A competencies framework of visual impairments for enabling shared understanding in design

Existing work in Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research has long sought to investigate the experiences of people with visual impairments in order to address their needs through technology design and integrate their participation into different stages of the design process. Yet challenges remain regarding how disabilities are framed in technology design and the extent of involvement of disabled people within it. Furthermore, accessibility is often considered a specialised job and misunderstandings or assumptions about visually impaired people’s experiences and needs occur outside dedicated fields. This thesis presents an ethnomethodology-informed design critique for supporting awareness and shared understanding of visual impairments and accessibility that centres on their experiences, abilities, and participation in early-stage design. This work is rooted in an in-depth empirical investigation of the interactional competencies that people with visual impairments exhibit through their use of technology, which informs and shapes the concept of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments. Although past research has established stances for considering the individual abilities of disabled people and other social and relational factors in technology design, by drawing on ethnomethodology and its interest in situated competence this thesis employs an interactional perspective to investigate the practical accomplishments of visually impaired people. Thus, this thesis frames visual impairments in terms of competencies to be considered in the design process, rather than a deficiency or problem to be fixed through technology. Accordingly, this work favours supporting awareness and reflection rather than the design of particular solutions, which are also strongly needed for advancing accessible design at large. This PhD thesis comprises two main empirical studies branched into three different investigations. The first and second investigations are based on a four-month ethnographic study with visually impaired participants examining their everyday technology practices. The third investigation comprises the design and implementation of a workshop study developed to include people with and without visual impairments in collaborative reflections about technology and accessibility. As such, each investigation informed the ones that followed, revisiting and refining concepts and design materials throughout the thesis. Although ethnomethodology is the overarching approach running through this PhD project, each investigation has a different focus of enquiry: • The first is focused on analysing participants’ technology practices and unearthing the interactional competencies enabling them. • The second is focused on analysing technology demonstrations, which were a pervasive phenomenon recorded during fieldwork, and the work of demonstrating as exhibited by visually impaired participants. • Lastly, the third investigation defines a workshop approach employing video demonstrations and a deck of reflective design cards as building blocks for enabling shared understanding among people with and without visual impairments from different technology backgrounds; that is, users, technologists, designers, and researchers. Overall, this thesis makes several contributions to audiences within and outside academia, such as the detailed accounts of some of the main technology practices of people with visual impairments and the methodological analysis of demonstrations in empirical Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research. Moreover, the main contribution lies in the conceptualisation of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments from the empirical analysis of interactional competencies and their practical exhibition through demonstrations, as well as the creation and use of a deck of cards that encapsulates the competencies and external elements involved in the everyday interactional accomplishments of people with visual impairments. All these contributions are lastly brought together in the implementation of the workshop approach that enabled participants to interact with and learn from each other. Thus, this thesis builds upon and advances contemporary strands of work in Human Computer Interaction that call for re-orienting how visual impairments and, overall, disabilities are framed in technology design, and ultimately for re-shaping the design practice itself

A competencies framework of visual impairments for enabling shared understanding in design

Existing work in Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research has long sought to investigate the experiences of people with visual impairments in order to address their needs through technology design and integrate their participation into different stages of the design process. Yet challenges remain regarding how disabilities are framed in technology design and the extent of involvement of disabled people within it. Furthermore, accessibility is often considered a specialised job and misunderstandings or assumptions about visually impaired people’s experiences and needs occur outside dedicated fields. This thesis presents an ethnomethodology-informed design critique for supporting awareness and shared understanding of visual impairments and accessibility that centres on their experiences, abilities, and participation in early-stage design. This work is rooted in an in-depth empirical investigation of the interactional competencies that people with visual impairments exhibit through their use of technology, which informs and shapes the concept of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments. Although past research has established stances for considering the individual abilities of disabled people and other social and relational factors in technology design, by drawing on ethnomethodology and its interest in situated competence this thesis employs an interactional perspective to investigate the practical accomplishments of visually impaired people. Thus, this thesis frames visual impairments in terms of competencies to be considered in the design process, rather than a deficiency or problem to be fixed through technology. Accordingly, this work favours supporting awareness and reflection rather than the design of particular solutions, which are also strongly needed for advancing accessible design at large. This PhD thesis comprises two main empirical studies branched into three different investigations. The first and second investigations are based on a four-month ethnographic study with visually impaired participants examining their everyday technology practices. The third investigation comprises the design and implementation of a workshop study developed to include people with and without visual impairments in collaborative reflections about technology and accessibility. As such, each investigation informed the ones that followed, revisiting and refining concepts and design materials throughout the thesis. Although ethnomethodology is the overarching approach running through this PhD project, each investigation has a different focus of enquiry: • The first is focused on analysing participants’ technology practices and unearthing the interactional competencies enabling them. • The second is focused on analysing technology demonstrations, which were a pervasive phenomenon recorded during fieldwork, and the work of demonstrating as exhibited by visually impaired participants. • Lastly, the third investigation defines a workshop approach employing video demonstrations and a deck of reflective design cards as building blocks for enabling shared understanding among people with and without visual impairments from different technology backgrounds; that is, users, technologists, designers, and researchers. Overall, this thesis makes several contributions to audiences within and outside academia, such as the detailed accounts of some of the main technology practices of people with visual impairments and the methodological analysis of demonstrations in empirical Human Computer Interaction and accessibility research. Moreover, the main contribution lies in the conceptualisation of a Competencies Framework of Visual Impairments from the empirical analysis of interactional competencies and their practical exhibition through demonstrations, as well as the creation and use of a deck of cards that encapsulates the competencies and external elements involved in the everyday interactional accomplishments of people with visual impairments. All these contributions are lastly brought together in the implementation of the workshop approach that enabled participants to interact with and learn from each other. Thus, this thesis builds upon and advances contemporary strands of work in Human Computer Interaction that call for re-orienting how visual impairments and, overall, disabilities are framed in technology design, and ultimately for re-shaping the design practice itself

Word Importance Modeling to Enhance Captions Generated by Automatic Speech Recognition for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users

People who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) benefit from sign-language interpreting or live-captioning (with a human transcriptionist), to access spoken information. However, such services are not legally required, affordable, nor available in many settings, e.g., impromptu small-group meetings in the workplace or online video content that has not been professionally captioned. As Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems improve in accuracy and speed, it is natural to investigate the use of these systems to assist DHH users in a variety of tasks. But, ASR systems are still not perfect, especially in realistic conversational settings, leading to the issue of trust and acceptance of these systems from the DHH community. To overcome these challenges, our work focuses on: (1) building metrics for accurately evaluating the quality of automatic captioning systems, and (2) designing interventions for improving the usability of captions for DHH users. The first part of this dissertation describes our research on methods for identifying words that are important for understanding the meaning of a conversational turn within transcripts of spoken dialogue. Such knowledge about the relative importance of words in spoken messages can be used in evaluating ASR systems (in part 2 of this dissertation) or creating new applications for DHH users of captioned video (in part 3 of this dissertation). We found that models which consider both the acoustic properties of spoken words as well as text-based features (e.g., pre-trained word embeddings) are more effective at predicting the semantic importance of a word than models that utilize only one of these types of features. The second part of this dissertation describes studies to understand DHH users\u27 perception of the quality of ASR-generated captions; the goal of this work was to validate the design of automatic metrics for evaluating captions in real-time applications for these users. Such a metric could facilitate comparison of various ASR systems, for determining the suitability of specific ASR systems for supporting communication for DHH users. We designed experimental studies to elicit feedback on the quality of captions from DHH users, and we developed and evaluated automatic metrics for predicting the usability of automatically generated captions for these users. We found that metrics that consider the importance of each word in a text are more effective at predicting the usability of imperfect text captions than the traditional Word Error Rate (WER) metric. The final part of this dissertation describes research on importance-based highlighting of words in captions, as a way to enhance the usability of captions for DHH users. Similar to highlighting in static texts (e.g., textbooks or electronic documents), highlighting in captions involves changing the appearance of some texts in caption to enable readers to attend to the most important bits of information quickly. Despite the known benefits of highlighting in static texts, research on the usefulness of highlighting in captions for DHH users is largely unexplored. For this reason, we conducted experimental studies with DHH participants to understand the benefits of importance-based highlighting in captions, and their preference on different design configurations for highlighting in captions. We found that DHH users subjectively preferred highlighting in captions, and they reported higher readability and understandability scores and lower task-load scores when viewing videos with captions containing highlighting compared to the videos without highlighting. Further, in partial contrast to recommendations in prior research on highlighting in static texts (which had not been based on experimental studies with DHH users), we found that DHH participants preferred boldface, word-level, non-repeating highlighting in captions

Touch- and Walkable Virtual Reality to Support Blind and Visually Impaired Peoples‘ Building Exploration in the Context of Orientation and Mobility

Der Zugang zu digitalen Inhalten und Informationen wird immer wichtiger für eine erfolgreiche Teilnahme an der heutigen, zunehmend digitalisierten Zivilgesellschaft. Solche Informationen werden meist visuell präsentiert, was den Zugang für blinde und sehbehinderte Menschen einschränkt. Die grundlegendste Barriere ist oft die elementare Orientierung und Mobilität (und folglich die soziale Mobilität), einschließlich der Erlangung von Kenntnissen über unbekannte Gebäude vor deren Besuch. Um solche Barrieren zu überbrücken, sollten technische Hilfsmittel entwickelt und eingesetzt werden. Es ist ein Kompromiss zwischen technologisch niedrigschwellig zugänglichen und verbreitbaren Hilfsmitteln und interaktiv-adaptiven, aber komplexen Systemen erforderlich. Die Anpassung der Technologie der virtuellen Realität (VR) umfasst ein breites Spektrum an Entwicklungs- und Entscheidungsoptionen. Die Hauptvorteile der VR-Technologie sind die erhöhte Interaktivität, die Aktualisierbarkeit und die Möglichkeit, virtuelle Räume und Modelle als Abbilder von realen Räumen zu erkunden, ohne dass reale Gefahren und die begrenzte Verfügbarkeit von sehenden Helfern auftreten. Virtuelle Objekte und Umgebungen haben jedoch keine physische Beschaffenheit. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es daher zu erforschen, welche VR-Interaktionsformen sinnvoll sind (d.h. ein angemessenes Verbreitungspotenzial bieten), um virtuelle Repräsentationen realer Gebäude im Kontext von Orientierung und Mobilität berührbar oder begehbar zu machen. Obwohl es bereits inhaltlich und technisch disjunkte Entwicklungen und Evaluationen zur VR-Technologie gibt, fehlt es an empirischer Evidenz. Zusätzlich bietet diese Arbeit einen Überblick über die verschiedenen Interaktionen. Nach einer Betrachtung der menschlichen Physiologie, Hilfsmittel (z.B. taktile Karten) und technologischen Eigenschaften wird der aktuelle Stand der Technik von VR vorgestellt und die Anwendung für blinde und sehbehinderte Nutzer und der Weg dorthin durch die Einführung einer neuartigen Taxonomie diskutiert. Neben der Interaktion selbst werden Merkmale des Nutzers und des Geräts, der Anwendungskontext oder die nutzerzentrierte Entwicklung bzw. Evaluation als Klassifikatoren herangezogen. Begründet und motiviert werden die folgenden Kapitel durch explorative Ansätze, d.h. im Bereich 'small scale' (mit sogenannten Datenhandschuhen) und im Bereich 'large scale' (mit einer avatargesteuerten VR-Fortbewegung). Die folgenden Kapitel führen empirische Studien mit blinden und sehbehinderten Nutzern durch und geben einen formativen Einblick, wie virtuelle Objekte in Reichweite der Hände mit haptischem Feedback erfasst werden können und wie verschiedene Arten der VR-Fortbewegung zur Erkundung virtueller Umgebungen eingesetzt werden können. Daraus werden geräteunabhängige technologische Möglichkeiten und auch Herausforderungen für weitere Verbesserungen abgeleitet. Auf der Grundlage dieser Erkenntnisse kann sich die weitere Forschung auf Aspekte wie die spezifische Gestaltung interaktiver Elemente, zeitlich und räumlich kollaborative Anwendungsszenarien und die Evaluation eines gesamten Anwendungsworkflows (d.h. Scannen der realen Umgebung und virtuelle Erkundung zu Trainingszwecken sowie die Gestaltung der gesamten Anwendung in einer langfristig barrierefreien Weise) konzentrieren.Access to digital content and information is becoming increasingly important for successful participation in today's increasingly digitized civil society. Such information is mostly presented visually, which restricts access for blind and visually impaired people. The most fundamental barrier is often basic orientation and mobility (and consequently, social mobility), including gaining knowledge about unknown buildings before visiting them. To bridge such barriers, technological aids should be developed and deployed. A trade-off is needed between technologically low-threshold accessible and disseminable aids and interactive-adaptive but complex systems. The adaptation of virtual reality (VR) technology spans a wide range of development and decision options. The main benefits of VR technology are increased interactivity, updatability, and the possibility to explore virtual spaces as proxies of real ones without real-world hazards and the limited availability of sighted assistants. However, virtual objects and environments have no physicality. Therefore, this thesis aims to research which VR interaction forms are reasonable (i.e., offering a reasonable dissemination potential) to make virtual representations of real buildings touchable or walkable in the context of orientation and mobility. Although there are already content and technology disjunctive developments and evaluations on VR technology, there is a lack of empirical evidence. Additionally, this thesis provides a survey between different interactions. Having considered the human physiology, assistive media (e.g., tactile maps), and technological characteristics, the current state of the art of VR is introduced, and the application for blind and visually impaired users and the way to get there is discussed by introducing a novel taxonomy. In addition to the interaction itself, characteristics of the user and the device, the application context, or the user-centered development respectively evaluation are used as classifiers. Thus, the following chapters are justified and motivated by explorative approaches, i.e., in the group of 'small scale' (using so-called data gloves) and in the scale of 'large scale' (using an avatar-controlled VR locomotion) approaches. The following chapters conduct empirical studies with blind and visually impaired users and give formative insight into how virtual objects within hands' reach can be grasped using haptic feedback and how different kinds of VR locomotion implementation can be applied to explore virtual environments. Thus, device-independent technological possibilities and also challenges for further improvements are derived. On the basis of this knowledge, subsequent research can be focused on aspects such as the specific design of interactive elements, temporally and spatially collaborative application scenarios, and the evaluation of an entire application workflow (i.e., scanning the real environment and exploring it virtually for training purposes, as well as designing the entire application in a long-term accessible manner)

Apraxia World: Deploying a Mobile Game and Automatic Speech Recognition for Independent Child Speech Therapy

Children with speech sound disorders typically improve pronunciation quality by undergoing speech therapy, which must be delivered frequently and with high intensity to be effective. As such, clinic sessions are supplemented with home practice, often under caregiver supervision. However, traditional home practice can grow boring for children due to monotony. Furthermore, practice frequency is limited by caregiver availability, making it difficult for some children to reach therapy dosage. To address these issues, this dissertation presents a novel speech therapy game to increase engagement, and explores automatic pronunciation evaluation techniques to afford children independent practice. Children with speech sound disorders typically improve pronunciation quality by undergoing speech therapy, which must be delivered frequently and with high intensity to be effective. As such, clinic sessions are supplemented with home practice, often under caregiver supervision. However, traditional home practice can grow boring for children due to monotony. Furthermore, practice frequency is limited by caregiver availability, making it difficult for some children to reach therapy dosage. To address these issues, this dissertation presents a novel speech therapy game to increase engagement, and explores automatic pronunciation evaluation techniques to afford children independent practice. The therapy game, called Apraxia World, delivers customizable, repetition-based speech therapy while children play through platformer-style levels using typical on-screen tablet controls; children complete in-game speech exercises to collect assets required to progress through the levels. Additionally, Apraxia World provides pronunciation feedback according to an automated pronunciation evaluation system running locally on the tablet. Apraxia World offers two advantages over current commercial and research speech therapy games; first, the game provides extended gameplay to support long therapy treatments; second, it affords some therapy practice independence via automatic pronunciation evaluation, allowing caregivers to lightly supervise instead of directly administer the practice. Pilot testing indicated that children enjoyed the game-based therapy much more than traditional practice and that the exercises did not interfere with gameplay. During a longitudinal study, children made clinically-significant pronunciation improvements while playing Apraxia World at home. Furthermore, children remained engaged in the game-based therapy over the two-month testing period and some even wanted to continue playing post-study. The second part of the dissertation explores word- and phoneme-level pronunciation verification for child speech therapy applications. Word-level pronunciation verification is accomplished using a child-specific template-matching framework, where an utterance is compared against correctly and incorrectly pronounced examples of the word. This framework identified mispronounced words better than both a standard automated baseline and co-located caregivers. Phoneme-level mispronunciation detection is investigated using a technique from the second-language learning literature: training phoneme-specific classifiers with phonetic posterior features. This method also outperformed the standard baseline, but more significantly, identified mispronunciations better than student clinicians

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

AN INVESTIGATION OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A MOBILE HEALTH SYSTEM FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DEXTERITY IMPAIRMENTS

Mobile health (mHealth) systems have a great potential to empower individuals with chronic disease and disabilities to engage in preventive self-care. Before persons with disabilities can harness the potential of mhealth, the accessibility of mhealth systems should be addressed. An innovative mHealth system called iMHere (Internet Mobile Health and Rehabilitation) has been developed at the University of Pittsburgh to support self-care and adherence to self-care regimens for individuals with spina bifida and other complex conditions who are vulnerable to secondary complications. However, the existing design of the iMHere system was not designed to accommodate users with dexterity impairments. The overall goal of this research is to design and transform an existing mHealth system to make it more usable and accessible for users with dexterity impairment. To achieve this goal, three studies were conducted: Evaluation, Design and Development, and Validation of personalization and accessibility design in mobile health apps. The first study (Evaluation) was aimed to identify the barriers of the original iMHere apps to accessibility, and to explore the necessary features that may improve users’ experiences. The second study (Design and Development) was aimed to develop innovative designs to improve the accessibility and usability of the mHealth system. The third study (Validation) was aimed to evaluate the users’ acceptance of and preferences regarding the personalized and accessible mHealth services on a smartphone. The accessible design and development model that is presented in this dissertation incorporates user-interface components related to physical presentation (widgets, visual cues) and navigation (activity flow and layout order). Personalization that provides the ability for a user to modify the appearance of content, such as the size of the icons and the color of text, are proposed as an optimal solution to address potential issues and barriers to accessibility. The importance of personalization strategies for accessibility is also discussed

현장 데이터 수집 능력을 확장하기 위한 자유도 높은 셀프 트래킹 기술의 디자인

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 컴퓨터공학부, 2019. 2. 서진욱.Collecting and tracking data in everyday contexts is a common practice for both individual self-trackers and researchers. The increase in wearable and mobile technologies for self-tracking encourages people to gain personal insights from the data about themselves. Also, researchers exploit self-tracking to gather data in situ or to foster behavioral change. Despite a diverse set of available tracking tools, however, it is still challenging to find ones that suit unique tracking needs, preferences, and commitments. Individual self-tracking practices are constrained by the tracking tools' initial design, because it is difficult to modify, extend, or mash up existing tools. Limited tool support also impedes researchers' efforts to conduct in situ data collection studies. Many researchers still build their own study instruments due to the mismatch between their research goals and the capabilities of existing toolkits. The goal of this dissertation is to design flexible self-tracking technologies that are generative and adaptive to cover diverse tracking contexts, ranging from personal tracking to research contexts. Specifically, this dissertation proposes OmniTrack, a flexible self-tracking approach leveraging a semi-automated tracking concept that combines manual and automated tracking methods to generate an arbitrary tracker design. OmniTrack was implemented as a mobile app for individuals. The OmniTrack app enables self-trackers to construct their own trackers and customize tracking items to meet their individual needs. A usability study and a field development study were conducted with the goal of assessing how people adopt and adapt OmniTrack to fulfill their needs. The studies revealed that participants actively used OmniTrack to create, revise, and appropriate trackers, ranging from a simple mood tracker to a sophisticated daily activity tracker with multiple fields. Furthermore, OmniTrack was extended to cover research contexts that enclose manifold personal tracking contexts. As part of the research, this dissertation presents OmniTrack Research Kit, a research platform that allows researchers without programming expertise to configure and conduct in situ data collection studies by deploying the OmniTrack app on participants' smartphones. A case study in deploying the research kit for conducting a diary study demonstrated how OmniTrack Research Kit could support researchers who manage study participants' self-tracking process. This work makes artifacts contributions to the fields of human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, as well as expanding empirical understanding of how flexible self-tracking tools can enhance the practices of individual self-trackers and researchers. Moreover, this dissertation discusses design challenges for flexible self-tracking technologies, opportunities for further improving the proposed systems, and future research agenda for reaching the audiences not covered in this research.일상의 맥락에서 데이터를 모으는 활동인 셀프 트래킹(self-tracking)은 개인과 연구의 영역에서 활발히 활용되고 있다. 웨어러블 디바이스와 모바일 기술의 발달로 인해 사람들은 각자의 삶에 대해 말해주는 데이터를 더 쉽게 수집하고, 통찰할 수 있게 되었다. 또한, 연구자들은 현장(in situ) 데이터를 수집하거나 사람들에게 행동 변화를 일으키는 데에 셀프 트래킹을 활용한다. 비록 셀프 트래킹을 위한 다양한 도구들이 존재하지만, 트래킹에 대해 다양화된 요구와 취향을 완벽히 충족하는 것들을 찾는 것은 쉽지 않다. 대부분의 셀프 트래킹 도구는 이미 설계된 부분을 수정하거나 확장하기에 제한적이다. 그렇기 때문에 사람들의 셀프 트래킹에 대한 자유도는 기존 도구들의 디자인 공간에 의해 제약을 받을 수밖에 없다. 마찬가지로, 현장 데이터를 수집하는 연구자들도 이러한 도구의 한계로 인해 여러 문제에 봉착한다. 연구자들이 데이터를 통해 답하고자 하는 연구 질문(research question)은 분야가 발전할수록 세분되고, 치밀해지기 때문에 이를 위해서는 복잡하고 고유한 실험 설계가 필요하다. 하지만 현존하는 연구용 셀프 트래킹 플랫폼들은 이에 부합하는 자유도를 발휘하지 못한다. 이러한 간극으로 인해 많은 연구자들이 각자의 현장 데이터 수집 연구에 필요한 디지털 도구들을 직접 구현하고 있다. 본 연구의 목표는 자유도 높은---연구적 맥락과 개인적 맥락을 아우르는 다양한 상황에 활용할 수 있는---셀프 트래킹 기술을 디자인하는 것이다. 이를 위해 본고에서는 옴니트랙(OmniTrack)이라는 디자인 접근법을 제안한다. 옴니트랙은 자유도 높은 셀프 트래킹을 위한 방법론이며, 반자동 트래킹(semi-automated tracking)이라는 컨셉을 바탕으로 수동 방식과 자동 방식의 조합을 통해 임의의 트래커를 표현할 수 있다. 먼저 옴니트랙을 개인을 위한 모바일 앱 형태로 구현하였다. 옴니트랙 앱은 개개인이 자신의 트래킹 니즈에 맞는 트래커를 커스터마이징하여 활용할 수 있도록 구성되어 있다. 본고에서는 사람들이 어떻게 옴니트랙을 자신의 니즈에 맞게 활용하는지 알아보고자 사용성 테스트(usability testing)와 필드 배포 연구(field deployment study)를 수행하였다. 참가자들은 옴니트랙을 활발히 이용해 다양한 디자인의 트래커—아주 단순한 감정 트래커부터 여러 개의 필드를 가진 복잡한 일일 활동 트래커까지—들을 생성하고, 수정하고, 활용하였다. 다음으로, 옴니트랙을 현장 데이터 수집 연구에 활용할 수 있도록 연구 플랫폼 형태의 '옴니트랙 리서치 킷(OmniTrack Research Kit)'으로 확장하였다. 옴니트랙 리서치 킷은 연구자들이 프로그래밍 언어 없이 원하는 실험을 설계하고 옴니트랙 앱을 참가자들의 스마트폰으로 배포할 수 있도록 디자인되었다. 그리고 옴니트랙 리서치 킷을 이용해 일지기록 연구(diary study)를 직접 수행하였고, 이를 통해 옴니트랙 접근법이 어떻게 연구자들의 연구 목적을 이루는 데에 도움을 줄 수 있는지 직접 확인하였다. 본 연구는 휴먼-컴퓨터 인터랙션(Human-Computer Interaction) 및 유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅(Ubiquitous Computing) 분야에 기술적 산출물로써 기여하며, 자유도 높은 셀프 트래킹 도구가 어떻게 개인과 연구자들을 도울 수 있는지 실증적인 이해를 증진한다. 또한, 자유도 높은 셀프트래킹 기술에 대한 디자인적 난제, 연구에서 제시한 시스템에 대한 개선방안, 마지막으로 본 연구에서 다루지 못한 다른 집단을 지원하기 위한 향후 연구 논제에 대하여 논의한다.Abstract CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1.1 Background and Motivation 1.2 Research Questions and Approaches 1.2.1 Designing a Flexible Self-Tracking Approach Leveraging Semiautomated Tracking 1.2.2 Design and Evaluation of OmniTrack in Individual Tracking Contexts 1.2.3 Designing a Research Platform for In Situ Data Collection Studies Leveraging OmniTrack 1.2.4 A Case Study of Conducting an In Situ Data Collection Study using the Research Platform 1.3 Contributions 1.4 Structure of this Dissertation CHAPTER 2. Related Work 2.1 Background on Self-Tracking 2.1.1 Self-Tracking in Personal Tracking Contexts 2.1.2 Utilization of Self-Tracking in Other Contexts 2.2 Barriers Caused by Limited Tool Support 2.2.1 Limited Tools and Siloed Data in Personal Tracking 2.2.2 Challenges of the Instrumentation for In Situ Data Collection 2.3 Flexible Self-Tracking Approaches 2.3.1 Appropriation of Generic Tools 2.3.2 Universal Tracking Systems for Individuals 2.3.3 Research Frameworks for In Situ Data Collection 2.4 Grounding Design Approach: Semi-Automated Tracking 2.5 Summary of Related Work CHAPTER3 DesigningOmniTrack: a Flexible Self-Tracking Approach 3.1 Design Goals and Rationales 3.2 System Design and User Interfaces 3.2.1 Trackers: Enabling Flexible Data Inputs 3.2.2 Services: Integrating External Trackers and Other Services 3.2.3 Triggers: Retrieving Values Automatically 3.2.4 Streamlining Tracking and Lowering the User Burden 3.2.5 Visualization and Feedback 3.3 OmniTrack Use Cases 3.3.1 Tracker 1: Beer Tracker 3.3.2 Tracker 2: SleepTight++ 3.3.3 Tracker 3: Comparison of Automated Trackers 3.4 Summary CHAPTER 4. Understanding HowIndividuals Adopt and Adapt OmniTrack 4.1 Usability Study 4.1.1 Participants 4.1.2 Procedure and Study Setup 4.1.3 Tasks 4.1.4 Results and Discussion 4.1.5 Improvements A_er the Usability Study 4.2 Field Deployment Study 4.2.1 Study Setup 4.2.2 Participants 4.2.3 Data Analysis and Results 4.2.4 Reflections on the Deployment Study 4.3 Discussion 4.3.1 Expanding the Design Space for Self-Tracking 4.3.2 Leveraging Other Building Blocks of Self-Tracking 4.3.3 Sharing Trackers with Other People 4.3.4 Studying with a Broader Audience 4.4 Summary CHAPTER 5. Extending OmniTrack for Supporting In Situ Data Collection Studies 5.1 Design Space of Study Instrumentation for In-Situ Data Collection 5.1.1 Experiment-Level Dimensions 5.1.2 Condition-Level Dimensions 5.1.3 Tracker-Level Dimensions 5.1.4 Reminder/Trigger-Level Dimensions 5.1.5 Extending OmniTrack to Cover the Design Space 5.2 Design Goals and Rationales 5.3 System Design and User Interfaces 5.3.1 Experiment Management and Collaboration 5.3.2 Experiment-level Configurations 5.3.3 A Participants Protocol for Joining the Experiment 5.3.4 Implementation 5.4 Replicated Study Examples 5.4.1 Example A: Revisiting the Deployment Study of OmniTrack 5.4.2 Example B: Exploring the Clinical Applicability of a Mobile Food Logger 5.4.3 Example C: Understanding the Effect of Cues and Positive Reinforcement on Habit Formation 5.4.4 Example D: Collecting Stress and Activity Data for Building a Prediction Model 5.5 Discussion 5.5.1 Supporting Multiphase Experimental Design 5.5.2 Serving as Testbeds for Self-Tracking Interventions 5.5.3 Exploiting the Interaction Logs 5.6 Summary CHAPTER 6. Using the OmniTrack Research Kit: A Case Study 6.1 Study Background and Motivation 6.2 OmniTrack Configuration for Study Instruments 6.3 Participants 6.4 Study Procedure 6.5 Dataset and Analysis 6.6 Study Result 6.6.1 Diary Entries 6.6.2 Aspects of Productivity Evaluation 6.6.3 Productive Activities 6.7 Experimenter Experience of OmniTrack 6.8 Participant Experience of OmniTrack 6.9 Implications 6.9.1 Visualization Support for Progressive, Preliminary Analysis of Collected Data 6.9.2 Inspection to Prevent Misconfiguration 6.9.3 Providing More Alternative Methods to Capture Data 6.10 Summary CHAPTER 7. Discussion 7.1 Lessons Learned 7.2 Design Challenges and Implications 7.2.1 Making the Flexibility Learnable 7.2.2 Additive vs. Subtractive Design for Flexibility 7.3 Future Opportunities for Improvement 7.3.1 Utilizing External Information and Contexts 7.3.2 Providing Flexible Visual Feedback 7.4 Expanding Audiences of OmniTrack 7.4.1 Supporting Clinical Contexts 7.4.2 Supporting Self-Experimenters 7.5 Limitations CHAPTER 8. Conclusion 8.1 Summary of the Approaches 8.2 Summary of Contributions 8.2.1 Artifact Contributions 8.2.2 Empirical Research Contributions 8.3 Future Work 8.3.1 Understanding the Long-term E_ect of OmniTrack 8.3.2 Utilizing External Information and Contexts 8.3.3 Extending the Input Modality to Lower the Capture Burden 8.3.4 Customizable Visual Feedback 8.3.5 Community-Driven Tracker Sharing 8.3.6 Supporting Multiphase Study Design 8.4 Final Remarks APPENDIX A. Study Material for Evaluations of the OmniTrack App A.1 Task Instructions for Usability Study A.2 The SUS (System Usability Scale) Questionnaire A.3 Screening Questionnaire for Deployment Study A.4 Exit Interview Guide for Deployment Study A.5 Deployment Participant Information APPENDIX B Study Material for Productivity Diary Study B.1 Recruitment Screening Questionnaire B.2 Exit Interview Guide Abstract (Korean)Docto

Modern Socio-Technical Perspectives on Privacy

This open access book provides researchers and professionals with a foundational understanding of online privacy as well as insight into the socio-technical privacy issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems, covering several modern topics (e.g., privacy in social media, IoT) and underexplored areas (e.g., privacy accessibility, privacy for vulnerable populations, cross-cultural privacy). The book is structured in four parts, which follow after an introduction to privacy on both a technical and social level: Privacy Theory and Methods covers a range of theoretical lenses through which one can view the concept of privacy. The chapters in this part relate to modern privacy phenomena, thus emphasizing its relevance to our digital, networked lives. Next, Domains covers a number of areas in which privacy concerns and implications are particularly salient, including among others social media, healthcare, smart cities, wearable IT, and trackers. The Audiences section then highlights audiences that have traditionally been ignored when creating privacy-preserving experiences: people from other (non-Western) cultures, people with accessibility needs, adolescents, and people who are underrepresented in terms of their race, class, gender or sexual identity, religion or some combination. Finally, the chapters in Moving Forward outline approaches to privacy that move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions, explore ethical considerations, and describe the regulatory landscape that governs privacy through laws and policies. Perhaps even more so than the other chapters in this book, these chapters are forward-looking by using current personalized, ethical and legal approaches as a starting point for re-conceptualizations of privacy to serve the modern technological landscape. The book’s primary goal is to inform IT students, researchers, and professionals about both the fundamentals of online privacy and the issues that are most pertinent to modern information systems. Lecturers or teacherscan assign (parts of) the book for a “professional issues” course. IT professionals may select chapters covering domains and audiences relevant to their field of work, as well as the Moving Forward chapters that cover ethical and legal aspects. Academicswho are interested in studying privacy or privacy-related topics will find a broad introduction in both technical and social aspects