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GVU Center

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70651

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Organizational Unit

Interactive Media Technology Center

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/1093

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 640

Roots of Distrust: Modern Technology and the Impact of a 19th Century Voter Suppression Plan

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2025-01-16) DeMillo, Richard

Much effort is devoted these days to understanding the root cause of distrust in election systems. Little effort is devoted to understanding the relationship between election technology and the historically significant distrust in populations whose rights have been denied. In this talk, I will first draw connections between the modern language used to justify the computerization of elections and the language of the Post-Reconstruction revision of the constitution of the state of Mississippi. I will use this analogy to bolster the argument that in modern times building "trust" in elections is counter-productive and that energy is better spent on developing confidence-building evidence-based methods for reaching agreement on election outcomes.
Youth Advocacy for Resilience to Disasters: Empowering Youth to Be Advocates for Change

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2025-01-09) Hyde, Allen

Frontline coastal communities are under increased threat from intersecting disasters. Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, heatwaves, heavy precipitation, and flooding are projected to rise in their incidence and overall severity over the coming decades due to climate change. Meanwhile, industries operating in ports are polluting the air and soil of nearby neighborhoods, and the negative health effects caused by industrial pollution can be exacerbated or redistributed by hurricanes and flooding. Through Youth Advocacy for Resilience to Disasters (YARDs), we seek to engage youth living in frontline communities in disaster resilience planning through mapmaking and advocacy through a cross-curricular STEAM program designed for middle school students. We designed a youth program because families are often busy with other activities, care work, and their employment that they can be difficult to engage; however, youth can be a gateway to access these busy families. Research has shown that engaging youth in advocacy can enhance disaster resilience. From 2021 to 2023, we implemented a 14-session curriculum that educates and empowers middle-school-aged participants to advocate for infrastructural improvements that can benefit themselves and their neighbors by learning about disaster resilience from the perspective of environmental justice and equity. Students then learn about the importance of civics and understanding power and representation in their community. The next module focuses on MapSpot, virtual mapmaking, and data to understand the assets and vulnerabilities in their communities related to disasters and climate. They then learn about green and gray infrastructure solutions to disasters. Finally, they develop an action plan and present their plan to local leaders (political and civic, including their families) that they have identified in their community to advocate for change. This curriculum has been piloted as an after-school program at a Title I school in Savannah and Chatham County's Public School System in the Fall of 2022 and twice as a summer camp in the summers of 2022 and 2023 at the Georgia Tech Savannah campus. Most recently, we ran the program as a 2-day camp in Cape Town, South Africa. This transdisciplinary and cross-curricular program includes elements and team members from diverse disciplines including sociology, urban planning, civil engineering, and digital media studies, as well as civic partners. We also refined and introduced a creative, accessible mapmaking tool, called Map Spot, to engage youth in data visualization and mapmaking to help make claims about disasters in their communities. 
Intelligent Textiles for Physical Interactions

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-11-14) Luo, Yiyue

Humans engage in a wide variety of daily activities by constantly interacting with the environment physically. Recording, modeling, and augmenting such physical interactions are fundamental to understanding human behaviors, promoting health monitoring and delivery, and fostering human-centric intelligent system designs. However, challenges arise from the pervasive and diverse nature of physical interactions: they occur across the human body at extended duration, are subjectively perceived by individuals and involve diverse input-output modalities. Practically deployable integrated interfaces for physical interactions are required to be scalable, seamlessly integrated, robust, and adaptable. In this talk, I will present three integrated textile-based systems for the recording, modeling, and augmentation of tactile interactions. First, I will introduce digital machine knitted full-sized tactile sensing garments for learning human-environment interactions. Then, I will briefly showcase the recording and modeling of tactile interactions in an ambient sensing scenario via an intelligent carpet. Lastly, I will describe adaptive tactile interactions transfer via digitally embroidered smart gloves. These innovations exemplify the opportunities by the combination of digital fabrication and artificial intelligence, enabling seamless observation of human activities, in-depth analysis of interactions with the surroundings, and strategies to augment our behaviors and intelligent systems.
Understanding the impact of floods on critical infrastructure networks

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-10-31) He, Yiyi

Critical infrastructure networks provide socio-economic services across local and regional scales. However, population and economic growth, urbanization, increasing infrastructure interdependency, and natural hazards – not least due to the worsening effects of climate change – are putting these infrastructure systems under increasing pressure. Given future climatic variations, a comprehensive understanding of the potential impact of climate-change-induced natural hazards on the intra- and interconnected critical infrastructure networks and network resilience options is still absent. Through three types of infrastructure networks as case studies, this talk discusses approaches to better understand climate change impacts on critical infrastructure networks.
Comprehending Human Behaviors with Everyday Wearables

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-10-31) Zhang, Cheng

Despite the rapid advancement of AI, computers' ability to comprehend human behaviors remains limited. For instance, commodity computing devices still face challenges in understanding even basic human daily activities such as eating and drinking. The primary obstacle lies in the absence of suitable sensing technologies capable of capturing and interpreting high-quality behavioral data in everyday settings. In this presentation, I will share my research on the development of everyday wearables that are minimally-obtrusive, privacy-aware, and low-power, yet capable of capturing and comprehending various body movements and poses that humans employ in their everyday activities. First, I will show how these sensing technologies can empower various everyday wearable form factors, including wristbands, necklaces, earphones, headphones, and glasses, to track essential body postures, such as facial expressions, gaze, finger poses, limb poses, as well as gestures on teeth and tongue. Then, I will demonstrate how, when paired with state-of-the-art AI, these everyday wearables can revolutionize how computers comprehend human behaviors. Specifically, I will focus on applications related to activity recognition, accessibility, and health sensing. Finally, I will discuss the prospects and challenges associated with the integration of AI and wearables to support users in the future of everyday computing.
Community-Engaged Research in Autism and ADHD Technologies

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-10-17) Hayes, Gillian R.

For over two decades, my research has focused on the development and evaluation of technologies to support people with autism and ADHD and their families, friends, and allies. This work, grounded in community-engaged research, reflects a commitment to creating tools that are not only effective but are co-designed with and evaluated by the people who will use them—children, families, educators, and clinicians. From wearable devices to ubiquitous technologies for classrooms and homes, from individual focused to societal and structural interventions, from studying to designing to deploying, the research of my group has spanned a variety of approaches to understanding and supporting the neurodivergent experience. Throughout this journey, the importance of long-term, sustained partnerships has been paramount. This approach ensures that the technologies we create are deeply relevant to the contexts in which they are deployed, while also addressing the ethical challenges that come with designing for vulnerable and minoritized populations. Community-engaged research is messy and fraught with systemic barriers, including publication biases and the complexities of maintaining relationships over time. Despite these challenges, the outcomes have been profound, with technological innovations leading to real-world impact. In this talk, I will explore the trajectory of this work, emphasizing key milestones in the development of autism and ADHD technologies. I will also reflect on the lessons learned from twenty years of community-engaged research, including the balance between scientific rigor and ethical responsibility, and the role that interdisciplinary partnerships play in making this work possible. Ultimately, this talk will underscore the critical role of community-driven innovation in shaping the future of technology for our increasingly neurodiverse world.
Reframing Climate Data: Situating Data in Histories in Place

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-10-03) Biggs, Heidi

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues we face today as a society. The phenomenon has inspired new awareness of human entanglements with non-human others (like plants, animals, and ecologies) as well as disparate impacts that fall along familiar lines (laid via histories) of race, gender, class, and access. In this talk, I discuss my research agenda, which uses design and making alongside humanistic theory and sensitivities to lay out critical agendas for Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (SHCI) and Interaction Design Research. Over the course of two design research projects, I discuss the entanglements of climate change, data, and embodied histories in place. By framing climate change impacts as tied to data practices, unevenly distributed, and historically situated, it shifts narratives to more local, actionable, and justice-oriented interventions. This work ultimately seeks to expand notions of criticality in sustainable HCI research.
(Re)working AI: Designing workplace technologies with and for labor

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-09-19) Fox, Sarah

Work is transforming rapidly. While some might suggest labor is in a perpetual state of change, the accelerated development and deployment of artificially intelligent (AI) systems within workplaces is set to meaningfully reshape the livelihoods of millions of workers across industries for decades to come. Though proponents see potential in automation as a means to rid work of monotony and boost productivity, many workers and worker advocates view AI as an existential threat to “good jobs” or those that provide meaningful employment, adequate pay, and necessary health benefits. This disconnect is rooted in a fundamental distance between those whose interests are prioritized in the development process and those who end up using the technology. Although the fields of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human-computer interaction (HCI) have a legacy of exploring methods of promoting worker participation in the design of particular workplace systems, less is understood about how participatory research approaches could be applied across the technology lifecycle—from procurement and integration to governance—to increase value for those on the frontlines. In this talk, Fox will outline the concept of “worker-centered design,” an approach that emphasizes the well-being and input of employees, aiming to enhance not only productivity but also cooperation, autonomy, and fulfillment. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic and design research, she will discuss three distinct cases in sectors facing different forms of technological change: 1) waste management, which is seeing a rise in robotics for sorting and disinfection; 2) public transportation, for which autonomous vehicle technologies are being developed; and 3) hospitality, which regularly employs algorithmic management. Across these sites, Fox describes labor-aligned efforts to evaluate the impacts of AI technologies on work practices and to develop methods and tools to ensure that working people have a voice in the creation, implementation, and governance of technologies in their workplaces.
Collaborative Approaches to Haptics and Soft Robotics Research

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-09-05) Yoshida, Kyle

Novel haptic interfaces and soft robots are integral to our increasingly digital world. Haptics can enhance robot teleoperation for various tasks including gaming, caregiving, and agriculture, while soft robots enable human-robot interaction and delicate object manipulation due to their flexibility. By leveraging collaborative, community-driven research, we can yield innovative and impactful outcomes aligned with these goals. In this talk, I will highlight several projects spanning mobile tactile displays and soft robotic actuators. Specifically, I will touch upon a 3-DoF wrist-worn haptic device for guidance and communication, a smartphone app used to democratize haptics research, and a versatile soft pneumatic actuator with reconfigurable fiber configurations. Moreover, I will demonstrate how technical expertise derived from research in the lab was coupled with the broader community to propel new research avenues. Making a conscious effort to uncover synergies between community and robotics research provides invaluable opportunities to benefit agriculture, human health, and everyday technology.
Scaffolding Emergent Futures: From Communities to Infrastructures

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-08-29) Kozubaev, Sandjar

Design researchers and practitioners have long been interested in shaping futures through objects, systems, and environments. This interest seems to be ubiquitous and is highly visible in industry, popular culture, and scholarly knowledge production. At the same time, local communities, particularly in the U.S., have been dealing with pressures of disinvestment in public and social services, along with the encroachment of privatization and commercial interests. This created an acute need for communities to foster alternative ways of being and knowing, opening emergent futures that are less visible but just as impactful. How might designers notice these future-making practices? Is there a role for design to take part in them? In this talk, we will explore some theoretical and methodological possibilities to answer these and other questions about design speculation and future making.