Research Statement

Overview

My research interests center primarily in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with heavy emphases on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and Human-Centered Design. At a high level, I am interested in forming a deeper understanding of how UbiComp technologies affect people within everyday living environments. My experiences in User-Centered Design and HCI have made me equally interested in multiple aspects of the implementation lifecycle for UbiComp technologies, including design, implementation, and evaluation. I believe that experiences with each stage of this lifecycle offer a unique perspective on how UbiComp technologies can act as a medium between people and the world in which they live. I hold strongly that the study of UbiComp technologies requires that they be situated in actual contexts of use, and observed over periods of time that allow them to become integrated into existing routines and the surrounding environment.

Consequently, I am also interested in any collaborative project where I may apply my skills in designing and building UbiComp technologies in order to address new and interesting problems. Recent examples of such collaborations include the LillyPad project, where I helped to develop a mobile computing application for aiding in sense-making among people studying flood-plane restorations [7], and my work with the ETHOS lab, which studies how UbiComp technologies can be used to explore issues of privacy and security in home healthcare.

Current Research: Ambient displays

My doctoral work focuses on information artifacts that make use of highly subtle forms of information representation, often referred to as ambient displays. These displays distinguish themselves from more typical information artifacts in that they are designed to demand minimal attention, and some level of perception from outside of one’s direct focus of attention; providing pre-attentive processing without being unnecessarily distracting.

Designing such displays is challenging due to their emphasis on blending into natural surroundings. Facilitating such blending demands greater consideration of aesthetics and physical form than is necessary with more familiar forms of information technology. However, the exact design attributes of an effective ambient display are not clearly understood, and often must be reconsidered on a case-by-case basis.

Evaluating these displays is also difficult in that they often facilitate styles of interaction uncommon in traditional computing interface research. Concepts that may be taken for granted in other HCI evaluations such as identifying the target user, or determining exactly when one is using the display, become ambiguous when dealing with ambient displays, making it difficult to adequately measure aspects such as usability. Also, the information content represented using these displays are often non-specific (e.g., “late afternoon” vs. “3:30pm”), and presented to general contexts (e.g., a public park). In these situations not only is the intended user non-specific, the intended use of this information is not necessarily specified.

To address these difficulties I have applied ambient displays in different ways to explore how they can function and expose the possible benefits of providing this form of information. However, since these displays require real-world environments in which to blend, what can be learned within a controlled laboratory is ultimately limited to issues of traditional usability. This realization has led me to believe that it is necessary to situate these displays within real-world contexts of use, incorporating non-intrusive forms of observation so as to allow blending to occur. For instance, in a recent study, I constructed an elaborate series of ambient displays designed to increase awareness of stair vs. elevator usage in a building to measure behavior change and argue for this as an exemplar for measuring the impact of ambient displays. An intriguing finding was that the behaviors that were logged over the course of the study contradicted the results of a post-study survey where people stated that the displays had no effect on their own decisions processes, implying that these displays may be influencing behavior at an unconscious level [3,6].

To encourage the ongoing growth of research in this area, I have hosted two international workshops to gather like-minded people from several different research domains, including Computer Science, Fine Arts, and Design [1,2]. These meetings were highly successful, leading to several new collaborations among researchers, as well as a special edition of the International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence [5].

Current Research: Technologies for Healthcare

For the last four years I have been deeply involved with the Ethical Technology in the Homes of Seniors (E.T.H.O.S.) laboratory at Indiana University. E.T.H.O.S. is an NSF-funded project consisting of an interdisciplinary team of researchers whose goal is to design and evaluate home-based computing technologies for older adults. In particular, the E.T.H.O.S. team is interested in developing technologies that simultaneously enable health and personal safety while preserving privacy. This team is dedicated to creating tools that will ultimately help older adults make appropriate decisions about home-based computing, and guide designers in creating privacy-respecting technologies. The E.T.H.O.S. project maintains a Living Lab in a historic home on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington where new technologies are designed, prototyped, built, and deployed. This allows older adults who visit the lab to interact with these prototypes in a simulated home environment.

As the lab manager for E.T.H.O.S., I have been in charge of the development lifecycle for the prototypes within the lab. This experience has made me increasingly interested in how UbiComp technologies—ambient displays and otherwise—can be applied in the domain of healthcare. Many existing commercial technologies are highly lacking in areas of design and HCI despite their exorbitant cost. The crux of research in this domain seems to be on technologies that attempt to enforce adherence to prescribed medicine, or on highly invasive monitoring technologies. In the E.T.H.O.S. lab I have worked to create more novel technologies which incorporated aspects of ambient display design. One result was the Presence Clock [4], which conveyed information about movement between remote spaces while maximizing privacy.

The Presence Clock—along with a series of other prototypes created at E.T.H.O.S.—has been used in a 6-week in-situ study to see how such technologies impact notions of privacy and security among older adults. I have produced a chapter on the  particulars of this deployment which is scheduled to appear in a book on Ubiquitous Computing deployments currently being compiled by researchers at Intel.

I would like to continue exploring the application of UbiComp Technologies in healthcare research as I think the application areas are ideally suited for each other. My goal would be to explore how best to design and incorporate such technologies into the home while maintaining the aspects that make one’s personal space more preferable than a hospital room.  This would involve looking into the qualities that define such an environment, and generating design principles that allow technology to be incorporated without occluding those particular qualities.

Strengths

My research in Ubiquitous Computing has primarily involved the study of novel technologies within actual contexts of use. Because of this, I have become highly proficient at building the functional prototypes necessary for conducting these studies. This includes the design of the prototype, physical construction, incorporation of electrical components and sensors, and developing the necessary software to drive the final implementation. Additionally, I have become adept at conducting user studies on Ubiquitous Computing applications in unpredictable real-world environments. The projects in which I have been involved have allowed me to develop my own methods for video and transcript analysis, survey development, structured/semi-structured interviewing, conducting focus groups, and logistical planning.

Future Directions

Ultimately I would like to continue with research that is rooted in the application of Ubiquitous Computing in real-world situations. I would be attracted to any project collaborations that allow the construction of novel UbiComp for exploration in other domains of study. For instance, my work with ETHOS project has made me highly interested in how technologies like ambient displays could be used within the realm of healthcare.

References

  1. 1st Workshop on Designing and Evaluating Ambient Information Systems. Eds. William R. Hazlewood, Lorcan Coyle, and Sunny Consolvo. Collocated with the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, May 13th 2007, Toronto Canada. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, online CEUR-WS.org/Vol-254/. AIS2007.
  2. 2nd Workshop on Ambient Information Systems Eds. William R. Hazlewood, Lorcan Coyle, Youn-kyung Lim, and Zach Pousman. Collocated with the Tenth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (COEX, Seoul, South Korea, Sep 21, 2008). AIS2008
  3. William R. Hazlewood, Nick Dalton, Paul Marshall, Yvonne Rogers, and Susanna Hertrich. 2010. Bricolage and consultation: addressing new design challenges when building large-scale installations. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ’10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 380-389.
  4. 4. William R. Hazlewood. (2010). Participatory Design with a Community of Seniors. in Extended Abstracts of the 4th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth2010).
  5. 5. William R. Hazlewood, Lorcan Coyle. (2009). On Ambient Information Systems: Challenges of Design and Evaluation. International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence. 1(2), 1-12.
  6. Yvonne Rogers, William R. Hazlewood, Paul Marshall, Nick Dalton, and Susanna Hertrich. 2010. Ambient influence: can twinkly lights lure and abstract representations trigger behavioral change?. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp ’10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 261-270.
  7. Yvonne Rogers, Kay Connelly, William Hazlewood, and Lenore Tedesco. (2010). Enhancing learning: a study of how mobile devices can facilitate sensemaking. Personal Ubiquitous Computing. 14(2), 111-124.