Thursday, October 15, 2015

Frontier Presents at CHItaly 2015

The CHItaly 2015 conference was held in Rome, Italy from September 28th to 30th. This marked the 11th bi-annual conference and was themed “Public, private, and community-based interaction.” The scope of CHItaly encompassed the diversity of research in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).

Representing the Sketch Recognition Lab and Director Dr. Tracy Hammond at CHItaly 2015 was Seth Polsley and Harish Vangavolu, the graduate mentor and the leader of the Frontier Capstone team, respectively. The duo presented the capstone project completed over the spring semester. Frontier worked on creating an application for web browsers which would allow for website history to be tracked in a non-linear fashion. Presently, browsers can only track one line of history, not multiple.
 

(Vangavolu presenting Frontier at CHItaly)

Imagine painting a dotted line – each dot represents a site that a user goes to while using a browser. Now imagine drawing a solid line off of one of the dots, covering all sequential dots after it, and stretching past the end of the original dotted line. This is how browser history works, now. Users can use the back and forward navigations in a browser to return to previous pages. But when they click a different link in the middle of their history, all information from that point onward is rewritten – which can be incredibly annoying when someone is, for example, researching information for a project or work.

Of course, if the original dotted line was not a line at all, but a series of pathways stemming off of one another – each connected, but not dependent on one another – users would not lose information by changing the pattern, they would just create another, branching pathway. This is the aim of Frontier: taking the linear history map and creating a more intuitive and graphically-based map. The application’s design is much like a circle graph, where each circle represents a visited site connected by lines to other circles.

“I really enjoyed the connections I made with the international CHI research community,” Polsley commented. “As someone who hasn't done a lot of travel prior to graduate school, I think this sort of event is fairly eye-opening in that it makes you think about research and development in a global perspective.”

(Vangavolu and Polsley having dinner at CHItaly with other researchers)
He went on to say that he recommends publishing and travel to anyone with the option – there are people around the world in the HCI field that are working to solve similar problems faced in the USA. Having the opportunity to meet and talk to experts from around the world opens doors to a variety of future careers and research.

Moving forward from his experiences at CHItaly, Polsley stated that he now considers how his work impacts not just those around him – both at Texas A&M University and the nation – but a global community. It was an eye-opening experience.

“It's great experience. Being in Rome wasn't too bad either,” Polsley joked. “We explored all over that city! It was a lot of fun all around.”

While he joked further about how difficult it was to find natural, un-carbonated water and how impressed he was by the cuisine of Italy, Polsley was moved by his experience in a city as old and full of culture – both from the past and present – as Rome. He was struck by each experience he had and could not decide which was more impactful, seeing the Pope speak or exploring the Colosseum.


(Vangavolu and Polsley at the Colosseum)

“Here in the U.S., we have a couple hundred years of history, but when you walk around an ancient city like Rome, literally everywhere you turn, you're looking at buildings and streets that have thousands of years of history,” he explained. “I was amazed by everything I saw, from every magnificent church to ancient, winding roads.”

Reflecting again on the experience of the CHItaly conference, Polsley praised them on bringing in other European researchers and experts to showcase their work as well as exemplifying a heightened global awareness, to a degree which he was unused to seeing in America.

“CHItaly is a fairly small CHI community. They do a lot of great work, especially in education from what I saw,” Polsley concluded. “It is a great community, and I learned a lot.”

Monday, October 12, 2015

Sketch Recognition Lab Summer Outings

Members of the Sketch Recognition Lab and Director Dr. Tracy Hammond are always busy - the stack of research, projects, and classes can almost seem unending. However, the time consuming schedules of SRL members are not so jam-packed to keep them from enjoying time with one another during lab outings.

Some outings consist of going out to movies like The Avengers or The Martian, eating together, or going for coffee. Some are more publicly situated than others. Recently, SRL went out to Grand Station in College Station to spend an evening bowling with one another. Grand Station has become a top pick for lab outings, when it’s convenient for a larger group.

(SRL Bowling outing - Left to Right: Katya Borgos-Rodriguez, Josh Cherian, Dr. Tracy Hammond, Hannah Conrad, Raniero Lara-Garduno, Jung-In Koh; Bottom: Angelica McMurty)
While most lab outings are spontaneous times for everyone to relax and enjoy some much needed downtime, the latest was also a farewell party to Katya Borgos-Rodriguez and Angelica McMurty, who helped Stephanie Valentine with KidGab updates and research over the summer, and Javier Anguas, Omar Garcia, Cristopher Cortes, and Aldo Haro (CANIETI Students, who were unfortunately unable to attend the bowling night).
While at Texas A&M University this summer, the CANIETI Students worked together on a project in the Sketch Recognition Lab. Their final prototype, called Smart Cap, is a hat which monitors the air quality and UV radiation that the wearer is exposed to and calculates Ultraviolet Index (UVI) and Air Quality Index (AQI). The cap is connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone, which then displays the findings.


Borgos-Rodriguez and McMurty, meanwhile, worked on new quizzes, drawings, plugins, and updates to KidGab. They also aided in summer Digital Friendship programs, hosted Digital Parties, and tracked information for KidGab until returning to their home universities.


(SRL Bowling Outing)

“I applied for the DRE Program. It was kind of a random encounter: I found it through a Facebook post. Someone posted it and I went ahead an applied and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best,” Borgos-Rodriguez explained how she found herself traveling from her home in Puerto Rico to Texas A&M University for the summer. “They assign you specific universities according to your interests.”

Once the DRE Program assigned her to Texas A&M University, Dr. Hammond contacted Borgos-Rodriguez via email with a description of projects that were available to work on over summer break. Stephanie Valentine, the creator of KidGab, was copied on the email because of her involvement with previous DRE students.

Borgos-Rodriguez mostly worked on new illustrations and styles for the cartoon avatars in KidGab. McMurty, on the other hand, mostly worked on new quizzes for KidGab members to take and participate in.

"My favorite thing about my summer experience," McMurty added later in the fall, "was to be able to work with really strong and amazing people, especially Stephanie [Valentine]." 

SRL loved hosting every one of our summer students, working beside them, and seeing their research take life at TAMU. We hope to see them all again in the near future!