I believe that much of my love for UX is guided by my love for people and creativity. As a speech language pathologist, my focus was on helping people how to communicate and how to think and not as much on what to communicate/think. UX research strongly parallels this – about what people do, why they do what they do and how can we use that information to create personas and stories and ultimately, co-design. As such, my core philosophy that guides UX experience research is triangulating observations, self-reports, performance and biosensed data to get the closest picture possible and teasing out those nuances with decent confidence.
As part of the Augmented Human Lab and Language and Social Cognition Lab, I have been designing and conducting user experience research to create and evaluate technologies ranging from ubiquitous computing systems to rehabilitative solutions for the elderly to assistive technology. I enjoy dissecting a person’s state as they engage in learning concepts/ interacting with any form of technology. As part of my graduate work, I explore the underlying cognitive and affective states as children experience varying levels of cognitive load when learning and interacting with learning interfaces. I strongly believe that identifying a framework that best captures this has implications in designing pedagogy, learning interfaces/toys and evaluating them.
PostBits
Placing information at specific locations in the home provides rich and intuitive ways for people to cope with information, as they leverage semantics of the locations within the home. However, there is no deeper investigation yet on how users would embed digital cloud-based information into various locations in their homes, partly because previous systems were not robust enough to be deployed in real settings for an ex- tended period of time. To this end, we have developed PostBits, a system of display blocks that integrate cloud information with contextually rich physical space. We deployed these systems in 6 homes and conducted a user study to understand emerging patterns of use with PostBits and used a grounded theory approach to map our findings. We identified a set of emerging usage patterns with PostBits including spatially directed remote postings, active in situ communication and spatially filtered information feeds.Here is a a more detailed version of the process.
ChaddyBuddy
While most assessments of learning and usability evaluations with Kindergartners focus on performance, self-reports and inferring from observable behaviours, they provide limited insights into the cognitive load and emotional state during the learning or interaction that are essential for a holistic picture of learning. We explored the feasibility of understanding cognitive-affective states associated with mental effort by triangulating the data obtained from observations, physiological markers, self-reports and performance as Kindergartners performed tasks of varying mental effort. We believe this work would be a step towards better understanding of the learning process thereby facilitating instruction that is more aligned with the learner’s cognitive-affective architecture as well as establishing guidelines for comprehensive usability / evaluation processes based on well-defined associations between child behaviour and child action. Here is a more detailed version of the study.
SparKubes
This work is directed towards understanding how the transformation of a regular object/traditional toy into an augmented toy may affect the dynamics of play behaviour. We present an observational user study with 8 children from kindergarten to understand the play value of SparKubes. SparKubes are stand-alone tangible objects that accept light from one direction and pass it on in another direction. We found that children who were aware of the SparKubes’ interactivity features displayed more variety of patterns and showed greater interaction with SparKubes as compared to the control group who were not aware of the features. The play behaviour revealed that SparKubes have constructive play value on the play pyramid and that adding light features changed the patterns of constructions by children. This knowledge opens up an exciting area of research in technology-mediated play and designing augmented toys for children. Here is a more detailed version of the study.
E-books and Attention to Print
Although there is rapid proliferation of e-books in recent years, no consensus has been reached on the effectiveness of e-books vis-à-vis printed books on the development of children’s literacy. We investigated whether multimedia features in e-books (i.e., audio-narration and tracking-animation) were effective in directing bilingual preschoolers’ attention to print in the target language in computerized single- and dual-language books. Seventy-one English-Mandarin bilingual 4- to 6-year-olds were presented with single-language and dual-language e-books (with and without enhancing features) to read independently. We used an eye-tracker to collect all the gaze data across conditions. Results indicated that enhancing electronic features based on synchronized dual-channel (visual and audio) inputs with attention-guiding cues effectively directed children’s attention to print in both their dominant and weaker languages. These findings provide important implications on how computerized electronic books affect children’s attention to print and in turn support the development of bilingual children’s emergent literacy in both languages. (Here is a link to the detailed version of the study)
Interactivity and Immersion on learning
Affect has been shown to play an important role in performance and learning as it influences cognitive processes. However, many learning assessments focus on performance measures and reporting achievements that overlook affective factors. Through a study with 12 kindergartners, we explore the role of such triangulation as a potential arsenal to supplement and complement existing assessments methods across two main pedagogical approaches: constructionist and instructionist, with a view to understanding cognitive-affective states during learning of a chosen Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concept. We present a synthesis of patterns that arose from such a triangulation across pedagogies and illustrate the potential value that these additional data channels offer, through some case illustrations. We summarize some key challenges and considerations in running such studies (A complete report of findings is under review)
Exploring pedagogies through triangulation
Affect has been shown to play an important role in performance and learning as it influences cognitive processes. However, many learning assessments focus on performance measures and reporting achievements that overlook affective factors. Through a study with 12 kindergartners, we explore the role of such triangulation as a potential arsenal to supplement and complement existing assessments methods across two main pedagogical approaches: constructionist and instructionist, with a view to understanding cognitive-affective states during learning of a chosen Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concept. We present a synthesis of patterns that arose from such a triangulation across pedagogies and illustrate the potential value that these additional data channels offer, through some case illustrations. We summarize some key challenges and considerations in running such studies.Here is a more detailed version of the study.
