Ph.D. Review Letter

So this is the first year that I have to do a Ph.D. Review letter. Below is the what I filled in for the Research section.

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I am focusing on building and evaluating systems for mobile collocated use. So far I have worked on 2 projects in this area.

DARPA ASSIST 
I built and maintained the in-field system that allowed for real-time media capture, annotation and sharing. Our system was built with off-the-shelf equipment allowing for flexibility of deployment. The system went through three rounds of iterative development and evaluation. Each evaluation round included mock military exercises by GT faculty and staff on campus as well as evaluation with actual soldiers at a military testing ground.

In our final evaluation we scored 80% or higher on six of the seven criteria used by NIST when surveying the soldiers involved in the evaluation. We scored a 100% on the criteria, “If the system were hardened for field use and worked flawlessly, would you use it in the field?” In addition to the NIST evaluations, we scheduled an extra day of evaluation during which the soldiers performed three vignettes. Each vignette was followed by a focus group where we discussed future improvements to the system along with any issues they had with the realistic nature of our vignettes. While we were not able to re-enact emergency scenarios, such as explosions or ambushes, we did cover other missions they commonly undertake, such as humanitarian and intelligence gathering missions.

This work was done under the supervision of Dr. Thad Starner and Ed Price (IMTC). A publication for this project is currently being written for CHI 2009.

Mobiphos 
This project was funded by a STAR center grant. In this project I created software to enable collocated users of camera phones to share and monitor photos captured in real-time. Unlike traditional camera phone software which separates the viewfinder and thumbnail mode, my software combined these modes to allow the user to capture their own photos and monitor incoming photos from other users. Evaluation of this system involved survey of existing photo sharing practices, in-field observation of participants and post evaluation focus groups. This work was published at MobileHCI 2008.

Further study of the system has been conducted in Seoul, South Korea with Samsung researchers. The evaluation was done over 2 trips to Suwon and Seoul, South Korea. We evaluated the system with 5 groups of 3-4 participants. We are currently working with Samsung researchers to translate and transcribe the data gathered. This evaluation was completed on 10/21/2008 and a journal paper is being written to be published in Spring 2009. Deeper content analysis of the photos captured in the first and current study are planned and may lead to a CHI 2009 publication.

Future work with Samsung and the STAR Center has been proposed and they are interested in working and funding our lab again in the future.