Thomas G. Zimmerman

Personal area networks: near-field intrabody communication

As electronic devices become smaller, lower in power requirements, and less expensive, we have begun to adorn our bodies with personal information and communication appliances. Such devices include cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pocket video games, and pagers. Currently there is no method for these devices to share data. Networking these devices can reduce functional I/O redundancies and allow new conveniences and services. The concept of Personal Area Networks (PANs) is presented to demonstrate how electronic devices on and near the human body can exchange digital information by capacitively coupling picoamp currents through the body. A low-frequency carrier (less than 1 megahertz) is used so no energy is propagated, minimizing remote eavesdropping and interference by neighboring PANs. A prototype pan system allows users to exchange electronic business cards by shaking hands.

Electronic musical re-performance and editing system

A music re-performance system allows a plurality of untrained instrumentalist to play pre-stored music using traditional playing techniques along with an automatic accompaniment at a tempo controlled by a selected-instrumentalist. Instrumentalists gestures start and stop pre-stored score notes and temporal restrictions limit gestural timing errors. Expression parameters, including volume, timbre, and vibrato, are selectively updated, allowing editing of music sound files. A finger manipulation and energy driver controller model, including transducers and signal processing, accommodates wind and string instruments. Temporal masking prevents substantially concurrent finger and energy gestures, intended as simultaneous, from producing multiple false gestures.

Creek watch: pairing usefulness and usability for successful citizen science

Citizen science projects can collect a wealth of scientific data, but that data is only helpful if it is actually used. While previous citizen science research has mostly focused on designing effective capture interfaces and incentive mechanisms, in this paper we explore the application of HCI methods to ensure that the data itself is useful. To provide a focus for this exploration we designed and implemented Creek Watch, an iPhone application and website that allow volunteers to report information about waterways in order to aid water management programs. Working with state and local officials and private groups involved in water monitoring, we conducted a series of contextual inquiries to uncover what data they wanted, what data they could immediately use, and how to most effectively deliver that data to them. We iteratively developed the Creek Watch application and website based on our findings and conducted evaluations of it with both contributors and consumers of water data, including scientists at the city water resources department. Our study reveals that the data collected is indeed useful for their existing practices and is already in use in water and trash management programs. Our results suggest the application of HCI methods to design the data for the end users is just as important as their use in designing the user interface.

Wireless networked digital devices: a new paradigm for computing and communication

The proliferation of mobile computing devices including laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wearable computers has created a demand for wireless personal area networks (PANs). PANs allow proximal devices to share information and resources. The mobile nature of these devices places unique requirements on PANs, such as low power consumption, frequent make-and-break connections, resource discovery and utilization, and international regulations. This paper examines wireless technologies appropriate for PANs and reviews promising research in resource discovery and service utilization.

Pen computing: challenges and applications

Pen computing as a fieId broadly includes computers and applications in which a pen is the main input device. This field continues to draw a lot of attention from researchers because there are a number of applications where the pen is the most convenient form of input. These include: 1. preparing a first draft of a document and concentrating on content creation; 2. a socially acceptable form of capturing information in meetings, that is quieter than typing and creates minimal visual barrier; 3. applications that need privacy; 4. entering letters in ideographic languages like Chinese and Japanese and non-letter entries like graphics, music and gestures; and 5. interaction with multi-modal systems. The advent of electronic tablets in the late 1950s precipitated considerable activity in the area of pen computing. This interest ebbed in the 1970s, and was renewed in the 1980s, primarily due to advances in pen hardware technology and improvement in user-interfaces and handwriting recognition algorithms. There are still however, a number of challenges that need to be addressed before pen computing can address the needs listed above to a acceptable level of user satisfaction. In the paper, an overview of three aspects of pen computing are presented: pen input hardware, handwriting recognition and pen computer applications.

Why Latino High School Students Select Computer Science as a Major: Analysis of a Success Story

This article reports on a public school that is succeeding in encouraging Latino high school students to select Computer Science (CS) as a major. The students attend a charter high school designed to encourage low-income Latino students to attend college and attain proficiency in English, Spanish, and computers. Using data from surveys and by analyzing test scores, the authors quantify the characteristics of students who are likely to choose CS as a major. A survey of 139 tenth- through twelfth-grade Latino students is used to determine factors that influence CS major selection. The survey includes questions from a previous study (836 high school math students from 9 public and private schools) as a control. Additional questions measure student interest in 20 STEM, business, and humanities subjects. Standardized test scores are correlated with factors affecting choice of CS as a major. Environment and intervention programs in, after, and outside of school are examined to consider their impact on student development. The article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the relationship among academic environment and performance, subject interests, gender, and teaching methods that influence the interest of Latino high school students in choosing CS as a major.

Simplifying home health monitoring by incorporating a cell phone in a weight scale

The overweight under-exercised aging baby-boom generation is creating an epidemic of chronic diseases that is placing a tremendous burden on the health care system. Frequent monitoring and contact between a patient and health care professional can help the patient control their diet, get more exercise and increase medication compliance. These factors produce dramatic improvements in patient health and well being. We present a home health system to manage heart disease that monitors patient weight and symptoms and support verbal communication between patient and health care professionals. The system embeds a cell phone, electronics and a large battery inside a weight scale to simplify installation and use, leverage cell phone cost-performance and speed up prototype development.

Travel Card: airport self-check in using a wireless PDA

A pilot project conducted at an airport allows passengers to self check-in and board using a personal digital assistant (PDA). The PDA runs a tiny browser wirelessly networked to a server. Transcoding software connects PDAs, gate readers and displays to the legacy reservation and departure control system. Gate readers cause digital photographs of passengers to appear during boarding for security check. Flight attendant PDAs and reception desk laptops receive digital photographs and flight records of passengers as they approach, to allow personalized greetings.

Retail applications of signature verification

The dramatic rise in identity theft, the ever pressing need to provide convenience in checkout services to attract and retain loyal customers, and the growing use of multi-function signature captures devices in the retail sector provides favorable conditions for the deployment of dynamic signature verification (DSV) in retail settings. We report on the development of a DSV system to meet the needs of the retail sector. We currently have a database of approximately 10,000 signatures collected from 600 subjects and forgers. Previous work at IBM on DSV has been merged and extended to achieve robust performance on pen position data available from commercial point of sale hardware, achieving equal error rates on skilled forgeries and authentic signatures of 1.5% to 4%.

Computational discovery of personal traits from social multimedia

Hundreds of millions of people leave digital footprints, including textual posts and photos, on public on social media and social networking sites. Here we present our work on using these digital footprints-social multimedia content-to derive four types of basic personal traits for individuals. Moreover, we show how these basic traits can be used in combinations to help assess composite traits in two cases: trust modeling and resilience modeling. We share our preliminary results and discuss future research directions.