Advanced Topics in HCI: Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing (Fall - Winter 2013)

This course is Creative Informatics Industrial Collaboration Program VI (創造情報学連携講義VI) in Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. If you want to take this course for credit, please make sure to do registration (contact the department for information about how to register).

This course has two objectives. It covers representative work and recent trends of user interfaces and interactive systems for mobile and ubiquitous computing. The course also offers exercises on conducting HCI research to identify a problem space, collect ideas through brainstorming, conduct surveys, present ideas, and write a grant proposal. These exercises are done through team work.

Each class will consist of two parts. The first 60 - 70 minutes will cover a research topic in mobile and ubiquitous computing. The rest 20 - 30 minutes will be a tutorial to offer design methods used in HCI research or cover some tips on skills important for research, such as presentations and writing. Assignments are designed to exercise knowledge and techniques that you learn during the classes.

This course will be offered in English. However, assignments may be submitted in either English or Japanese.

If you are taking this course for credit, you must be registered, and must submit the following assignments. These assignments may be submitted in either English or Japanese.

If any clear instance of plagiarism (e.g., direct copy-and-paste from a paper, book, other assignment submissions or any other material without any citation) is spotted, the person or team (all team members) who are responsible for the submission will automatically receive a zero total score for this course regardless of their performance. The incident will also be immediately reported to the department.

Also read the guideline by Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo. http://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/others/pdf/guideline_ja.pdf

If you are unsure about how to cite or quote, please feel free to ask the instructor. You should contact him well in advance before the assignment deadline.

Late submissions may be accepted if they satisfy the following conditions, with a penalty based on the duration.

• Late under 24 hours: A submission may be accepted with 25% deduction from the total score.
• Late under 48 hours: A submission may be accepted with 50% deduction from the total score.
• Late over 48 hours: A submission will not be accepted.

If your team has a legitimate justification for your late submissions (e.g., with doctor's notes), they can be accepted without any penalty. If you are not sure, please contact the instructor before the deadline.

Office hours are intended to have advice from the instructor or teaching assistant on your assignments. You may bring things you think problematic or are not clear to you, but the instructor and teaching assistant will not directly help your assignment in any way (e.g., writing up part of the assignment). Treat them as more like an external consultant or advisor on your work.

Office hours are available only by appointment. If you feel you need to talk to the instructor or teaching assistant, send them an email in 24 hours before your desired appointment time. This is necessary to make sure that they are available for you. Most likely, office hours would be before the class (so somewhere between 3 and 4 pm). Discussions with the instructor and teaching assistant can be either in English or Japanese.

Form a team of 3 - 5 people. Try to have people with different backgrounds and skills because they would be able to offer different contributions in collaboration.

After forming your team, let me know about your team. Send me the following information:

• About the team
  • Team name
• About each team member
  • Your name
  • Year of your course
  • Your department
  • Your research interests
  • Your expertise and skills
  • Why did you decide to take this course?

Download this form for Assignment A. Fill it out with your team members and submit its PDF version to me. If you do not have a way to make a PDF file, you may submit your assignment as a Word file.

The subject of your email must be “Assignment A ([your team name])”.

In this assignment, you discuss with your team members mobile and ubiquitous systems or applications you would want to build, and conduct a brainstorming session.

As a project theme, we pick up applications and services with glass-like devices. Glass-like devices, such as head-mounted displays, have been investigated for decades, and recently has started to be commercialized (e.g., Google Glass). Although devices now become available to the public, it is still unclear how people would use such devices. This and subsequent assignments will examine what applications and services these devices would enable and how they could influence our life. For example, suppose you are doing a start-up on these glass-like devices. Now you want to build applications or services which people would love and keep using. Or you may want to create some kinds of accessories for Google Glass which would offer unique interaction capabilities. Then what would that be? What would Google Glass users want to buy (beyond basic applications or accessories)?

First, check out recent glass-like devices (wearable see-through displays).

• Google Glass
• NTT Docomo's recent glass-like device
• Recon Jet
• AiR Scouter
• Tele-Pathy

Discuss with your team members various ideas and use scenarios with glass-like devices. For example,

• What applications with glass-like devices would help you perform particular tasks?
• What interaction would enhance the user experience of glass-like devices? Remember on-body or around-body sensing technologies we discussed in the classes. How could they be integrated and could be used?
• What output modalities beyond visual would make a difference in glass-like devices?
• How could glass-like devices change our current communication behavior? Compared to mobile phones or other communication terminals, how could they provide improved or enriched communication between people?
• How could these devices help various user populations, such as people with impairments, elderly people or children?
• How could we mitigate security and privacy issues around glass-like devices?

Conduct a brainstorming session to explore possible solutions. You are encouraged to follow the brainstorming principles I explained during the class.

Try to come up with at least [the number of team members] * 3 ideas/scenarios (e.g., if your team consists of four members, your team must present at least 12 ideas/scenarios. List up the ideas in the assignment. We do not count identical or very similar ideas (e.g., telling you locations and directions of new restaurants nearby and telling you locations and directions of convenience stores nearby where you can buy a bottle of water). Ideas should also be expected to be feasible in the near future. Ideas which have substantial overlaps with others or which are not clearly feasible would result in score deduction.

When the brainstorming is done, discuss all ideas you have with your team members, and decide the the best ideas.

In the assignment, you must report:

• How the brainstorming session was conducted,
• What ideas you came up with,
• What you guys agreed as the best idea, and why.

Download this form for Assignment B. Fill it out with your team members and submit its PDF version to me. If you do not have a way to make a PDF file, you may submit your assignment as a Word file.

The subject of your email must be “Assignment B ([your team name])”.

In this assignment, you must create a presentation of your project and pitch your idea to other students.

Presentation is a very important activity for researchers to communicate and discuss ideas with others. This assignment is intended to offer an exercise on preparing a presentation material and doing a presentation. You (as a team) will be asked to give a presentation during the class.

Your presentation must cover the following points:

• Motivation of your project: What problems are you trying to solve? Why are they so important? Who are the target users?
• Solution proposal: How are you going to solve this problem?
• Prior work: What are a few examples of representative prior work? Show us at least three research projects that are closely related to your idea, including one that was discussed in this course.
• Development plan: How will you build your system/application? Explain potential technical challenges as well.

You may use any type of presentation software (e.g., Powerpoint, Keynote, Prezi, etc). But please make sure that your presentation is playable with the projector and screen at the classroom. You should double-check this by yourself before the class starts. Also bring a laptop or tablet for your presentation (maybe bringing another machine for back-up would be a good idea).

Each team presentation will be evaluated in the following criteria:

• Content quality (8 points): How well did your presentation cover the points specified in the assignment?
• Presentation material quality (8 points): How effectively did the presenters use visual materials? Too much text would be a deduction.
• Speech quality (8 points): How smooth was the speech? Was it easy for the audience to follow? Did you speak to the audience rather than keep looking at the projected screen or laptop?
• Equality of workload in the presentation (6 points): Each of the team member should be responsible for presenting part of the project. Make sure that you divide the presentation workload equally across all the team members.

Each of the team members must present at least one section of the presentation. You must prepare both your presentation material in English. You may present in either Japanese or English though English is strongly recommended. I understand that some of you are not English-native speakers, and this is why the evaluation does not consider your low-level English ability (e.g., pronunciation). Think well about how you can communicate your project in the vocabulary you have. I am not looking for very sophisticated expressions or poetic performance. Rather, try hard to communicate in a way that the audience can understand your idea quickly.

Each presentation is 12 minutes long, followed by a 3-minute Q&A session. Thus, 10 - 15 slides would suffice if you use PowerPoint or Keynote. Incorporate the tips I presented during the class into your presentation. For example, too much text or unnecessary visual effects in a slide would be detrimental to the score of “Presentation material quality”.

There is a penalty for under-run (shorter than 10 minutes) or over-run (longer than 14 minutes). The amount of the deduction will be determined based on how much under-run or over-run your presentation is.

After the class, please send me all the materials you used for your presentations. You may provide its copy to me after the class.

In this assignment, you must write up a grant proposal for your project. A grant proposal is as important as a publication because it is the main way for researchers to obtain funding. This assignment is intended to offer an exercise on this important activity as a researcher.

Your team is now going to apply for a one-year project grant proposal. It will provide a relatively small funding (15k - 30k USD; 1.5M - 3M JPY), but this would be sufficient to conduct an initial phase of research (e.g., creating a working proof-of-concept and attending a conference to present the work).

Download this form for Assignment D. Fill it out with your team members and submit its PDF version to me. If you do not have a way to make a PDF file, you may submit your assignment as a Word file. In the form, you must fill out:

• Project title
• Project members
• Abstract (150 - 300 words)
• Descriptions
  • Problems to be investigated, and its social and technical importance
  • Proposed solutions to solve the problems
  • Research approaches and implementation methods
  • Include diagrams or algorithms if appropriate
• Expected outcomes and deliverable
• Project schedule
• Estimated budget (in USD or JPY)
• Previous and related work

The proposal must be at least 4 pages, but no more than 10 pages.

The subject of your email must be “Assignment D ([your team name])”.

It is really important for me to have honest feedback from you guys. This is always a great opportunity for me to learn as an instructor and understand how a course like this can be improved in the future.

To collect your honest opinion, I have made my survey anonymized. You do not have to reveal your identity unless you really want to. I also promise that this survey does not affect your course score in any way.

If you are willing to offer your feedback to me, click this link to complete the survey. There are only a few questions, and it will take only 10 - 15 minutes (I believe).

The survey results may be shared with other professors at the same university. The survey is anonymized, but I will ensure that all identifiable information is removed before sharing.