Walter Bender

Influencing group participation with a shared display

During face-to-face interactions, groups frequently overly rely on the dominant viewpoint to lead the group in its decision-making process. We begin with a discussion of this phenomenon and the possibility for technology to assist in addressing it. We then present findings from a behavioral study that examines how a shared display of individual speaker-participation rates can impact the behavior of the group during a collaboration task. The results from the study indicate that the presence of such a display influences the behavior of group participants in the extremes of over and under participation. While influencing the quantity of time someone speaks is not directly equivalent to influencing the topics discussed, we suggest that this approach of providing peripheral displays of social information is promising for improving certain types of group interactions.

Salient video stills: content and context preserved

A new class of images called salient stills is demonstrated and a software development platform for their creation is discussed. These images do not represent one discrete moment of time, as do a photograph or single video frame. Rather, one image reflects the aggregate of the temporal changes that occur in a moving image sequence with the salient features preserved. By the application of an affine transformation and non-linear temporal processing, multiple frames of an image sequence, which may include variations in focal-length or field-of-view, are combined to create a single still image. The still image may have multi-resolution patches, a larger field-of-view, or higher overall resolution than any individual frame in the original image sequence. It may also contain selected salient objects from any one of the sequence of video frames. The still can be created automatically or with user intervention. A by-product of the salient still process is a structured representation of moving image data.

Information Hiding to Foil the Casual Counterfeiter

Security documents (currency, treasury bills, stocks, bonds, birth certificates, etc.) provide an interesting problem space for investigating information hiding. Recent advances in the quality of consumer printers and scanners have allowed the application of traditional information hiding techniques to printed materials. This paper explores how some of those techniques might be used to address the problem of counterfeiting as the capability of home printers to produce “exact” copies improves.

Things that talk: using sound for device-to-device and device-to-human communication

Nonlexical sound is explored as both a device-to-device and device-to-human communication medium. Considerations for device-to-device communication include robustness in various environments, potential interference, frequency limitations of conventional and piezoelectric devices, computational complexity, and strategies for ultrasonic and humanaudible frequencies. Algorithms include modem protocols, information-hiding techniques, impulse coding, and dual-tone modulation. Considerations for device-to-human communication include the use of sounds that are unobtrusive in public settings and sounds that enable attention to be divided between the performance of complex tasks and real-time feedback.

An Audio-Based Personal Memory Aid

We are developing a wearable device that attempts to alleviate some everyday memory problems. The ”memory prosthesis” records audio and contextual information from conversations and provides a suite of retrieval tools (on both the wearable and a personal computer) to help users access forgotten memories in a timely fashion. This paper describes the wearable device, the personal-computer-based retrieval tool, and their supporting technologies. Anecdotal observations based on real-world use and quantitative results based on a controlled memory-retrieval task are reported. Finally, some social, legal, and design challenges of ubiquitous recording and remembering via a personal audio archive are discussed.

iRemember: a personal, long-term memory prosthesis

We present a wearable, computational memory aid capable of ubiquitous recording and associated retrieval tools for use during memory failures. We describe a study in which one of the authors recorded everyday conversations with colleagues for two years and subsequently evaluated the effectiveness of the retrieval tools for remedying simulated memory problems. Results suggest early validation of the memory retrieval approach (i.e., searching for memory triggers) towards alleviating certain classes of memory problems.

Group reactions to visual feedback tools

This paper presents findings on how individuals respond to receiving feedback on their participation levels during meetings. Comparing in-lab and natural group settings, repeated use, and differing information displays, we found that individuals vary on how useful and informative they found the feedback. Their ratings were most influenced by how the tool was first introduced to them and whether or not there was redundancy in the feedback.

Using visualizations to review a group's interaction dynamics

We present a visualization system for reviewing the turn-taking patterns in a face-to-face meeting. Without the need to directly observe a group, a user can use the system to gain insight into the interaction dynamics of a meeting. We evaluated the visualizations by asking outside observers to make qualitative judgments about the individuals represented visually, and then compared their assessments to our own, made from direct observation of the meetings.

Improving speech playback using time-compression and speech recognition

Despite the ready availability of digital recording technology and the continually decreasing cost of digital storage, browsing audio recordings remains a tedious task. This paper presents evidence in support of a system designed to assist with information comprehension and retrieval tasks from a large collection of recorded speech. Two techniques are employed to assist users with these tasks. First, a speech recognizer creates necessarily error-laden transcripts of the recorded speech. Second, audio playback is time-compressed using the SOLAFS technique. When used together, subjects are able to perform comprehension tasks with more speed and accuracy.

Time frames: temporal augmentation of the news

Great strides have been made in the use of computer tools to create, edit, filter, and present information, particularly since the tremendous growth in the mainstream popularity of the World Wide Web. The presence of a computationally rich environment at all stages of news distribution provides a unique opportunity to use these tools to improve the reader experience. Information provided for a general audience from a general source can be combined with small amounts of information specific to a reader to improve the readers understanding of, connection to, and engagement with the news. This paper discusses Time Frames for extracting time information from news articles. Combining this time information with limited information about the reader, we explore the possibilities for improving the reader experience by augmenting news articles.