IRB Training

Consent form form Project testing.





Certificate of IRB training for the ECS598 Class.

Book: Self Theories: their role in motivational, personality and development

Great book from author Carol Dweck.

Different keyboard input HCI

Link to multiple links for keyboard interfaces

Technology barriers and Solutions


Wear Clam: One hand wrist wearable keyboard


Twiddler: One hand keyboard interface








Senseboard

Data from project using Many eyes tool

This link is the graphic showing the MPG vs cost and CO2 of two different vehicles in a one year range. Very nice tool and allowed me to gather data from different sources and present the data in a more appealing manner.


Many eyes link





Cost of fuel economy

Many eyes tool

Experimenting with data from HCI class project. Very good tool for visualization of data in multiple unique ways. Give it a try!!
Check my uploaded data here.

Beliefs Influence Green Behavior: Lessons from Guatemala

Key learning for green marketers:

Shared values predict behavior. Atran et. al. demonstrated that beliefs predict human impact on plants (deforestation) among the three groups studied. Each group varied considerably in its propensity to practice sustainable forestry: simply put, the Itza sustained their land, the Q’eqchi did not and the Ladinos were somewhere in the middle. Atran et. al. demonstrated that beliefs (e.g., ecological centrality of plants, value of plants for cash, wood or shelter, etc.) were highly correlated with human impact.

Shared values create a contextual framework for decision making. People with shared values and beliefs tend to have similar contextual frameworks (mental models) that result in similar decisions being made – even when confronted with new or unfamiliar stimuli. Environmental decision-making is no different.

Religion motivates behaviors, and may even override economic self-interests. The Itza’ are a religious people and the belief in forest spirits is strong, especially among the men. Such beliefs are powerful motivating factors which dictate behaviors (which animals and plants to protect, etc.) in order to placate spirits or win their favor. While a delicate subject for marketers, religion can be a powerful motivating force for certain target segments.

Education is critical to shaping/evolving beliefs. People do not appreciate or value what they do not understand. In this study, for example, the Ladinos were learning sustainable practices from the Itza’s, which resulted in measurable improvements in forest sustainability over time.

Influencers matter. Trusted expert do shape beliefs and influence behavior. Yet, people have to be receptive to the message. Atran et al, found that the more overlap between expert and social networks, the greater the influence exerted (in this case knowledge transferred regarding sustainable practices).

http://marketinggreen.wordpress.com/2006/07/25/beliefs-influence-green-behavior-lessons-from-guatemala/

http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/files/the_cultural_mind.pdf#search="The Cultural Minds atran"

Green Consumer Behavior– Part I: Information Paradox | Futurelab – An international marketing strategy consultancy

Green Consumer Behavior Part I: Information paradox

by: David Wigder

Understanding consumer behavior is critical for any marketer, and is especially important in regard to environmental products and services.

More than one hundred years of consumption theory – across a wide range of academic disciplines including economics, psychology and sociology - makes it clear that there are many different motivations and influences that drive consumer behavior. Professor Tim Jackson at the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey (Guildford, UK) provides a comprehensive summary of this history in his Motivating Sustainable Consumption, a report to the Sustainable Development Research Network, a Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (UK)-funded initiative designed to link research and policymaking in the area of sustainable development.

Green Consumer Behavior– Part I: Information Paradox | Futurelab – An international marketing strategy consultancy

Of importance in this repor is this comment quoted here:

"One counter-intuitive observation that Jackson made is that of the Information Paradox: People want to “feel in control of their lives and resist feelings of helplessness.” More information, however, may not empower them. In fact, it may have “precisely the opposite effect.” "

Papero The robot nanny from NEC

Papero is an amazing Japanese robot that can take care of your kids, it is mainly used as a research tool for HCI.

Check this video and some of its capabilities.
mms://ucan.wmt.biglobe.ne.jp/ucan_wf/robo/high/paperochild_eng.wmv

It's capabilities video link:
mms://ucan.wmt.biglobe.ne.jp/ucan_wf/robo/high/papero04kino_eng.wmv

General web page for videos and description of Papero.
http://www.nec.co.jp/products/robot/en/video/index.html

Class blog

Getting started with blogging as a Portfolio tool

I never had a online portfolio before, so it is an interesting experience to apply myself and write down my thoughts as different topics cross my mind or everyday observations occur. We'll see how this evolves in time, hopefully it will become a more natural task and ideas will flow freely.

Networks and existing video needs as bandwidth needs increased

While planning the goals for this year at work, it cross my mind the quantity of applications that can be created if a) video analytics required low resolution for its algorithms to work or HD video would be easy to remotely stream using internet ( I mean 1080p resolution) and b) if there was a smarter way to define or detect the video buffer or frame where the information to analyze resides. The overall direction of technology shows that it is a matter of time for this to become a reality and as a trend analytics are starting to move to the client side, within the camera guts, next to the encoding system.


Change of human values and interaction as technology evolves

This previous week I tried to pay close attention to people and their computer interactions. First, it is amazing the levels computers permeate everyday actions. Allow me to explain myself. Today my gas tank was low, at least that is what my vehicle showed me, so I decided to head towards the gas station and after pulling in front of the pump I used my credit card to pay for the transaction, filled the tank and headed to work. After reflecting a little about this, I realized my interaction with nearly 100 little computers. My vehicle has at least 50 small microcontrollers that monitor, control and provide multiple UI for personal comfort, to mention a few (tire pressure, gas, airbags, stereo, passenger's seat, antilock brakes, steering wheel, speed sensors, etc) the pump also has multiple computers, at least for credit card network transactions, the database computer for my credit card data, the fuel measurement system, the computer of the pump, the internal cash register in case I use cash. If I take a closer look, my watch, the soda machine, the traffic light, my cell phone, they are everywhere.

After realizing how this invisible invasion of computers makes my life so easy, I started to wonder about the underlying effects this has on people. This issue is better reflected in the paper “reflecting human values in the digital age” and “fogies at 20's”. All this was become clearer when I observed a couple next to the table my friends and I sat while lunch. The interesting thing was that human interaction was gone and each one was one hundred percent immerse in a different computer, one was using his net-book and the other was reading her nook. This made me wonder if this phenomenon was caused by technology (maybe it is easier to interact with a computer) or our culture drives us to always feel in a rush to keep up with something and we can share “it” better after our devices keep an eye for us and just interrupt us when necessary.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Problems as opportunities

Mostly new developments are been used in the area of technology been along the mentality of faster and less power. So far, it seems that HCI needs to catch up and in order for this to happen our understanding of Human interaction with computer needs to be better understood.

However, more applications (music instruments, gadgets, gesture detection) and lack of a framework to understand the interactions leads to gadgets that are cool but do not survive in time.
It seems however that no understanding of the application or lack of human motive is further develop (which means it is a verge of development and a cool area to work on).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Writing about my thoughts has never been easy, I always found reason why I could not write or when I would try it would be hard to describe, it was better to draw or to paraphrase it in another way. I am eager to see what results from this e-diary.

Stanford lectures

Personally there were two things that I felt were very applicable to myself. One is to take the chance to be fabulous and talk to people, I guess that I tend to get entangled in my own thoughts that even when walking do not pay much attention around me. By taking the chance to be fabulous I force myself to be aware, to express what I think and to think more about what is going on around me, this also allows me to talk to other people more and discuss about the same topic from a different perspective. All that has been fascinating and an eye opener about who you can meet if you are in the right place.
The other topic from this talk I felt was appealing was the envelope with five dollars, this part made me think about how limited we can be sometimes if we do not look at things from a different perspective. There can be multiple solutions to the same problem and sometimes we also develop a deaf ear because we think we heard everything before. This seems to be the case because of been in the industry for long, it shapes the way I think. Since I started this class, I tend to think lees of cost or technology available and more about the new concepts and if it would be acceptable or change the way we perform certain tasks. It creates a new level of thinking, more freedom I guess.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I received today the book of the Universal Traveler. It is a very interesting book, it provides different sets of tools for problem solving and creative thinking, it will be very useful in creative thinking which is an area I want to develop further before I apply any problem solving skills.
Hopefully not like Susumu Yokota’s song titles

Some very cool TED talks


http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=as-luck-would-have-it

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computers helping us to become aware of our behaviors and dealing with other people’s behaviors
Links to explore:

http://ict.usc.edu/projects/elect_bilat1/
http://ict.usc.edu/projects/full_spectrum_command/

inspiring
http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html

Group Project
Behaviors and what impact they can have in our society and environment
Smart house and power consumption awareness
Use for monitoring behavior today, this can have a great impact. First step is to realize that we as a group or global culture have a sometimes terrible effect in nature, and natural or human resources.
Use this data to show it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking_stats.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

Energy logistics
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/gapcasts/gapcast-10-energy/

Brink and Lard Games

Larp games: Live action role play game. Allows real life experiences to be portrayed as games. This is the realm of role play games such as:
Brink Games:

Mission for Project

COMPOSTING

Why Compost?

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/composting/questions.htm

Composting makes sense. Instead of sending organic matter to a landfill, it can be transformed into a useful additive which can even be sold. See Environmental Benefits.

What Can Compost Be Used For?

    * Farmers use compost for enhancing crops and for sod farms.

    * Landscapers use compost as a soil amendment and for decorative purposes at properties, golf courses, and athletic fields.

    * Landfill operators use compost to cover landfills and carry out reclamation projects.

    * Nurseries use compost for enhancing plant and forest seedling crops in reforestation projects and to prevent certain plant diseases such as root rot.

    * Public agencies use compost for landscaping highway median strips, parks, recreational areas, and other public property and remediating contaminated or eroded sites.

    * Homeowners use mature compost to enrich gardens, improve the soil around trees and shrubs, use as soil additive for house plants and planter boxes and as a protective mulch for trees and shrubs.

How Do I Compost?

Composting is easy. Common materials like chicken wire, bricks, and buckets are all it takes to begin composting, which can be done either indoors or outdoors. Maintenance is not difficult either: regular mixing or turning and a little water can ensure success. Learn how to create your own compost pile.

Compost:

Why Not Burn Leaves and Other Yard Wastes?

Burning leaves and other yard wastes pollutes the air and can lead to uncontrolled fires. Leaf smoke can make breathing difficult for people who suffer from asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, or allergies. A number of states currently ban leaf burning, and some communities either ban leaf burning or restrict when and where it can take place. For more information, visit EPA's Backyard Burning site.

CAR POLUTION

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=263

Car pollution adds up and sticks around

We might not picture creating pounds of global warming pollution when we drive, but the exhaust coming out of our car has actual weight—an average household with two medium-sized sedans emits more than 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year. That's 10 tons of pollution adding to the greenhouse effect. SUVs tend to emit more global warming pollution than smaller cars—as much as 40 percent more exhaust.

Here's how it adds up: A gallon of gasoline weighs just over 6 pounds. When burned, the carbon in it combines with oxygen to produce about 19 pounds of CO2. Adding in the energy that went into making and distributing the fuel, the total global warming pollution is about 25 pounds of CO2 per gallon. An average car that gets 21 mpg and is driven about 30 miles a day uses 1.4 gallons daily and emits 35.7 pounds of CO2 every day. That's a lot of pounds when multiplied by the millions of cars across the country.

Heat-trapping pollution, like that from cars and trucks, can stay in the atmosphere for several decades to about a century. For instance, some emissions from Ford's 1912 Model Ts are still up in the atmosphere today, thickening the blanket of greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet.

Population growth has helped put more cars on the road, and a strong economy has led to more cars per driver. These trends combined with poor gas mileage mean we're facing a dangerous situation.

The Annual Cost of Lower Fuel Efficiency

Average gas mileage      Average fuel used (based on 12,000 miles per year)       

Approximate greenhouse gas pollution                 Approximate Cost (based on $2.30/gallon)

50 mpg                 240 gallons          2.7 tons/year     $552

40 mpg                 300 gallons          3.4 tons/year     $690

30 mpg                 400 gallons          4.5 tons/year     $920

25 mpg                 480 gallons          5.4 tons/year     $1,104

20 mpg                 600 gallons          6.8 tons/year     $1,380

15 mpg                 800 gallons          9 tons/year         $1,840

10 mpg                 1,200 gallons      13.6 tons/year   $2,760

TIP: Did you know that idling for more than ten seconds uses more gas and creates more pollution than simply restarting your engine? If you are stopping for more than ten seconds—except in traffic—turn off your engine.

      Travel light and pack smart. Extra weight decreases fuel economy. Hauling an extra 100 pounds in your vehicle reduces fuel economy by up to 2 percent. Place luggage inside rather than on the roof or trunk to  minimize drag and increase mileage.

      Drive less aggressively. Aggressive driving—rapid acceleration and braking—can lower gas mileage by as much as 33 percent on the highway and 5 percent in town. Aggressive drivers are using an extra 125 gallons of gas and spending over $250 more than average drivers each year.

      Slow down. In highway travel, exceeding the speed limit by a mere 5 mph results in an average fuel economy loss of 6 percent.

      Know when to use the air. Air conditioning can decrease your fuel efficiency by as much as 12 percent in stop-and-go traffic, so consider cracking the windows. But at high speeds, driving with the windows open can decrease the overall efficiency of the vehicle.

      Don't idle. If you are stopping for more than ten seconds—except in traffic—turn off your engine.  Idling for more than ten seconds uses more gas and creates more global warming pollution than simply restarting your engine.

Maintain your car

Keep your vehicle operating in peak performance by following these recommendations.

      Keep your engine tuned properly. Checking spark plugs, oxygen sensors, air filters, hoses and belts are a few examples of maintenance that can save a vehicle owner up to 165 gallons of gas per year, resulting in potential savings of $380.

      Check the tires. Have your wheels aligned and keep your tires properly inflated. Low tire pressure wastes over two million gallons of gasoline in the United States—every day. For every pound of pressure below recommended levels, fuel economy drops 1 percent. Keeping your tires properly inflated means saving about a tank of gas a year.

Drive less

No matter how smart you drive, leaving the car parked always saves more gas and pollution.

      Combine trips. Consider running all your errands in the same area at once, rather than making separate trips. Cutting a 20 mile trip out of your schedule each week can reduce your global warming pollution by more than 1,200 pounds a year and save you over $100 in gas expenses.

      Telecommute once a week. Americans traveled 614.5 billion miles to and from work in 2001. If all commuters worked from home just one day a week, we could save 5.85 billion gallons of oil and cut over 65 million metric tons (roughly 143 billion pounds) of carbon dioxide each year.

      Carpool and use public transportation when possible. An average 2005 passenger car costs about 31 cents per mile in fuel, maintainance and depreciation to drive. If you share rides and use other means to get to work, you'll save yourself money, reduce congestion on the roads and cut your global warming pollution.

Ethanol and other biofuels

Cars don't run on gas alone—at least not all of them. Ironically, sometimes looking ahead means looking backward. Ford's Model Ts were designed to run on either gas or ethanol, an alternative fuel made from grains and from plant or animal waste.

There are many potential benefits to biofuels such as ethanol, which is currently made mostly from corn. For one, they can reduce dependence on foreign oil: one consortium of growers, the Agricultural Working Group, has called on farmers to meet 25 percent of America's energy needs by 2025. Today, nearly every car can run on E10, gasoline blended with 10 percent ethanol. About one in forty cars can run on E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Find out if your car can run on ethanol.

Now, ethanol wasn't developed to solve global warming, and greenhouse emissions savings from biofuels can vary substantially (e.g., Do farmers forgo plowing to trap more gases in the soil? Do they cut back on nitrogen fertilizers, which release a potent global warming pollutant? Is the fuel made from the grain or, more efficiently, from "stover"—the stalks and leaves?).  But some biofuels can help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. Farmers and refiners are continuing to work on new approaches and processes that can produce low-carbon fuels that yield much greater global warming benefits over time. Consumers should stay tuned.

When it comes to global warming, how and what we drive are two of our most powerful choices. Transportation is the biggest source of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, more than factories or homes. 

    * Save fuel: Use less gas with your current car

    * Choose green: Buy a clean, efficient car

Global Warming

What You Can Do

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=135

Burning fossil fuels to power our homes and run our cars creates global warming pollution. Big and small changes can add up and make a real difference in the fight against global warming.

At Home: Use Less Energy

Home energy accounts for 21 percent of America's global warming pollution. If we make smart choices, we can cut more pollution than the entire emissions of over 100 countries!

    * Change a bulb: Better energy-saving lights

    * Greener power: Re-thinking home energy

    * Full list of tips: How to cut pollution at home

Neutralize Your Pollution

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=270

How does it work?

Even if you have already reduced your driving and electricity use, there's more you can do. You can neutralize the rest of your pollution—through offsets. When you buy offsets, you essentially pay someone to reduce or remove global warming pollution in your name.

For example, when you buy 10 tons of carbon offsets, the seller guarantees that 10 fewer tons of global warming pollution go into the atmosphere. While the pollution you produce yourself is the same, you get the credit for that 10-ton reduction.

Where can you buy offsets?

Shopping for offsets can be confusing. If you're not an expert, it can be hard to tell how much pollution is really being reduced or removed.

Calculator for C02

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com/content.cfm?contentid=5043

HCI 3-3-2010

The new rich Tim Ferris.

Urgent evoque. Sponsor a game online comic book interface.

Java tools  africa enterprenourship using and developing applets. Gromming Fromm (novel price). Keva.

Blending of work and life. I can take my work anywhere, I don't want to work as much.

Creativity and societal problems ( HCI and email, concentration).

Focus attention -- Number of tasks----- Interruptions --- Meetings

http://www.iii-p.org/research/disrupt_comm_report_v2.pdf

Flexible solar cells (caltech)

http://www.iii-p.org/research/disrupt_comm_report_v2.pdf

Flexible solar cells (caltech)

UI of the 100 dlls computer (BAD)

Mindset of right now!!! affect their behaviour NOW!

Picture can have a shift in behavour by watching the picture of smt.

Develop tools to allow the change of the tomorrow, not the right now.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Eliminate boundary between education and research

Emergence of physiological computing. Burleson 2004

Creativity and interface (CACM) 2002

Using sensors to test if expert users reaction to simple users

complex responses vs simple responses.

check fireftp for mozilla already downloaded in chrome.

Prototype and play with it, take it outside and see what it does.

Check slides online

uncanny valley

Knowing the person's context and responding to their motivations.


kids room media la 1996 be aware of this research and its findings

Look for findings in behavioral changes using technology.

As long as heararchy structure its fairly easy to remove responsability. Mallgrams experiments.


Two things

developing a relationship.

measure physiological signals. //Win will look at the paper.

Widows of warcraft -->> immersive MMR. PP  makes money out of virtual world sweatshops.

New work paradigm online white collar

IAN BOGOST

book persuasive games.

www.bogost.com

ASU Our courts... check this program.. freedom of speech or gang heaven.

GUI or TUI (tangible user interfaces)

Greenies (context-aware computing)

Ubiquitous and pervasive computing

oxygen.csail.mit.edu

digital simplicity (intel)

social afordance

Affective and Physiological computing

www.emotiv.com

Persuasive and Reflective Computing

Computers as persuasive technology 

B. J.Fog

Pryor's Clicker Training strategies

Cialdini's influence: science and practice Cialdini 2000

Csikszentmihalyi's strategies for personal reflection.  Science of influence. Scientific america article.

Actualizing.... how to talk.

80% of people in this hotel save their towel??

Flow and optimal experience.

Creative IT.

Goals for the next meeting for the HCI group

As a HCI team we have been looking at the different resources we have been using.


Internal resources

-programming

-Drawing/creative skills

-commited to project

-Cohesion as a group

-Low key, very creative.

External resources

-web server 

-software platform

        -j q-touch

        -Mendeley 

       -Where to get participants

-Lots of literature

-HCI google group

-Group webpage

-External resources to find users (?) FUTURE need to start designing experiemnt using

Commitment for the next meeting

-Application Framework

-Research framework

the goal is March 24 to have the platform running.

review: Issues in Designing Agents for Long Term Behavior Change

Introduction
Some people are not ready to change their health
behavior, such as stopping smoking, or improving
exercising or dieting, even though they may know all of
the reasons for change. Such individuals will not likely
take the first step toward change, even when asked to
do so by a counselor or therapist. These individuals,
who admit to no plans or willingness to change, are
referred to as “precontemplators” within the framework
of the transtheoretical (stages of change) model of
health behavior change [20]. They represent a
particular challenge for human and automated health
counselors alike, and have not received much attention
in the literature on automated health behavior change
to date.


Challenges
Minimizing Repetitiveness
One surprising finding from prior longitudinal studies of
health counseling agents we have conducted was that,
even though dialogue scripts had been authored to
provide significant variability in each days' interaction,
most participants found the conversations repetitive at
some point during the month, and because of this
many lost motivation to follow the agent’s advice [4,5].
As one participant put it, “It would be great if Laura
could just change her clothes sometimes.” This
repetitiveness was more than an annoyance; some
subjects indicated that it negatively impacted their
motivation to exercise (e.g., “In the beginning I was
extremely motivated to do whatever Laura asked of
me, because I thought that every response was a new
response.”). The amount of behavioral, linguistic and
visual variability required to avoid the perception of
robotic repetitiveness remains an open research
question.

Establishing Therapeutic Alliance
The therapeutic alliance – the strength of the bond
between counselor and patient, and their mutual
agreement on the goals and tasks of therapy – is a key
component of successful change across a wide variety
of different counseling methods and strategies [6]. We
believe that establishing a strong therapeutic alliance
between an agent and its user will, similarly, be a key
requirement in maintaining engagement through the
course of a long-term behavior change intervention.
The patient’s assessment of the therapeutic alliance
tends to be established early, within the first few
sessions; this early assessment is relatively stable over
time, and predictive of successful outcomes [17]. The
behavior of the agent within the first few interactions
with the user must be carefully designed, as a failure to
develop a strong alliance may be difficult to correct
later. The alliance also tends to develop through a
cycle of short-term ruptures and repairs [21]; a
successful agent must be able to assess and respond to
these variations in its working relationship with users.
Maintaining Persistence Across Counseling Sessions
In order to perform counseling actions that span more
than one session, in addition to demonstrating
continuity in the working relationship [10], the agent
must remember something about its past encounters
with users. Many schools of psychotherapy involve
giving patients some form of “homework” to do in
between counseling sessions, and most behavioral
techniques (e.g., shaping and positive reinforcement)
require that patients’ past behavior and/or goals be
remembered for comparison purposes. At a minimum,
the fact that the agent has interacted with a given user
before, and perhaps the number and/or duration of
such interactions must be remembered between
sessions. Persistent memory should ultimately be
represented as an episodic store recording details of all
past interactions with users. A useful middle ground is
to record specific facts that can be referenced in future
conversations. Examples in the physical activity
coaching domain include remembering the name of a
user’s walking buddy or favorite walking location, as
well as purely social (off-task) facts, such as the user’s
favorite television program and whether they had any
big plans for the upcoming weekend. In our system, a
user model is loaded from a relational database at the
start of each counseling session, and saved back out at
the end of the session, in order to provide persistence
across sessions.
Authoring Counseling Dialogue
Devising an efficient and effective process for authoring
large quantities of dialogue for longitudinal interaction
is a significant challenge of this project. We must
provide sufficient content for up to 30 conversations
per user, encompassing as large a range of user
situations as possible. The content should be reviewed
by experienced counselors or other domain experts.
Finally, the content should be modular and reusable, to
ease the implementation effort of future systems. In
previous work [5], we have used dialogue systems
based on augmented transition networks. This simple
formalism has been usable by domain experts with
relatively little training. Thus far we have found that
our current hierarchical task modeling approach is
significantly more difficult to understand and author.
Whether these increases in authoring difficulty result in
commensurate improvements in reusability remains to
be seen.
Eliciting Open-Ended Responses
Open-ended questions and continuation prompts (“tell
me more about that”) are used extensively in
motivational interviewing to get clients talking about
their own motivations for change. Eliciting this kind of
information through multiple-choice menus represents
one of the biggest hurdles to our use of hierarchical
task models to emulate this style of counseling.
Approaches we have taken include: keeping user
responses very abstract; providing “drill down” trees to
index desired statements from general categories to
specific responses; and using knowledge about users
gleaned from other sources (e.g., enrollment web
forms) that they can simply endorse during a
counseling session. None of these approaches is
entirely satisfactory, and this remains an open area of
research.
Conclusion
We have described many challenges and open research
problems in building a re-usable health counseling
system for longitudinal health behavior change
interventions. We plan to conduct initial testing of an
exercise promotion intervention based on this
framework early in 2009 and then proceed to porting
the framework for use in a diet intervention (fruit and
vegetable.

From:

Timothy Bickmore
Daniel Schulman
Northeastern University
College of Computer and
Information Science
360 Huntington Ave, WVH202
Boston, MA 02115
bickmore@ccs.neu.edu
laurap@ccs.neu.edu
schulman@ccs.neu.edu

Walking, talking girl robot to hit Japan catwalk

Article about Japanese Female Robot.

Related to the uncanny valley.

Link to original article

Social interruption and the loss of productivity

A must read if you want to know more about Socual interruption and Productivity.

http://interruptions.net/literature/CubeSmart-productivity-wp1.pdf

E-mail Isn't Dead, But It Is Broken - Reviews by PC Magazine

Interesting post from PC Magazine about email and its issues.

Is email dead, will it ever die and how productive it is. Check it out.

E-mail Isn't Dead, But It Is Broken - Reviews by PC Magazine

Phoenix Grand Challenges Summit 2010

Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering will host the Phoenix Summit on the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges in Phoenix, Arizona on April 8-9, 2010. This two-day event will focus on the grand challenges of engineering better medicines, managing the nitrogen cycle, making solar energy economical and advancing personalized learning.
Here is more information: Phoenix Grand Challenge Summit 2010

Interacting with computers

My first interaction with a computer

It was at elementary school, I started using the XT PC because computers started to become popular at professional areas. After playing with my first computer my father realized I was quite good using them and it was fun for me because I could write a first Basic program which would play music on a speaker. Later I was capable to create simple graphics using texts/symbols.

My worst experience with a computer is whenever I install something and it does not work as it is supposed to, which creates a lot of work to make sure it is installed correctly and no other parts of the system stop working. It feels like interacting with someone who is working against you.

Best experience with any computer or technology is creating an application that runs smoothly, adding video, sounds or new interfaces in order to create new sensations and simulate a new environments.

My favorite activity: Developing new embedded toys to control remotely using wireless networks. Several computers have been involved with this, due to the different programs and the network interface. The ease to acquire/view and control devices from another location, data that is possible to use to enable other applications, takes away the tediousness of writing everything and analyzing data at a faster rate.