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Browsing by Author "Harrison, Steven R."

Now showing 1 - 20 of 51
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    Analysis of the Relationships between Changes in Distributed System Behavior and Group Dynamics
    Lazem, Shaimaa (Virginia Tech, 2012-04-06)
    The rapid evolution of portable devices and social media has enabled pervasive forms of distributed cooperation. A group could perform a task using a heterogeneous set of the devices (desktop, mobile), connections (wireless, wired, 3G) and software clients. We call this form of systems Distributed Dynamic Cooperative Environments (DDCEs). Content in DDCEs is created and shared by the users. The content could be static (e.g., video or audio), dynamic (e.g.,wikis), and/or Objects with behavior. Objects with behavior are programmed objects that take advantage of the available computational services (e.g., cloud-based services). Providing a desired Quality of Experience (QoE) in DDCEs is a challenge for cooperative systems designers. DDCEs are expected to provide groups with the utmost flexibility in conducting their cooperative activities. More flexibility at the user side means less control and predictability of the groups' behavior at the system side. Due to the lack of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees in DDCEs, groups may experience changes in the system behavior that are usually manifested as delays and inconsistencies in the shared state. We question the extent to which cooperation among group members is sensitive to system changes in DDCEs. We argue that a QoE definition for groups should account for cooperation emergence and sustainability. An experiment was conducted, where fifteen groups performed a loosely-coupled task that simulates social traps in a 3D virtual world. The groups were exposed to two forms of system delays. Exo-content delays are exogenous to the provided content (e.g., network delay). Endo-content delays are endogenous to the provided content (e.g., delay in processing time for Objects with behavior). Groups' performance in the experiment and their verbal communication have been recorded and analyzed. The results demonstrate the nonlinearity of groups' behavior when dealing with endo-content delays. System interventions are needed to maintain QoE even though that may increase the cost or the required resources. Systems are designed to be used rather than understood by users. When the system behavior changes, designers have two choices. The first is to expect the users to understand the system behavior and adjust their interaction accordingly. That did not happen in our experiment. Understanding the system behavior informed groups' behavior. It partially influenced how the groups succeeded or failed in accomplishing its goal. The second choice is to understand the semantics of the application and provide guarantees based on these semantics. Based on our results, we introduce the following design guidelines for QoE provision in DDCEs. • If possible the system should keep track of information about group goals and add guarding constraints to protect these goals. • QoE guarantees should be provided based on the semantics of the user-generated content that constitutes the group activity. • Users should be given the option to define the content that is sensitive to system changes (e.g., Objects with behavior that are sensitive to delays or require intensive computations) to avoid the negative impacts of endo-content delays. • Users should define the Objects with behavior that contribute to the shared state in order for the system to maintain the consistency of the shared state. • Endo-content delays were proven to have significantly negative impacts on the groups in our experiment compared to exo-content delays. We argue that system designers, if they have the choice, should trade processing time needed for Objects with behavior for exo-content delay.
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    Automatic Generation of Test Cases for Agile using Natural Language Processing
    Rane, Prerana Pradeepkumar (Virginia Tech, 2017-03-24)
    Test case design and generation is a tedious manual process that requires 40-70% of the software test life cycle. The test cases written manually by inexperienced testers may not offer a complete coverage of the requirements. Frequent changes in requirements reduce the reusability of the manually written test cases costing more time and effort. Most projects in the industry follow a Behavior-Driven software development approach to capturing requirements from the business stakeholders through user stories written in natural language. Instead of writing test cases manually, this thesis investigates a practical solution for automatically generating test cases within an Agile software development workflow using natural language-based user stories and acceptance criteria. However, the information provided by the user story is insufficient to create test cases using natural language processing (NLP), so we have introduced two new input parameters, Test Scenario Description and Dictionary, to improve the test case generation process. To establish the feasibility, we developed a tool that uses NLP techniques to generate functional test cases from the free-form test scenario description automatically. The tool reduces the effort required to create the test cases while improving the test coverage and quality of the test suite. Results from the feasibility study are presented in this thesis.
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    Cheating in Multiplayer Video Games
    Hardy, Robert Stafford (Virginia Tech, 2009-04-15)
    Cheating in video games has been prevalent ever since the days of Pong. Games have evolved much since then and the ways in which people play together have changed as well. Older systems required people to play together in the same room, but with the advent of the internet, gaming consoles allow us to play games together with people located all over the globe. Cheating has evolved as well, since gamers no longer have the luxury of monitoring the person sitting next to them; anti-cheating mechanisms are built into most online systems and suspicious behavior is monitored by gaming companies. Most of the current research has surrounded ways in which players cheat and their reasoning for doing so. This is only half of the equation however, what happens after a gamer is caught cheating? What are the repercussions for being caught cheating and how does being caught influence future decisions to cheat? By putting gamers in a situation where they are caught cheating, three different responses were revealed: those who are determined to cheat no matter what, those who scale back their cheating in the hopes of remaining undetected, and those who stopped cheating altogether.
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    Classroom resources and impact on learning
    Kurdziolek, Margaret Angela (Virginia Tech, 2011-08-05)
    In the past, educators and policy makers believed that by providing more resources they could directly improve student-learning outcomes. To their frustration, this turns out not to be entirely true. Resources may be necessary but they are not sufficient. Resources themselves are not self-enacting, that is, they do not make change inevitable. Differences in their effects depend on differences in their use. This is also true in the case of educational technologies. As developers of these technologies we need to understand how resources fit within the classroom environment as enacted and how they can be effectively used to increase student learning. I report on four case studies conducted within the context of the Scaling-Up SimCalc study. In the study, "treatment" teachers were given a set of new resources to use: a combination of curriculum, educational software, and teacher professional development. "Delayed treatment" (control) teachers were asked to use their usual curriculum. Year-one study results demonstrated by randomized controlled testing the successful use of technology in class settings; however, there was little information on how the students and teachers actually interacted with the resources. Case study classrooms were selected to examine the effects of variation of computational resource arrangements: one utilized a computer lab, two used mobile laptop carts, and one used a laptop connected to a projector. The first round coding and analysis shows that the observed classrooms varied not only in their classroom set-ups but also in how teachers and students interacted with the software, the workbooks, and with one another. The variety of resource interaction points to the robustness of the SimCalc project: students and teachers can interact with the SimCalc resources in a variety of ways and still achieve student-learning gains. However, through subsequent review and analysis of the observation data five themes emerged. These themes suggest commonalities in classrooms practices surrounding the use of resources. Two new theoretical constructs, "socio-physical resource richness" and "resource use withitness" help describe (1) physical and social arrangements of resources and (2) how teachers and students manage resource use.
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    CoListen
    Stewart, Michael Clark (Virginia Tech, 2018-09-19)
    Humans need to feel connected to one another. With each new technology we create and re-create ways to connect with others we care about. Thanks to the ubiquity of powerful mobile technology in certain parts of the world, we have nearly immediate access to those remote others. Despite these advances our shared experiences are diminishing, and the ways we most often connect with our remote framily members seem to be superficial and at the expense of more meaningful interaction with collocated family members. People are not likely to give up the convenience and entertainment afforded by their mobile technology, but might those same technologies be capable of supporting interactions that help the users be the selves they wish they were, rather than the consumers their technologies were designed to support? To investigate the space of technological support for people's feelings of togetherness I conducted three studies. The first study was a diary study over 14 days where I asked about the current practices of middle schoolers for communicating with friends out side of school and for listening to music. In the second study, I conducted a design charrette where participants designed a technology to support co-listening, and then tried my first prototype. CoListen is a streaming music player that supports a listener in listening to the same music at the same time as a friend or family member. CoListen is designed with the explicit intent of requiring as little of the listener's attention as possible. In the third study, I deployed Colisten v1.0 in the wild and conducted a 14-day diary study asking participants about their experiences. I found that many of the participants from my target population listen to music and communicate with their friends, and that phatic communication (as opposed to goal-oriented communication) was prominent. I also found participants to be interested in the idea of technology to support co-listening and intrigued by how few little the barrier to co-listening can be, and how little attention is required. In study 3 I found that people enjoyed the experience of remote co-listening and did listen to music as a background activity. Many participatns reported feeling more together with their framily members with whom they co-listened.
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    Collaborative Storyboarding: Artifact-Driven Construction of Shared Understanding
    Wahid, Shahtab; Branham, Stacy; Harrison, Steven R.; McCrickard, D. Scott (Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2009)
    Collaborative storyboarding, with a focus on aggregating designers’ expertise in the storyboarding process, offers the opportunity for a group of designers to make progress toward creating a visual narrative for a new interface or technology, but it requires the designers to work together to explore ideas, differentiate between options, and construct a common solution. Important in collaborative storyboarding is the shared understanding that emerges among the designers and the obstacles they face in establishing that understanding. This paper defines a model for collaborative storyboarding, presents a study that explores group interactions in collaborative storyboarding, and analyzes the interactions using the distributed cognition and common ground theories. Our findings demonstrate that joint interaction and enthusiastic efforts within each phase lead to active information exchanges and shared understanding among the members of the group.
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    Communities of Tweeple: How Communities Engage with Microblogging When Co-located
    Vega, Edgardo Luis (Virginia Tech, 2011-04-22)
    Most of the research done on microblogging services, such as Twitter, has focused on how the individual communicates with their community at a micro and macro level; less research has been done on how the community affects the individual. We present in this thesis some ideas about this phenomenon. We do this by collecting data of Twitter users at a conference. We collected 21,150 tweets from approximately 400 users during a five week period and additionally collected survey data from a small subset of the tweeters. By observing users of Twitter, before, during, after a specific event we discovered a pattern in postings. Specifically, we found that tweets increased the week of the conference and that by the end of the conference the network was strong. These findings lead us to conclude that collocation of communities, like conferences, has a substantial effect on online microblogging behaviors.
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    Complexity of Engineering Identity: A Study of Freshmen Engineering Students
    Trammell, Melanie Kaye (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-15)
    The General Engineering Program exists at Virginia Tech to provide curriculums that engage, challenge and support entry-level engineers. One important part of this initiative is helping students identify with a specific engineering branch, and overtime develop an identity within it. Yet, there exists little research on what entry-level engineers believe it means to be an engineer, especially during these stages of early formation and continual shifting. In order to generate insight on this topic we developed a contextual inquiry method to help inquire into engineering identity. Two participants were placed in an online chatroom and allowed to talk for ten minutes, with one trying to answer the question 'Am I talking to an engineer or not?' and asked to give their reasoning. Comparisons allow entry-level engineering students to articulate their beliefs on what characteristics, behaviors and personalities make up their cohort -- thus exposing their ideas about identity. Moreover, this methodology also provides opportunities for participants to critique their own bias and further develop and expose their opinions on identity. Additionally, our findings showcase the complexity around student's perceptions of engineers. For example, participants' responses pointed to: many sources that inform identity, the difficulty of identifying what is uniquely engineering, how identity is impacted by the ideal image of an engineer, that identity is a spectrum, and that identity varies with respect to associations and time. As a result, through our inquiry and representation of results we demonstrate the validity of our methodology as a HCI research tool along with the power of narrative forms of representation.
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    Contextualizing Remote Touch for Affect Conveyance
    Wang, Rongrong (Virginia Tech, 2012-09-27)
    Touch is an expressive and powerful modality in affect conveyance. A simple touch like a hug can elicit strong feelings of affection both in the touch initiator and recipient. Therefore delivering touch over a distance to a long-distance family member or significant other has been an appealing concept for both researchers and designers. However compared to the development of audio, video channels which allow the transmission of voice, facial expression and gesture, digitally mediated touch (Remote Touch) has not received much attention. We believe that this is partially due to the lack of understanding of the capabilities and communication possibilities that remote touch brings. This dissertation presents a review of relevant psychological and sociological literature of touch and proposes a model of immediacy of the touch channel for affect conveyance. We advance three hypotheses regarding the possibility of remote touch in immediate affect conveyance: presence, fidelity and context. We posit that remote touch with relatively low touch fidelity can convey meaningful immediate affect when it is accompanied by a contextualizing channel. To test the hypothesis, two sets of remote touch devices are designed and prototyped which allow users to send/receive a squeeze on the upper arm to/from others effectively. Three in-lab user studies are conducted to investigate the role of remote touch in affect conveyance. These studies showed clearly that remote touch, when contextualized, can influence the affective component in communication. Our results demonstrated that remote touch can afford a rich spectrum of meanings and affects. Three major categories of the usage are identified as positive affect touch which serves to convey affects such as affection, sympathy and sharing, comfort etc., playful touch which serves to lighten the conversations, and conversational touch which serves to regulate the dynamics in the discourse. Our interview results also provide insights of how people use this new channel in their communication.
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    Continuously Extensible Information Systems: Extending the 5S Framework by Integrating UX and Workflows
    Chandrasekar, Prashant (Virginia Tech, 2021-06-11)
    In Virginia Tech's Digital Library Research Laboratory, we support subject-matter-experts (SMEs) in their pursuit of research goals. Their goals include everything from data collection to analysis to reporting. Their research commonly involves an analysis of an extensive collection of data such as tweets or web pages. Without support -- such as by our lab, developers, or data analysts/scientists -- they would undertake the data analysis themselves, using available analytical tools, frameworks, and languages. Then, to extract and produce the information needed to achieve their goals, the researchers/users would need to know what sequences of functions or algorithms to run using such tools, after considering all of their extensive functionality. Our research addresses these problems directly by designing a system that lowers the information barriers. Our approach is broken down into three parts. In the first two parts, we introduce a system that supports discovery of both information and supporting services. In the first part, we describe the methodology that incorporates User eXperience (UX) research into the process of workflow design. Through the methodology, we capture (a) what are the different user roles and goals, (b) how we break down the user goals into tasks and sub-tasks, and (c) what functions and services are required to solve each (sub-)task. In the second part, we identify and describe key components of the infrastructure implementation. This implementation captures the various goals/tasks/services associations in a manner that supports information inquiry of two types: (1) Given an information goal as query, what is the workflow to derive this information? and (2) Given a data resource, what information can we derive using this data resource as input? We demonstrate both parts of the approach, describing how we teach and apply the methodology, with three case studies. In the third part of this research, we rely on formalisms used in describing digital libraries to explain the components that make up the information system. The formal description serves as a guide to support the development of information systems that generate workflows to support SME information needs. We also specifically describe an information system meant to support information goals that relate to Twitter data.
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    Critisearch for Scholarly Search
    Joshi, Sarang G. (Virginia Tech, 2018-11-30)
    Online search has empowered users with access to vast amounts of information. However, current online interfaces do not permit users to manipulate the hits on a search engine result page (SERP). This leads to the user adapting his/her own search style to suit the search engine instead of being the other way round. We present Critisearch, an online search interface that allows users to manipulate hits by upvoting, downvoting and sorting them such that they can be arranged in a user-defined order. Critisearch was originally developed for middle school children. However, we found an interesting dearth of studies on how graduate students conduct searches. In order to evaluate how the manipulation of hits can benefit users, we conducted a longitudinal study with 10 graduate students who used Critisearch and/or other search engine/s of their choice for conducting the scholarly search over a three week period. Results indicate that using Critisearch for hit manipulation enabled metacognitive scaffolding (plan, filter, sort information) on the search engine interface especially in exploratory search contexts. Critisearch seems to facilitate a conversation with the interface by enabling marking of hits. In addition, Critisearch also appears to promote reflection with the upvote/downvote capabilities for marking of hits available to the user. The hit manipulation and metacognitive scaffolding on the Critisearch interface encourages users to conduct their search tasks in a more breadth-first fashion as opposed to the commonly used depth-first search strategy. Using qualitative analysis, we discovered three distinct types of search tasks that users perform in a scholarly context namely, specific exploration, needle-in-a-haystack and general exploration. This analysis provides a starting point for a better understanding information needs of users in a scholarly context and a classification of search tasks thus, adding to the existing body of literature on nature of online search tasks.
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    Design and Evaluation of a Web-Based Programming Tool to Improve the Introductory Computer Science Experience
    Tilden, Daniel Steven (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-05)
    Introductory computer science courses can be notoriously difficult for students, especially those outside of the major. There are many reasons for this, but the programming software itself may play a significant role.  To address this issue, we have developed Pythy, a web-based programming environment that allows students to write, execute, and test programming assignments from within the familiar interface of a web browser.  In this work, we discuss various aspects of Pythy in detail, including the rationale behind its design, the system architecture on which it is built, and the various functions offered by the software.  Next, we discuss an evaluation of Pythy\'s effectiveness during a programming course for non CS-majors offered at Virginia Tech, comparing it to a different software solution used in another programming course.  Results suggest that Pythy was successful in several target areas, including making it easier to get started with programming and providing feedback about program behavior.  Access log data from Pythy itself reveals details about how students used the system.  Finally, we conclude with a summary of key contributions and suggest some potential future directions for the system.
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    Designing Display Ecologies for Visual Analysis
    Chung, HaeYong (Virginia Tech, 2015-05-07)
    The current proliferation of connected displays and mobile devices from smart phones and tablets to wall-sized displays presents a number of exciting opportunities for information visualization and visual analytics. When a user employs heterogeneous displays collaboratively to achieve a goal, they form what is known as a display ecology. The display ecology enables multiple displays to function in concert within a broader technological environment to accomplish tasks and goals. However, since information and tasks are scattered and disconnected among separate displays, one of the inherent challenges associated with visual analysis in display ecologies is enabling users to seamlessly coordinate and subsequently connect and integrate information across displays. This research primarily addresses these challenges through the creation of interaction and visualization techniques and systems for display ecologies in order to support sensemaking with visual analysis. This dissertation explores essential visual analysis activities and design considerations for visual analysis in order to inform the new design of display ecologies for visual analysis. Based on identified design considerations, we then designed and developed two visual analysis systems. First, VisPorter supports intuitive gesture interactions for sharing and integrating information in a display ecology. Second, the Spatially Aware Visual Links (SAViL) presents a cross-display visual link technique capable of guiding the user's attention to relevant information across displays. It also enables the user to visually connect related information over displays in order to facilitate synthesizing information scattered over separate displays and devices. The various aspects associated with the techniques described herein help users to transform and empower the multiple displays in a display ecology for enhanced visual analysis and sensemaking.
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    Designing Socio-Technical Systems to Illuminate Possibilities for a Vulnerable Population
    Gautam, Aakash (Virginia Tech, 2021-08-12)
    How might computer scientists work with communities in facilitating meaningful social change? In this project, we make a case for an approach that builds upon what the individuals and community already have---their assets---rather than emphasizing "user's needs" as typically postulated by human-centered design. We present details of our four-year-long assets-based engagement with an anti-trafficking organization in Nepal and the sex trafficking survivors supported by the organization. We explored the potential role that socio-technical systems and technology designers can play in assisting the survivors to build on their existing assets towards their vision of "dignified reintegration". The research involves three fieldwork and a remote study, each one leveraging carefully tailored socio-technical systems to investigate a design proposition. We present an operationalizable definition of assets and a framework of action to leverage assets in realizing change at an individual and institutional level. We describe the conditions that influenced the possibilities for our interventions and the factors that guided the design of the socio-technical systems. We further highlight how we adapted our methods to the local resources and practices in order to foster a space that promoted comfort and control to the study participants. The detailed account of our approach aims to provide a justification for undertaking slow, incremental steps with the community.
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    Designing Technologies for Empathic Communication
    Branham, Stacy Marie (Virginia Tech, 2014-04-09)
    If you have ever used your phone while on a date to send a text message, or snapped a picture with a friend to upload to Facebook, or cut a sentence down to 140 characters to broadcast on Twitter, you may agree with some leading Social Scientists that technology is changing the way we relate with one another. Our interactions through technology seem to be getting increasingly short with less sophisticated language. More and more, our thoughts are broadcast to everyone instead of intended for someone special. Yet, there is something profoundly human and central to our development that is neglected in these interchanges. Close human relationships---with families, significant others, friends---need complex, intimate, ongoing conversations in order to create and maintain empathic connectivity. In these types of conversations, individuals become part of one another, defined by each other. Together, they change, they grow, they find meaning in life. This is, in essence, what I call Empathic Communication. Until now, this concern has been largely neglected in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, a community of researchers and technology designers who are arguably best positioned to address it. To suggest one path forward, in this dissertation I raise the question of whether computer technologies can become brokers of Empathic Communication between people who care about each other, with a specific focus on intimate partners. How can we conceptualize Empathic Communication, how can we build tools that support it, and how do we know if we have succeeded? I address these questions by creating a simplified model of the therapeutic process of intimate reconnection, or the 4Rs framework---Repattern, Reflect, Restory, Reconnect. Using the 4Rs framework as an ideation tool, I designed and field-tested a technology concept for a dyadic journaling application, Diary Built for Two, that might help romantic partners reconnect through deep communication. Using the 4Rs framework as an evaluation tool, I found that Diary Built for Two enabled more intimate, more thoughtful, more Empathic Communication that changed the way partners saw themselves, one another, and their relationship. Unexpectedly, I found that research interviews I conducted with intimate partners had the same type of therapeutic effect. Simply asking partners questions about their relationship caused them to reflect on and change their understandings of their relationship and each other. To guide other researchers and designers of Empathic Communication Technologies (ECTs), I present a set of specific outcomes of my study. First, I present Symmetric and Asymmetric interface profiles, which identify new human-technology configurations that may better support deep communication---for example, having one shared device between two people, as opposed to one separate device for each. I also share some of the ways in which research interviews may positively and negatively affect study participants towards reconsidering current informed consent practices. Both of these findings showcase the utility of selectively conceptualizing our technology designs as well as our research methods as therapeutic interventions; when we apply the therapy metaphor, new design and research opportunities become apparent.
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    Effects of Feedback Video in Mediated Communication
    Dewal, Shiwani Sita (Virginia Tech, 2016-10-04)
    Video-conferencing has become a widely-used form of mediated personal communication. While other form of real-time communication such as face-to-face conversations or telephonic conversation, do not afford any form of feedback about self-presentation to individuals; video conferencing has the ability to provide a continuous feedback video loop. Previous work in this area has shown that this form of feedback can cause issues related to vanity and distraction. However, effects on sensitive aspects of the human psyche, such as self-consciousness and self-esteem, have not been studied. In this project we investigated such possible effects, specifically related to self-consciousness and self-esteem, through laboratory-based user study. The results of this exploratory study form lay the grounds for further research, which can be used to inform theory and design for video-conferencing systems.
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    The Effects of Handheld Network Service "Look" on the Acquisition of Common Ground
    Kim, Kibum (Virginia Tech, 2007-01-12)
    Constructing common ground and the associated convergent conceptual change is critical to cooperative work and learning. Convergent conceptual change is achieved as participants in a conversation update common ground through presentations, repairs, and acceptances of utterances. People employ available techniques that utilize the least collaborative effort for current purposes. Although sharing physical co-presence of interlocutors' facial expressions doesn't make grounding more efficient even in more open-ended and less task-focused dialogues, visual co-presence of the addressee's workspace is essential to work-related tasks, such as information transmission and collaborative problem-solving. However, handheld-mediated collaborative activity makes sharing the workspace challenging, especially when we consider that handhelds possess small screens and permit activities of a distributed nature. In a handheld-mediated classroom, a teacher must be able to check students' work for various reasons (e.g., grading, checking whether they are following directions correctly or paying attention) and at various phases of the activity. Gazing into the small screen of a handheld over someone's shoulder is a tricky task at best. The teacher may misread the information on the screen and thus provide incorrect feedback. Another challenge involves the difficulty inherent in latecomers joining the collaborative activity when each student is involved with his or her individual and small screen. This exclusion from joining on-going activity can reduce the chance of student's vicarious and serendipitous learning. Although such events may occur naturally in the learning environment, they become important concerns when one attempts to focus collaborative activities with handheld devices. I therefore created a new handheld network service called "Look," which is designed to facilitate the acquisition of common ground and allow a latecomer to do meaningful monitoring of ongoing conversation about the workspace. I tested empirically the value of this shared physical/virtual context in the task of creating common ground by examining task performance and conversation quality.
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    Embodied Interfaces for Interactive Percussion Instruction
    Belcher, Justin Ryan (Virginia Tech, 2007-05-10)
    For decades, the application of technology to percussion curricula has been substantially hindered by the limitations of conventional input devices. With the need for specialized percussion instruction at an all-time high, investigation of this domain can open the doors to an entirely new educational approach for percussion. This research frames the foundation of an embodied approach to percussion instruction manifested in a system called Percussive. Through the use of body-scale interactions, percussion students can connect with pedagogical tools at the most fundamental level−leveraging muscle memory, kinesthetics, and embodiment to present engaging and dynamic instructional sessions. The major contribution of this work is the exploration of how a system which uses motion-sensing to replicate the experiential qualities of drumming can be applied to existing pedagogues. Techniques for building a system which recognizes drumming input are discussed, as well as the system's application to a successful contemporary instructional model. In addition to the specific results that are presented, it is felt that the collective wisdom provided by the discussion of the methodology throughout this thesis provides valuable insight for others in the same area of research.
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    Enabling Locative Experiences
    Sampat, Miten (Virginia Tech, 2007-12-04)
    The appropriate framework to capture and share location information with mobile applications enable the development of interfaces and interface techniques that empower users to obtain and share information on the go. As such, the work in this thesis makes two major contributions. First is the SeeVT framework, a locative backbone that uses currently-available data and equipment in the Virginia Tech and Blacksburg VA environments (e.g., wireless signal triangulation, GPS signals) to make available to applications the location of the device in use. Applications built on this framework have available knowledge of the region in which the user's device is located. Second is a set of four applications built on the SeeVT framework: SeeVT – Alumni Edition (a guide for alumni returning to campus, often after lengthy absences), the Newman Project (a library information system for finding books and other library resources), VTAssist (a information sharing system for disabled users), and SeeVT-Art (a guide for users in our local inn and conference center to learn about the art on display). Key in this contribution is our identification and discussion of three interface techniques that emerged from our development efforts: an images-first presentation of information, a lightweight mobile augmented reality style of interaction, and locative content affordances that provide ways to quickly input focused types of information in mobile situations.
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    Enabling the Blind to See Gestures
    Oliveira, Francisco Carlos De Mattos Brito (Virginia Tech, 2010-08-02)
    Mathematics instruction and discourse typically involve two modes of communication: speech and graphical presentation. For the communication to remain situated, dynamic synchrony must be maintained between the speech and dynamic focus in the graphics. Sighted students use vision for two purposes: access to graphical material and awareness of embodied behavior. This embodiment awareness keeps communication situated with visual material and speech. Our goal is to assist students who are blind or visually impaired (SBVI) in the access to such instruction/communication. We employ the typical approach of sensory replacement for the missing visual sense. Haptic fingertip reading can replace visual material. We want to make the SBVI aware of the deictic gestures performed by the teacher over the graphic in conjunction with speech. We employ a haptic glove interface to facilitate this embodiment awareness. In this research, we address issues from the conception through the design, implementation, evaluation to the effective and successful use of our Haptic Deictic System (HDS) in inclusive classrooms.