Designing a Foot Input System for Productive Work at a Standing Desk

In this thesis we present Tap-Kick-Click, a foot interaction system for controlling common desktop applications. This system enables computer workers to take healthy and productive breaks from using a keyboard and mouse and demonstrates foot interaction techniques which could be applied in other contexts. Our work supplements the existing literature on foot based interaction, as no published work has combined foot input with a standing desk or attempted control of conventional desktop applications. We describe two experiments to investigate questions about the human performance characteristics of foot input relevant to our application which were unanswered in the existing literature. These experiments investigated the effect of target size, direction and distance; the difference between dominant and non-dominant foot; the use of tapping and kicking interaction; and the impact of displaying or hiding a foot cursor. Based on our results we present a set of design guidelines including a suggested minimum target size; a recommendation to ignore foot dominance; and a preference ranking for direction and foot action. These design guidelines informed the design of Tap-Kick-Click, which we describe in detail. It uses a sensing technique using a Microsoft Kinect depth camera and a pair of augmented slippers capable of robustly sensing foot position, kicking and tapping. The primary interaction technique is based on combinations of foot action and directional tapping in a low-density target layout, supported by feedback and instructions presented in an always visible sidebar. This technique is supplemented with a system for selecting elements in a GUI, a high-density target layout for selecting items from a menu, and a help screen. We illustrate the usefulness of Tap-Kick-Click by describing how it can be used to control a web browser, a citation manager and a debugger. Finally, we present the results of a study conducted to evaluate whether new users could learn and use the system in a web browser context. The study demonstrated that users are successfully able to learn and use the system, along with providing areas for improvement.4 month

TicTacToes: Assessing Toe Movements as an Input Modality

From carrying grocery bags to holding onto handles on the bus, there are a variety of situations where one or both hands are busy, hindering the vision of ubiquitous interaction with technology. Voice commands, as a popular hands-free alternative, struggle with ambient noise and privacy issues. As an alternative approach, research explored movements of various body parts (e.g., head, arms) as input modalities, with foot-based techniques proving particularly suitable for hands-free interaction. Whereas previous research only considered the movement of the foot as a whole, in this work, we argue that our toes offer further degrees of freedom that can be leveraged for interaction. To explore the viability of toe-based interaction, we contribute the results of a controlled experiment with 18 participants assessing the impact of five factors on the accuracy, efficiency and user experience of such interfaces. Based on the findings, we provide design recommendations for future toe-based interfaces.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 23), April 23-28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 17 page

Through the Eye and Into My Heart: Scenes of Embrace in Morgan MS M.245 and the Tactile Responses They Provoked

This thesis examines representations of embrace in a Roman de la rose (Morgan Library, M.245). Emphasis is on the reader’s tactile interaction with the manuscript as an object, and the notion of romances as sites for a distinctly physical reading practice, in which miniatures would be kissed, rubbed, or pierced

Tangos Before Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight: A Conversational Journey with Jesse and Celine

Stripping the story of a romantic relationship down to its essentials, then fiercely delving into the details and potential variations of those essentials, director Richard Linklater and his collaborators created a unique trilogy of films spanning eighteen years in both real and fictional time. In Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), two appealing yet flawed characters meet by chance on a train headed for Vienna, risk extending their acquaintance during a one-night tour of the city, then spend the next two decades either brooding about or deeply engaged with each other. The journey of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) as a couple is like a complicated series of dance steps repeated many times but never in exactly the same way. Their marathon conversations build on one another, echoing back and forth across the years, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, generating intimacy one moment and misunderstanding the next. Words and memories bind them together, except when weaponized to serve resentment and a desire to inflict pain. This work attempts to trace the subtle twists and turns of these two fascinating characters as their passion for each other waxes and wanes and waxes again. Like most relationships, of any kind, theirs never stands still. Before Sunset and Before Midnight reflect the inevitable wear and tear, but also the emotional depth, that time and aging can bring to friendship or love. Linklater\u27s trilogy is a fictional exploration of possibilities that is well-worth exploring in itself for the insights and excitement it brings to its universal subject

California preschool curriculum framework, Volume 2

Journal ArticleI am pleased to present the California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2, a publication I believe will be a major effort in working to close the school-readiness gap for young children in our state. Created as a companion to the California Preschool Learning Foundations, this framework presents strategies and information to enrich learning and development opportunities for all of California's preschool children

"I Want This, I Want That": a discursive analysis of mental state terms in family interaction

Using the theoretical approach of discursive psychology, this thesis examines the interactive uses of mental state talk, in particular the term want , in everyday family interaction. In mainstream cognitive psychology mental state terms are examined as words which signify internal referents. How individuals come to competently participate in social interaction is formulated as a problem of how individual, isolated minds come to understand the contents of other minds. This thesis challenges these individualistic notions and examines notions of wanting as interactionally managed participants concerns. The data are taken from two sources; a set of video recordings taken from a series of fly-on-the-wall documentary programmes which each focus on a particular family and videotapes of mealtimes recorded by three families. Recordings were initially transcribed verbatim and sections related to the emerging themes within the thesis were subsequently transcribed using the Jefferson notation system. These transcripts were then analysed, alongside repeated viewings of the video recordings. The thesis considers a range of analytic themes, which are interlinked via one of the primary research questions, which has been to examine how, and to what end, speakers routinely deploy notions of wanting in everyday talk-in-interaction. A major theme has been to highlight inherent problems with work in social cognition which uses experimental tasks to examine children s Theory of Mind and understanding of desires . I argue that the assumptions of this work are a gross simplification of the meaning wanting for both children and adults. A further theme has been to examine the sequential organisation of directives and requests in both adults and children s talk. Finally, I examine speakers practices for rejecting a proposal regarding their actions and for denying a formulation of their motivations by a co-interactant. The conclusions of the thesis show that expressions of wanting are practical expressions which work within a flow of interactional and deontic considerations and that making claims regarding one s own or others wants is entirely a social matter. I argue that rather than being examined for what they may reveal about the mind , mental state terms may be fruitfully examined as interactional matters

A critical ethnography of The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana with ruminations on hauntology

This study examines how ghosts perform and are performed in southern Louisiana, particularly in the eclectic Baton Rouge enclave of Spanish Town and at The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. Although The Myrtles, considered “one of the most haunted locations in the United States,” served as the genesis for this project, I explore the continuities and discontinuities of the histories and historicities of these two distinct places and my journeys between them over a five year period. Using critical ethnography as a grounding framework, the study draws from literature in tourism studies, performance studies, and other related areas of research, to illustrate how these sites figure histories that are simultaneously informed and troubled by ghostly matters. The study is structured as a performative journey. Chapter One establishes an itinerary, explaining the theory and methodological tools employed in the study. Chapter Two explores the performance of tourism and the ways in which it is inevitably bound up in increasingly complicated notions of home. As the beginning of the journey, it contextualizes the places that anchor the study. Chapter Three revisits Highway 61 and utilizes this liminal space to examine elided histories that will serve as a context and provide insight into the primary ghost at the heart of this study, Chloe, as well as the other ghosts she brings with her. Chapter Four provides a thick description of the grounds of The Myrtles and uses the categories of touristic performance to examine how tourists navigate the spaces prior to taking a tour. Chapter Five provides the reader with a tour of the house. Performed by three different guides, this tour illustrates how the guides function as mediums between ghosts and guests on the tour. In Chapter Six, I situate this journey in relation to how other scholars employ haunting and hauntology as a theoretical perspective and methodological tool before heading off in another haunted direction that explores implications for future research

On and Off the Stage at Atlanta Greek Picnic: Performances of Collective Black Middle-Class Identities and the Politics of Belonging

This dissertation presents a thick ethnography that engages in the micro-analysis of the situationality of black middle-class collective identification processes through an examination of performances by members of the nine historically black sororities and fraternities at Atlanta Greek Picnic, an annual festival that occurs at the beginning of June in Atlanta, Georgia. It mainly attracts undergraduate and graduate members of these university-based organizations, as they exist all over the United States. This exploration of black Greek-letter organization (BGLO) performances uncovers processes through which young black middle-class individuals attempt to combine two universes that are at first glance in complete opposition to each other: the domain of the traditional black middle-class values with representations and fashions stemming from black popular culture. These constructions also attempt to incorporate—in a contradiction of sorts— black popular cultural elements in the objective to deconstruct the social conservatism that characterizes middle-class values, particularly in relation to sexuality and its representation in social behaviors and performances. This negotiation between prescribed v middle-class values of respectability and black popular culture provides a space wherein black individuals challenge and/or perpetuate those dominant tropes through identity performances that feed into the formation of black sexual politics, which I examine through a variety of BGLO staged and non-staged performances