Sen H. Hirano

Interactive visual supports for children with autism

Interventions to support children with autism often include the use of visual supports, which are cognitive tools to enable learning and the production of language. Although visual supports are effective in helping to diminish many of the challenges of autism, they are difficult and time-consuming to create, distribute, and use. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study focused on uncovering design guidelines for interactive visual supports that would address the many challenges inherent to current tools and practices. We present three prototype systems that address these design challenges with the use of large group displays, mobile personal devices, and personal recording technologies. We also describe the interventions associated with these prototypes along with the results from two focus group discussions around the interventions. We present further design guidance for visual supports and discuss tensions inherent to their design.

vSked: evaluation of a system to support classroom activities for children with autism

Visual schedules--the use of symbols to represent a series of activities or steps--have been successfully used by caregivers to help children with autism to understand, structure, and predict activities in their daily lives. Building from in-depth fieldwork and participatory design sessions, we developed vSked, an interactive and collaborative visual scheduling system designed for elementary school classrooms. We evaluated vSked in situ in one autism-specific classroom over three weeks. In this paper, we present the design principles, technical solution, and results from this successful deployment. Use of vSked resulted in reductions in staff effort required to use visual supports. vSked also resulted in improvements in the perceived quality and quantity of communication and social interactions in the classroom.

MOSOCO: a mobile assistive tool to support children with autism practicing social skills in real-life situations

MOSOCO is a mobile assistive application that uses augmented reality and the visual supports of a validated curriculum, the Social Compass, to help children with autism practice social skills in real-life situations. In this paper, we present the results of a seven-week deployment study of MOSOCO in a public school in Southern California with both students with autism and neurotypical students. The results of our study demonstrate that MOSOCO facilitates practicing and learning social skills, increases both quantity and quality of social interactions, reduces social and behavioral missteps, and enables the integration of children with autism in social groups of neurotypical children. The findings from this study reveal emergent practices of the uses of mobile assistive technologies in real-life situations.

Improving communication and social support for caregivers of high-risk infants through mobile technologies

Upon leaving the hospital, parents of high-risk infants experience a variety of challenges in providing care at home. In this work, we present results from a qualitative study to understand the role of social interaction and information-sharing surrounding high-risk infants among both home caregivers and health professionals. These results demonstrate challenges in communication and social support for caregivers of these infants. Based on these results, we present design guidelines for collaborative communication technologies for this population and a prototype system design that demonstrates how these design guidelines might be met in a mobile application. Finally, we discuss how collaborative technologies can serve to improve communication with professionals as well as provide much-needed social support.

GroupMind: supporting idea generation through a collaborative mind-mapping tool

Collaborative brainstorming can be a challenging but important part of creative group problem solving. Mind-mapping has the potential to enhance the brainstorming process but has its own challenges when used in a group. We introduce GroupMind, a collaborative mind-mapping tool that addresses these challenges and opens new opportunities for creative teamwork, including brainstorming. We present a semi-controlled evaluation of GroupMind and its impact on teamwork, problem solving and collaboration for brainstorming activities. GroupMind performs better than using a traditional whiteboard in both interaction group and nominal group settings for the task involving memory recall. The hierarchical mind-map structure also imposes important framing effects on group dynamics and idea organization during the brainstorming process. We also present design ideas to assist in the development of future tools to support creative problem solving in groups.

Classroom-based assistive technology: collective use of interactive visual schedules by students with autism

vSked is an interactive and collaborative assistive technology for students with autism, combining visual schedules, choice boards, and a token-based reward system into an integrated classroom system. In this paper, we present the results of a study of three deployments of vSked over the course of a year in two autism classrooms. The results of our study demonstrate that vSked can promote student independence, reduce the quantity of educator-initiated prompts, encourage consistency and predictability, reduce the time required to transition from one activity to another. The findings from this study reveal practices surrounding the use of assistive technologies in classrooms and highlight important considerations for both the design and the evaluation of assistive technologies in the future, especially those destined for classroom use.

It takes a network to get dinner: designing location-based systems to address local food needs

Based on an 18-month qualitative study that included the creation and testing of design considerations and a prototype location-based information system (LBIS), this research provides empirical insight into the daily practices of a wide variety of individuals working to address food insecurity in one U.S. county. Qualitative fieldwork reveals that nonprofit organizations in the food assistance ecology engage in location-based information practices that could be enhanced by the design of a LBIS. Two practices that would benefit from a collaborative LBIS are 1) practices of matching in which nonprofit workers help individuals who are seeking assistance to food resources and 2) practices of distribution in which nonprofit workers help organizations access and deliver food resources to clients. In order to support such practices across organizations the cooperative design component of this research suggests that an LIBS should: support the role of intermediaries who engage in practices of matching and distribution; provide interactive mapping tools that match resources to need; enable organizations to control visibility over specific data; and document work and impact. This research further suggests that designers should explore the wide variety of spatial patterns that must align and overlap such that ecologies of nonprofit organizations might synergistically work together to address pressing social needs.

Estrellita: A Mobile Capture and Access Tool for the Support of Preterm Infants and Their Caregivers

In this article, we describe the design process and principles used in the development of Estrellita, a tool to support parents of preterm infants to track health data. We tested Estrellita in the homes of seven families for 4 months while following seven additional families without Estrellita. The feedback from this trial, including in-depth interviews, surveys, and log analyses, sheds light on how parents can use a mobile data collection tool to enhance their problem-solving processes about their own health and that of their infants, as well as to share with others who support them in this care. In addition to presenting the design of a recording technology for preterm infants and its use in a real-life setting, the results of this research provide a deep understanding of how technology can and should be used to support home care of at-risk patients, in which data capture may be essential.

WalkMinder: encouraging an active lifestyle using mobile phone interruptions

Medical research suggests that avoiding lengthy periods of physical inactivity can have significant health benefits. The pervasive nature of mobile phones increasingly allows individuals to track and measure their own physical activity thus creating opportunities for them to reflect on their behavior and make informed changes. In this work, we investigated two mechanisms for encouraging a more active lifestyle: a glanceable display of an individuals level of physical activity and mobile phone vibrations to interrupt extended periods of inactivity. We found that both mechanisms can help users become more aware of their activity patterns but may be ignored unless coupled with concrete advice on how to incorporate active moments into their day.

Detecting cooking state with gas sensors during dry cooking

Gas sensors have the potential to assist cooking by providing feedback on the cooking process and by further automating cooking. In this work, we explored the potential use of gas sensors to monitor food during the cooking process. Focusing on dry cooking, we collected gas emissions using 13 sensors during trials in which food was cooked to various degrees of doneness. Using decision tree classifiers, we were able to predict doneness for waffles and popcorn with 73% and 85% accuracy, respectively. We reflect on the potential reasons for this variation and the ways in which gas sensors might reliably be used in ubicomp applications to support cooking.