Externalizing and interpreting autonomic arousal in people diagnosed with autism

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-128).This research explores how externalization of physiological states helps to provide an awareness of hidden stressors through a home-based study, a lab-based study, and a school-based study in order to facilitate social understanding of people who are nonspeaking, especially those diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For people who experienced with hyper- or hypo-sensory responses (e.g., many people diagnosed with ASD), over-aroused situations or " meltdowns" are often accompanied by incorrect attributions of potential stressors in their everyday lives. A series of physiology-based technologies are implemented as a toolkit (e.g., providing in-situ visual and tactile feedback, or enabling interactive and analytical indexing of collected data) for assisting the interpretations of individuals' arousal states. First, the home-based study is a participant-driven study following Kanner's perspective of documenting "fascinating peculiarities" in autism. I arrive in a family as an ethnographer documenting a dynamic process of hypothesizing and interpreting situations in order to seek a dialogue with a young man with ASD who is able to name objects, but does not use language in typical ways. Second, the lab-based study is a single-case design experiment with direct replications focusing on class teachers' interpretations of arousal states in students diagnosed with ASD. The goal of this study is to assess how real-time displays of student physiological activity (i.e. heart rate) affect teacher estimation of arousal and relaxation. The results suggest that arousal estimation varies as a function of how physiological information is displayed. Third, the school- based study presents a collaboration with an occupational therapist (OT) and three teenage participants with ASD. This study documents the iterated investigations of the OT's interpretations with and without the presence of students' physiological data (i.e. skin conductance data). This study demonstrates how participants' arousal information assists the OT in making judgments from a clinical perspective. This dissertation presents an experimental method and toolkit to help calibrate typical assumptions about people diagnosed with ASD. With the intervention of physiology-based technologies, this research shows a novel approach of debugging reciprocal understanding of people in both naturalistic and experimental environments.by Chia-Hsun Jackie Lee.Ph.D

Spatial user interface : augmenting human sensibilities in a domestic kitchen

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-90).The real world is not a computer screen. When can augmented reality and ambient interfaces improve the usability of a physical environment? This thesis presents data from design studies and experiments that demonstrate the value for ambient information and augmented reality design. The domestic kitchen is used as a domain to place smart technologies and to study visual attention,multi-tasking, food-preparation and disruptiveness. Human perception in visually complex environments can be significantly enhanced by overlaying intuitive, immersive and attentive displays. Placing Graphical User Interface designs in a physical environment made only 20% of the subjects understand what to do in the Soft-Boiled Egg experiment. In the stovetop study, 94% of the subjects understood that the augmented stovetop was still hot and dangerous through the abstract and immersive display, while only 19% of the subjects were able to determine that the normal stovetop was still hot from a distance. In the Sink study, 94% of the subjects immediately understood that the water was hot by its red color. Useful knowledge about cooking, safety, and using home appliances can be embedded with sensors into the physical environment.(cont.) Causal-related cooking events (i.e. when a subject opened the freezer and then stood in front of the microwave, a 'Defrost' appeared on the microwave.) were added in KitchenSense in order to maintain an easily understood physical environment.by Jackie Chia-Hsun Lee.S.M

Augmenting Human Sensibilities in a Domestic Kitchen

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iSphere: a free-hand 3D modeling interface

Making 3D models should be an easy and intuitive task like Free-hand sketching. This paper presents iSphere, a 24 degree of freedom 3D input device. iSphere is a dodecahedron embedded with 12 capacitive sensors for pulling-out and pressing-in manipulation on 12 control points of 3D geometries. iSphere exhibits the top-down 3D modeling approach for saving mental loads of low-level machineries. Using analog inputs of 3D manipulation, designers are able to have high-level modeling concepts like push or pull the 3D surfaces. Our experiment shows that iSphere saved steps of selecting control points and going through menus and make subjects more focus on what they want to build instead of how they can build. Novices saved significant time for learning 3D manipulation and making conceptual models, but lacking of fidelity is an issue of analog input device. 1

Lessons learned from a pilot study quantifying face contact and skin conductance in teens with asperger syndrome

This paper presents lessons learned from a preliminary study quantifying face contact and corresponding physiological reactivity in teenagers with Asperger syndrome. In order to detect face contact and physiological arousability, we created a wearable system that combines a camera with OpenCV face detection and skin conductance sensors. In this paper, we discuss issues involved in setting up experimental environments for wearable platforms to detect face contact and skin conductance levels simultaneously, and address technological, statistical, and ethical considerations for future technological interventions

Emotionally Reactive Television

When is an interface simple? Is it when it is invisible or very obvious, even intrusive? From the time TV was created, watching TV is considered as a static activity. TV audiences have very limited choices to interact with TV, such as turning on/off, increasing/decreasing volume, and traversing among different channels. This paper suggests that TV program should have social responses to people, such as affording and accepting audience’s emotional feeling with the growth of technologies. This paper presents HiTV, an Emotionally-Reactive TV system using a digitally augmented soft ball as affect-input interfaces that can amplify TV program’s video/audio signals. HiTV transforms the original video and audio into effects that intrigue and fulfill people’s emotional expectation. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]