Matching Items (41)
Description
This honors thesis utilizes smart home components and concepts from Dr. Burleson's Game as Life, Life as Game (GaLLaG) systems. The thesis focuses on an automated lifestyle, where individuals utilize technology, such as door sensors, appliance and lamp modules, and system notifications, to assist in daily activities. The findings from our efforts to date indicate that after weeks of observations, there is no evidence that automated lifestyles create more productive and healthy lifestyles and lead to overall satisfaction in life; however, there are certain design principles that would assist future home automation applications.
ContributorsRosales, Justin Bart (Author) / Burleson, Winslow (Thesis director) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Hekler, Eric (Committee member) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Along with the number of technologies that have been introduced over a few years ago, gesture-based human-computer interactions are becoming the new phase in encompassing the creativity and abilities for users to communicate and interact with devices. Because of how the nature of defining free-space gestures influence user's preference and the length of usability of gesture-driven devices, defined low-stress and intuitive gestures for users to interact with gesture recognition systems are necessary to consider. To measure stress, a Galvanic Skin Response instrument was used as a primary indicator, which provided evidence of the relationship between stress and intuitive gestures, as well as user preferences towards certain tasks and gestures during performance. Fifteen participants engaged in creating and performing their own gestures for specified tasks that would be required during the use of free-space gesture-driven devices. The tasks include "activation of the display," scroll, page, selection, undo, and "return to main menu." They were also asked to repeat their gestures for around ten seconds each, which would give them time and further insight of how their gestures would be appropriate or not for them and any given task. Surveys were given at different time to the users: one after they had defined their gestures and another after they had repeated their gestures. In the surveys, they ranked their gestures based on comfort, intuition, and the ease of communication. Out of those user-ranked gestures, health-efficient gestures, given that the participants' rankings were based on comfort and intuition, were chosen in regards to the highest ranked gestures.
ContributorsLam, Christine (Author) / Walker, Erin (Thesis director) / Danielescu, Andreea (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering (Contributor) / School of Arts, Media and Engineering (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Computing and Informatics Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Technological advances in the past decade alone are calling for modifications to the usability of various devices. Physical human interaction is becoming a popular method to communicate with user interfaces. This ranges from touch-based devices such as an iPad or tablet to free space gesture systems such as the Microsoft Kinect. With the rise in popularity of these types of devices comes the increased amount of them in public areas. Public areas frequently use walk-up-and-use displays, which give many people the opportunity to interact with them. Walk-up-and-use displays are intended to be simple enough that any individual, regardless of experience using similar technology, will be able to successfully maneuver the system. While this should be easy enough for the people using it, it is a more complicated task for the designers who are in charge of creating an interface simple enough to use while also accomplishing the tasks it was built to complete. A serious issue that I'll be addressing in this thesis is how a system designer knows what gestures to program the interface to successfully respond to. Gesture elicitation is one widely used method to discover common, intuitive, gestures that can be used with public walk-up-and-use interactive displays. In this paper, I present a study to extract common intuitive gestures for various tasks, an analysis of the responses, and suggestions for future designs of interactive, public, walk-up-and use interactions.
ContributorsVan Horn, Sarah Elizabeth (Author) / Walker, Erin (Thesis director) / Danielescu, Andreea (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
A study was undertaken to examine and test the effectiveness of a self-experimentation model, guided by a mobile app called PACO, in helping college students improve behaviors associated with sleep. Thirteen participants were enrolled in this study and their nightly sleep quality and sleep duration were measured via PACO as they underwent three conditions: a baseline non-intervention phase, an expert-developed intervention phase, in which pre-made intervention examples were provided and used in PACO, and a self-experimentation phase, during which users were invited to develop their own sleep-behavior interventions using PACO. The participants were randomly placed into three groups, and the points of transition between phases was staggered across five weeks according to a multiple baseline design. The goal and hypothesis was to determine if sleep duration and sleep quality (sleep satisfaction) were improved in the final self-experimentation phase compared to the expert-developed experimentation phase and baseline phase, as well as in the expert-developed experimentation phase compared to the baseline phase. The results show little change, and nearly no improvement in the outcome measures between phases, leaving us unable to support the hypothesis. However, the existence of several limitations considered in retrospect, such as the small sample size, the short study time period, and technical difficulties with the PACO application means that no concrete conclusions should be made regarding the effectiveness of the self-experimentation model, nor the usability of PACO. Additional research should be made toward user motivation and modes of teaching the underlying behavioral science principles to casual users to increase effectiveness.
ContributorsNazareno, Alexandra Nicole (Author) / Hekler, Eric (Thesis director) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Digital technologies are quickly being combined with and replacing teacher curriculums and student resource tools. This is particularly true with advances in digital textbooks as it provides a medium for opportunity and growth in the nature of the textbook as it pertains to students in the classroom. Although great strides have been taken in intelligent tutoring systems personalized toward a student's needs there seems to be an overall disconnect between student needs in the classroom in not utilizing or adopting these technologies. In this paper I provide both conflicting and comparable needs of teachers and students surrounding the textbook to reveal the costs and benefits associated with technology adoption. Through 4 teacher interviews and 4 participatory prototyping sessions I found that students and teachers desire the following elements in technology: 1) Collaboration 2) Synchronicity 3) Adaptive 4) Automation. I discuss the implications of implementing such features and how they could be applied in integrated Q&A system to encourage collaborative learning.
ContributorsRodriguez, James Paul (Author) / Walker, Erin (Thesis director) / Finn, Edward (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Academic resources at Arizona State University are vast and allow a student to maintain success through his/her university attendance. The distribution and management of these systems is arduous and manually done. A software solution for the distribution of academic resource information is a Dashboard system that utilizes information from the university, and is expandable. A solution for the management of academic centers utilizes a scheduling algorithm that allows quick scheduling of resources. Overall these solutions provide easier workflows than the current systems allow.
ContributorsGupta, Anurag (Co-author) / Berk, Nick (Co-author) / Ryan, Jay (Co-author) / Patel, Niraj (Co-author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Over the course of computing history there have been many ways for humans to pass information to computers. These different input types, at first, tended to be used one or two at a time for the users interfacing with computers. As time has progressed towards the present, however, many devices are beginning to make use of multiple different input types, and will likely continue to do so. With this happening, users need to be able to interact with single applications through a variety of ways without having to change the design or suffer a loss of functionality. This is important because having only one user interface, UI, across all input types is makes it easier for the user to learn and keeps all interactions consistent across the application. Some of the main input types in use today are touch screens, mice, microphones, and keyboards; all seen in Figure 1 below. Current design methods tend to focus on how well the users are able to learn and use a computing system. It is good to focus on those aspects, but it is important to address the issues that come along with using different input types, or in this case, multiple input types. UI design for touch screens, mice, microphones, and keyboards each requires satisfying a different set of needs. Due to this trend in single devices being used in many different input configurations, a "fully functional" UI design will need to address the needs of multiple input configurations. In this work, clashing concerns are described for the primary input sources for computers and suggests methodologies and techniques for designing a single UI that is reasonable for all of the input configurations.
ContributorsJohnson, David Bradley (Author) / Calliss, Debra (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
This project explores the development of a Ruby on Rails web application to help supervisors manage the tutoring centers at Arizona State University. Each phase of the project's development is examined in detail, including the requirements analysis, system design, system implementation, test strategy, and deployment strategy. The application also includes a REST API for providing the tutoring center data to external applications. These external applications can then present the data, along with their own unique features, to students. This should allow students to have an easier time locating the academic resources they need.
ContributorsRyan, Jay (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to understand peer-to-peer study habits at Arizona State University, and provide recommendations for improving these habits through online integration. This was done by researching current peer-to-peer collaboration literature, and analyzing online integration efforts. Interviews of Arizona State University students were carried out in order to discover specific insights on study patterns at this university. The scope of this research study was further limited to freshman and sophomore engineering, mathematics, and science majors in order to mitigate the impacts of external factors. The background research and study illuminated various flaws in existing peer-to-peer collaboration tools and methods. These weaknesses were then used to design two online tools that would be incorporated into a student resource dashboard. The first tool, called "Ask a Peer", provides a question and answer forum for students. This tool differs from existing products because it provides a mobile platform for students to receive reputable and immediate responses from their classmates. The second tool, "Study Buddy Finder", can be used by students to form study partnerships. This tool is beneficial because it displays information that is essential to students deciding to work together. The thesis provides detailed designs for both modules, and provides the foundation for implementation.
ContributorsPatel, Niraj (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Despite the advancement of online tools for activities related to the core experience of taking classes on a college campus, there has been a relatively small amount of research into implementing online tools for ancillary academic resources (e.g. tutoring centers, review sessions, etc.). Previous work and a study conducted for this paper indicates that there is value in creating these online tools but that there is value in maintaining an in-person component to these services. Based on this, a system which provides personalized, easily-accessible, simple access to these services is proposed. Designs for user-centered online-tools that provides access to and interaction with tutoring centers and review sessions are described and prototypes are developed to demonstrate the application of design principles for online tools for academic services.
ContributorsBerk, Nicholas Robert (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-12