11 ATLAS community members have contributed to work featured at the 22nd annual to be held on June 19-23, 2023 at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. IDC is the premier international conference for researchers, educators and practitioners to share the latest research findings, innovative methodologies and new technologies in the areas of inclusive child-centered design, learning and interaction. IDC’23 is hosted by the Center for Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University.

Coming out of the pandemic, this year’s theme asks participants to “rediscover childhood” to understand what it means to be a child in this and coming decades and what adults can do to provide a sustainable and equitable future for the next generation. Key topics include privacy, ethics, equity, social and emotional wellbeing, sustainability, and healthy human development.

Research presented by ATLAS faculty, students and affiliates

Casey Lee Hunt (ATLAS THING Lab member, PhD student), Kaiwen Sun, Zahra Dhuliawala, Fumi Tsukiyama, Iva Matkovic, Zachary Schwemler (ATLAS MS alumnus), Anastasia Wolf, Zihao Zhang, Allison Druin, Amanda Huynh, Daniel Leithinger (ATLAS THING Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member), Jason Yip

Children’s online co-design has become prevalent since COVID-19. However, related research focuses on insights gained across several shorter-term projects, rather than longitudinal investigations. To explore longitudinal co-design online, we engaged in participatory design with children (ages 8 - 12) for 20 sessions in two years on a single project: an online collaboration platform with tabletop telepresence robots. We found that (1) the online technology space required children to play a role as technology managers and troubleshooters, (2) the home setting shaped online social dynamics, and (3) providing children the ability to choose their design techniques prevented gridlock from situational uncertainties. We discuss how each finding resulted from interplay between our long-term technology design and online co-design processes. We then present insights about the future of online co-design, a conceptual model for longitudinal co-design online, and describe opportunities for further longitudinal online co-design research to generate new methods, techniques, and theories.

Junnan Yu, Ronni Hayden (PhD student), Ricarose Roque (Assistant Professor, Information Science)

Physical play has often been leveraged to provide children with active and engaging learning experiences. However, coding activities are predominantly sedentary in front of the screen, and the application of physical play in Computer Science education is less explored, e.g., how can we engage in computational thinking (CT) through physical play? In this design-based exploration, we conducted three design activities where young children, college students, and researchers were invited to create physical play projects using the BBC micro:bit and reflect on their experiences. By examining participants’ projects and creating processes, we provide empirical evidence that remixing physical play activities with coding can engage learners in various CT concepts and practices, reveal how CT concepts and practices can be represented in physical play, and highlight implications for designing physical play-mediated computational learning experiences. Ultimately, we encourage more learning experiences to incorporate physical play into computing education for children.

Ricarose Roque chairs the session “Computational and Data Literacy” in which this paper is included.

[Pictorial]
Ricarose Roque (Assistant Professor, Information Science)

This pictorial presents visuals of families engaging with creative technologies as “knowledge-building artifacts” to provoke reflection on the social, material, and emotional context of designed interactions (“things that make you think”) as well as provocations to re-value these contexts and promote alternative visions in what and how engagement with computing can look like (“things that matter”). The selected images are from a large and ongoing collection of documentation from a family technology program. The images were captured using the Reggio Emilia documentation approach to documentation, which aims to “make learning visible.”

Ricarose Roque is one of three Pictorial Chairs in the conference Organizing Committee.

[Work-in-progress]
Krithik Ranjan (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD student), Peter Gyory (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD Candidate), Michael L. Rivera (Utility Research Lab Director, Assistant Professor, Human-Computer Interaction and Digital Fabrication), and Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member)

Computational thinking has been identified as an important skill for children to learn in the 21st century, and many innovative kits and tools have been developed to integrate it into children’s learning. Yet, most solutions require the use of devices like computers or other expensive hardware, thus being inaccessible to low-income schools and communities. We present Cartoonimator, a low-cost, paper-based computational kit for children to create animations and engage with computational thinking. Cartoonimator requires only paper and a smartphone to use, offering an affordable learning experience. Children can draw the scenes and characters for their animation on the paper, which is printed with computer vision markers. We developed the mobile web app to provide an interface to capture keyframes and compile them into animations. In this paper, we describe the implementation and workflow of Cartoonimator, its deployment with children at a local STEAM event, and a planned evaluation for the kit.

[Work-in-progress] 
Cornelius Onimisi Adejoro, Luise Arn, Larissa Schwartz (Master's student), Tom Yeh (Associate Professor, Computer Science)

This paper presents a new approach to engaging children in Nigeria to share their views of AI. This approach is centered on an inclusive writing contest for children in a secondary school in Abuja to write about AI to compete for prizes and share their writings with others. A preliminary analysis of the first 11 articles we received exhibits diverse gender and ethnic representation that conveys cultural values and perspectives distinct from those of the children in Western countries. This finding suggests future work to conduct an in-depth cross-cultural analysis of the articles and to replicate similar writing contests to engage children in other underrepresented countries

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We are happy to announce that 19 members of the ATLAS community contributed to work accepted for the 2023 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, taking place in Hamburg, Germany, April 23–28.

Accepting fewer than 25 percent of submissions, CHI is the premier international conference on human-computer interaction (HCI), attracting researchers and practitioners from around the world.

A special shout-out goes to Laura Devendorf, Etta Sandry and Emma Goodwill, who were awarded an Honorable Mention (top 5% of submissions) for their paper, "AdaCAD: Parametric Design as a New Form of Notation for Complex Weaving."

Details of all accepted work by members of the ATLAS community, which includes faculty with tenure homes in the College of Engineering and Applied Science and College of Media, Communication and Information, are listed below.

ATLAS @ CHI 2023 Papers

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Laura Devendorf (ATLAS Unstable Design Lab Director, Information Science faculty member),Etta Sandry (ATLAS Unstable Design Lab weaving resident)Emma R. Goodwill (ATLAS Unstable Design Lab member, undergraduate student)

Woven textiles are increasingly a medium through which HCI is inventing new technologies. Key challenges in integrating woven textiles in HCI include the high level of textile knowledge required to make effective use of the new possibilities they afford and the need for tools that bridge the concerns of textile designers and concerns of HCI researchers. This paper presents AdaCAD, a parametric design tool for designing woven textile structures. Through our design and evaluation of AdaCAD we found that parametric design helps weavers notate and explain the logics behind the complex structures they generate. We discuss these finding in relation to prior work in integrating craft and/or weaving in HCI, histories of woven notation, and boundary object theory to illuminate further possibilities for collaboration between craftspeople and HCI practitioners.

Peter Gyory (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD candidate), S. Sandra Bae (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD student), Ruhan Yang (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD student), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member), Clement Zheng (PhD alumnus, ATLAS ACME Lab)

The electronics-centered approach to physical computing presents challenges when designers build tangible interactive systems due to its inherent emphasis on circuitry and electronic components. To explore an alternative physical computing approach we have developed a computer vision (CV) based system that uses a webcam, computer, and printed fiducial markers to create functional tangible interfaces. Through a series of design studios, we probed how designers build tangible interfaces with this CV-driven approach. In this paper, we apply the annotated portfolio method to reflect on the fifteen outcomes from these studios. We observed that CV markers offer versatile materiality for tangible interactions, afford the use of democratic materials for interface construction, and engage designers in embodied debugging with their own vision as a proxy for CV. By sharing our insights, we inform other designers and educators who seek alternative ways to facilitate physical computing and tangible interaction design.

Netta Ofer (ATLAS Living Matter Lab member, PhD student), Mirela Alistar (ATLAS Living Matter Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member)

Designing with living organisms can offer new perspectives to design research and practices in HCI. In this work, we explore first-person perspectives through design research with Kombucha Scoby, a microbial biofilm. We began with a material design exploration, producing digitally fabricated and crafted samples with Scoby. As we noticed our felt experiences while growing and working with Kombucha Scoby, we shifted towards a reflective autoethnographic study. Through reflective writings, we followed sensory experiences such as hearing the Kombucha fermentation, touching the Scoby while harvesting it, and watching the slow growth of layers over time. Subsequently, we designed "sensory engagement probes”: designed experiments that bring forward new connections and communicate our process, motivations, and tensions that emerged while engaging with the organism. Lastly, we discuss how such design research can inform material design with living matter by creating space to contemplate "life as shared experience" and more-than-human design perspectives.

Keke Wu (recent ATLAS PhD student), , Emma Petersen (ATLAS MS alumnus), , Danielle Albers Szafir (former ATLAS faculty member)

Data is everywhere, but may not be accessible to everyone. Conventional data visualization tools and guidelines often do not actively consider the specific needs and abilities of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), leaving them excluded from data-driven activities and vulnerable to ethical issues. To understand the needs and challenges people with IDD have with data, we conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with individuals with IDD and their caregivers. Our algorithmic interview approach situated data in the lived experiences of people with IDD to uncover otherwise hidden data encounters in their everyday life. Drawing on findings and observations, we characterize how they conceptualize data, when and where they use data, and what barriers exist when they interact with data. We use our results as a lens to reimagine the role of visualization in data accessibility and establish a critical near-term research agenda for cognitively accessible visualization.

Keke Wu (recent ATLAS PhD student)

Visualization amplifies cognition and helps a viewer see the trends, patterns, and outliers in data. However, conventional visualization tools and guidelines do not actively consider the unique needs and abilities of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD), leaving them excluded from data-driven activities and vulnerable to ethical issues in everyday life. My dissertation work explores the challenges and opportunities of cognitively accessible visualization. Through mixed-method approaches and close collaboration with people with IDD, my team and I ran experiments and developed guidelines to improve current visualizations, we interviewed people with IDD and gained an initial understanding of their daily data experiences, and we are currently in the process of revising a participatory design workshop to create accessible visualizations for and with this population. For the remaining dissertation work, I hope to further expand our knowledge of cognitively accessible visualization, translating what I have learned from these experiences into a graphical user interface that supports people with IDD with their self-advocacy and self-expression using personally relevant data. My ultimate career goal is to theorize cognitively accessible visualization and empower people with IDD to make informed decisions and generate meaningful discoveries through accessible visual analytics.

Clement Zheng (PhD alumnus, ATLAS ACME Lab), , , Laura Devendorf (ATLAS Unstable Design Lab Director, Information Science faculty member), ,

Glazed ceramic is a versatile material that we use every day. In this paper, we present a new approach that instruments existing glazed ceramic ware with interactive electronic circuits. We informed this work by collaborating with a ceramics designer and connected his craft practice to our experience in physical computing. From this partnership, we developed a systematic approach that begins with the subtractive fabrication of traces on glazed ceramic surfaces via the resist-blasting technique, followed by applying conductive ink into the inlaid traces. We capture and detail this approach through an annotated flowchart for others to refer to, as well as externalize the material insights we uncovered through ceramic and circuit swatches. We then demonstrate a range of interactive home applications built with this approach. Finally, we reflect on the process we took and discuss the importance of collaborating with craftspeople for material-driven research within HCI.

Ran Zhou (ATLAS THING Lab member, PhD student), Zachary Schwemler (ATLAS MS alumnus), , , Casey Lee Hunt (ATLAS THING Lab member, PhD student), Daniel Leithinger (ATLAS THING Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member)

Emerging research has demonstrated the viability of emotional communication through haptic technology inspired by interpersonal touch. However, the meaning-making of artificial touch remains ambiguous and contextual. We see this ambiguity caused by robotic touch’s "otherness" as an opportunity for exploring alternatives. To empower emotional haptic design in longitudinal out-of-lab exploration, we devise TactorBots, a design toolkit consisting of eight wearable hardware modules for rendering robotic touch gestures controlled by a web-based software application. We deployed TactorBots to thirteen designers and researchers to validate its functionality, characterize its design experience, and analyze what, how, and why alternative perceptions, practices, contexts, and metaphors would emerge in the experiment. We provide suggestions for designing future toolkits and field studies based on our experiences. Reflecting on the findings, we derive design implications for further enhancing the ambiguity and shifting the mindsets to expand the design space.

Note: This team will also lead an Interactivity session:

Workshops

ATLAS will also be represented at the Electrofab 2023 workshop during CHI. This year’s theme is “Beyond Prototyping Boards: Future Paradigms for Electronics Toolkits,” and will feature two papers authored by ATLAS members.

Ruhan Yang (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD student), Krithik Ranjan (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD student), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab Director, Computer Science faculty member)

This paper introduces a new method of paper circuit fabrication that overcomes design barriers and increases flexibility in circuit design. Conventional circuit boards rely on thin traces, which limits the complexity and accuracy when applied to paper circuits. To address this issue, we propose a method that uses large conductive zones in paper circuits and performs subtractive processing during their fabrication. This approach eliminates design barriers and allows for more flexibility in circuit design. We introduce PaperCAD, a software tool that simplifies the design process by converting traditional circuit design to paper circuit design. We demonstrate our technique by creating two paper circuit boards. Our approach has the potential to promote the development of new applications for paper circuits.

Clement Zheng (PhD alumnus, ATLAS ACME Lab member), Peter Gyory (ATLAS ACME Lab member, PhD Candidate), Ellen Yi-Luen Do (ATLAS ACME Lab Director and Computer Science faculty member)

The electronics-centered approach to physical computing presents challenges when designers build tangible interactive systems due to its inherent emphasis on circuitry and electronic components. To explore an alternative physical computing approach we have developed a computer vision (CV) based system that uses a webcam, computer, and printed fiducial markers to create functional tangible interfaces. Over the last three years, we ran a series of studios with design participants to investigate how CV markers can participate in physical computing and the construction of physical interactive systems. We observed that CV markers offer versatile materiality for tangible interactions, afford the use of democratic materials for interface construction, and engage designers in embodied debugging with their own vision as a proxy for CV. Taking these insights, we are developing a visual editor that enables designers to easily program marker behavior and connect it to keyboard events. We believe that such a platform will enable designers to develop physical and digital interfaces concurrently while minimizing the complexity of integrating both sides. In addition, this platform can also facilitate the construction of many alternative interfaces for existing software that cater to different people. We discuss our motivation, progress, and future work of this research here.

Two ATLAS community members also co-organized a workshop in the Extended Abstracts portion of CHI 2023.

, , , , Fiona Bell (PhD Candidate), Netta Ofer (ATLAS Living Matter Lab member, PhD student), , , , , ,

As knowledge around bio-digital interaction continues to unfold, there are new opportunities for HCI researchers to integrate biology as a design and computational material. Our motivation for the workshop is to bring together interdisciplinary researchers with interest in exploring the next generation of biological HCI and exploring novel bio-digital interfaces implicating diverse contexts, scales, and stakeholders. The workshop aims to provide a space for interactive discussions, presentations, and brainstorming regarding opportunities and approaches for HCI around bio-digital interfaces. We invite researchers from both academia and industry to submit a short position paper in the following areas: Synthetic Biology, Biological Circuits, Do-It-Yourself Biology (DIYBio), Biomimetic Interfaces, Living Interfaces, Living Artefacts, and Bio-ethics. We will evaluate submissions on fit, ability to stimulate discussion, and contribution to HCI. On our website we have included examples of past work in this area to help inspire and inform position papers. Our website will host a recording of the entire workshop session with accepted papers to support asynchronous viewing for participants who are unable to attend in-person or synchronously.

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THING Lab

“EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch,” authored by Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang and Assistant Professor Daniel Leithinger, director of the THING Lab, won a Best Pictorial Honorable Mention award at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '22). Zhou, an ATLAS PhD student who was also the for DIS'22, presented the research during the Multisensory Design session.

Prior psychology findings show humans can communicate distinct emotions solely through touch, and in this work, THING Lab researchers hypothesize that similar effects might also be applicable to robotic touch. Their findings uncover that the "otherness" of robotic touch broadens the design possibilities of emotional communication beyond mimicking interpersonal touch. Bringing designers into the exploration of emotional robotic touch, the researchers discuss their design decisions and reflect on their insights. To enable designers to easily generate and modify various types of affective touch for conveying emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, etc.), the researchers also developed a platform consisting of a robotic tactor interface and a software design tool. When conducting an elicitation study with 11 interaction designers, they discovered common patterns in their generated tactile sensations for each emotion.The researchers also illustrated the strategies, metaphors, and reactions that the designers deployed in the design process.

Publication

Ran Zhou, Harpreet Sareen, Yufei Zhang, and Daniel Leithinger. 2022. EmotiTactor: Exploring How Designers Approach Emotional Robotic Touch. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1330–1344. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533487 .pdf  (June 13-17, 2022—Virtual Event, Australia) [Best Pictorial Honorable Mention].
 

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When users reach out to touch a visible surface in virtual reality, it normally isn't there. But a team of researchers in ATLAS Institute's THING Lab have been exploring ways to make the virtual tangible. Building on their past work, PhD graduate Ryo Suzuki and Assistant Professor Daniel Leithinger recently published a paper that was presented for ACM's Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology, introducing an intriguing application of small swarm robots that dynamically move to provide physical touchpoints on demand whenever the user reaches out and touches a virtual point in space.

Coined HapticBots, the Rubix cube-sized robots reach the hand just in time to provide haptic feedback. While each robot can render the surface touched by a single fingertip, having a fast-moving, shape-changing swarm of them gives the illusion of a large virtual surface. Each robot controls a small piece of the surface, the size of 2–3 fingertips, equivalent to one pin of a shape display that can be moved around, rotated, raised and lowered to encounter a fingertip, as it approaches the virtual object. The small robots can be also be picked up by the user and deployed to a different surface. Possible applications for the technology include remote collaboration, education and training, design and 3D modeling, and gaming and entertainment.

Suzuki, now an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary, was the lead author for the paper, collaborating with a Microsoft Research team and his former advisor, Leithinger.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFq5JNtXSKo]

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ATLAS researchers presented 10 published works and one special interest group at the 2021 Human Factors in Computing Conference, the world’s preeminent forum for the field of human-computer interaction. The conference, commonly referred to as CHI, was held virtually May 8-13, 2021. 

Researchers affiliated with VisuaLab authored four of the nine ATLAS papers admitted to the conference, two of which received awards, including "Best Paper" and "Honorable Mention."  The Unstable Design Lab had two papers accepted, while the THING, Emergent Nanomaterials, Superhuman Computing, and Living Matter labs each had one. An additional paper was co-authored by alumna Andrea DeVore TAM '18, who is not associated with an ATLAS lab.

In all, 2,844 papers were submitted to CHI 2021, 28 of which were selected for the "Best Paper" award and 114 received "Honorable Mention."  In 2020, CHI accepted nine ATLAS papers, including four from the Unstable Design Lab and one each from the Superhuman Computing, Living Matter, VisuaLab, ACME and IRON labs.
 

CHI 2021 papers, position papers and workshops by ATLAS faculty and students

VisuaLab

. [Best Paper Award].  
Keke Wu (PhD student, ATLAS), Emma Petersen, (CTD MS student, ATLAS), Tahmina Ahmad, (Computer Science BS student), David Burlinson (PhD Computer Science, University of North Carolina), E. S. Tanis (faculty, CU Denver–Anschultz), and Danielle Szafir (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science)
Researchers conducted a web-based mixed-methods experiment with 34 participants with and without Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDDs) to identify their differences in reading data and summarized the findings into four accessible visualization design guidelines. 

Immersive Design Reviews through Situated Qualitative Feedback (workshop paper)
M. Whitlock (PhD student, Computer Science) and Danielle Albers Szafir (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science)
This paper on Immersive Design Reviews through Situated Qualitative Feedback was accepted to the Evaluating User Experiences in Mixed Reality Workshop at CHI 2021.

VisuaLab Collaborations

Grand Challenges in Immersive Analytics 
Danielle Szafir (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science), Matt Whitlock (PhD student, Computer Science) and 22 other international experts.
A diverse group of 24 international experts developed 17 key research challenges, providing a systematic roadmap of current directions as well as the impending hurdles to facilitating productive and effective applications for Immersive Analytics.

 [Best Paper Honorable Mention]
Willie Payne (BS/MS alumnus Computer Science/Music Composition), Mary West (PhD student, Computer Science), Carlie Charp (CTD BS student, ATLAS), Ben Shapiro (faculty, Computer Science),  Edd Taylor (faculty, Education).

Dance provides opportunities for embodied interdisciplinary learning experiences that can be personally and culturally relevant. danceON's system supports learners to leverage their body movement as they engage in artistic practices across data science, computing and dance. It allows users to bind virtual shapes to body positions in under three lines of code, while also enabling complex, dynamic animations that users can design working with conditionals and past position data. The work identifies implications for how design can support learners' expression across culturally relevant themes and examines challenges from the lens of usability of the computing language and technology.

Unstable Design Lab

Laura Devendorf (faculty, ATLAS/Information Science), , (faculty, Eindhoven University of Technology/Department of Industrial Design), , (faculty, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University/Computer Science).
Parent-focused smart devices and data-tracking platforms frame the responsible parent as one who evaluates, analyzes and mitigates data-defined risks for their children and family. In this article, the researchers turn away from self-improvement narratives to attend to their own experiences as mothers and designers through creating Design Memoirs, speaking directly to the HCI community from their positions as both users and subjects of optimized parenting tools.

Late-breaking work
From The Art of Reflection to The Art of Noticing: A Shifting View of Self-Tracking Technologies’ Role in Supporting Sustainable Food Practices
Janghee Cho, (PhD student, Information Science), Laura Devendorf (faculty, ATLAS/Information Science) and Stephen Voida (faculty, Information Science).
This paper explores using self-tracking technologies that might help people draw attention to the impact of their food practices on the environment and promote sustainable food habits.

Living Matter Lab 

Self-deStaining Textiles: Designing Interactive Systems with Fabric, Stains and Light
Fiona Bell, (PhD student, ATLAS), Mirela Alistar (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science),  and Laura Devendorf (faculty, ATLAS/Information Science) 
More information
While staining happens unintentionally (e.g., spilling coffee), this paper introduces “destaining” as an intentional design tool that can be used by HCI practitioners and designers alike to selectively degrade stains on textiles in aesthetic ways. 

Superhuman Computing Lab 

Vinitha Gadiraju (PhD student, Computer Science),  Olwyn Doyle (BA Computer Science and Political Science '20) and Shaun K. Kane (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science)
This work explores how classroom technology design can imitate the instructional strategies educators use to teach visually impaired students the academic and behavioral skills outlined by the Expanded Core Curriculum.

THING Lab & Laboratory for Emergent Nanomaterials

Soft Electrohydraulic Actuators for Origami Inspired Shape-Changing Interfaces 
Purnendu (PhD student, ATLAS),Eric Acome (Keplinger Research Group), Christoph Keplinger, (faculty, Mechanical Engineering), Mark D. Gross (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science), Carson Bruns (faculty, ATLAS/Mechanical Engineering) and Daniel Leithinger (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science).  
This work introduces electrohydraulic actuators capable of producing sharp hinge-like bends that can be used to actuate existing objects or fold origami creases.

OTHER

Junnan Yu (INFO PhD Candidate), Andrea DeVore (ATLAS Undergrad Alumna), Ricarose Roque (INFO Faculty)

Special Interest Group

Microbe-HCI: Introduction and Directions for Growth
Raphael Kim (Queen Mary University), Pat Pataranutaporn (MIT), Jack Forman (MIT), Seung Ah Lee (Yonsei University), Ingmar Riedel-Kruse (University of Arizona), Mirela Alistar (faculty, ATLAS/Computer Science),  Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez (UC Davis), Katia Vega (UC Davis) Roland van Dierendonck (Studio Roland van Dierendonck), Gilad Gome (The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya), Oren Zuckerman (The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya), Angela Vujic (MIT), David Sun Kong (MIT), Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab), Hiroshi Ishii, (MIT), Misha Sra (UCSB), Stefan Poslad (Queen Mary University).  

Microbes bring a distinct set of functional, practical and ethical ramifications in interaction design. This special interest group addresses the various forms that microbial integration in human-computer interaction can take.  The sessions are engaging, focused and orientated conversations around microbes acting as agents of interaction.

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Helping robots behave tactfully in group situations, pinpointing ways social media can avoid reminding the bereaved of their losses, blending modern technology with ancient weaving practices to improve smart textiles, encouraging visually impaired children and sighted family members to learn Braille together through tangible blocks and computer games—these are some of the topics covered in the nine papers and two workshops by researchers at CU Boulder’s ATLAS Institute that were accepted to CHI 2020, the world’s preeminent conference for the field of human-computer interaction. 

Like so many other events, CHI 2020, also known as ACM’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, isn’t taking place this year, but the proceedings are published and faculty and students remain tremendously proud of their contributions. Commenting on their work, ATLAS Director Mark Gross said, “The interactions we all have with hardware and software range from the absurd to the sublime. The field of human-computer interaction has more impact today than ever before, and ATLAS students and faculty are contributing at the highest levels. I’m immensely proud of this work.”

Researchers in the Unstable Design Lab authored a remarkable four of the nine papers admitted to the conference, two of which earned honorable mention, an accolade reserved for the top 5 percent of accepted conference papers. The THING, Superhuman Computing, Living Matter, ACME and IRON labs also had papers accepted to the conference. 

"Each of these papers is unique and forward-thinking," said Laura Devendorf, director of the Unstable Design Lab, of the researchers' papers. "They show new ways of both designing, engaging, but also recycling wearable tech devices. They not only present interesting design work, but present it in a way that ties in theories and practices from inside and outside our research community: from design for disassembly to ASMR channels on YouTube."

CHI 2020 was scheduled to take place April 25 – 30, in Hawaii. “I’m particularly disappointed for our students. It’s a big opportunity for them and their careers to get that kind of exposure,” said Devendorf.

In all, CHI 2020 received 3,126 submissions and accepted 760. In 2019, CHI accepted five ATLAS papers, including three from the Unstable Design Lab and two from the Superhuman Computing Lab.
 

CHI 2020 papers, position papers and workshops by ATLAS faculty and students

Unstable Design Lab

[Honorable Mention Award]
Laura Devendorf (ATLAS/INFO Faculty), Katya Arquilla (Aerospace PhD Student), Sandra Wirtanen,  Allison Anderson (Aerospace Faculty), Steven Frost (Media Studies Faculty) 
By broadening the idea of who and what is considered “technical,” this paper examines the ways HCI practitioners, engineers and craftspeople can productively collaborate. 

[Honorable Mention Award]
Laura Devendorf (ATLAS/INFO) Faculty), Kristina Andersen, Aisling Kelliher
How can we design for difficult emotional experiences without reducing a person’s experience? In this paper three researchers design objects that illustrate their personal experiences as mothers to gain a deeper understanding of their individual struggles.

  
Shanel Wu (ATLAS), Laura Devendorf (ATLAS/INFO)
Being mindful of the massive waste streams for digital electronics and textiles, HCI researchers address sustainability and waste in smart textiles development through designing smart textile garments with reuse in mind.

  
Josephine Klefeker (ATLAS, TAM undergraduate), Libi Striegl (Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance), Laura Devendorf (ATLAS/INFO)
Researchers introduced the online subculture of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos, showing people slowly interacting with objects and whispering into microphones and triggering a tingling bodily sensation in viewers and listeners, as a source of inspiration for wearables and experiences of enchantment, to cultivate deeper connections with our mundane and everyday environments.

IRON Lab

 
Hooman Hedayati (PhD student, Computer Science), James Kennedy, Daniel Szafir
While humans most often learn to interpret social situations and adjust their behavior accordingly, robots must be programmed to do so. This paper explores ways for robots to detect and predict the position of individuals in human conversational groups in order to more fluidly interact and participate in a conversation with them. More information

THING Lab & ACME Lab

Ryo Suzuki, Hooman Hedayati, (both PhD student, CS), Clement Zheng (ATLAS PhD candidate), James Bohn (undergraduate, CS), Daniel Szafir, Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Mark D. Gross, Daniel Leithinger (all ATLAS faculty)
With applications in virtual tours and architectural design, this project dynamically synchronizes virtual reality with the physical environments by rearranging objects using a small swarm of robots able to elevate and relocate tables, chairs and other objects. When users can sit on, lean against, touch and otherwise interact with objects in a virtual scene, it provides more a fuller immersion in the virtual world than purely visual VR. More information

Living Matter Lab 

Mirela Alistar (ATLAS), Margherita Pevere
An exploration of the potential of DNA molecules to enable new ways for humans to interact with their stories and memories via a physical interface. The project involved encoding an elderly woman's written memories into precisely sequenced DNA and then splicing the code into the genome of a microorganism. The transformed bacteria then replicated, creating billions of facsimiles of the woman's memories. The resulting biofilm was presented in an exhibition as a sculpture. (CHI '20: Extended Abstracts)

Superhuman Computing Lab 

BrailleBlocks: Computational Braille Toys for Collaborative Learning
Vinitha Gadiraju, Annika Muehlbradt, and Shaun K. Kane (ATLAS/CS)
BrailleBlocks tactile gaming system encourages visually impaired children and their sighted family members to learn Braille together through tangible blocks and pegs and an iPad application with interactive educational games. More information.

ATLAS PhD Student in External Labs

Katie Z. Gach (ATLAS PhD Student), Jed Brubaker (INFO Faculty)
Managing Facebook pages for loved ones after their death is fraught with difficulty, according to this paper. While Facebook has created the ability for users to appoint post-mortem managers, called legacy contacts, Facebook gives them limited authority over the content, making them feel distrusted by the social network (Published in Transactions on Social Computing, invited for presentation at CHI 2020)

Workshops Organized

Robert Soden (ATLAS alumnus), Laura Devendorf (ATLAS/INFO faculty), Richmond Y. Wong, Lydia B. Chilton, Ann Light, Yoko Akama
This workshop explores the many ways uncertainty appears in research and the different types of responses that HCI has to offer. Outcomes of the workshop include exercises designed to evoke uncertainty in participants, concept mappings and a collection of essays developed by participants.

 
Ellen Yi-Luen Do(ATLAS faculty) among many others listed
This symposium showcases the latest HCI work from Asia and those focusing on incorporating Asian sociocultural factors in their design and implementation. In addition to circulating ideas and envisioning future research in human-computer interaction, this symposium aims to foster social networks among researchers and practitioners and grow the Asian research community.

Workshop Papers

Matt Whitlock (CS student), Daniel Leithinger (ATLAS faculty), Danielle Albers Szafir (ATLAS faculty/INFO affiliate faculty)
This paper on envisioning future productivity for immersive analytics was accepted to the Immersive Analytics workshop at CHI 2020.

Virtual and Augmented Reality for Public Safety
Cassandra Goodby (CTD student)
This paper explores potential applications of AR and VR technologies, haptics and voice recognition for first-responders. It was accepted to the Everyday Proxy Objects for Virtual Reality workshop at CHI 2020.

Mental Health Survey and Synthesis
Cassandra Goodby (CTD student)
This paper on tools and technologies available through mental health applications was accepted to the Technology Ecosystems: Rethinking �ƹ���Ƶ for Mental Health workshop at CHI 2020.

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