A Computer That Cuts You Some Slack

Researchers at MIT and Tufts have developed a computer interface that can recognize when a person is multitasking, using a wearable brain scanner called a functional near-infrared spectroscopy sensor, and then modify the system to make it easier. From my most recent piece for Technology Review:

For an experiment, Treacy Solovey and her team incorporated Brainput into virtual robots designed to adapt to the mental state of their human controller. The main goal was for each operator, capped with fNIRS headgear, to guide two different robots through a maze to find a location where a Wi-Fi signal was strong enough to send a message. But here’s what made it tough: the drivers had to constantly switch between the two robots, trying to keep track of both their locations and keep them from crashing into walls.

As the research subjects drove their robots toward the strongest Wi-Fi signal, their fNIRS sensors transmitted information about their mental state to the robots. The robots, for their part, were programmed to focus on a state of mind called branching, in which a person is simultaneously working on two goals that require attention. (Previous studies have correlated certain fNIRS signals to this sort of mental state.) When the robots sensed that the driver was branching, they took on more of the navigation themselves.

Not surprisingly, the robots, in autonomous mode, were a big help to the drivers who were multitasking. But the researchers also found that if the robots went into their autonomous mode (which wasn’t optimized) when the driver wasn’t multitasking, performance declined. The lead researcher Erin Treacy Solovey of MIT says, “Overall, we showed that autonomy was helpful only when it was well-matched with the user’s cognitive state.”

This sort of system could be increasingly important as our cars become more computerized and assume more of the decision-making for us. It might not be too far fetched to imagine a feature in a car that seamlessly takes over when your mind starts to wander during traffic. Rush hour might never be the same.

The link to the TR story is here:

A Computer Interface that Takes a Load Off Your Mind

The paper is here:

Brainput: Enhancing Interactive Systems with Streaming fNIRS Brain Input

Erin Treacy Solovey’s website is here:

http://web.mit.edu/erinsol/www/

 

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What is that Blinking Light Trying to Say?

Tiny lights can be found on myriad electronic devices from toothbrushes and wristwatches to mobile phones and modems. All of these gadgets use flashing LED lights to communicate information in a slightly different way. While some light blinks make sense to many of us, not all are intuitive. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University wondered if some patterns were more universally recognizable than others. What’s the range of information that a simple blinking light can express?

To find out, the researchers explored more than 20 different light patterns and surveyed participants via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, an online system for crowdsourcing questions. Participants surveyed in the study automatically linked certain light-flashing patterns on a mobile phone with certain functions.

  • Notifications = Beacon, Bright Flash, and On with Bright Flash behaviors
  • Active = Random Brightness and SOS Blink behaviors
  • Low Energy State = Pulse Slow and Fast In Slow Out behaviors
  • Turning On = Staircase Continuous behavior

The researchers suggest that designers have only begun to tap the potential of simple lights to convey a message. They propose a “light vocabulary,” that could be expanded and include not only the timing and intensity of a point of light, but color, size, shape, directionality, and diffuseness as well.

A video summary is here:

The paper is here:

Unlocking the Expressivity of Point Lights

The conference at which it was presented is here:

CHI2012

An example of a robot that communicates using flashing lights and bleep-bleep noises is here:

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World Without Email

Electronic missives are a constant feature of the modern office. But how much does receiving and responding to email throughout the day steal our focus and stress us out?

Researchers from the University of California Irvine and the U.S. Army conducted a study in which they examined office workers’ productivity and biometric measures of stress over five days when email was shut down. They presented the quantified the effects of an email-free office this week at the Computer Human Interaction Conference in Austin, TX.

While other studies have examined multitasking within the context of normal email use and self-reports of email stress, this study is the first to compare a complete cessation of email to a baseline of normal email, record biometric stress levels, and see how removing people from the email network affected other workers.

In the experiment, the researchers watched the habits of 13 workers for at least three days to get a sense of baseline activity. Then, they programmed Microsoft Outlook to automatically file new emails so none appeared in the inbox. The workers still had access to old emails, calendar events, and contacts, but they weren’t notified when a new email arrived. If someone from the organization sent an email to one of the email-free workers, they would get an automated reply explaining the situation and suggesting other modes of communication such as a face-to-face conversation or phone call.

The researchers found that when workers did not have access to new emails they multitasked less and focused longer on tasks than they did during the baseline study. In surveys, participants noted that they felt less stress. Heart rate variability was up slightly, a biometric indicator a calmer state of mind. And surprisingly, the email-free condition didn’t seem to hinder communication. Important information was still shared between the email-using and email-free workers.

The findings led the researchers to suggest that people should take email vacations from time to time. Or possibly even batch their emails so they are only compelled to check their inbox a few times a day.

The paper describing the study is here:

” Pace Not Dictated by Electrons”: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email

The conference at which it was presented is here:

CHI 2012

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