Seeing Through Things:Exploring the Design Space of Privacy-Aware Data-Enabled Objects

Increasing amounts of sensor-augmented research objects have been used in design research. We call these objects Data-Enabled Objects, which can be integrated into daily activities capturing data about people's detailed whereabouts, behaviours, and routines. These objects provide data perspectives on everyday life for contextual design research. However, data-enabled objects are still computational devices with limited privacy awareness and nuanced data sharing. To better design data-enabled objects, we explore privacy design spaces by inviting 18 teams of undergraduate design students to re-design the same type of sensor-enabled home research camera. We developed the Connected Peekaboo Toolkit (CPT) to support the design teams in designing, building, and directly deploying their prototypes in real home studies. We conducted Thematic Analysis to analyze their outcomes which led us to interpret that privacy is not just an obstacle but can be a driver by unfolding an exploration of possible design spaces for data-enabled objects.</p

Designing the Expressiveness of Point Lights for Bridging Human-IoT System Communications

In the last decade, the digital devices and intelligent systems are becoming popular in people’s everyday lives. Many machines could communicate and collaborate as a system to provide various services. However, they seldom provide sufficient feed forwards or feedbacks to help users understand current states and aware what it is about to act. In this study, we explored the possibilities of expressiveness with the point lights embedded on ubiquitous devices. By applying the findings from related works and animation principles, we created nine basic individual patterns and composed 12 designs of group behaviors. We then conducted a survey with 69 participants to rate their expressiveness regarding nine vocabularies of the human-system communication. The results show that single light behavior and the performative group light behavior could help to convey specific state information for intuitive communication. At the individual light level, for instance, the fade in light behavior can indicate changes in status; rapid blinking can indicate important information. At the group level, the two designs developed in this study, leading and simultaneous type also can initiate human interactions and represent the machine-to-machine conversations taken place in the system, respectively

Simultaneous Penile Gangrene and Testicular Infarction Secondary to Calciphylaxis in a Uremic Patient

We report here a 46-year-old man with end stage renal disease (ESRD) secondary to type 2 diabetes, who had been on hemodialysis for 5 years. He had a painful glans lesion for 1 week. Five days later, he also complained of right testicular pain. Computed tomography of the pelvis demonstrated calcification of both penile arteries. Scrotal sonography revealed right testicular infarction. He received partial penectomy and right orchiectomy because of progressive lesions and intractable pain. Pathologic examination revealed testicular and penile tissue with necrotizing inflammation accompanied by multifocal calcification in the tunica media, compatible with calciphylaxis. This is the first report to document simultaneous penile gangrene and testicular infarction secondary to calciphylaxis