HCII Students Summer Projects

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

This week’s seminar consists of descriptions of three projects done by HCI Masters students. They illustrate the broad range of research and design skills students develop during the program.

Presentation #1:

Title: Comic Books: A Case Study for Redesigning Traditional Media and Assessing Entertainment Value
Speakers: Juan Casares, Karen Cross, Andrea Klein, Stavros Polyviou, Daniel Yocum

Abstract:
In this talk, we describe the results of an experiment designed to assess the best way to put comic books in electronic form. In determining this, we also compare and contrast the evaluation methods by which we came to our decision. Two comic books representing different genres were put into electronic form using two basic manipulations: the degree of user control in advancement of pages (“user control”); and the amount of pages that a user could read on a given screen (“visual scope”). We used a combination of evaluation methods to measure how successful the various manipulations were: pre and post questionnaires, quick experience surveys, facial expression analysis; and heart rate measurement. Success was defined by maximum user enjoyment and satisfaction, as approximated by these techniques. From our study, we determined that allowing full user control in navigation, and presenting comic panels appearing sequentially within pages, were the most successful ways to present electronic comics. In order to maximize user enjoyment with an interface, we suggest measuring prototypes via a combination of techniques, including post questionnaires and either active experience surveys or facial expression analysis.

Presentation # 2:

Title: A Cognitive Tutor for Causal Reasoning
Speaker: Willie Wheeler

Abstract:
This talk presents the results of my independent study, supervised by Albert Corbett, in which I developed a cognitive tutor to teach a graph-theoretic property called d-separation, which is an important component in causal reasoning. The project consisted of (1) developing a problem solving interface in which the student solves d-separation problems and (2) developing a cognitive model of student performance that is employed to provide the student problem solving feedback.

I will begin with a very brief discussions of d-separation problem solving and model-tracing. I will demonstrate the tutor interface and the tutor itself. The talk will conclude with a discussion of future plans to implement knowledge tracing and conduct empirical evaluations.

Presentation #3

Title: GM Car Driver Information Interface
Speakers: Mon-Chu Chen, Guo-Hong Dong, supervised by Jodi Forlizzi

Abstract:
In this project, we, as interaction designers, characterized the information needs, accessed the current technologies and created scenarios to demonstrate our design of interface and interactions between driver, vehicle, and environment. In the talk, I will describe our design process, the information architectures, and also present our Photoshop and Director files. The interactions between us and other teams on the context of a large inter-disciplinary research groups will also be addressed.