Showing papers by "Donald J. Patterson published in 2012"

Collapse informatics: augmenting the sustainability & ICT4D discourse in HCI

Abstract: Research in many fields argues that contemporary global industrial civilization will not persist indefinitely in its current form, and may, like many past human societies, eventually collapse. Arguments in environmental studies, anthropology, and other fields indicate that this transformation could begin within the next half-century. While imminent collapse is far from certain, it is prudent to consider now how to develop sociotechnical systems for use in these scenarios. We introduce the notion of collapse informatics---the study, design, and development of sociotechnical systems in the abundant present for use in a future of scarcity---as a complement to ICT4D and mitigation-oriented sustainable HCI. We draw on a variety of literatures to offer a set of relevant concepts and articulate the relationships among them to orient and evaluate collapse informatics work. Observing that collapse informatics poses a unique class of cross-cultural design problems, we sketch the design space of collapse informatics and provide a variety of example projects. We explore points of connection and distinction between collapse informatics and sustainable HCI, ICT4D, and crisis informatics. Finally, we discuss next steps and comment on the potential value of collapse informatics work even in the event that collapse never occurs.

Assessment of Infant Movement With a Compact Wireless Accelerometer System

Abstract: There is emerging data that patterns of motor activity early in neonatal life can predict impairments in neuromotor development. However, current techniques to monitor infant movement mainly rely on observer scoring, a technique limited by skill, fatigue, and inter-rater reliability. Consequently, we tested the use of a lightweight, wireless, accelerometer system that measures movement and can be worn by premature babies without interfering with routine care. We hypothesized that this system would be useful in assessing motor activity, in identifying abnormal movement, and in reducing the amount of video that a clinician would need to review for abnormal movements. Ten preterm infants in the NICU were monitored for 1 h using both the accelerometer system and video. A physical therapist trained to recognize cramped-synchronized general movements scored all of the video data by labeling each abnormal movement observed. The parameters of three different computer models were then optimized based on correlating features computed from accelerometer data and the observer’s annotations. The annotations were compared to the model’s prediction on unseen data. The trained observer identified cramped-synchronized general movements in 6 of the 10 infants. The computer models attained between 70% and 90% accuracy when predicting the same observer label for each data point. Our study suggests that mini-accelerometers may prove useful as a clinical tool assessing patterns of movement in preterm infants. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4006129]

Massively distributed authorship of academic papers

Abstract: Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This model, developed by a collective of thirty authors, identifies key tools and techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate, and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale collaborative research.

Augmenting gesture recognition with erlang-cox models to identify neurological disorders in premature babies

Abstract: In this paper we demonstrate a Markov model based technique for recognizing gestures from accelerometers that explicitly represents duration. We do this by embedding an Erlang-Cox state transition model, which has been shown to accurately represent the first three moments of a general distribution, within a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). The transition probabilities in the DBN can be learned via Expectation-Maximization or by using closed-form solutions. We test this modeling technique on 10 hours of data collected from accelerometers worn by babies pre-categorized as high-risk in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at UCI. We show that by treating instantaneous machine learning classification values as observations and explicitly modeling duration, we improve the recognition of Cramped Synchronized General Movements, a motion highly correlated with an eventual diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy.

What if sustainability doesn't work out?

Abstract: 12-month average temperatures since record keeping began in 1895 [3,4]. Figure 1 details the key predictions regarding global change made by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climage Change [5]. In his keynote at the National Academies symposium, John Holdren, head of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy and chief science advisor to the nation, described a need for both mitigation—the reduction of the magnitude of change—and adaptation—the mobilization of responses to change [6]. Holdren offered that many more projects are currently In a recent NSF-funded National Academies symposium on Science, Innovation, and Partnerships for Sustainability Solutions, there was a great deal of discussion about global change. To offer a few concrete examples of the kind of problems that may result from global change: Sea-level rise could displace tens or even hundreds of millions of people by the end of this century [1]; similar numbers of people could be subjected to increased water stress [2]; and shifting climatic zones could cause many farms to cease to be viable with current crop choices and farming techniques. As we write this, the U.S. is experiencfocusing on mitigation than adaptation. Researchers around the world and across widely disparate fields are exploring ways to mitigate environmental problems. Mitigation is a key focus for many industrialized nations seeking to enable their citizenry to maintain or improve their lifestyles. Nevertheless, despite the significant efforts to mitigate global change being exerted across many elements of human civilizations, it is not clear that these efforts are sufficient to place humanity on a path that avoids the grave consequences of this change. If, as increasingly seems likely, humanity is unable to prevent draWhat If Sustainability Doesn’t Work Out?

Informing and performing: investigating how mediated sociality becomes visible

Abstract: In the human---computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work, and ubiquitous computing literature, making people's presence and activities visible as a design approach has been extensively explored to enhance computer-mediated interactions and collaborations. This process has developed under the rubrics of "awareness," "social translucence," "social activity indicators," "social navigation," etc. Although the name and details vary, the central ideas are similar. By making social presence and activities more visible or perceivable, they provide social context for members to make sense of situations and guide their activities more informatively and appropriately. In this work, we introduce a class of visualizations called social context displays, which use and share graphical representations to depict people's presence and activity information with an explicit focus on groups. The aim of this work is to examine social context displays in use and contribute new abstractions for understanding how making social information more visible works in general. Through our first-hand experience with user-centered design and empirical investigations of two social context displays in real settings, we uncovered not only how they provide social context to inform actions and decisions, but also how members perform and manage their self- and group-representations through the display. Drawing on Goffman's performance framework, we provide a detailed description of how people react and respond to these two social context displays and reconsider some of the broader issues associated with computer-mediated interactions such as privacy, context, and media richness.

When camera meets accelerometer: a novel way for 3d interaction of mobile phone

Abstract: Performing real-time 3D motion interaction with a mobile phone is useful for extending interaction out of a limited screen. However, current phone motion detection approaches, which use only camera or accelerometer, have limitations in recognizing versatile 3D motions simultaneously. In this paper we present a real-time approach designed for 3D tasks by holding and moving a phone equipped with both a camera and an accelerometer. By analyzing both motion features from image frames and changes of accelerometer data simultaneously, our approach can naturally distinguish translation and rotation of a mobile phone. In a pilot user study, we demonstrated our design requires low learning effort and has high accuracy. Since it does not require any outside infrastructure, our approach can be applied to any phone with a camera and an accelerometer. Our main contribution is giving mobile phone users 3D interaction ability by exploiting hand translation and rotation.

Massively Distributed Authorship of Academic Papers

Abstract: Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This model, developed by a collective of 31 authors, identifies key tools and techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate, and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale collaborative research.