Category: design

Course · design · Teaching

Looking back at my first year as assistant professor, part 3: teaching

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As I have mentioned earlier, my position includes 70% research and 30% teaching. During this first year the teaching part was somewhat reduced due to the Vinnova-funding I got, but I could still be involved to quite a large extent in two courses.

My first teaching assignment was to supervise and then examine five theses on the bachelor level. I was very comfortable with that task since I have supervised around 50 informatics related theses at KTH and thus have a lot of experience in the area. There were quite a few similarities between the processes followed for degree courses at KTH and Örebro University, but also some interesting differences. One of those differences was the collaboration between all supervisors involved in the course. At KTH there was no formal collaboration between different supervisors, but at Örebro University (or at least at the Informatics department) all involved supervisors gathered in a joint meeting to discuss all project proposals before the first meeting with the students. I really liked this approach – it was very rewarding to be able to discuss e.g. challenges with the respective project proposals before the supervision started. I will write more about the supervising experience later on (this is more of a summary post).

The examination experience was new to me. Previously, I have suggested grades to the examiners for the projects I have supervised (and the examiners always followed my suggestion), but I was never really formally responsible for the grading. After the last supervision seminar with the students, all the involved supervisors switched roles and became examiners instead. This was a very interesting setup! For me this meant that I was assigned five student groups that I should examine (not my own groups, of course). This included leading presentation/opposition seminars and grading the final report. I will surely get back to this in a later blog post.

The other course I was involved in, this time as the course responsible, was a course in interaction design. I have been responsible for such courses both at KTH and Uppsala University and I really enjoy teaching these kinds of creative project based courses. The course started in May but I started planning already in January. Among other things, I wanted to incorporate some components that I had used at KTH and Uppsala University. Among other things, I wanted to add a creative prototyping session where students should use different materials to physically build low level (low-fi) prototypes of new systems (see this blog post for a description of such a session). I also wanted to end the entire course with a design final where finalist groups should have short presentation and an invited jury should choose a winner. Unfortunately, because of Covid-19, none of those things could actually be implemented in the course. Instead, I had to rethink most parts of the course and prepare it for online-only teaching! That is certainly not ideal for this type of design course. How I transformed the course will be a topic for later blog posts and in fact also a topic for pedagogical research – a proposal for a popular science book chapter, focusing on online interaction during e.g. seminars in two courses (one is interaction design) has already been submitted!

(I took the blog picture above in Abisko a few years ago)

communication · design · Group work · Haptics · Human-Computer Interaction · Multimodality · sonification

Overview of my research within multimodal interaction

Jonas Moll1 Comment

thesis

In my last blog post I presented an overview about my research within the eHealth domain. In this blog post I will do the same thing, but for my other main research field – multimodal interaction in virtual environments.

 

What have I done related to multimodal interaction?

Even though I have spent the last couple of years focusing mainly on eHealth, I have done a lot of research – especially as a Ph.D. student at the Royal Institute of Technology – related to multimodal interaction. Most of this research has been focused on multimodal learning environments for collaborative task solving between sighted and visually impaired persons. Haptic feedback has played a major part in the collaborative virtual environments that I have designed and evaluated both in lab settings and in the field in e.g. primary schools. Quite a while ago, I wrote a blog series on haptic feedback focusing on the work I performed within the scope of my doctoral studies. Here are the links to those posts:

During my time as a postdoc at Uppsala University, I also performed some activities related to multimodal interaction. Most of this time I devoted to research grant applications and I also wrote a few conference papers. You can read a short summary of these activities here.

In total, my research on multimodal interaction has, up until today, resulted in the following five journal publications (some links lead to open access publications or pre-prints):

and the following 11 conference papers (some links leads to open access publications or pre-prints):

 

My ongoing research within multimodal interaction

Currently, there is not much going on related to this research field (at least not in my own research). The only ongoing activity I’m engaged in is an extensive literature review related to communication in collaborative virtual environments which will lead to a theoretical research article where I will discuss different technical solutions for haptic communication in the light of the research I have performed within the area up until today. I’m collaborating with my former Ph.D. supervisor Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander on this activity. I hope that this research activity will help me in my continued research on collaboration between visually impaired and sighted pupils based on different types of tasks and learning material.

Upcoming research on multimodal interaction

As I wrote in a recent blog post multimodal interaction, with a focus on haptic feedback, seems to be a new research area at the Centre for empirical research on information systems (CERIS) where I just stared my assistant professorship. Thus, this is the research area in which I can contribute with something new to the department. An area that is already represented at the department, however, is “Information Technology and Learning”, which seems to be a perfect fit in this case!

Last year, I also submitted a research grant application focusing on continued work with collaborative multimodal learning environments. Unfortunately, that one was rejected but no one is giving up. I will work somewhat on revising the application during the autumn and submit as soon as a suitable call pops up. Maybe I will also have additional co-applicants from the CERIS department by then.

communication · design · DOME · eHealth · EIT · EIT Health · Grant application · Human-Computer Interaction · Medical Records Online · National patient survey · Social media in higher education

Looking back at 2017!

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Färjeläget

A new year has just begun and before I start blogging about current activities, I will take this opportunity to look back at some of the important things that happened last year. If you have been following this blog regularly, you have probably already read about the last summer’s adventures at the ACM SIGCHI/EIT Health summer school in a number of different posts so I will not get into any detail about that school here. If you want to read about what went on during this eHealth/mHealth design summer school you should read this post and all the posts it links to. The same goes for the very successful DOME session about patient accessible electronic health records at Vitalis, which I describe here.  As in all other of my meta-posts, I have chosen one of the nature pictures I took myself during the year.

Selected research activities

There was quite a lot of research going on last year. The research activities related to all of my focus areas eHealth, multimodal communication and social media in higher education courses. Naturally, most of my activities were connected to eHealth. Primarily, I continued working with the national patient survey on patient accessible electronic health records in Sweden (introduced here) and the interview/observation/survey study with physicians and nurses (introduced here). Last year’s work with the national patient survey resulted in four submitted manuscripts (to one journal and two conferences) and there is a lot more we can do with that study! It became especially interesting when we started comparing responses from different disease groups during the end of 2017. I will tell you more about these results later on when we have some publications. In the other study we conducted several interviews with physicians, about the effects of patients accessible electronic health records on their work environment, during the autumn. Most of the surveys have also been handed in. I will not discuss the results before they get published but I can tell you that both the qualitative and quantitative data gathered this far show that this study was very much needed! During the autumn I also started to, with my DOME consortium colleague Gunilla Myreteg, follow the implementation of psychiatry records online in Region Uppsala. I will write more about that in later posts.

I also started on another track related to eHealth – how we can make use of data from different sources for better diagnoses and treatment of cancer. This topic is also connected to big data and happens to be one of the themes covered in the 2018 version of Uppsala Health Summit. I am one of the organizers behind a workshop there and I also submitted a workshop proposal to a conference on the same theme. It remains to be seen if this will become one of my main research focuses in the future. It’s definitely and interesting and very important topic.

My work on multimodal mediated communication during 2017 focused primarily on revising a journal manuscript (presenting a study I was a part of during my last year at KTH) and submitting two posters to the Swedish Cognitive Science Society conference which was held in Uppsala in October. The accepted submissions are more thoroughly presented here and here.

Teaching

During autumn I was, together with Mohammad Obaid, responsible for a master level introductory course in Human-Computer Interaction. I really enjoyed that and I think the changes made to the course before it started really made a positive difference. One of the new parts we introduced to the course was a very appreciated creative prototyping session which I describe here. The students presented their final results in the middle of December and those results were very good. I describe the final presentation sessions here and the four finalists (which will compete for the winning team award) in these four blog posts:

  1. HCI course finalist 1: enhancing and simplifying the biking experience through augmented reality!
  2. HCI course finalist 2: utilizing haptic feedback for alerts and navigation cues!
  3. HCI course finalist 3: a solution for finding bikes to rent at your destination!
  4. HCI course finalist 4: a device presenting real-time and easily read navigational cues!

My research on the use of social media in higher education courses was also combined with my teaching in this course. The focus of that research is a teacher administrated Facebook-group which has been used as a complementary communication channel during the course. I explain the basic idea here.

Some other activities

Other activities worth bringing up here are my participation in the EIT Health Alumni Connect and the INNOVEIT events in Budapest in October. It was a great experience being there and my blog posts about Connect and INNOVEIT as well as those about the summer school also resulted in me being asked if I wanted to work with the EIT Health Alumni communication manager! Of course I accepted, but it remains to be seen exactly how that work should be carried out and what the tasks will be.

In November, I also took part in the first meeting as a representative in the eHealth council at the National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden. I wrote about some of my experiences from that meeting here. I think many interesting collaborations can be found here!

In April I also submitted my first ever VR (the Swedish Research Council) application, which focused on support for collaboration between sighted and deafblind pupils in school. I wrote about that here. Unfortunately, we did not get a grant this time, but we got a “Very good” ranking on all criteria related to the content and feasibility so we will definitely move on with our ideas!

Course · design · Human-Computer Interaction

HCI course finalist 3: a solution for finding bikes to rent at your destination!

Jonas Moll1 Comment

Human-Cycling Interaction

So, now time has come to present the third finalist in our basic HCI course. Today’s finalist is the group “Human-Cycling Interaction” and consists of the master students: Jesper Ericsson, Dara Kushnir, Anthony Mathieu, Nam Nguyen, Jules Ruig and Lisanne Wiengarten.

This group did not focus on the actual cycling activity, but rather on the logistics around finding a bike to use while e.g. travelling in other countries. The group designed an app which can be used to locate bikes which are possible to rent (from private persons), at the location you are aiming for. Their solution is similar to Airbnb, but for bikes instead of places to stay. After signing in and choosing location and time interval, a scrollable catalogue of possible bikes to rent is presented. Each bike option in the list contains details such as size, current distance from e.g. city center, status of different equipment and if helmets are included. See the picture above for an example. After having proceeded to order the bike (e.g. rent it during the chosen period), the user can choose to add a number of extra features like insurance, baskets or a helmet. After payment, the order is confirmed and moved to a list of orders made. It is also possible to contact the owner of an ordered bike through a chat feature in the app and there are some other options included as well.

The proposed app adds an important possibility for travelers, since it enables them to find alternatives to often quite expensive public transport solutions like buses and taxis. There are some problems associated with the proposed method and if you want to read more about how the group wants to tackle these and about the work process and prototype development you should definitely take a look at their project blog!

Course · design · Human-Computer Interaction

HCI course finalist 1: enhancing and simplifying the biking experience through augmented reality!

Jonas Moll1 Comment

Ace_that_Interface

In my last blog post I wrote about the final presentation seminar sessions in the master level HCI course that Mohammad Obaid and I have been running this autumn. Based on the scores that were given to each group (from fellow students and teachers) during those sessions, I was able to select the finalists. See the blog post linked above for an explanation of e.g. the voting. In this, and the upcoming three blog posts, I will briefly introduce the finalists. The finalists will be presented in no specific order and pictures from their project blogs will be used only if it’s ok by the respective groups.

Today’s finalist is the group “Ace that Interface”, consisting of the students Joosep Alviste, Imad Collin, Hassan Odimi, Iosif Kakalelis and Mauro José Pappaterra. They came up with the idea shown in the image above – an augmented reality solution for cyclists. The view has different components, providing information to the user, which are placed in a way so that they should not interfere too much with the cyclist’s field of view. General status information, like temperature, time and heartrate, is placed in the upper left part. In the lower left part you find a map showing the surrounding and your current position and beside the map is a presentation of e.g. your speed. If you have chosen a specific route (in an accompanying app) there are also indicators showing where to turn and the distance you need to move on a specific part of the route (compare with usual GPS solutions in cars or Google maps on phones). The navigation arrow blinks when it changes direction, in order to make sure that the cyclist notes when it’s time to e.g. make a turn. In the accompanying app you can choose which information items you want to show (toggle on/off) in the augmented reality interface, select routes, etc.

This is a somewhat futuristic idea, but it is great and has a lot of potential. It presents (customizable) information which is relevant for the cyclist, without forcing him/her to take the hands off the handles or shifting focus to another device. There is a lot more I can say about this idea and the process the students followed, but since the main documentation medium used in this course is a project blog, I think it’s better that you go there for more detailed information. In this blog you can read more about the project members and the group’s whole process from requirements elicitation to the final design.

 

Course · design · Human-Computer Interaction · Oral presentation

Final presentations in our basic HCI course

Jonas Moll2 Comments

After a few months of project work in our basic HCI course at Uppsala University it was time for final presentations last Friday! During this presentation the project groups should describe their entire process from requirements elicitation and physical prototype development (described in this blog post) to the evaluation with users leading up to the final design. The final prototype should also be presented/demoed.

There were three presentation sessions in total and four groups presented during each session. Each group got 8 minutes for the presentation, after which the audience could ask questions.

I really enjoyed listening to the presentations, which were all very well prepared. All groups have made a very good job when it comes to identifying a problem (related to biking) and designing a solution relevant for a chosen user group and context. In my earlier blog post about the course (linked above) I said that some ideas could probably form the basis for commercial products. After having seen demoes of the final results I still think this could be the case. Some groups actually included a short discussion related to market research in their presentations!

The most important part of the course is the iterative design process and it is very clear from the presentations that the groups understand the different steps and have been able to carry them out in a good way. Now I just hope that the groups will do perfect written presentations of their work, with clear connections to theory, on their project blogs as well!

After each presentation the teachers as well as the students in the other project groups (thus, everyone in the audience) gave the presenting project group a score between 1 (solution has no potential) and 7 (solutions has excellent potential). Tomorrow, I will calculate a mean value for each group. The group with the highest mean value in each seminar session will go to the design final, where a winning group will be chosen by a jury! Next week I will write a series of blog posts about the finalists.

conference · design · DOME · eHealth

Got a new paper published at Interact 2017!

Jonas Moll2 Comments

Interact_published

As I have written in an earlier blog post, a paper on critical incidents and eHealth was submitted and later on accepted for presentation and publication at Interact 2017. Now our paper has been published in the conference proceedings and the presentation is coming up very soon! The full title of the short paper is “Using Critical Incidents in Workshops to Inform eHealth Design” and you can reach the paper here (page 364-373) if you (or a University you are affiliated with) have a Springer subscription. The authors are introduced in the blog post I link to above.

Christiane Grünloh, who is the lead author and the one who coordinated the entire writing process in a very good way, will present the paper at the conference tomorrow, September 27! The presentation concludes a session that focuses on Co-design studies, which starts at 1:30 PM in lecture hall 23. So, if you happen to be at the conference and want to attend her presentation about how one can utilize critical incidents to inform eHealth design you know where to go and when!  🙂

The workshop from NordiCHI 2016, on which the paper is based, was very special for me since I submitted my first research contribution from a patient’s perspective to that very workshop. That workshop contribution, entitled Making a case for easily accessible electronic health records – A patient perspective on lack of availability of health information in critical situations is not behind a paywall so if you are interested in how a patient contribution can look like you can find the paper directly by clicking on the title. It was a very interesting experience for me to use a critical scenario from my own life as a basis for discussion about how to inform eHealth design. The other papers, covering e.g. professionals’ perspectives and design were also very interesting and altogether the different contributions gave a good mix. You can find a collection of all workshop contributions here.

I usually write at least one blog post a week (usually two), but last week I didn’t post anything at all. The reason is a very bad inflammation in an eye. My contacts with healthcare, in different county councils, during last week (and the weekend before) proved to be very interesting most of all because county councils do not share patient record information. Interestingly enough, I had to use my patient accessible electronic health record to transfer important information between county councils! I will write a blog post about my experiences later this week, but since the paper I’m writing about here is to some extent about patient contributions to research I just want to point out that I now have several new ideas about real-life experience contributions based on my experiences from last week!

design · eHealth · Summer school

EHealth summer school in Stockholm, day 4!

Jonas Moll1 Comment

This day of the eHealth summer school contained two lectures and several hours of project work – this was the most project focused day so far. Once again it was a very rewarding day. 

Kristina Höök, an interaction design professor from the department Media Technology and Interaction design where I worked earlier, started off the day by talking about soma design. In the picture above you can see her “Soma design manifesto” which will be discussed in her upcoming book on interaction design. Her talk was very inspiring and focused a lot on movement and how we can design with movement in mind. Several examples of design koncepts based on movement were brought up to discussion and fact is that I have tried some of them at KTH during an open house session a few years ago. One example was a design solution with a lamp which light intensity varied with your breathing – it really made it possible to experience breathing in a different way. Another example was a device you laid down, which generated heat based on pressure. The common theme of all examples was that the developed products give an awareness of the body and how it moves. The lecture also contained a practical exercise in which we should sit down relaxed and focus on the state of different body parts as well as the relation between them. This was a very interesting experience especially when it came to thinking about what mechanisms we use when we start and stop breathing. We can do this in soo many ways, but we hardly ever think about it. It became clear that we are different. Most of us are not really symmetrical, especially not if we experience some kind of pain, and we should design with this in mind. After this lecture I’m really curious about that book!  🙂

The other lecture was held by Elina Eriksson, who is also a former colleague, and from the same department as Kristina. Elina focused on ICT and sustainability and her talk was also very engaging. She started out with a very important and serious subject: what is the state of our planet and where are we going (my own interpretation, not a quote)? We definitely have a problem today – the emissions (especially carbon dioxide) are increasing which in turn causes all sorts of highly problematic chain reactions. We also have a problem with resources – e.g. just recently we passed the world overshoot day and it’s not even autumn yet! This is an important topic to really think hard about, but I will not delve deeper into it here. In the other part of her talk she focused more on sustainable development and gave several intereresting examples. It was especially pointed out that the whole life cycle is of importance – not just the usage of a product. We need to consider how and with which resources products are manufactured. The issues in the production or in waste handling might cost much more, in terms of effect on environment, than the actual usage. This is of course problematic when it comes to computers and phones which are often thrown out way before they actually stop functioning (sometimes due to incompatible new software). The lecture also contained group discussions about e.g. development goals which we were adressing and goals that were conflicting. Those who are interested in this topic (should be everyone!) may also be interested in this earlier blog post about a recent talk by Ulf Danielsson (professor from Uppsala University) about the fragile system we are all part of. 

The rest of the day was devoted to project work, which started today. I will just mention the main steps here. We started with defining clear goals, after which we formulated important questions to answer. We also discussed what is needed for success as well as pitfalls that could lead to failure. The next step was a mapping activity, where we defined all stakeholders, data gathering and other key steps in the design cycle.  The next main task was to choose a small part of the idea mapped out and generate several design ideas based on it (everyone in the project group produced 8 examples under time pressure). Each person than expanded on one of the ideas which was than shown to the entire group. The group than decided what parts from everyone’s solutions that should be a part of the final group design. The last project task today was that we started on a story board. 

The day ended with a nice dinner with the entire group of participants and organizers.