital photographs to support face-to-face communication. Unlike any other augmentative and alternative communication device for people with aphasia, PhotoTalk focuses solely on image capture and organization and is designed to be used independently. Our project used a streamlined process with 3 phases: (1) a rapid participatory design and development phase with two speech-language pathologists acting as representative users, (2) an informal usability study with 5 aphasic participants, which caught usability problems and provided preliminary feedback on the usefulness of PhotoTalk, and (3) a 1 month field evaluation with 2 aphasic participants, which showed that both used it regularly and fairly independently, although not always for its intended communicative purpose. Our field study demonstrated PhotoTalks promise in terms of its usability and usefulness in real life situations.

The Design and Field Evaluation of PhotoTalk: A Digital Image Communication Application for People with Aphasia

PhotoTalk is an application for a mobile device that allows people with aphasia to capture and manage digital photographs to support face-to-face communication. Unlike any other augmentative and alternative communication device for people with aphasia, PhotoTalk focuses solely on image capture and organization and is designed to be used independently. Our project used a streamlined process with 3 phases: (1) a rapid participatory design and development phase with two speech-language pathologists acting as representative users, (2) an informal usability study with 5 aphasic participants, which caught usability problems and provided preliminary feedback on the usefulness of PhotoTalk, and (3) a 1 month field evaluation with 2 aphasic participants, which showed that both used it regularly and fairly independently, although not always for its intended communicative purpose. Our field study demonstrated PhotoTalk’s promise in terms of its usability and usefulness in real life situations.

How can diagramming tools help support programming activities

We report on an exploratory study we conducted to investigate what kind of diagrammatic tool support, if any, is desired by programmers. The study involved 19 professional programmers working at three different companies. We found that the study participants desire a wide range of information content in diagrams, which would change depending upon the particular context of use. Meeting these needs may require flexible, adaptive and responsive diagramming tool support.

An initial usability assessment for symbolic haptic rendering of music parameters

Current methods of playlist creation and maintenance do not support user needs, especially in a mobile context. Furthermore, they do not scale: studies show that users with large mp3 collections have abandoned the concept of playlists. To remedy the usability problems associated with playlist creation and navigation - in particular, reliance on visual feedback and the absence of rapid content scanning mechanisms - we propose a system that utilizes the haptic channel. A necessary first step in this objective is the creation of a haptic mapping for music. In this paper, we describe an exploratory study addressed at understanding the feasibility, with respect to learnability and usability, of efficient, eyes-free playlist navigation based on symbolic haptic renderings of key song parameters. Users were able to learn haptic mappings for music parameters to usable accuracy with 4 minutes of training. These results indicate promise for the approach and support for continued effort in both improving the rendering scheme and implementing the haptic playlist system.

Turning exams into a learning experience

Most students see exams as a stressful experience, having crammed as much as they possibly can and hoping that the material they have studied would indeed be on the exams, and the material that they did not have the time to study for, nor understand, would be overlooked by their professors. At the same time, instructors see exams as formal assessments of student learning. Exams are seldom thought of as a learning experience. In this paper, we report our experiences in the use of two-stage exams as a learning experience for the students in two different courses. In a two-stage exam, students write an exam individually, then they rewrite the same exam in collaboration with three or four other students. One of the main objectives is to encourage peer instruction and promote learning even during the exams. Students obtain immediate feedback during the exam, and initial results have shown that this type of exam format produces some positive effects in later assessment.

Are Females Disinclined to Tinker in Computer Science

Our study explores the use of tinkering strategies across genders in undergraduate students of Computer Science. We present a definition and a framework for tinkering as it applies to this context, and use these to investigate how students across genders tinker with hardware and software. Our goal is to examine gender-based differences in tinkering behaviour and to discuss the meaning and implications of these differences on teaching and learning in Computer Science. We gathered data via interviews and a questionnaire and used both qualitative and quantitative methods for analysis. Our work is preliminary and suggests further areas of research in this domain.

Insights from the Application of Universal Design Principles to Support English Language Learners

The rising number of international students who are English Language Learners (ELL) at English-speaking universities has introduced challenges and opportunities for these students and their instructors. In this paper we present a case study of our experiences using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to guide curriculum design that supports ELL students in a first programming course (CS1). We assess the success of our approach in terms of student grades with respect to the entire CS1 population, student feedback via surveys, and instructor reflections. Our contribution to the computer science education community is an argument for following UDL when designing curriculum to support language needs. We believe that this curriculum will benefit both ELLs and their native English speaking peers in a broad, linguistically diverse student population.