Research

Current Projects

Abaris People: Julie Kientz, Gregory Abowd Abaris is a fully functioning prototype capture and access application to support therapists who perform Discrete Trial Training therapy, a current best practice intervention for children with autism. We have evaluated Abaris in homes and schools to determine its effectiveness in supporting data-based decision-making through better collaboration, better access to reliable artifacts, and higher confidence in decision-making. Kientz, J.A., G.R. Hayes, G.D. Abowd, and R.E. Grinter. From the War Room to the Living Room: Decision Support for Home-based Therapy Teams. In the proceedings of CSCW 2006. Banff, Alberta, Canada. 2006. Kientz, J.A., G.R. Hayes, T.L. Westeyn, T. Starner, and G.D. Abowd. Pervasive Computing and Autism: Assisting Caregivers of Children with Special Needs. IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. Special Issue on Pervasive Healthcare. January 2007. Abowd, G.D., G.R. Hayes, J.A. Kientz, L. Mamykina, and E.D. Mynatt. Challenges and Opportunities for Collaboration Technologies for Chronic Care Management, Presented at The Human-Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC 2006). Fraser, Colorado, USA, 2006. Kientz, J.A., S. Boring, G.D. Abowd, and G.R. Hayes. Abaris: Evaluating Automated Capture Applied to Structured Autism Interventions. In the Proceedings of Ubicomp 2005: The 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. Tokyo, Japan, September 11-14, 2005. Hayes, G. R., J.A. Kientz, K.N. Truong, D.R. White, G.D. Abowd, and T. Pering. Designing Capture Applications to Support the Education of Children with Autism. In the Proceedings of Ubicomp 2004: The 6th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. Nottingham, United Kingdom, September 7-10, 2004.

Early Detection of Developmental Delay People: Julie Kientz, Tracy Westeyn, Ping Wang, Rosa Arriaga, Gregory Abowd Our research group is interested in designing technology to help detect, record, and track important developmental milestones that occur in children during their first 5 years of life. By tracking these milestones, we can help parents and healthcare providers detect developmental delays such as autism or deafness earlier, which can improve the effects of interventions. In particular, I am working on developing design guidelines for developing technology to support new parents in record-keeping and implementing novel technologies to support better record-keeping and decision-making about developmental progress. Kientz, J.A., R.I. Arriaga, M. Chetty, G.R. Hayes, J. Richardson, S.N. Patel, and G.D. Abowd. Grow and Know: Understanding Record-Keeping Needs for the Development of Young Children. In the Proceedings of CHI 2007. 2007. Kientz, J.A. and G.D. Abowd. Designing Technology to Aid in the Early Detection of Developmental Delay in Children. UbiHealth 2006: The 4th International Workshop on Ubiquitous Computing for Pervasive Healthcare Applications and Ubicomp 2006.

Studying the Proximity of Mobile Devices to Users People: Shwetak Patel, Julie Kientz, Gregory Abowd Many Ubicomp and mobile applications being developed assume users alway have their phones nearby, but we suspect that this may not always be true. Thus, we are empirically studying the proximity of users to mobile devices to determine people's usage of mobile phones. Patel, S.N., J.A. Kientz, G.R. Hayes, S. Bhat, and G.D. Abowd. Farther Than You May Think: An Empirical Investigation of the Proximity of Users to their Mobile Phones. In the proceedings of Ubicomp 2006. Orange County, California, USA. 2006.

FETCH People: Julie Kientz, Arwa Tyebkhan, Shwetak Patel, Gregory Abowd FETCH is a mobile system for aiding the visually impaired in locating their misplaced objects in many locations. Through a focus group and individual interviews with the visually impaired, we discovered a need for a quick, temporary tagging system for frequently lost objects that can be used in many locations. We deployed this system with 4 users in visual impariments on a mobile phone using Bluetooth tags. Kientz, J.A., S.N. Patel, A.T. Tyebkhan, B. Gane, J. Wiley, and G.D. Abowd. Where’s My Stuff? Design and Evaluation of a Mobile System for Locating Lost Items for the Visually Impaired. In the Proceedings of ASSETS 2006. Portland, Oregon, USA. 2006.

Past Projects

Personal Audio Loop People: Shwetak Patel, Gillian Hayes, Khai Truong, Giovanni Iachello, Julie Kientz, Gregory Abowd With frequent changes in the topics of discussion or other interruptions, sometimes it is difficult to resume a previous thread in a conversation, even if it occurred only minutes ago. The Personal Audio Loop (PAL) application is a near-term audio recording system to support the recovery of interrupted conversations. Hayes, G.R., Patel, S.N., Truong, K.N., Iachello, G., Kientz, J.A., Farmer, R., Abowd, G.D. The Personal Audio Loop: Designing a Ubiquitous Audio-Based Memory Aid. Proceedings of Mobile HCI 2004: The 6th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (September 13-16, Glasgow, Scotland), 2004. Abowd, G.D., G.R. Hayes, G. Iachello, J.A. Kientz, S.N. Patel, M. Stevens, K.N. Truong. Prototypes and Paratypes: Designing Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Applications. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2005. Patel, S.N., K.N. Truong, G.R. Hayes, G. Iachello, J.A. Kientz, and G.D. Abowd. Designing a Ubiquitous Audio-Based Memory Aid. To appear in the Handbook of Research on User Interface Design and Evaluation for Mobile Technology. 2008.

Ambient Displays People: Jennifer Mankoff, Anind Dey, Gary Hsieh, Julie Kientz, Morgan Ames, Scott Lederer While participating in the University of California, Berkeley's SUPERB program, I worked with Anind Dey, Jennifer Mankoff, and Scott Lederer on the design and evaluation of two types of ambient displays. These displays were called the Bus Mobile and Daylight Display and were intended to provide information to individuals in a windowless computer lab. These displays were later used as test examples for a project on the heuristic evaluation of ambient displays. Mankoff, J., A.K. Dey, G. Hsieh, J.A. Kientz, M. Ames, S. Lederer. Heuristic evaluation of ambient displays. CHI 2003, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI Letters 5(1): 169-176. 2003.