Media Laboratory Colloquium Series 2000-2001

Speakers and Information

 
 

Kristin Lucas

There were Many Problems with the Conference Room

April 4, 2001

ABSTRACT

Lucas will present strategies behind recent computer, video, installation and performance work. Descriptions follow.

Involuntary Reception: The central character of this video is a young woman whose mind and body are inhabited by unusually large levels of electromagnetivity, performed by Lucas. The two-channel aspect of this video echoes her paradoxical relationship to technology. On the one hand her mutation has exiled her from popular electronic culture, on the other hand it has enabled her to self-broadcast without the aid of hardware. How does this position her in the eyes of society at large? She is a spectacle, to some a victim, to others a superhero, civilization's least known potential-enemy, a spiritual leader, and an overgrown teenager adapting to the precipitation of technological standards. The interplay between the visuals and the monologue bring current posthuman/body politic issues to the forefront. In particular references are made to surveillance, disembodiment through teleportation, and genetic cloning.

Simulcast: Simulcast is a business concept with environmental consequences. What is Simulcast? Simulcast is an energy management consultancy. Our lifestyles continue to change with the integration of new machines in our public and private spheres: digital satellites and GPS, mobile phones and SMART refrigerators, and large-scale media waves generated by global interest over stories such as the U.S. Presidential Election 2000. An increasing number of emissions and fields are infiltrating into our environment each day: radiation, sonar, microwaves, gamma and sound waves, including light waves from marquees, televisions, street lights, and bug zappers. Simulcast sets a precedent for moderating the flow of competing and conflicting energies by contributing to the greater awareness of invisible threats to our environment through staged public interventions and the active distribution of take-home participation tools. Even cats and dogs can become active participants.

Temporary Housing for the Despondent Virtual Citizen: Commissioned by O.K Center for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria, this installation is an environment for the technophobe, technofile and tech-inept. The installation is comprised of numerous components, including a patchboard intercom system, a surveillance-themed cafŽ, a vending machine, an arcade game, a coffee machine to bring beginners up to speed, and a sculpture garden with leashed mobile units with adjustable antennas, strobe lights, magic 8 ball interface and single channel video "Are you still blam?"

BIO

Using video, installation, performance, and the Internet, Kristin Lucas addresses the complexity of her relationship toward automation and the effects of rapid spread technology on the mind and body. Lucas graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art, in 1994. She has participated in festivals and exhibitions in the US and abroad since 1996, including: The 1997 Whitney Biennial, isea98revolution in Liverpool, England, Akihabara TV2 in Tokyo, Japan, and a recent solo exhibition at O.K Center for Contemporary Arts Upper Austria in Linz. She is the recent recipient of The Colbert Foundation Award for New Media. Lucas's videos are distributed by EAI (Electronic Arts Intermix) in New York.
 
 

William J. Clancey

Mars on Earth: How Shall We Use the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station to Prepare for Mars Surface Operations?

April 11, 2001

ABSTRACT

In July 2000, the Mars Society constructed a simulated Mars habitat at Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic near the Haughton impact crater, 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. How can we exploit this research station (FMARS) to prepare for living and working on Mars? Is there a principled way of "analyzing away" the environmental and logistic differences between Devon Island and Mars, to produce data that will be valid on Mars? I review the motivation for working in the arctic, plus the activities and results of the past three field seasons of the Haughton-Mars Project. I emphasize the interests of computer scientists, focusing on representational tools (such as data-logging devices), the communications and computing infrastructure (especially between remote sites and base camp), and prototype telescience devices (such as "robot geologists"). Extensive photographs, video, and time-lapse photography illustrate my ethnographic approach to studying a modern field expedition. Mapping this data onto the constraints of Mars surface operations, I demonstrate a requirements analysis that comprehensively relates the total system of facilities, organization, procedures, and technologies.

Based on this experience, I provide a framework for characterizing similarities and differences between Devon and Mars and a strategy for defining experimental protocols using FMARS. A distinction is drawn between high-fidelity characteristics that are inherent or can be easily imposed (e.g., authentic geology investigation) and characteristics that require more planning and may be imposed in more limited experimental phases (e.g., wearing realistic gloves). For example, how is a geologistŐs observation, interpretation, and memory changed if drawing on site is not possible, but restricted to annotating photographs after returning to base camp? Ethnographic studies and modeling of practices establish a baseline of how people normally work. Behaviors that will be impossible or severely constrained on Mars can then be identified and their effect articulated, providing requirements for new tools and processes.

BIO

William J. Clancey is Chief Scientist for Human-Centered Computing in the Computational Sciences Division at Ames Research Center. He is on leave from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida, Pensacola. Previously (1988-1997), he was a founding member of the Institute for Research on Learning in Menlo Park, CA. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1979, after graduating Summa Cum Laude in Mathematical Sciences (BA) from Rice University in 1974.

Involved in expert systems research in StanfordŐs Knowledge Systems Lab from the early days of the MYCIN Project in 1975, Clancey developed some of the earliest AI programs for explanation, the critiquing method of consultation, tutorial discourse, and student modeling. His work on "heuristic classification" and "model construction operators" has been influential in the design of expert systems and instructional programs. He has published six books, including: Knowledge-Based Tutoring (1987), Contemplating Minds: A Forum for Artificial Intelligence (1994, with S. Smoliar and M. Stefik), Situated Cognition: On Human Knowledge and Computer Representations (1997), and Conceptual Coordination: How the Mind Orders Experience in Time (1999). The most recent book presents a specification for a "process memory" that bridges descriptive cognitive models and neurophysiological theories.

Clancey has presented invited lectures, including many keynote addresses, in eighteen countries. He is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (1986) and of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He was an AAAI Councilor, the first Editor-in-Chief of The AAAI Press, and Program Co-Chair of the AAAI 1996 National Conference. He was a Senior Editor of Cognitive Science for seven years and has served on several editorial boards, including Artificial Intelligence. Recently, he has worked with the Challenger Center and TheTech Museum to convey to children the relation of scientific discovery, artificial intelligence, and space exploration.

Clancey also has experience in the practical application of AI technology as a co-founder of two companies; he has received patents for his work in qualitative modeling applied to instruction, work simulation, and financial analysis. His current research at Ames focuses on Brahms, a multiagent simulation program for modeling work practice, with special emphasis on human-robot interaction.
 
 

Mark Stefik

Voices of Innovation

April 18, 2001

ABSTRACT

What makes an inventor? Are inventors made or born? Are inventors more like scientists or engineers? How are they like scholars or artists? Do they plan or do they tinker? Are there different styles of invention so that different inventors work in different ways? Are women as inventors like men as inventors, or are they different? Do inventors have deliberate, teachable methods? Does chance play a key role in invention?

This talk reflects a mid-point reflecting on "what really matters" both for the practice of innovation and in institutional cultures that foster or impede innovation. It was triggered by the changes taking place at Xerox PARC and elsewhere that effect changes in the culture of research and invention. About two months ago my wife, Barbara Stefik, and I started a series of interviews with "repeat inventors" -- trying to learn more about what inventors are like and what they believe really matters in their creative lives. The book is not an attempt to create an all-encompassing theory of invention -- but rather -- a practical and grounded consideration of the practice in a world that is changing.

BIO

Mark Stefik is a research fellow at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and manager of its Information Sciences and Technologies Laboratory.

Stefik's research is broadly about using computers to enhance human creativity and expression. From 1993-1999, he developed technology for digital property rights for digital publishing. This led to the creation of ContentGuard, a joint venture by Xerox and Microsoft. His earlier work included collaboration hardware and software for meeting rooms (Colab) Đ leading to the Xerox Liveboard product. He also worked on object-oriented programming in LISP, experiment planning in molecular genetics, and knowledge systems for VLSI design. Stefik's current research focuses on "sense making" technology for reflective communities.

Stefik has authored four books including the textbook Introduction to Knowledge Systems. His latest book, The Internet Edge, was published by MIT Press in 1999. Stefik's doctoral degree in computer science was from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Fellow in the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
 
 

Genevieve Bell

What are the Asia Takeaways?: Making sense of the rest of the world for an industry audience

April 25, 2001

ABSTRACT

It used to be easier to think that technology was neutral, that it had escaped the markings of culture and the politics of location. However, as technologies, from the washing machine to the mobile phone and PC, spread out across the globe, it has become harder and harder to ignore the ways in which its use is contextual. The tension here is between the globalization of technology and the localization of its use. The same object acquires different meanings, it lives in different parts of our homes, conveys different messages, performs different tasks, and it even satisfies different needs.

In order to understand these differing contexts, I do fieldwork, spending time in domestic and urban spaces, hanging out with people as they go about their daily lives. Over the last 2 years I have done a lot of such fieldwork, but in this talk I want to focus on the exploratory ethnographic research we conducted in Asia last year. I will explore the process of doing fieldwork in non-US geographies for an industry and design audience, as well as reflecting on the ways in which this research is received and redeployed.

In 2000, members of Intel's Peoples and Practices Research group and several external consultants conducted research in 8 major urban centers in India and China. We visited a total of 40 households, taking the emerging upper middle classes, or "new rich", as our entry point into Asian domestic ecologies. Our research tried to make sense of how people occupied their domestic spaces, how those spaces were embedded within the broader community and what technologies were present in those spaces and how they were used. This presentation then is framed by 3 critical questions: what were people doing, how do you make sense of it and what are the implications of those insights for research and design?

BIO

Genevieve Bell currently works as a design ethnographer within the Intel Architecture Labs at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon. Her group, Peoples and Practices Research, is responsible for finding new users and new uses for technology using social science and design methodologies. Genevieve has conducted ethnographic fieldwork across Western Europe, China and the United States, visiting some 120 households over the last 2 years. She has also conducted research around eCommerce and consumption, museum spaces, mobility and mobile technologies, the role of television in the home and the emerging constellation of alternate Internet access points. She is interested in the intersections of emerging technologies and social practice as they occur within domestic and public spaces. Prior to joining Intel in August of 1998, Genevieve taught anthropology and Native American studies at Stanford University. She has conducted fieldwork with indigenous peoples in the US and Australia. Genevieve holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and a combined AB/MA from Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia. Her dissertation research explored the relationships between the federal government and indigenous peoples as experienced at one non-reservation boarding school at the turn of the last century. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where she spends a lot of time complaining about the rain.
 
 

Hong Tan

A Chair-based Haptic System

May 3, 2001

ABSTRACT

For the past few years, we have focused on an object that is involved in virtually all human-computer interactions - a chair. A chair that is found in most office environments today is sensory and information deprived. A chair is said to be sensory deprived because it does not know anything about the state of its occupant. A chair is said to be information deprived because it does not provide any feedback to its occupant. In this talk, I will describe three ongoing projects on the development of a chair-based haptic system that can sense its occupant's actions and provide useful information to its occupant. The first project is aimed at developing a Sensing Chair by outfitting a chair with surface-mounted pressure distribution sensors. We have so far developed a real-time sitting posture classification system for multiple users. I will describe the PCA-based algorithm used in our system. I will also discuss the use of a second-stage classifier that can improve the classification accuracy of a PCA-based system. The second and third projects are concerned with the development of a Chair Display using vibrotactile stimulators embedded in the back of a chair. In one study, we tested the intuitiveness of directional signals based on the sensory saltation phenomenon. Our results show that the saltatory signals we employed share unique and consistent interpretations among a group of observers who had never experienced them before. In another study, we investigated the effect of haptic cues on the reaction time of a visual change-detection task. Subjects in this task felt a tap on their back in one of four locations. They were then asked to locate a visual change on a computer monitor. Our data suggest that valid haptic cues (i.e., when a haptic tap and a visual change occur in the same corresponding quadrant) decrease the reaction time for the detection of a visual change. On the other hand, invalid haptic cues increase the reaction time (to a lesser degree) for the same task. Our work has potential applications in many areas including HCI, ergonomics and the automobile industry.

BIO

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Jack Tigh Dennerlein

Ergonomics of a Force-Feedback Office Computer Mouse

May 9, 2001

ABSTRACT

Pointing devices, long an essential input tool for the graphical user interface (GUI) of desktop computers, require precision motor control and dexterity to use. Haptic force-feedback devices provide the human operator with tactile cues adding the sense of touch to existing visual and auditory interfaces. However, the performance enhancements, comfort, and possible musculoskeletal loading of using a force-feedback device in an office environment are unknown. Two fundamental types of tasks executed with a pointing device are point-and-click operations and path navigation, such as pull-down menu operations.

Experimental procedures tested the hypotheses that the time to perform a task and the self-reported pain and discomfort during the task improves with the addition of force-feedback. Twenty-six people ranging in age from 22 to 44 years performed a point-and-click task 540 times with and without an attractive force field surrounding the desired target. The point-and-click movements were approximately 25% faster with the addition of force-feedback (paired t-tests, t < 0.001). Perceived user discomfort and pain, as measured through a questionnaire, were also smaller with the addition of force-feedback (t < 0.001). However, this difference decreased as additional distracting force fields, simulating a more realistic work situation, were added to the task environment. Ten additional adults performed eighty steering or navigational tasks, where the participants moved the cursor through a small tunnel with varying indices of difficulty using a conventional and force-feedback mouse. Movement times were on average 52 percent faster during the force-feedback condition when compared to the conventional mouse.

These results further support that human computer interfaces benefit from the additional sensory input of tactile cues to the human user. These results suggest that for a given task, use of a force-feedback device improves performance as well as potentially reducing musculoskeletal loading during computer mouse use. Therefore actual or potential applications of this research include human computer interface design, specifically that of the pointing device extensively used for the graphical user interface.

BIO

Dr. Dennerlein is currently Assistant Professor of Ergonomics and Safety within the School of Public Health at Harvard University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996 for his work in the biomechanics of office ergonomics. Previously he received a B.S. from the State University of New York at Buffalo (1986) and an M.S. from MIT (1989). His research interests include biomechanics, ergonomics and the human factors of haptic and computer interfaces.
 
 

Dennis Roberson

Future Wireless Communication and Commerce

May 16, 2001

BIO

Dennis A. Roberson is senior vice president and chief technology officer of Motorola, Inc. with responsibility for identifying and leading the strategic and visionary business-based technology advancements. Mr. Roberson serves as chairman of Motorola's Technology Action Council and Science Advisory Board and as head of the company's research arm, Motorola Labs.
 
 

Victoria Bellotti

The Good, The Bad and the Very, Very Ugly

May 23, 2001

ABSTRACT

This talk will cover experiences of doing fieldwork in both commercial and non commercial projects, in service of general design oriented research and in service of specific product or experimental technology design. I will outline some of the reasons for doing fieldwork and the different practical methods one can use, and some of the strange and inexplicable arguments against doing fieldwork or using its results. I will focus on two interesting examples which provide a contrast between a best possible case and a worst possible case (and I quote, "this design will be design driven not requirements driven"). My two examples show how very differently other stakeholders such as market analysts, engineers and managers in the design process may view fieldwork in terms of its importance in the design process. The worst case also serves as an apposite example of the risks of ignoring your target users.

BIO

Victoria Bellotti is a "research sleuth" in the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. She has worked in several computer technology research labs over the years, coming to the US and Apple in 1994 where she abandoned academic social science theory (on the grounds that it didn't really address the real concerns of design) and began a career in design-oriented user studies. She has continued this direction at PARC since 1998.

These days she finds herself working mainly with the methods derived from sociology and anthropology conducting ethnographies (in-situ interviews and observations), strongly oriented to support the design process for novel computing systems. Her role in the exploratory design process is to study what the target users for some system really do and find out what they need and expect from computer design innovations.

Often working closely with technology designers, she has conducted a range of studies of people, looking at bus driving, process control, how design teams work, teleworking, administrative support, publishing (newspapers and web-sites), research, people interacting with technology in public places, reading practices amongst executives, personal information management, collaborative project management over the internet, sales force automation and use of corporate employee services.
 
 

Elizabeth Churchill

Designing Lightweight Collaboration Technologies: From Fieldwork to Prototype

May 30, 2001

ABSTRACT

In this talk I will describe the activity centered design process that we have been following at FXPAL in the design of lightweight technologies for collaboration and communication. I will illustrate this process by describing two projects. The first project involved studying of the use of text-chat in support of collaboration. This study led to the design and development of Sticky Chats, an application that supports in-context text chat. The second set of studies addressed mobile collaboration, and led to the design of several 'transmedia' services for mobile, wireless devices. I will conclude with a brief outline of a new research project that concerns the use of large screen, public displays as a means of fostering communication and collaboration between collocated and remote colleagues.

BIO

Elizabeth Churchill is a senior research scientist at FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc. (FXPAL) working on the design and use of computer based tools to support collaborative activities. Following a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the University of Cambridge in the UK, she carried out research in the area of implicit learning and interface design at the University of Nottingham while teaching Human Factors and Human Computer Interaction. She has published within the area of cognitive psychology, human computer interactions and computer supported collaborative work. She has co-edited several conference proceedings and two books: the first, Embodied Conversational Agents was published in 2000 by MIT press, and the second, Collaborative Virtual Environments: Digital Places and Spaces for Interaction was published in March 2001. She recently co-chaired the ACM's Conference on Collaborative Virtual Environments, and is the co-chair for the ACM's 2001 Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work.
 

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