Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons^™

Developing Accessible Narrative-Based Stem Learning Software For K-6 Braille Display Users, Dylan Ravel, Daniel Tsivkovski, Brandon Foley, Maryam Etezad, Franceli Cibrian, Ariel Han, Rajeev Joshi

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research develops a free, accessible web application that enables K-6 students who are blind or visually impaired (BVI) to learn STEM concepts using refreshable braille displays. Currently, most online learning tools are not designed for BVI students, creating a significant educational barrier.

The application interfaces with commercial braille displays and uses narrative-based learning to make STEM content approachable and engaging. By presenting material as interactive stories, students can connect with concepts while developing braille reading skills. The curriculum design prioritizes accessibility through the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) standards and screen reader support.

The goal is to provide BVI …

Tellings Of The Pacific Ocean: A Landscape-Based Approach For Multispecies Design And Hci, Maliheh Ghajargar

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Environmental disturbances induced by climate change have caused significant changes in our ecosystems and are threatening the health of our environments. As a response to this issue, a growing body of work has emerged in HCI and design, which seeks to foreground more-than-human stories in support of making more sustainable and just futures. This research contributes to this broad agenda by probing graphic novels as a multispecies storytelling method for design and HCI. Combining ideas from Anna Tsing’s adventures of landscape and from HCI and design’s use of sequential art (e.g., storyboards), we use landscape as the main protagonist of …

Exploring Human-Centered Principles To Improve Lecture Slides, Joshua Harlev, Louanne Boyd

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

As a university emphasizing student participation and attention, lectures are central to the educational experience at Chapman. However, slide-based lectures can widely vary in quality and approach. Considering various debunkings of learning styles over the years, it seems more difficult than ever to understand how to most effectively teach students. Effective use of computerized tools has thus become increasingly important as the pace of change continues to increase. Yet, research is available on the effectiveness of teaching methods that can provide guidelines for instructors. With increasingly connected and capable devices at our fingertips, it is imperative to both use the …

Reducing Stigma Around Neurodiversity Through The Use Of Celebratory Technology Ice Breakers In First-Year Undergraduate Classrooms, Briana Craig

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MS) Theses

Celebratory technology for Neurodiversity is a new paradigm in the field of human computer interaction; it focuses on reducing stigma surrounding neurodivergent labels and behaviors. Celebratory technology aims to highlight the strengths of neurodiversity rather than fixing socially undesired traits, shifting the responsibility for change from neurodivergent individuals to society's attitudes. Stigma reduction can be accomplished through providing high quality interactions, where anyone can meet and learn about positive traits in others as well as learn of interests' others have in common, thus reframing neurodivergence as inclusion in human diversity rather than a condition to be stigmatized or objectified. This …

Smartphone Haptics Can Uncover Differences In Touch Interactions Between Asd And Neurotypicals, Ivonne Monarca, Franceli L. Cibrian, Isabel López Hurtado, Monica Tentori

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Utilizing touch interactions from smartphones for gathering data and identifying digital markers for screening and monitoring neurological disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is an emerging area of research. Smartphones provide multiple benefits for this kind of study, including unobtrusive data collection via built-in sensors, integrated haptic feedback systems, and the capability to create specialized applications. Acknowledging the significant yet understudied presence of tactile processing differences in individuals with ASD, we designed and developed Feel and Touch, a mobile game that leverages the haptic capabilities of smartphones. This game provides vibrotactile feedback in response to touch interactions and collects …

Creative Insights Into Motion: Enhancing Human Activity Understanding With 3d Data Visualization And Annotation, Isaac Browen, Hector M. Camarillo-Abad, Franceli L. Cibrian, Trudi Di Qi

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

This paper presents a novel 3D system for human motion analysis - Motion Data Visualization and Annotation (MoViAn). Designed to provide a comprehensive visual representation of 3D human motion data, MoViAn incorporates detailed visualization of gaze direction, hand movements, and object interactions, alongside an interactive interface for efficient data annotation. A user study involving eight participants indicates that MoViAn enables users to thoroughly explore and annotate human motion data, with System Usability Scale (SUS) results demonstrating a satisfactory usability level. The contribution of this paper lies in the development of an interactive and usable data analytics tool aimed at deepening …

Piecing Together Performance: Collaborative, Participatory Research-Through-Design For Better Diversity In Games, Daniel L. Gardner, Louanne Boyd, Reginald T. Gardner

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Digital games are a multi-billion-dollar industry whose production and consumption extend globally. Representation in games is an increasingly important topic. As those who create and consume the medium grow ever more diverse, it is essential that player or user-experience research, usability, and any consideration of how people interface with their technology is exercised through inclusive and intersectional lenses. Previous research has identified how character configuration interfaces preface white-male defaults [39, 40, 67]. This study relies on 1-on-1 play-interviews where diverse participants attempt to create “themselves” in a series of games and on group design activities to explore how participants may …

Vrmovian - An Immersive Data Annotation Tool For Visual Analysis Of Human Interactions In Vr, Isaac Browen

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Understanding human behavior in virtual reality (VR) is a key component for developing intelligent systems to enhance human focused VR experiences. The ability to annotate human motion data proves to be a very useful way to analyze and understand human behavior. However, due to the complexity and multi-dimensionality of human activity data, it is necessary to develop software that can display the data in a comprehensible way and can support intuitive data annotation for developing machine learning models able recognize and assist human motions in VR (e.g., remote physical therapy). Although past research has been done to improve VR data …

User Feedback On Celebratory Technology Model For Reducing Stigma, Evelyn Lawrie, Daniel Dinh, Sav Avalos, Jack De Bruyn, Spencer Au, Christian Lopez, Ray Tan, Cyrus Fa'amafoe

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Social stigma is a complex manifestation that affects humanity, particularly individuals with disabilities and other marginalized groups, including those with physical, cognitive, and emotional conditions. Society often judges these individuals' interactions with the world, and many technologies designed to assist those with disabilities attempt to change their daily interactions and behaviors. Nonetheless, when the emphasis is placed on validating disabled identities, there is a potential for it to be seen as "inspiration porn." This approach might inadvertently reduce inclusivity and do little to challenge negative stereotypes; it can also lead to the objectification of individuals with disabilities. Therefore, this project …

One Font Doesn’T Fit All: The Influence Of Digital Text Personalization On Comprehension In Child And Adolescent Readers, Shannon M. Sheppard, Susanne L. Nobles, Anton Palma, Sophie Kajfez, Marjorie Jordan, Kathy Crowley, Sofie Beier

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Reading comprehension is an essential skill. It is unclear whether and to what degree typography and font personalization may impact reading comprehension in younger readers. With advancements in technology, it is now feasible to personalize digital reading formats in general technology tools, but this feature is not yet available for many educational tools. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of character width and inter-letter spacing on reading speed and comprehension. We enrolled 94 children (kindergarten–8th grade) and compared performance with six font variations on a word-level semantic decision task (Experiment 1) and a passage-level comprehension task (Experiment 2). …

Counterventions: A Reparative Reflection On Interventionist Hci, Rua Mae Williams, Louanne E. Boyd, Juan E. Gilbert

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Research in HCI applied to clinical interventions relies on normative assumptions about which bodies and minds are healthy, valuable, and desirable. To disrupt this normalizing drive in HCI, we define a “counterventional approach” to intervention technology design informed by critical scholarship and community perspectives. This approach is meant to unsettle normative assumptions of intervention as urgent, necessary, and curative. We begin with a historical overview of intervention in HCI and its critics. Then, through reparative readings of past HCI projects in autism intervention, we illustrate the emergent principles of a counterventional approach and how it may manifest research outcomes that …

Para Cima Y Pa’ Abajo: Building Bridges Between Hci Research In Latin America And In The Global North, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Marisol Wong-Villacres, Karla A. Badillo-Urquiola, Mayra Donaji Barrera-Machuca, Franceli L. Cibrian, Marianela Ciolfi Felice, Carolina Fuentes, Laura Sanely Gaytán-Lugo, Vivian Genaro Motti, Monica Perusquía-Hernández, Oscar A. Lemus

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

The Human-computer Interaction (HCI) community has the opportunity to foster the integration of research practices across the Global South and North to begin overcoming colonial relationships. In this paper, we focus on the case of Latin America (LATAM), where initiatives to increase the representation of HCI practitioners lack a consolidated understanding of the practices they employ, the factors that influence them, and the challenges that practitioners face. To address this knowledge gap, we employ a mixed-methods approach, comprising a survey (66 respondents) and in-depth interviews (19 interviewees). Our analyses characterize a set of research perspectives on how HCI is practiced …

Let's Read: Designing A Smart Display Application To Support Codas When Learning Spoken Language, Katie Rodeghiero, Yingying Yuki Chen, Annika M. Hettmann, Franceli L. Cibrian

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Hearing children of Deaf adults (CODAs) face many challenges including having difficulty learning spoken languages, experiencing social judgment, and encountering greater responsibilities at home. In this paper, we present a proposal for a smart display application called Let's Read that aims to support CODAs when learning spoken language. We conducted a qualitative analysis using online community content in English to develop the first version of the prototype. Then, we conducted a heuristic evaluation to improve the proposed prototype. As future work, we plan to use this prototype to conduct participatory design sessions with Deaf adults and CODAs to evaluate the …

Feel And Touch: A Haptic Mobile Game To Assess Tactile Processing, Ivonne Monarca, Monica Tentori, Franceli L. Cibrian

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Haptic interfaces have great potential for assessing the tactile processing of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), an area that has been under-explored due to the lack of tools to assess it. Until now, haptic interfaces for children have mostly been used as a teaching or therapeutic tool, so there are still open questions about how they could be used to assess tactile processing of children with ASD. This article presents the design process that led to the development of Feel and Touch, a mobile game augmented with vibrotactile stimuli to assess tactile processing. Our feasibility evaluation, with 5 children …

Connecting The Dots For People With Autism: A Data-Driven Approach To Designing And Evaluating A Global Filter, Viseth Sean

Computational and Data Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

"Social communication is the use of language in social contexts. It encompasses social interaction, social cognition, pragmatics, and language processing” [3]. One presumed prerequisite of social communication is visual attention–the focus of this work. “Visual attention is a process that directs a tiny fraction of the information arriving at primary visual cortex to high-level centers involved in visual working memory and pattern recognition” [7]. This process involves the integration of two streams: the global and local streams; the global stream rapidly processes the scene, and the local stream processes details. This integration is important to social communication in that attending …

Improving Medication Information Presentation Through Interactive Visualization In Mobile Apps: Human Factors Design, Don Roosan, Yan Li, Anandi Law, Huy Truong, Mazharul Karim, Jay Chok, Moom Roosan

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Background: Despite the detailed patient package inserts (PPIs) with prescription drugs that communicate crucial information about safety, there is a critical gap between patient understanding and the knowledge presented. As a result, patients may suffer from adverse events. We propose using human factors design methodologies such as hierarchical task analysis (HTA) and interactive visualization to bridge this gap. We hypothesize that an innovative mobile app employing human factors design with an interactive visualization can deliver PPI information aligned with patients’ information processing heuristics. Such an app may help patients gain an improved overall knowledge of medications.

Objective: The …

Vrsensory: Designing Inclusive Virtual Games With Neurodiverse Children, Ben Wasserman, Derek Prate, Bryce Purnell, Alex Muse, Kaitlyn Abdo, Kendra Day, Louanne Boyd

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

We explore virtual environments and accompanying interaction styles to enable inclusive play. In designing games for three neurodiverse children, we explore how designing for sensory diversity can be understood through a formal game design framework. Our process reveals that by using sensory processing needs as requirements we can make sensory and social accessible play spaces. We contribute empirical findings for accommodating sensory differences for neurodiverse children in a way that supports inclusive play. Specifically, we detail the sensory driven design choices that not only support the enjoyability of the leisure activities, but that also support the social inclusion of sensory-diverse …

Paper Prototyping Comfortable Vr Play For Diverse Sensory Needs, Louanne E. Boyd, Kendra Day, Ben Wasserman, Kaitlyn Abdo, Gillian Hayes, Erik J. Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

We co-designed paper prototype dashboards for virtual environments for three children with diverse sensory needs. Our goal was to determine individual interaction styles in order to enable comfortable and inclusive play. As a first step towards an inclusive virtual world, we began with designing for three sensory-diverse children who have labels of neurotypical, ADHD, and autism respectively. We focused on their leisure interests and their individual sensory profiles. We present the results of co-design with family members and paper prototyping sessions conducted by family members with the children. The results contribute preliminary empirical findings for accommodating different levels of engagement …

A Virtual Reality System For Practicing Conversation Skills For Children With Autism, Natalia Stewart Rosenfield, Kathleen Lamkin, Jennifer Re, Kendra Day, Louanne E. Boyd, Erik J. Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

We describe a virtual reality environment, Bob’s Fish Shop, which provides a system where users diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can practice social interactions in a safe and controlled environment. A case study is presented which suggests such an environment can provide the opportunity for users to build the skills necessary to carry out a conversation without the fear of negative social consequences present in the physical world. Through the repetition and analysis of these virtual interactions, users can improve social and conversational understanding.

Choice Of Human–Computer Interaction Mode In Stroke Rehabilitation, Hossein Mousavi Hondori, Maryam Khademi, Lucy Dodakian, Alison Mackenzie, Cristina V. Lopes, Steven C. Cramer

Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research

Background and Objective. Advances in technology are providing new forms of human–computer interaction. The current study examined one form of human–computer interaction, augmented reality (AR), whereby subjects train in the real-world workspace with virtual objects projected by the computer. Motor performances were compared with those obtained while subjects used a traditional human–computer interaction, that is, a personal computer (PC) with a mouse. Methods. Patients used goal-directed arm movements to play AR and PC versions of the Fruit Ninja video game. The 2 versions required the same arm movements to control the game but had different cognitive demands. With …