Neema Moraveji

Comicboarding: using comics as proxies for participatory design with children

Comicboarding is a participatory design method that uses specially created comic books to generate engaging, productive brainstorming sessions with children. By leveraging known plot formats, interaction styles, and characters in comics, researchers can elicit ideas even from children who are not accustomed to brainstorming, such as those from schools were rote learning is the norm. We conducted an experiment using two variants of the comicboarding methodology with 17 children in China, where traditional participatory design may fail in the face of local cultural practices. The results suggest that comicboarding holds promise for co-design with children.

Mischief: supporting remote teaching in developing regions

Mischief is a system to support traditional classroom practices between a remote instructor and a group of collocated students. Meant for developing regions, each student in the classroom is given a mouse and these are connected to a single machine and shared display. We present observations of teaching practices in rural Chinese classrooms that led to Mischiefs design. Mischiefs user interface, with which scores of collocated students can interact simultaneously, supports anonymous responses, communicates focus of attention, and maintains the role of the instructor. Mischief is an extensible platform in which Microsoft PowerPoint slides, used commonly in developing regions, are made interactive. We setup a controlled environment where Mischief was used by classrooms of children with a remote math instructor. The results from the study provided insight into the usability and capacity of the system to support traditional classroom interactions. These observations were also the impetus for a redesign of several components of Mischief and are also presented. These findings contribute both a novel system for synchronous distance education in an affordable manner and design insights for creators of related systems.

A mischief of mice: examining children's performance in single display groupware systems with 1 to 32 mice

Mischief is a system for classroom interaction that allows multiple children to use individual mice and cursors to interact with a single large display [20]. While the system can support large groups of children, it is unclear how childrens performance is affected as group size increases. We explore this question via a study involving two tasks, with children working in group sizes ranging from 1 to 32. The first required reciprocal selection of two on-screen targets, resembling a swarm pointing scenario that might be used in educational applications. The second, a more temporally and spatially distributed pointing task, had children entering different words by selecting characters on an on-screen keyboard. Results indicate that performance is significantly affected by group size only when targets are small. Further, group size had a smaller effect when pointing was spatially and temporally distributed than when everyone was concurrently aiming at the same targets.

Direct pointer: direct manipulation for large-display interaction using handheld cameras

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a technique, Direct Pointer, that enables users to interact intuitively with large displays using cameras equipped on handheld devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistant (PDA). In contrast to many existing interaction methods that attempt to address the same problem, ours offers direct manipulation of the pointer position with continuous visual feedback. The primary advantage of this technique is that it only requires equipment that is readily available: an electronic display, a handheld digital camera, and a connection between the two. No special visual markers in the display content are needed, nor are fixed cameras pointing at the display. We evaluated the performance of Direct Pointer as an interaction product, showing that it performs as well as comparable techniques that require more sophisticated equipment.

Peripheral paced respiration: influencing user physiology during information work

We present the design and evaluation of a technique for influencing user respiration by integrating respiration-pacing methods into the desktop operating system in a peripheral manner. Peripheral paced respiration differs from prior techniques in that it does not require the users full attention. We conducted a within-subjects study to evaluate the efficacy of peripheral paced respiration, as compared to no feedback, in an ecologically valid environment. Participant respiration decreased significantly in the pacing condition. Upon further analysis, we attribute this difference to a significant decrease in breath rate while the intermittent pacing feedback is active, rather than a persistent change in respiratory pattern. The results have implications for researchers in physiological computing, biofeedback designers, and human-computer interaction researchers concerned with user stress and affect.

ClassSearch: facilitating the development of web search skills through social learning

We explore the use of social learning - improving knowledge skills by observing peer behavior - in the domain of Web search skill acquisition, focusing specifically on co-located classroom scenarios. Through a series of interviews, pilot studies, and classroom deployments, we conclude that a peripheral display of Web search activity within a classroom facilitates both social learning and teacher-led discourse. We present the ClassSearch system for shared awareness of Web search activity, which embodies principles gleaned from our iterative design process, and show results from a ClassSearch deployment in twelve middle-school classroom sessions. Finally, we highlight design suggestions and opportunities for future work while taxonomizing the space of co-located search pedagogies.

Measuring improvement in user search performance resulting from optimal search tips

Web search performance can be improved by either improving the search engine itself or by educating the user to search more efficiently. There is a large amount of literature describing techniques for measuring the former; whereas, improvements resulting from the latter are more difficult to quantify. In this paper we demonstrate an experimental methodology that proves to successfully quantify improvements from user education. The user education in our study is realized in the form of tactical search feature tips that expand user awareness of task-relevant tools and features of the search application. Initially, these tips are presented in an idealized situation: each tip is shown at the same time as the study participants are given a task that is constructed to benefit from the specific tip. However, we also present a follow-up study roughly one week later in which the search tips are no longer presented but the study participants who previously were shown search tips still demonstrate improved search efficiency compared to the control group. This research has implications for search user interface designers and the study of information retrieval systems.

Multiple mouse text entry for single-display groupware

A recent trend in interface design for classrooms in developing regions has many students interacting on the same display using mice. Text entry has emerged as an important problem preventing such mouse-based singledisplay groupware systems from offering compelling interactive activities. We explore the design space of mouse-based text entry and develop 13 techniques with novel characteristics suited to the multiple mouse scenario. We evaluated these in a 3-phase study over 14 days with 40 students in 2 developing region schools. The results show that one technique effectively balanced all of our design dimensions, another was most preferred by students, and both could benefit from augmentation to support collaborative interaction. Our results also provide insights into the factors that create an optimal text entry technique for single-display groupware systems.

The role of commitment devices and self-shaping in persuasive technology

We examine the role of self-shaping and commitment devices in persuasive systems. Self-shaping refers to the practice of taking purposeful action in modifying ones environment in order to shape or influence ones own future behavior. We present results from a survey of 23 users that assessed the role self-shaping plays in their use of persuasive technologies. A second survey elicited 65 self-shaping designs from 41 expert users, finding the Fogg Behavior Model describes how the designs were indeed persuasive. We then reviewed 85 tools based on this model to show the two dimensions that can be used to organize persuasive devices: (1) salience of a tools self-shaping features and (2) their intended flexibility. The resulting four categories of tools are useful for researchers and designers of persuasive systems.

User interface designs to support the social transfer of web search expertise

While there are many ways to develop search expertise, I maintain that most members of the general public do so in an inefficient manner. One reason is that, with current tools, is difficult to observe experts as a means of acquiring search expertise in a scalable fashion. This calls for a redesign of computer-mediated communication tools to make individual search strategies visible to other users. I present a research agenda to investigate this claim, which draws upon theories of social learning. I use design-based research to build novel systems that enable imitation-based learning of search expertise.