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Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Hawai`i
Research

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Labs With Primary Focus on HCI

• AMI: Adaptive Multimodal Interaction Laboratory
• CSDL: Collaborative Software Development Laboratory
• HICHI: Hawaii Computer-Human Interaction Lab
• LILT: Laboratory for Interactive Learning Technologies

Projects With Significant HCI Components

• Traces: Understanding Distributed Socio-Technical Systems (Dr. Dan Suthers and Dr. Devan Rosen)
  Socio-technical systems range from informal networks of people to virtual organizations. To more effectively support virtual organizations with emerging technologies, new analytic tools are needed to understand how technological designs encourage transformative interactions between people. (NSF Award Abstract)
• Human centered information integration for the smart grid (Dr. Philip Johnson)
  The "Smart Grid" represents a new vision for the electrical infrastructure of the United States, whose goals include more active participation by consumers, new generation and storage options including renewable energy, and new products, services, and markets. To reach its full potential, the Smart Grid must provide information to consumers in a way that enables positive, sustained changes to energy-related behaviors. The central question to be pursued in this research is: What kinds of information, provided in what ways and at what times, enables consumers to make positive, sustained changes to their energy consumption behaviors?
• Social Search and Deliberation in Digital Political Information and Collaboration Domains (Dr. Scott Robertson)
  Participation in political debate and deliberation is critical to democracy. Browsing political material is a direct way of acquiring knowledge about civic activities, the operations of government, and the issues of the day. This project examines a fast growing, but little understood new type of political participation: online information seeking, deliberation and decision making in the context of Web 2.0 technologies. The research includes three intertwined threads of study: (a) user-centered design of enhancements to a search/browse tool and a cross-application, user-generated interlinkage browser; (b) laboratory studies of how potential voters browse and make decisions in social computing environments; and (c) longitudinal observation of users of novel, socially-enabled political search/browse tools through at least three U.S. election cycles. (NSF Award Abstract)
• Digital Deliberation: Searching and Deciding About How to Vote (Dr. Scott Robertson)
  This project involved the development of an understanding of how people use emerging information technologies to learn, remember, reason about, and make decisions in the context of civic and government activities. There is very broad impact of the proposal in that resulting systems could influence citizens of many backgrounds and circumstances, and can be utilized by developers and implementation decision makers in governments, private organizations, and academic settings. The educational goals of the project include the production of digital government systems that encourage learning about civic issues by citizens. The goal of making digital government work for all citizens, with specific attention to issues of equity and the digital divide, addresses diversity goals. (NSF Award Abstract)
• VotesBy.US (Dr.Scott Robertson)
  A front-end to Google that helps people search for information about political candidates and issues.
• Coherence-based modeling of cultural change and political violence (Drs. David Chin and Scott Robertson are working on interface design)
• The Origin, History, and Distribution of Water and its Relation to Life in the Universe (Dr. Rich Gazan is working on integrated information management)

Selected Recent Publications of Faculty and Students

• Banks, B., Jackson, G.M., Helly, J.J., Chin, D.N., Masters, D. Burger, A., Krebs, W., Smith, T.J., Schmidt, A., Brewer, P., Medd, R. (2007). Using behavior analysis algorithms to anticipate security threats before they impact mission critical operations. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance, pp. 307-312.
• Binsted, K., O Griofa, M., OÕKeeffe, D. (in press, 2009). Using space and planetary surface analogue environments to motivate and evaluate technology design. Designing the user experience of future peripatetic users: new HCI design challenges in space. IGI Global, Pennsylvania.
• Binsted, K. (2007). Challenges in human-computer interaction for manned Mars exploration. alt.chi proceedings, Computer-Human Interaction Conference, San Jose, CA.
• Brewer, R.S. (2011). The Kukui Cup: Shaping everyday energy use via a dorm energy competition, In Proceedings of the CHI 2011 Workshop on Everyday Practice and Sustainable HCI (May 2011).
• Chin, D.N. (2007). Information filtering, expertise and cognitive load. Proceedings of Foundations of Augmented Cognition, Third International Conference, FAC 2007, held as Part of HCI International 2007, pp. 75-83.
• Crosby, M.E., Scholtz, J., & Ward, P. (2006). Special issue of Interacting with Computers: Symbiotic performance between humans and intelligent systems. Interacting with Computers 18(6), pp. 1165-1169.
• Gazan, R. (2009). When online communities become self-aware. Proceedings of HICSS-42: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. (10pp).
• Gazan, R. (2008). Social annotations in digital library collections. D-Lib 14 (11/12).
• Gazan, R. (2007). Seekers, sloths and social reference: Homework questions submitted to a question answering community. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 13(2), pp. 239-248.
• Gazan, R. (2005). Imposing structures: Narrative analysis and the design of information systems. Library & Information Science Research 27(3), pp. 346-362.
• Hundhausen, C.D., Narayanan, N.H., & Crosby, M.E. (2008). Exploring studio-based instructional models for computing education. SIGCSE 2008: pp. 392-396
• Ikehara, C.S., Biagioni, E., & Crosby, M.E. (2007). Ad-hoc wireless body area network for augmented cognition sensors. In D. Schmorrow & L. Reeves (Eds.). Foundations of Augmented Cognition, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4565/2007, pp. 38-46.
• King, L., & Crosby, M.E. (2007). Assessing information presentation preferences with eye movements. In D. Schmorrow & L. Reeves (Eds.). Foundations of Augmented Cognition, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4565/2007, pp. 94-102.
• Le Pape, M., & Vatrapu, R. (2009). An experimental study of field dependency in altered Gz extreme environments. Proceedings of CHI'09: ACM Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York: ACM Press, pp. 1255-1264 (best paper nomination).
• Medina, R. & Suthers, D. D. (2008). Bringing Representational Practice From Log to Light. Proceedings of the International Conference for the Learning Sciences. Utrecht.
• Robertson, S.P. (2011). Changes in referents and emotions over time in election-related social networking dialog. In Proceedings of HICSS-44: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. (10pp).
• Robertson, S. & Vatrapu, R. (2010). Digital government. In B. Cronin (Ed.). Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 44, Ch. 8, pp. 317-364.
• Robertson, S., Vatrapu, R., & Abraham, G. (2009). Note taking and note sharing while browsing campaign information: Design tradeoffs between e-democracy and e-participation. Proceedings of HICSS-42: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. (10pp).
• Robertson, S., Vatrapu, R., & Medina, R. (2009). The social life of social networks: Facebook linkage patterns in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Proceedings of dg.o2009: 10th Annual Conference on Digital Government Research. Digital Government Society of North America.
• Robertson, S., Vatrapu, R., & Medina, R. (in press/2009). YouTube and Facebook: Online video "friends" social networking. Proceedings of the Conference on YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the United States, Amherst, MA., pp. 159-176.
• Robertson, S. (2008). Design research in digital government: A query prosthesis for voters. Proceedings of dg.o2008: 9th Annual Conference on Digital Government Research. New York: ACM Press.
• Sophian, C. & Crosby, M. (2008). What eye fixation patterns tell us about subitizing. Developmental Neuropsychology, 33 (3), pp. 394-409.
• Suthers, D. D. (in press/2009). Empirical studies of the value of conceptually explicit notations in collaborative learning. In A. Okada, S. Buckingham Shum & T. Sherborne (Eds.), Knowledge Cartography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Suthers, D. D., Vatrapu, R., Medina, R., Joseph, S., & Dwyer, N. (2008). Beyond threaded discussion: Representational guidance in asynchronous collaborative learning environments. Computers & Education 50(4), 1103-1127.
• Tomaszewski, Z., & Binsted, K. (2006). A reconstructed neo-Aristotelian theory of interactive drama. Workshop on Computational Aesthetics: Artificial Intelligence Approaches to Beauty and Happiness, National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Boston, Massachusetts.
• Vatrapu, R. (2008). Cultural considerations in computer supported collaborative learning. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 3(2), pp. 159-201.
• Vatrapu, R., Robertson, S., & Dissanayake, W. (2008). Are political weblogs public spheres or partisan spheres? International Reports on Socio-Informatics, 5(1), pp. 7-26.

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HCI@UH
Information and Computer Sciences Department
University of Hawai`i at Manoa
Pacific Ocean Science and Technolgy Bldg., Suite 317
1680 East-West Rd.
Honolulu, HI 96822 USA