Using Technology Enabled Qualitative Research to Develop Products for the Social Good, An Overview

This paper discusses the potential benefits of the convergence of three recent trends for the design of socially beneficial products and services: the increasing application of qualitative research techniques in a wide range of disciplines, the rapid mainstreaming of social media and mobile technologies, and the emergence of software as a service. Presented is a scenario facilitating the complex data collection, analysis, storage, and reporting required for the qualitative research recommended for the task of designing relevant solutions to address needs of the underserved. A pilot study is used as a basis for describing the infrastructure and services required to realize this scenario. Implications for innovation of enhanced forms of qualitative research are presented

PaperChains: Dynamic Sketch+Voice Annotations

In this paper we present a novel interface for collaborative creation of evolving audio-visual documents. PaperChains allows users to sketch on paper and then augment with digital audio, allowing both the physical and digital objects to evolve simultaneously over time. The technique we have developed focuses on affordability and accessibility in its design, using standard cameraphones and telephone connections, which allow it to be used in regions where literacy, technological ex-perience and data connections cannot necessarily be taken for granted. The main use-case that we focus on in this paper is for collaborative storytelling, an area which has been well studied and previously proven to be of value in resource constrained environments. To investigate the relevance of the approach in these contexts, we undertook two usability evaluations in India and South Africa. Results from these investigations indicate users ’ ability to both create and interpret stories using the software, as well as demonstrating high overall usability and enjoyment. We end with a discussion of the implications of our design and opportunities for use in other contexts. Author Keywords Sketching; audio; photographs; cameraphones

Capturing Situational Context in an Augmented Memory System

Bookmarking a moment is a new approach being introduced to capture past experience and insert information into an augmented memory system. This idea is inspired from the concept of the bookmark in web browsers. Semi-automatic bookmarking different moments when time is limited and revisiting these moments before inserting them into an augmented memory system will help people to remember their past experience. An exploratory study was conducted to discover and shape the design requirements for a system called CatchIt. It aims to understand end-users’ needs to capture their personal experience, which is an important and complex issue in the case of capture and access of personal experiences. CatchIt is a system to bookmark the significant moments during the day before enriching them, and entering them into the augmented memory system called Digital Parrot. The conceptual design of CatchIt will be the main aim of this study. The primary requirements were derived from the scenarios and analysis of the findings of five different study stages were designed to inspect these: unobserved field visit, shadowing, using indictors, Wizard of Oz and using technology. Thirty participants were involved in field visit, survey and follows up interview. Each stage had different tasks to be performed and the findings of each stage contributed to understanding different parts of user needs and system design requirements. The results of this study indicated the system should automatically record the context information, especially the time and location since they were typically neglected by the participants. Different information such as textual and visual information should be manually recorded based on the users’ setting or situations. A single button is a promising input mechanism to bookmark a moment and it should be fast and effort- less. The result showed no clear correlation between learning style and type of the information that had been captured. Also, we found that there might be a correlation between passive capture and false memories. All these findings were used to provide a foundation for further work to implement the bookmark system and evaluate this approach. Some issues raised in this study need further research. The work will contribute to a greater understanding of human memory and selective capture

Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools

In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings

Video interaction using pen-based technology

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em InformáticaVideo can be considered one of the most complete and complex media and its manipulating is still a difficult and tedious task. This research applies pen-based technology to video manipulation, with the goal to improve this interaction. Even though the human familiarity with pen-based devices, how they can be used on video interaction, in order to improve it, making it more natural and at the same time fostering the user’s creativity is an open question. Two types of interaction with video were considered in this work: video annotation and video editing. Each interaction type allows the study of one of the interaction modes of using pen-based technology: indirectly, through digital ink, or directly, trough pen gestures or pressure. This research contributes with two approaches for pen-based video interaction: pen-based video annotations and video as ink. The first uses pen-based annotations combined with motion tracking algorithms, in order to augment video content with sketches or handwritten notes. It aims to study how pen-based technology can be used to annotate a moving objects and how to maintain the association between a pen-based annotations and the annotated moving object The second concept replaces digital ink by video content, studding how pen gestures and pressure can be used on video editing and what kind of changes are needed in the interface, in order to provide a more familiar and creative interaction in this usage context.This work was partially funded by the UTAustin-Portugal, Digital Media, Program (Ph.D. grant: SFRH/BD/42662/2007 - FCT/MCTES); by the HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative 2006; by the project "TKB - A Transmedia Knowledge Base for contemporary dance" (PTDC/EAT/AVP/098220/2008 funded by FCT/MCTES); and by CITI/DI/FCT/UNL (PEst-OE/EEI/UI0527/2011

Mobile and web tools for participative learning

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaThe combination of different media formats has been a crucial aspect on teaching and learning processes. The recent developments of multimedia technologies over the Internet and using mobile devices can improve the communication between professors and students, and allow students to study anywhere and anytime, allowing each student progress at its own pace. The usage of these new platforms and the increase of multimedia sharing applied to educational environments allow a more participative learning, and make the study of interfaces a relevant aspect of existing multimedia learning systems. The work done in this dissertation explores interfaces and tools for participative learning,using multimedia educational systems over Internet broadband and mobile devices. In this work, aWeb-based learning system was developed, which enables to store, transmit, search and share the contents of courses captured in video and its extension to support Tablet PCs. The Web system, developed as part of the VideoStore project, explores video interfaces and video annotations, which encourage the participative work. The usage of Tablet PCs, through the mEmLearn project, has the aim to encourage the participative work, allowing the students to augment the course materials and to share them with other students or instructors

Spatially Aware Computing for Natural Interaction

Spatial information refers to the location of an object in a physical or digital world. Besides, it also includes the relative position of an object related to other objects around it. In this dissertation, three systems are designed and developed. All of them apply spatial information in different fields. The ultimate goal is to increase the user friendliness and efficiency in those applications by utilizing spatial information. The first system is a novel Web page data extraction application, which takes advantage of 2D spatial information to discover structured records from a Web page. The extracted information is useful to re-organize the layout of a Web page to fit mobile browsing. The second application utilizes the 3D spatial information of a mobile device within a large paper-based workspace to implement interactive paper that combines the merits of paper documents and mobile devices. This application can overlay digital information on top of a paper document based on the location of a mobile device within a workspace. The third application further integrates 3D space information with sound detection to realize an automatic camera management system. This application automatically controls multiple cameras in a conference room, and creates an engaging video by intelligently switching camera shots among meeting participants based on their activities. Evaluations have been made on all three applications, and the results are promising. In summary, this dissertation comprehensively explores the usage of spatial information in various applications to improve the usability