Correlating Pedestrian Flows and Search Engine Queries

An important challenge for ubiquitous computing is the development of techniques that can characterize a location vis-a-vis the richness and diversity of urban settings. In this paper we report our work on correlating urban pedestrian flows with Google search queries. Using longitudinal data we show pedestrian flows at particular locations can be correlated with the frequency of Google search terms that are semantically relevant to those locations. Our approach can identify relevant content, media, and advertisements for particular locations.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

A Design Exploration of Health-Related Community Displays

The global population is ageing, leading to shifts in healthcare needs. It is well established that increased physical activity can improve the health and wellbeing of many older adults. However, motivation remains a prime concern. We report findings from a series of focus groups where we explored the concept of using community displays to promote physical activity to a local neighborhood. In doing so, we contribute both an understanding of the design space for community displays, as well as a discussion of the implications of our work for the broader CSCW community. We conclude that our work demonstrates the potential for developing community displays for increasing physical activity amongst older adults

Leveraging Social Networking Services on Multipurpose Public Displays

Abstract This thesis focuses on integrating multipurpose public displays with online social networking services. Modern public displays are capable of much more than the early digital billboards used for promoting brand awareness in urban areas. Currently, smaller, interactive displays are proliferating and starting to offer a variety of services for their users. A network of such displays is located in the northern City of Oulu, Finland, for example, where it is used by the general public. As such, it forms a realistic test bed for studying novel public display services in an authentic urban setting. This thesis examines how to leverage online social networking services in creating services for interactive public displays. A key difference to most related research is that the displays simultaneously offer multiple services to their users. The thesis first provides general purpose software components, which together allow creating services that take advantage of online social networking services. These include a distributed user interface framework, a login mechanism for displays that relies on the developed framework, and a social networking service API for public displays, relying on the login mechanism. Then, the thesis presents a number of prototype services that use the developed components. The services are discussed in the contexts of user generated content, public displays for enabling communication between users, and the role of smart phones in enabling these services. The key findings of this thesis illustrate how consuming and producing user generated content directly on public displays provide compelling use cases. Also, while leveraging online social networking services can be useful in supporting casual communication between users, the anonymity of public display users is likely to cause problems in official communications. Mobile phones are found as suitable for enabling the integration of social networking services and public displays by de-anonymizing the users. However, we are still far from a situation in which mobile phones are a natural part of the interface between humans and public displays, and more research and development towards this vision are needed.Tiivistelmä Tämä väitöskirja keskittyy monikäyttöisten julkisten näyttöjen ja yhteisöpalvelujen yhdistämiseen. Uudenaikaiset julkiset näytöt kykenevät paljon muuhunkin kuin ensimmäiset suuret mainostaulut joilla mainostettiin suuria tavaramerkkejä. Pienemmät, interaktiiviset näytöt yleistyvät ja alkavat tarjoamaan uudenlaisia palveluita. Yksi verkko tällaisia näyttöjä sijaitsee Oulussa, Suomessa, missä se on yhteisön käytössä. Se muodostaa aidon ja totuudenmukaisen testialustan julkisten näyttöjen palveluille aidossa kaupunkiympäristössä. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii Internetin yhteisöpalveluiden käyttämistä interaktiivisten julkisten näyttöjen palveluiden luomisessa. Yksi työn tärkeimmistä eroista olemassaolevaan kirjallisuuten on se, että käytetyt näytöt tarjoavat yhtäaikaa useita palveluita. Väitöskirja esittelee ensin yleiskäyttöisiä ohjelmistokomponentteja, joiden avulla voidaan luoda näytöille palveluita, jotka käyttävät hyväkseen Internetin yhteisöpalveluita. Nämä ovat hajautettu käyttöliittymäratkaisu, sisäänkirjautumismekanismi, mikä rakentuu kehitetyn käyttöliittymäratkaisun varaan sekä yhteisöpalvelurajapinta, mikä taas rakentuu sisäänkirjautumismekanismin varaan. Seuraavaksi väitöskirja esittelee prototyyppipalveluita, mitkä rakentuvat mainittujen komponenttien varaan. Nämä palvelut analysoidaan eri viitekehyksissä: käyttäjien luoma sisältö, julkisten näyttöjen mahdollistama kommunikaatio eri käyttäjien välillä sekä älypuhelinten rooli näiden palveluiden luomisessa. Väitöskirjan löydökset havainnollistavat, kuinka käyttäjien luoma sisältö sekä sen tuottaminen suoraan julkisella näytöllä ovat mieleisiä käyttötapoja. Lisäksi, vaikka yhteisöpalvelujen hyödyntäminen julkisilla näytöillä voikin tukea arkipäiväistä kommunikaatiota käyttäjien välillä, käytön anonymiteetti voi kuitenkin aiheuttaa ongelmia virallisemmassa kommunikaatiossa. Matkapuhelimet todetaan sopiviksi yhteisöpalvelujen ja julkisten näyttöjen yhdistämisessä etenkin käyttäjien tunnistamistuen vuoksi. Olemme kuitenkin vielä kaukana tilanteesta, missä matkapuhelimet ovat osa luonnollista käyttöliittymää ihmisten ja julkisten näyttöjen välillä, ja lisää tutkimusta on tehtävä tämän vision suuntaan

Design recommendations for augmenting creative tasks with computational priming

Abstract Supporting creativity is a grand challenge in HCI. A critical component of creativity is the ability for divergent thinking, and divergent thinking can be fostered through looking at the problem through the lens of a different person, by assuming a role. Prior work found that assuming a role and affective stimulation with images may lead individuals to be more creative. In this work, we investigate the use of roles in stimulating the creativity of individuals in two complementary studies. In the first study, we implemented an online instrument for augmenting creativity with roles and images, and recruited crowd workers (n = 60) to complete a divergent thinking task while assuming a role. Interestingly, and in contrast to earlier findings, our analysis could not confirm the computational priming having an effect on the outcome of a small batch of creative tasks. In the second study, we observed the effect of roles on the ideation process of individuals when they reach an impasse in the flow of ideas. Our complementary studies highlight that adopting roles can help when one runs out of ideas, but this is not a silver bullet for improving divergent thinking, especially in online crowd-sourcing environments that are increasingly being used for experiments and data collection in behavioural science. Our work informs the design of future crowd-powered creativity support tools and contributes a timely case study to the body of literature in the growing field of creativity support online

Towards eliciting feedback for artworks on public displays

Abstract The internet and digital technologies have had a strong influence on how art is created, distributed and perceived. Museums and art galleries, however, are still predominantly places of passive consumption of art. In our project, we explore new forms of communication and feedback between artists and their audience, mediated by public displays. In this work-in-progress paper, we present a situated feedback system for giving feedback on artworks in a public setting. We present a preliminary evaluation of the system with artists and potential audience on their reactions to the system and eight different types of feedback

Experizone:integrating situated scientific experimentation with teaching of the scientific method

Abstract Citizen Science projects ask their participants to contribute work to pre-defined topics, thereby typically rendering the participants as mere consumers of often narrowly defined tasks. In this work-in-progress paper, we present our work on an interactive experimentation platform that allows anybody — researchers as well as members of the crowd — to run experiments and test scientific hypotheses with a local crowd of volunteers. The platform also enforces a lightweight review process for teaching its users how to formulate valid scientific hypotheses and experimental designs

Simulation-based IoT stream data pricing incorporating seller competition and buyer demands

Abstract The concept of sensor clouds has been populated for utilizing data from massive amount of IoT devices. In the sensor cloud, a large number of sensors and users are connected and sensor data are traded among them. A number of market frameworks for such data ecosystems have been proposed so far, most of which assumes multiple stakeholders and coordinates their interests using techniques such as the traditional economic theory and game theory. However, because of the duplicability of IoT data, designing a natural pricing scheme based directly on market principles, such as the balance between seller competition and consumer demands, is still a challenge. In this paper, we propose a new pricing scheme for IoT stream data, where prices are determined by the balance between seller competition and consumer demand. Unlike conventional methods, our method is based on simulation. By simulating the market and sellers’ pricing behaviors on the broker’s platform, fair pricing is achieved without causing undesirable phenomena such as price wars. The evaluation results show that the proposed pricing method has desirable characteristics for an IoT data market

Exploring mobile ad formats to increase brand recollection and enhance user experience

Abstract Digital marketing is increasingly moving from desktop (e.g., browser) to mobile environments (e.g., within mobile applications). The means for delivering ads however, remains largely unchanged: banners and videos. In this work, we explore transforming ad delivery methods to the mobile environment while mitigating issues causing frustration and distractions to the users, evident in both web and mobile marketing. We demonstrate that softly enforcing interaction with the ad — with minimal usable screen space reduction — can improve user’s attitude towards mobile advertising. Brand recollection is also influenced via increased interactions with the ad delivery method

Exploring the use of ambient WiFi signals to find vacant houses

AbstractIn many countries, the population is either declining or rapidly concentrating in big cities, which causes problems in the form of vacant houses in many local communities. It is often challenging to keep track of the locations and the conditions of vacant houses, and for example in Japan, costly manual field studies are employed to map the occupancy situation. In this paper, we propose a technique to infer the locations of occupied houses based on ambient WiFi signals. Our technique collects RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) data based on opportunistic smartphone sensing, constructs hybrid networks of WiFi access points, and analyzes their geospatial patterns based on statistical shape modeling. We show that the technique can successfully infer occupied houses in a suburban residential community, and argue that it can substantially reduce the cost of field surveys to find vacant houses as the number of potential houses to be inspected decreases

CrowdUI:supporting web design with the crowd

Abstract Web design is a complex and challenging task. It involves making many design decisions that materialise preconceived notions of user needs that may or may not be true. In this paper, we investigate supporting the co-design of a website with visual feedback elicited from the website’s community of users. Website users can express their needs by re-arranging and modifying the website’s layout and design. To explore and validate this idea, we present CrowdUI, a web-based tool that enables members of the community of a website to visually express their design improvement ideas, frustrations and needs, and to send this feedback to the person in charge of designing or maintaining the website. CrowdUI is validated in a study with 45 users of a popular social media and networking website. Second, our qualitative evaluation with 60 experienced web developers shows that CrowdUI is able to elicit diverse and meaningful feedback. Put together, our results suggest that CrowdUI’s approach constitutes a productive setting for eliciting visual feedback from the user community as a complement to traditional ways of eliciting feedback and participatory design. Finally, based on our experiences, we discuss a design space for crowdsourced web design and provide design recommendations for similar future tools