Empowering breast self-awareness: integrating augmented reality for comprehensive breast self-examination

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-13) Wang, Yijing

In recent years, Augmented Reality (AR) has seen a growing application in the healthcare industry, revolutionizing patient care, medical training, and diagnostics. In alignment with this technological trend, this thesis explores the development and evaluation of an innovative mobile application that harnesses the power of AR to enhance breast self-examinations. This application offers real-time, step-by-step instructions projected onto the user's body to ensure precise self-examinations, supplemented by personalized feedback and guidance for follow-up actions. Through this research, we have gained valuable insights into the fundamental pain points users encounter in breast self-examination, user attitudes toward the application of AR technology in this domain, and their reactions to the newly designed experience. These findings provide a wealth of information and assistance in shaping the future of breast self-examination, offering a more informed and enhanced user experience.
Designing an Interactive Experience for Local Elections Information to Increase Civic Participation Amongst Young Adults

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-13) Park, Chaeeun

Americans are uniquely situated in that they have more opportunities than people in other countries to vote due to the combination of municipal, state, and national elections. However out of these elections, local elections suffer from the lowest voter turnout despite the fact that these elections hold major influence in the daily lives of local residents. Paired with this, young, voting-aged adults (aged 18-29) have different frameworks for understanding and engaging with politics from previous generations. This divergence is rooted in their reliance on trusted personal networks in a vast sea of political information as well as their interest in specific social causes as opposed to the mechanisms of traditional political institutions. This study examines how young, voting-aged adults (ages 18-29) are both motivated and demoralized from civic engagement. Through design intervention, it explores how interactive games can help motivate young adults to become more civically engaged in their local elections through demystifying the perceived complex hostility of politics by utilizing roleplaying and gamification, helping young adults learn more about what is happening in their local environment, and fostering a cooperative model of civic engagement based on guided discussion. Finally, a tabletop game, Denizen, was developed in order to help facilitate political discussions amongst young adults and also help them learn more about local issues. The outcomes of this study underscore the importance of utilizing new engagement methods for young adults, especially for re-engaging young adults into traditional electoral duties. It also highlights the importance of knowledge-building and political expertise in improving overall civic motivation.
UX guide to microinteractions : Establishing a classification system to enable microinteraction design literacy among novice UX designers

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-12-11) Shankar, Abhishek

This study explores how identifying and classifying various animated microinteractions can help improve design literacy among UX/UI designers by integrating motion design elements. Microinteractions are small, task-specific actions that a user can trigger or experience within a user interface, such as liking a post, setting a status, or receiving a notification. They play a crucial role in providing feedback, guiding users, and adding an element of delight to the user experience. In this thesis, the focus is on the importance of microinteractions in enhancing the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. To better understand how designers work with microinteractions and motion in product design, subject matter experts (SMEs) were interviewed who revealed that non-motion designers often need help understanding microinteraction design language. To address this, a classification system was developed and hosted online, which permits UX/UI designers to access microinteraction design language. Microinteractions are classified into a visual design system based on triggers, functions, and principles of motion. This classification system was validated by UX/UI designers using interviews and questionnaires. The results showed that the system promotes cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration among design team members by introducing motion design language and terminologies through an organized classification system.
A Comparative Study: Influence on Real-World Consumer Perception of Products Presented in Augmented Reality

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-08-18) Chen, Kaiyuan

With the development of the mobile device, augmented reality (AR) is moving from the laboratory into the consumer market. Product presentation in the augmented environment has become a compelling function that helps consumers have a better perception of the product. In this article, we proposed a comparative study to figure out how users perceive the product model in the AR environment and the difference compared with the real-world product. Through this research, we will further understand which attributes of the product can be better perceived in AR. The product semantic differential method was used here to build the product evaluation metrics and compare the user perception of 3 types of product presentation based on product semantic.
Design Opportunities Tracking Related Cues to Support Remote Psychotherapy

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-26) Gao, Lan

Remote psychotherapy has been growing rapidly. Despite its increasing prevalence, it presents challenges such as privacy concerns, technological familiarity, and interaction blockers. Most significantly, it often compromises the therapeutic alliance—a key factor in effective psychotherapy—due to a lack of non-verbal cues and a perceived distance between client and therapist. This research aims to address these challenges through the integration of sensor tracking systems, which offer the potential to improve online interactions and support a stronger therapeutic alliance. We begin by exploring the opportunities and challenges of deploying sensor-tracking systems in remote psychotherapy, through qualitative analysis of interviews, card-sorting activities, and co-design sessions with 9 clients and 10 therapists. We subsequently propose a sensor-based remote psychotherapy platform, informed by the findings from these activities. Finally, we ran a user testing session conducted with 7 clients and 3 therapists to evaluate the feasibility of our proposal. This work offers insights into the deployment of sensor-tracking systems in remote psychotherapy, presenting valuable directions for enhancing the therapeutic alliance and overall experience for both clients and therapists.
Development of a priming package to aid in overcoming the experiential gap between student designers in a capstone course and users to improve quality of generated concepts

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05-23) Drawdy, Morgan Sophia

The primary objective of this thesis is to evaluate the extent to which priming packages overcome the experiential gap between student designers and pre-determined end users, with the ultimate outcome of improving the quality of concepts generated by the students to address the needs of the end users. This thesis was divided into two parts: 1) development of the general priming package structure/content and evaluation tools to grade the concepts on their adherence to the needs of stakeholders, and 2) an assessment of concepts generated by teams with and without access to the second-iteration priming package, with refinement based on feedback collected during the preliminary trials.
Nets and Knots: Techniques for Scaling Netted Lace

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-05-02) Johnston, Margaret

Traditional handcrafts have potential for a variety of applications in the modern field of industrial design, from their historic function in the creation of everyday objects to recent applications in projects that leverage modern technology to push the boundaries of a craft. Previous work has demonstrated success in projects that adapt craft techniques at a large scale to create new products or architectural designs. This study explores options for scaling up netted lace-making techniques for use in a Georgia Tech Research Institute project that intends to send a net into space to collect space debris. Though fishing nets and sports nets are already mass-produced at a large scale, the machines that make them lack the nuance to make more than a single type of net from a machine. They impose limits on the material of the net, the scale at which it is made, and the ability to incorporate unique design choices, such as crossed or gathered stitches, into the pattern of the netting. At the other extreme, small-scale handcraft methods of making netted lace allow for a wide variety of pattern choices but are labor intensive processes for the crafter. The traditional tools of netted lace become unwieldy at the scale necessary for this project. This thesis therefore proposes a new technique for net-making which fills the gap identified between industrial machines that mass produce fishing nets and the method that handcrafters use to make small lace samples. The tools and techniques created for this purpose, developed through analogy to a number of other textile crafts, decrease the labor required on the part of the crafter while preserving their ability to make a variety of pattern choices in the design of the net.
Design and Evaluate a Configurable TV Remote Control for People with Mild Cognitive Impairment

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-04-25) Du, Hanxiao

This master thesis aims to rethink how to design and evaluate a customizable and configurable tangible TV remote control for OAs with MCI. The device allows users to customize their remote control based on their personal needs and preferences and choose interaction types, functions, and components. We initiated the study by collecting users’ needs and insights via survey and conducting a co-design workshop with users to develop their tangible remote control. Finally, we developed a functional prototype and conducted a usability testing session with the users to understand the usability and usefulness of the prototype. The promising result of this study shows the benefit of customizable tangible interfaces in supporting OAs with MCI by simplifying their tasks while using complex electronic devices. We anticipate that configurable tangible interfaces could be beneficial to other similar populations (e.g., early-stage dementia or Alzheimer’s disease) and applicable to developing other complex electronic devices.
Study On The Impact Of AI Real-Time Emotion Suggestions On Users’ Social Experience In Online Conferences

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-12-19) Li, Xingyu

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have provided great opportunities for participating in social communication and carrying out empathic conversations through collaborating with people. However, Emotion AI with its currently low accuracy does not work well in social scenarios as the effect must be studied in the context it is being expressed, and observed emotion signals should not replace internally reported effects for affective computing applications. Affective Computing is a growing field making rapid strides toward improving Emotion AI. This project speculates, perhaps there will be a high-accuracy Emotion AI with an improved algorithm fitting complex social scenarios in the near future. To understand the effects of Emotion AI (artificial intelligence that learns to interpret and respond to human emotions) on people's interpersonal confidence, social experience, and emotion recognition ability, we designed a prototype, Adverb, providing real-time detailed emotion types in the online meeting software. This thesis study aims to investigate the following questions: How does emotional AI communicate with humans? What is the impact of AI information displays' advice on users' social intelligence and interpersonal confidence? What is the impact of AI information displays advice on users' emotion recognition ability? We conducted the user study employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, and thirty participants completed the survey and interview. This thesis is concluded with a discussion of the limitations and future work of human-AI collaboration. Our findings are as follows: (1) Displaying the categories of emotions from AI, overall affects users' social intelligence, however, there is no significant effect on social confidence. (2) Users wanted the AI to show its suggestions and explain its principles only when the users wanted it to do so. (3) In different social scenarios, different communication methods and information levels can be applied. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for user interfaces where users can collaborate with AI.
THE NON-EXISTENT CHAIR SERIES: EVALUATING GENERATIVE DESIGN OUTCOMES

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-08-02) Wu, Jiaying Ally

Generative Design has been a popular topic in the design world for a while, earlier inventions like shape grammar and space syntax generate geometrical designs with sets of rules defined by the user. The latest invention of generative design is artificial neural networks like GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), which created a new logic of generative design. Earlier inventions focused on geometrical exploration with applied rules; therefore, the generated designs are calculated results. GANs, on the other hand, because of the nature of deep learning networks - are like a black box. Since there is no way of supervising what happens within, there are levels of randomness and uncertainty. GANs are also trained with images instead of geometrical shapes or forms. Making it capable of exploring colors, image depth, as well as overall composition. In a way, it changed the logical decision-making process in design into something more spontaneous. AI also enabled a new production journey map from ideation to manufacture, introducing new design opportunities. However, when it comes to evaluating generative design, most of current work are done by developers. Which focused on statistical evaluations to calculate the similarities between the dataset and the generated images. While they are valuable for improving algorithm efficiency, it may not apply to the designs. Current evaluation methods lack empathy, especially when it comes to judging and critiquing good vs. bad design. This work aims to explore the usability and applicability of generative networks by coming up with non-statistical measurable features. This work aims to answer how realistic the generated designs need to be for them to be “viable”, and for designers to be able to recognize the object for what it is. And how the pursuit of photorealism in image generation networks may not apply to the field of design.