The Final Project

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Agency, Trust, and Interpretability of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): Design of an interface that utilizes feature design, visualization, and explanations to build an AI novice’s mental models for a GAN system.

How can the interface design of a GAN system facilitate an AI novice’s interpretability, agency, and trust to build user mental models when using a GAN system?

Syashi Gupta

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are emergent neural network technology that allows users to generate new images, videos, or audio within a matter of minutes. Previous applications of AI were only able to classify, learn, and predict behaviors, but GANs enabled synthesis of content to produce something that did not previously exist. GAN technology affords robust generative creativity, but the technology is not without pitfalls. Automated output without active involvement of human input in the creative process can yield dull, even harmful results, that are often riddled with errors. Human manipulation at the level of a machine learning model can provide an astonishing amount of power and control over the generations of a GANs system but such manipulation is currently inaccessible and confusing for an AI novice. Drawing from research, this investigation gives an AI novice agency to explore with GAN systems via an explainable interface, understand system working and outputs (including erroneous ones), and notice visualized neural network internals to understand, manipulate, and constrain parts of generations. This investigation also conceptualizes utilizing the GANs system as a plug-and-play system (Application Programming Interface) on any software. The resulting Application Programming Interface (API) makes it simple for a user to flexibly utilize the functionality of both the API tool and software, set user intent, and establish context for the GAN system.

Implementing Human-Centered Processes and Empathetic Design, Within Senior high school Professional Learning Community Meetings: How Designed Digital Spaces can Help Guide Educators into Creating Systematic Changes and Productive Improvements Within the Classroom Setting

How can designed digital spaces guide professional educators to follow step by step phases for creating empathetic curricular plans within high school Professional Learning Community Meetings?

Ash Isley

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At the beginning of the school year, educators conduct their classroom planning during high school Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings. Implementing empathetic and human-centered design into high school PLC meetings will create systematic changes and productive improvements within the classroom setting and learning environment. However, not many technological systems help professional educators implement empathetic design into PLC meetings, in both a virtual and in-person format. Focusing on marginalization, judgment, safety, and equitable and accurate student empathy data helped guide and ground the investigations within the studies. Understanding how to design digital spaces to help implement empathetic-centered design into High School PLC meetings will allow educators to collaborate and identify student and classroom needs while ideating solutions. The investigation results show the need for empathy processes and human-centered design within educational collaboration platforms. The representation of people encourages empathy processes.

Designing for the Lived Experience of Time: Visually Representing Time as a Means for Students to Disincentivize Procrastination

How can the design of a multimodal digital interface facilitate a sense of progression for undergraduates experiencing difficulty in balancing course work to moderate procrastination by adopting a future time perspective?

Gloria Jing

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Procrastination has remained a pervasive issue within the academic context; this is further exacerbated in the Covid-19 pandemic, which highlights a need for students to successfully adapt to online asynchronous course environments. However, few studies exist that explore alternative temporal representations of scheduling to bolster motivation and orient students to a future time perspective during task planning and execution. This investigation reframes time perception to help college students mitigate self-regulatory failure by including multiple perspectives and explorations of the relational aspects of time within a 3D environment. Beyond procrastination, this investigation points to the exciting design possibility of tackling recurring issues through slight shifts in perspective.

Bridging The Gaps: Improving Interactions Between African-American Teenagers and Uniformed Police Officers: The Use of Augmented Reality for Uniformed Police Officers During Police-Community Programs.

How can the design of an augmented reality de-escalation application for uniformed police officers used inside police-community programs encourage a change of learned behavior to avoid escalation for future interactions with African-American teenagers?

Nigel Jones

The tension between African-American teenagers and uniformed police officers remains an issue. Although there have been efforts to change police-community relations through police-community programs and training, many training tactics fail to take advantage of de-escalation training. While police training may utilize design technologies, such as virtual reality, no training utilizes place-based augmented reality. This study explores how an augmented reality de-escalation application for the uniformed police officer, used inside police-community programs, can encourage police officers to consider alternative ways to go about future interactions in the community. Police officers utilizing this application would learn ways to reduce the use-of-force, to have empathy, and the use of appropriate language. This application can help with future interactions between the uniformed police officer and African-American teenager.

Enhancing Cognitive Empathy: Interactive Virtual Reality for Empathic Skills Development in College Undergraduate Students

How can the design of an interactive virtual reality experience on a university campus incorporate perspective-taking to help first-year students evoke empathy for diverse experiences?

Madeline Kelly

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Cognitive empathy, the recognition of another’s emotions, facilitates altruistic behavior and interpersonal connection. However, few initiatives exist to develop empathy skills for persons beyond early childhood, and existing interventions for the young adult population often rely on self-guided and self-motivated skills practice. Empathic skills interventions neglecting the young adult population become even more pronounced on the college campus, where young adults from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds aggregate to socialize, learn, and cohabitate, and require empathic skills to sustain prosocial and altruistic behavior. A collaborative, immersive experience aimed at enhancing cognitive empathy skills in first-year college undergraduates may foster altruism and connection in the college campus setting. This study uses a recursive virtual reality experience and perspective-taking exercises to allow for controlled and collaborative empathic skills practice.

Dialogic Imagery for Care: Visual Mediation of Complex Conversations in Alternative Prenatal Caregiving

How can a collaborative digital platform mediate health information-sharing between a rural, first-time expectant mother and their midwife over the course of their pregnancy in order to augment effective prenatal care and improve the patient experience?

Marcie Laird

Of all developed nations, the U.S. leads in the maternal mortality rate, with large disparities in risk across race, socioeconomic status, and geography. In rural areas, many pregnant people seek out midwives as their access to traditional hospital obstetrics services diminishes. However, midwives often lack tools to stay connected to their patients across long distances and social strata, making it difficult to provide effective and personalized perinatal care. Additionally, it is increasingly critical that patients and their midwives build a meaningful relationship to facilitate information-sharing, particularly around the social determinants of health. However, these topics may often be highly personal and difficult to verbalize, requiring tools that mediate conversations in a patient-centered way. This investigation explores how visual aids and prompts in a collaborative digital platform might improve communication between the patient and midwife and build mutual understanding of the patient’s unique needs. Visual tools are used as a storytelling device through which the patient gains agency during care visits and reflects on their pregnancy journey over time. By learning from the patient’s lived experiences, midwives are better equipped to provide customized, holistic care and patients are empowered and celebrated.

Aiding Memory Recognition Using Framework Building for Aphantasia: A Machine Learning Web Extension

How can the use of recognition in association-building within a web extension make digital research papers more comprehensible for undergraduate students with aphantasia to improve memory performance?

Anna Pataky

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Aphantasia is a rare way to cognitively perceive the world that involves the inability of people to see things within the mind’s eye. An estimated 2% of the population has aphantasia, which affects major cognitive processes like episodic memory, future event prospection, visual working memory, and dreaming. Even with cognitive processes like this disrupted, those with aphantasia have learned ways around it by developing their own internal toolsets and relying on associations they have accumulated. Aphantasia is underrepresented despite the recent shift for inclusive design and has room for many future assistive tools and technology to aid this population as research and understanding grows. This investigation aims to create a web extension to aid associative memory retention in individuals with aphantasia by augmenting a user’s visual perception of an academic paper as well as providing a framework-building tool to capitalize on spatial memory.

The Nature Experience: Augmenting a Path to Healthier Lifestyles

How can an AR mobile-based information delivery system combined with social engagement strategies support park-situated nature-therapy experiences that foster healthier lifestyles for urban residing adolescents?

Eryn Pierce

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Experiences in nature coupled with positive encounters with nature have significant psychological health benefits. However, for many urban citizens, especially adolescents, there is a disconnect between the natural world and one’s place within it. This project examines how the design of immersive learning technologies like augmented reality (AR) combined with social engagement-based motivation tactics can inform the achievement of healthier lifestyles outdoors. Findings from this study suggest that designing AR supported and adaptive learning experiences, which include moments for technology disconnection and opportunities for personal and shared encounters within and outside of the nature experience, contribute to the formation of healthy habits and can improve the effectiveness of restorative nature-based prescriptions.

Playing Smart: Playful Civic Learning in Human-Centered Smart City Development

How can a multimodal platform for experiential learning supplement existing civic engagement efforts by creating an informed citizen base who advocates for their values in the development of smart cities?

Jack Ratterree

Ubiquitous and invisible technologies are being implemented into municipal governance internationally at an exponential rate. To ensure a sustainable democracy in these smart cities, they must develop per the values of their citizens. An intervention is needed to establish a base of citizens who are digitally literate and equipped to advocate for their values in this new civic domain. This investigation fills this need with a playful workshop experience encouraging mental model formation, daily routine contextualization, and community discussion through a digital interface and a physical toolkit for hands-on exploration. Mapped onto Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, this design investigation instills a lasting understanding of smart technology in citizens, develops their critical thinking skills, and prepares them for resilient advocacy for their values in the development of smart cities.

Working with Imagery: Mediating Image Rescripting for Anxiety with Multimodal Digital Storytelling

How can a digital therapy tool challenge negative automatic thoughts for undergraduate students experiencing anxiety in order to achieve more balanced thinking in daily planning and goal setting?

Ashley Anderson

An estimated 32% of adults in the United States experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Though a large segment of the population is affected by anxiety, many lack access to treatment and coping resources. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a type of psychotherapy aimed at helping individuals with anxiety challenge unhelpful patterns of thought and behavior. However, traditional treatments for anxiety can be costly and time-consuming. Beyond these logistical barriers lies an enduring stigma of mental illness that discourages individuals from seeking treatment. Mobile applications attempt to bring established mental health treatments to more people directly. Although efforts to expand therapy resources into a digital space have made them more accessible, many apps fail to take advantage of the affordances of mobile digital devices. Such devices make it easy to create and manipulate media and suggest opportunities beyond converting existing interventions to static device screens. This investigation explores how a digital therapy tool might be designed to challenge negative automatic thoughts related to planning and goal setting. Drawing from imagery-based interventions used in cognitive behavioral therapy, this investigation combines imagery change techniques with multimodal digital storytelling to develop visual strategies for eliciting, reframing, and transforming mental imagery.

Climate Change Communication in 3D Environments: Agency and Place as Tools in Virtual Reality for Increasing Self-Efficacy and Decreasing Psychological Distance to Climate Change

How can the design of virtual reality experiences decrease psychological distance to climate change in order to increase citizens’ individual and collective efficacy?

Victoria Rabelo Gerson

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People perceive climate change to be a distant phenomenon that is not relevant to them, this is referred to as psychological distance, the perception of how distant or proximal something is from an individual on four dimensions: spatial, temporal, social, and experiential. An individual’s distance to an issue or event influences whether it is mentally represented and evaluated as abstract or concrete, in turn affecting behavioral responses and action. In order to decrease distance, we must make abstract concepts immediate and observable. Current climate change communication is disseminated mainly through traditional media channels, which are limited in their ability to successfully decrease distance to climate change and engage people in meaningful action. This research proposes that virtual reality is a promising channel for decreasing psychological distance due to the ability to transport users through time and space, and provide tools to exert their agency. This study investigates how the design of interactions within 3D environments can decrease an individual’s psychological distance to climate change on each of the four dimensions. By working with graphic design students to design 3D interactive environments, the researcher developed a prototype for a system of tools intended for use within a virtual reality experience.

Mixed-Reality Game as a Tool to Explore Vulnerability in Father-Son Relationships

How can the design of a Mixed Reality game during father & son playtime encourage a positive mindset towards vulnerability to prevent emotion-dysregulation in boys?

Michele Pereira de Souza

Traditional gender norms impact women’s and men’s daily lives in different ways. While women are frequently labeled as sentimental, men are expected to perform as invincible superheroes — always confident and secure, never showing a sign of weakness or fear, never letting a tear fall. Restricting emotionality has serious consequences not only for their health but for their partners as well, as recent studies have shown a strong association between the difficulty to express vulnerable emotions and aggressive behavior in men. The pressure to behave according to traditional gender norms starts early in childhood. As this pressure increases in adolescence, parents have the difficult task of educating boys about the importance of positive emotion expression while watching out for their own behaviors. In order to facilitate this process, I propose the design of a mixed reality system that engages a father and their child in meaningful play. The play activity addresses expressing vulnerable emotions in a lighthearted way while providing continuous engagement. During gameplay, father and child engage in the exercise of identifying difficult situations and feelings in a judgment- free environment. Playing the game encourages father and child to experience constructive emotional expression and shapes positive behaviors at home so that both parent and child are better equipped to face daily challenges.

Smart Adaptive Mentor [S.A.M.]: Interventions with Machine Learning to Support University Students with High Functioning Autism

How might we design sensory interactions for an intelligent peer mentoring system to assist university students with high functioning autism to independently manage their academic life?

Ashamsa Mathew

Virtual Problem-Based Learning: The Design of a Virtual Reality Toolkit to Assist 5th Grade Students with ADHD During Problem-Based Learning.

How can the design of a virtual reality toolkit assist a 5th grade student with ADHD-I during problem-based learning?

Dmitri Knapp

Complementary Note-Taking: Designing a Digital Interface Specifically for the Note-Taking Activity

How can the design of a digital interface promote purposeful interactions during note-taking to strengthen a college student’s encoding capabilities while engaging with lecture-based coursework?

Matthew Norton

A New Digital Library: Imagining the Local Library as a Digital Social Space

How can the design of a digital library, used by adults at home, afford the community benefits traditionally provided by physical libraries?

Grace Herndon

Local public libraries exist as an essential part of a community’s social infrastructure. Libraries supply access to resources, space for leisure and social encounters, and opportunities for education. Libraries facilitate community wellbeing through a diverse environment, increased awareness of community activity, and provide opportunities for serendipitous discovery. However, these benefits are often unmatched by libraries’ online counterparts, digital libraries. At present, digital libraries act as databases of media resources, functioning effectively as online warehouses. Faced with the fact that libraries are sought out as social spaces, as well as the reality that communities increasingly congregate online, the design of digital libraries should take into consideration the social component of information seeking. Focusing specifically on search, discussion, and annotation tools, this study investigates how the design of a digital library can afford the community benefits provided by a physical public library. The outcomes of this investigation suggest the effectiveness of motion as an indicator of presence, the opportunity for meaningful online experiences through purposeful limitation of technology, and increased engagement aided by user autonomy.

A State of (Betweenness): Narrating Transnational Family Histories in Dynamic and Multi-Dimensional Digital Archives

How can a dynamic and multi-dimensional digital archive interface promote representational belonging amongst distant, transnational family members using multimodal inputs to visualize and experience a narrative?

Randa Hadi

Transnational families are characterized by their geographical dispersion. These families become fragmented and scattered due to social, economic, and political reasons but often continue to keep close relationships across borders. Transnational families lack a concrete connection to their families and home. This study proposes a dynamic, multidimensional digital family archive that provides a space for transnational families to share, annotate, experience, explore, connect, and promote representation through family histories. Rather than attempting to draw out the truth, this study exploits family narratives to create a sense of connection. This research combines family narrative characteristics and multimodal digital storytelling to inform the design of an interface that provides a space for individuals to feel connected through stories — giving transnationals a space to weave together seemingly disparate past events into a story about where they have been, where they are, and where they are going. The research proposes multiple options to suggest how such a system might function.

Data Sense: Facilitating Citizen Sensemaking of Smart Environments through Augmented Urban Experiences

How can the design of a mixed reality experience facilitate transparency of IoT sensors and data through citizen engagement with its infrastructure?

Katie Frohbose

As pervasive, invisible, and ubiquitous computing occupies corners of public and private space in smart cities, it is becoming increasingly important for citizens to be informed and aware of the affordances and agency of data and sensing artifacts. Building awareness into the design of the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure can be difficult, due to its inherent invisibility. As such, designers need to consider ways in which new technologies can help bridge the digital–physical divide the IoT transgresses. This investigation uses the Acts of Noticing as the framework to bring a pedestrian into awareness of invisible IoT infrastructure. It explores how various technologies and touch points in digital and physical spaces can provoke pedestrian engagement with IoT sensors and data. It then investigates how embodied and contextual interactions in augmented reality can encourage sense-making of IoT sensors and data in new forms.

Making New Friends: A Study in Companionship

How can the design of an Embodied Conversational Agent help adults who lack meaningful connections with others gain a sense of companionship through interactions with Artificial Intelligence?

Matthew Gabriel Maharaj

Can an AI Learn to Make you Laugh?: Creating Humor with Machine Learning on Computer Interfaces to Combat Stress at Work

How can the design of a computer interface used by professionals at their desks in a semi-private work environment inject humor into the user experience to reduce stress, improve mental and physical health and maintain workflow?

Harrison Lyman

Elevated stress levels can harm the human body physically and mentally over time. Professionals who work primarily on a computer in an office environment are prone to experiencing regular elevated stress. Humor is therapeutic to body and to mind as it directly decreases stress levels. Machine learning technology may be used to detect short term and long term stress and recommend appropriate humorous interventions. These ML recommendation systems could gather initial data as well as recognize patterns to develop a user humor profile and improve timing and content of such interventions. The results of this study show the potential to use ML to implement humor via a user interface design, specifically through the use of a variety of intelligent low strategy games, characters, and language.

Project Management Tools to Support Agile Methods in the Workplace: Visualizing Moments Across the Timeline of a Project Through a Project Management User Interface and Suite of Tools

How can the design of a Project Management Tool support varied interactions through the interface within cross functioning teams to track project workflow in an Agile workplace environment?

Hannah Faub

Conceptualize This: Making Picture Books Accessible for Preschool Children with Visual Impairments

How can picture books be made accessible for preschool children with visual impairments to facilitate literacy comprehension and parent-child interactive story reading?

Jessye Holmgren-Sidell

Picture books can facilitate preschool children’s literacy comprehension and ability to retain information. Through interactive reading with their parents, children begin to internalize the illustrations they see in stories and apply them to real-life experiences. Although picture books offer an array of potential benefits to young readers, they are not a fully inclusive medium for those with visual impairments. . .

Currently, children and their parents have no extensive system that they can apply to existing picture books to make them both accessible and interactive. This presents an opportunity for design intervention. Using a combination of frameworks and design methods — including interviews with educators, literacy interventionists, and parents; journey mapping; prototyping; and user testing — this investigation demonstrates how picture books can be made accessible for preschool children with visual impairments to facilitate literacy comprehension and parent-child interactive story reading.

Helping Cancer Patients Reduce Psychological Distress with Embodied Conceptual Metaphors in a Serious VR Game

How can the design of a serious VR game use multimodal metaphors to transform a patient’s embodied metaphorical conceptualization of their cancer from a negative source of anxiety and depression to a positive opportunity for personal growth?

Matthew Dale Lemmond

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38.4% of people in the U.S. will receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. Those facing cancer are likely to experience cancer-related psychological distress. . . it should not be surprising that patients struggle to understand their future with this disease. Cancer is an unknown entity. Fearing the unknown future is a source of distress for cancer patients.

Metaphors help patients make sense of their past, present, and future experiences with cancer. The embodiment of a metaphor refers to the idea that cognition and communication form by physical experience and bodily interaction with a tangible world, as well as giving shape to thoughts and feelings.

. . . This investigation maps cancer patients’ distress, comfort, and metaphors, and connects it with VR game concepts and interactions. Additionally, this investigation explores the metaphorical presentation of cancer in a VR space.

History Re-Experienced: Implementing Mixed Reality Systems into Historic House Museums

How can the design of mixed reality systems be implemented in historic house museums to increase the experiential value of a visit?

Shadrick Addy

As immersive technologies have become ubiquitous today, traditional museums are finding success augmenting existing exhibits to increase visitors’ satisfaction. However, due to the immutable nature of house museums, and its tendency to place visitors in direct contact with historical artifacts, museum managers are seeking original approaches to cultural preservation. Implementing mixed reality in house museums is one such approach. The goal of the study is to develop and test a conceptual framework that guides how designers can use the affordances of mixed reality systems to create experiences that align with the range of historical narratives found in house museums. Such experiences can contribute to improving visitor’s satisfaction, self-interpretation, and understanding of the homeowner’s life and the community within which they lived. Building on user-centered design methods, the researcher developed and tested an augmented reality (AR) mobile application centered on the Pope House Museum in Raleigh, NC. The outcome of this research suggests that house museum visitors should have agency in deciding the lens through which they experience the variety of historical narratives present in the home.

Recollection: Incorporating Smartpen Adaptive Interfaces into Learning Management Systems

How can the design of an adaptive user interface for a learning management ecosystem support student learning in an online college chemistry course?

Matthew Babb

With the constant increase of online learning courses utilizing learning management systems (LMS), the technology has yet to be fully optimized to allow easy navigation of course material for study and practice, which makes the user interface (UI) design cumbersome. . .

The mnemonic device of physically writing out one’s handwritten lecture notes and study guides is a lost practice in online course management systems. Utilizing smartpen optical character recognition and laser tracking allows for the design of a user interface that reincorporates these helpful practices into daily study tasks. Pairing these features with machine learning enables adaptive interfaces that can assist learning depending on the needs and the skill level of the student. Together, these technological affordances and comparative case studies of existing smartpens inform the design of an innovative UI that pushes LMS into a user- friendly, user-adaptive future.

Supporting Soldier Mental Health During Deployment Cycles: Interventions through Mobile Applications and a Wearable Device

How can the design of mobile applications and wearable technology function as a system to support the mental health care needs of U.S. Army soldiers while on deployment to combat zones?

Alysa Buchanan

Of the 1.8 million U.S. soldiers deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, an estimated 10-18% are likely to have returned home with Post Traumatic Stress Related Disorder (PTSD). Veterans account for 14-16% of suicides in the U.S., yet are 8% of the population. Professionals advise that PTSD treatment should begin as soon as symptoms are observed, which can occur immediately after the event. Delays in treatment can worsen the individual’s symptoms. A decrease in marital satisfaction and an increase in depression, anxiety, anger, and addiction following deployments have been observed. Yet when soldiers are deployed, often for six to twelve months at a time, access to mental health care options are limited and under-utilized. This research explores how a system of designed interventions may address the unique mental health care needs of soldiers on deployment. . .

The results of this research show that there is a desire, need, and potential for a variety of new mental health care options for soldiers during deployment.

Virtual Design Improvisation Enhancing Computer-based Designing through Designer/Virtual Agent Interaction

How might the design of a conversational virtual agent employ improvisational methods to mitigate negative design fixation and creative stagnation in upper-level undergraduate graphic design students during recurring computer-based ideation stages of an independent, multi-week design project?

Ellis Anderson

Building on improvisational design pedagogy currently taught at the College of Design at North Carolina State University, this research investigates how a responsive software interface might introduce “just-in-time” messages, creative prompts and exploratory exercises to upper-level design students to enhance their computer-mediated workflow during a multi-week, research-based design project. The proposed interface seeks to enrich a student’s design process by intervening during moments of creative stagnation and design fixation. Computer-based design tools such as Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, while enabling efficient production and visual complexity, may stifle a student designer’s ability to generate a diversity of ideas and exacerbate the potential for hyperfocusing along one conceptual pathway. An opportunity exists for embedding a responsive interface in a student’s software ecosystem that challenges them during computer-based making. The system borrows creative strategy from musical improvisation, a process of thinking and acting on your feet in response to new and shifting phenomena, often yielding chance results when faced with sudden provocation. Improvisational competence can augment divergent thinking and may be able to compensate for common difficulties in the design process such as fixation and attachment to early concepts. . .

Anticipatory Workstation: Responding to Stress through the Design of Smart Objects

How can the design of an anticipatory system of smart objects respond to stress to create a calming work environment for young professionals?

Amber Ingram

This research explores the use of an anticipatory system involving smart objects as a vehicle for reducing stress within a workstation environment. . .

This investigation considers focused, peripheral and implicit interactions through the lens of David Rose’s “Designing for Subtlety” scale, which defines ways that smart objects can communicate with users while respecting the user’s attention. As Rose suggests—and synesthetic research engineer Michael Haverkamp, describes—different bodily senses (modalities) can engage with data to produce peripheral and implicit interactions via connected devices. This study identifies opportunities for such ambient, anticipatory design interventions to redefine the workstation user experience in an attempt to lower stress via a more thoughtful engagement with human attention levels.

Collaborating with Machines Rather than Commanding Them: Interaction and Interface Design for a Human-AI Collaboration Paradigm

How can the design of a graphical user interface utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in a context of use informed by human- computer collaboration, help designers create design artifacts that require information abundant research and dissemination?

Clément Bordas

Progress made in artificial intelligence and machine learning is changing the way designers interact with computers. Machines are now able to transform billions of data points into insights, predictions and knowledge without the need for traditional programming. This information- and knowledge-abundant data enables computers to be trained to act as intelligent agents and is changing the relationship we have with the computer. . .

This research investigates the design of interfaces that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to help designers create design artifacts involving information- abundant research and dissemination. A framework, which integrates several Human-Computer Collaboration (HCC) approaches with artificial intelligence and machine learning, will underpin the design of these interfaces.

Designing a Multi-Level Reporting System for Visualizing Glanceable and Cumulative Data to Promote Eco-Friendly Behaviors

How can the design of glanceable displays and reporting dashboards motivate individuals to engage in sustainable decision-making by visually communicating how incremental actions, taken over time, accumulate to produce meaningful contributions towards societal efforts aimed at mitigating climate change?

Dajana Nedić

Small-scale actions by individuals and communities, when clustered and added together, create a significant shift at the grand scale of climate change. The decision to address those small actions and prioritize sustainability starts with individual citizens and visual representations of how their contributions factor into overall impact. Designers have an opportunity to create citizen-centric visualization tools that not only offer environmentally-minded individuals the moments of clarity and understanding they need, but provide means by which individuals can identify — and ‘see’ precisely — where their contributions impact the larger system of climate change.

. . . By encompassing glanceable moments, incremental reports, community comparison, and goal setting into one multi-layer system, this project proposes how a home can be transformed into a motivational hub where citizens can understand how their sustainable efforts are contributing to mitigating climate change.

Designing Computer Supported Collaborative Conversations: For Online Design Communities to Prompt Tangible Action Toward Advocacy Goals

How can the design of an online community platform incorporate opportunities for collaborative conversation between recent graduates who are interested in socially responsible design strategies to address goals and coordinate actions?

Bree McMahon

. . . Several proponents of socially conscious design, or “design for good,” publish case studies and resources that embolden young designers to initiate projects in topics they care about. Additionally, online repositories and educational programming offer information and principles for practicing socially responsible design strategies. However, the typical design-for-good ‘showcase’ model lacks effective tools that invite and engage optimistic, young designers seeking involvement in socially responsible projects.

. . . My final project investigates the potential for conversation to build online communities that share values and goals. The project proposes the design of an active social space wherein interested designers learn and converse, with the goal of becoming motivated to act. . .

Designing Responsive GUIs: An Intelligent Interface that Tailors Information Presentation by Responding to a User’s Cognitive State

How can the design of a responsive graphical user interface (GUI) for an online data repository adapt to different cognitive states of primary caregivers who are engaged in information-seeking and knowledge-acquisition search processes to learn about a dependent’s medical condition?

Rachael Paine

A person faced with caring for a loved one with a serious health diagnosis has an immediate thirst for knowledge, even while their cognitive ability to find—let alone comprehend—useful information may be hindered due to their traumatized, high-stress mental state. The design of most online health information search platforms do not consider the cognitive state of this type of user, even though new technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, have the potential to offer personalized support for this particular information-seeking circumstance. The design of standard search tools and features encountered on ordinary health information websites typically take a one-size-fits-all approach.

The objective of this study is to determine how intelligent human-computer interfaces can present information in meaningful and clearly comprehensive ways by responding to the health information-seeker’s cognitive state—in particular, for someone who is under duress from a recent medical diagnosis. . .

TYPE2U: A Customized Service Design for People with Type 2 Diabetes that Supports Making Healthy Food Choices

How can the design of a food shopping application support dietary adherence in adults newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes by assisting and integrating their food purchasing decisions related to Food Selection, Food Substitution, and Food Combination?

Grace Anne Foca

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Visualizing Uncertainty: Developing an Experiential Language for Uncertainty in Data Journalism

How can information visualizations commonly found in news media incorporate representations of uncertainty to facilitate non-expert decision making about current events?

Mac Hill

. . . While visualizations in mass media can render data accessible to the public, they can also give users a false sense of truth and certainty. Uncertainty, in the form of incomplete or imperfect data, exists in all information and visualizations. . .

Currently, there is not a robust, experiential visual language for conveying that uncertainty. While there are methods for visualizing uncertainty in scientific or statistical figures, these graphics are typically created for audiences familiar with the visual language of scientific data, making them inaccessible to non-expert audiences. This gap provides an opportunity for design methods and research to develop techniques for non-expert audiences. Drawing from design methods and frameworks, particularly explorations of visual form, in addition to statistical and scientific methods for conveying uncertainty, this investigation examines experiential techniques that data journalists can use to convey uncertainty in statistical and scientific information to a non-expert audience.

Cyborg Centered Design: Designing a User Interface for Cochlear Implant Recipients through User-Sensitive Inclusive Design

How can User-Sensitive Inclusive Design principles inform the design of a customizable user experience for Cochlear Implant users?

Alexandra Grossi

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In the niche market of assistive tech, design decisions are not fueled by the need to attract and retain users. The Cochlear Implant (CI) is a biotechnological feat that provides deaf and hard-of-hearing recipients digital hearing. CIs act as the user's connection to the hearing world, making the CI user a deeply invested stakeholder. Unlike mainstream devices such as laptops that provide consumers with a wide array of product choices, CI recipients are locked-in users of one company’s devices for life. . .

Design explorations range from the basic elements of usability in controls to possibilities in customizable, connected, contextual interface. Using David Rose’s concept of “Enchanted Objects” as a framework, this investigation also looks at how the Internet of Things (IoT) can connect and empower Cochlear Implant users. . .

Designing a Language Toolkit for Virtual Reality Documentary Film

How can existing theories currently influencing filmmaking be aggregated, altered, and redefined to create a digital tool that can be used for the development of future virtual reality experiences?

Ioan Opris

The purpose of this study was to define and develop a Language Toolkit for Virtual Reality (VR) Documentary Film. This tool boasts a collection of terms, definitions, and illustrations to be used in the production of VR film, and is based on existing frameworks for traditional film. . .

Terms were subsequently developed into a digital toolkit presented to and validated by a hands on workshop. The final phase involved a revision and development of the toolkit demonstrated through user-journey mapping. By identifying terms and constructing this tool, producers of VR film will have a resource to reference when creating new media. This will allow for more successful and bountiful VR film, ultimately leading towards an increased excitement and encouragement among potential audience members.

The Emotional Potential of Personal Messaging in Immersive Mobile VR Environments

How can the design of multimodal experiences within immersive virtual reality facilitate poetic and emotive personal messaging?

Tori Jordan

. . . Mobile digital devices, through email, text, or other personal messaging, facilitate much of our present correspondence. However, it can be constrained by the two dimensional screen. These constraints limit the conveyance and translation of dynamic qualities and visual cues that may be found in other forms of communication, such as the expression of emotion, which is an essential aspect of social interaction. Because virtual reality employs largely multi-modal, sensory and immersive experiences, implementing it as a personal messaging medium could create an arena in which users design dynamic, emotive experiences rather than traditional typed messages. Messaging then transforms into a form of dialogue that is dynamic, emotive and poetic—something that can not only facilitate, but also enrich emotional expression and connectivity in an age of digitally mediated communication.

Learning to Make: Lowering Barriers to e-Learning

How can the design of an online learning platform facilitate learning to make by lowering barriers to entry for self-learning novices and support the community engagement through a contextual user interface?

Anantaya (Grace) Wonaphotimuke

The goal of this investigation is to lower novices’ barriers to participation and present information in a way that supports online community engagement. Through visual studies, this investigation explores a way to help ease novices in learning Processing by tailoring information necessary to learn and engage with other members. This investigation concludes that the necessary tools, functions, and features for each novice level need to be differ from the rest of the community. While some of those tools, functions, and features are available throughout the three novice levels, the presented information is also needed to be tailored specific towards each novice level. For instance, a video tutorial feature and a vocabulary feature (dictionary tools) are available for all novice levels. However, the information or the content or each tutorial and term should to accommodate different needs and goals for each novice levels. Lastly, this research concludes that having the interface that can adapt and learn from the novice’s interaction is beneficial.

Perceptions of One’s Self and Others in Virtual Reality: Designing minimal form virtual embodiments that establish social presence, reduce bias and stereotypes, and raise involvement in VR environments

What is the minimal form of individual visual representation in a virtual reality environment required to achieve social presence?

Luis Zapata

When a user enters a digital environment, like making an account on a computer or playing a game, they are given the opportunity to create and customize what they will be represented as in that context. . . When getting users to connect with each other, photorealistic realism inhibits expression of personal information. My investigation explores ways for users to enter a virtual reality environment, embody a form that reduces bias and stereotypes while attempting to raise comfortability to connect with others in the space. I built upon the research Bailenson and Blascovich have been studying in the Virtual Human Interactions lab while utilizing Biocca and Harms Networked Minds Theory for measuring Social Presence. In my investigation, I used research through design, case studies, interviews and experiments to establish a prototype. My hi-fidelity prototype creates a testing ground for further exploration in minimal form representation in VR. The tool allows for designers and psychologist to observe passively or interact with participants in the space while collecting data for future analysis.

Prompting In-Person Conversation Toward Empathy: Interaction Design in a Networked Environment

How can networked technology in a physical fitness environment be designed to support in-person interactions that offer opportunity for building empathy among older adults?

April Maclaga