As media multitasking becomes the most common form of entertainment consumption, foundational research is needed to explore actual patterns of multitasking behavior. This work uses direct observation to provide better insight into media multitasking, exploring visual cues that encourage or discourage switching. A first eyetracker study recorded consumer reactions to simultaneous television and webpage media coded on numerous content variables. Consistent with differences between peripheral and central vision, results show that lower-level visual cues (such as motion) were more effective at creating switches towards content, while higher-level perceptual cues (such as faces) were more effective at discouraging switches away. A second naturalistic study observed participants using a computer and television simultaneously, and established that media switching is rapid and constant. Breaks between show-to-commercial or commercial-to-show, or moving between webpages, led to increased switching in the seconds immediately following. Unlike lay theory, both show and commercial onsets favored towards-computer switches, further highlighting the importance of multitasking work that records and establishes baseline behavioral patterns.

As the rise of tablets and smartphones move the dominant interface for digital content from mouse or trackpad to direct touchscreen interaction, work is needed to explore the role of interfaces in shaping psychological reactions to online content. This research explores the role of direct-touch interfaces in product search and choice, and isolates the touch element from other form factor changes such as screen size. Results from an experimental study using a travel recommendation Web site show that a direct-touch interface (vs. a more traditional mouse interface) increases the number of alternatives searched, and biases evaluations toward tangible attributes such as décor and furniture over intangible attributes such as WiFi and employee demeanor. Direct-touch interfaces also elevate the importance of internal and subjective satisfaction metrics such as instinct over external and objective metrics such as reviews, which in turn increases anticipated satisfaction metrics. Findings suggest that interfaces can strongly affect how online content is explored, perceived, remembered, and acted on, and further work in interface psychology could be as fruitful as research exploring the content itself.

We have developed Noggin and Glass Gab, two Google Glass based systems to allow people with disabilities to choose Yes or No and spell out messages just by moving their head. Our goal is to allow people who cannot speak and do not have reliable control of their hands to communicate just with head movements. The advantage of using Google Glass is that the user, perhaps in a wheelchair, does not need a notebook computer or tablet computer. The system displays a pointer on the Google Glass screen and Yes and No buttons (Noggin) or an onscreen keyboard (Glass Gab). The user moves the pointer by head movement. Selection is made using dwell time, by having the pointer dwell over the buttons or letters for a second. The user can have Google Glass speak the message. Head motion is detected using the three axis gyroscope built into Glass.

This research explores how same-language subtitles-on-screen text that matches the spoken language-can enhance advertising effectiveness for television commercials on normal viewing audiences outside of foreign-language or deaf-viewer contexts. A preliminary eye-tracker study shows that same-language subtitles capture disproportionate visual attention, and a first study highlights that same-language commercial subtitles can increase brand recall and memory of other verbal ad information. Three further studies using 12 additional ads reinforce the positive effects of subtitles and show how same-language subtitle effectiveness varies with changes in visual and verbal ad complexity. In addition to showing how subtitles can increase behavioral intent, results also highlight how varying subtitle content affects memory gains and illustrate how subtitles can lead to negative effects in the uncommon situation that brand information is missing from the audio. As the efficacy of television advertising becomes increasingly debated, same-language subtitling is a simple way to boost advertising effectiveness.

As mouse-driven desktop computers give way to touchpad laptops and touchscreen tablets, the role of touch in online consumer behavior has become increasingly important. This work presents initial explorations into the effects of varying touch-based interfaces on consumers, and argues that research into the interfaces used to access content can be as important as research into the content itself. Two laboratory studies using a variety of touch technologies explore how touchscreen interfaces can increase perceived psychological ownership, and this in turn magnifies the endowment effect. Touch interfaces also interact with importance of product haptics and actual interface ownership in their effects on perceived product ownership, with stronger effects for products high in haptic importance and interfaces that are owned. Results highlight that perceptions of online products and marketing activities are filtered through the lens of the interfaces used to explore them, and touch-based devices like tablets can lead to higher product valuations when compared to traditional computers. (C) 2013 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Changes in the media landscape have made simultaneous usage of the computer and television increasingly commonplace, but little research has explored how individuals navigate this media multitasking environment. Prior work suggests that self-insight may be limited in media consumption and multitasking environments, reinforcing a rising need for direct observational research. A laboratory experiment recorded both younger and older individuals as they used a computer and television concurrently, multitasking across television and Internet content. Results show that individuals are attending primarily to the computer during media multitasking. Although gazes last longer on the computer when compared to the television, the overall distribution of gazes is strongly skewed toward very short gazes only a few seconds in duration. People switched between media at an extreme rate, averaging more than 4 switches per min and 120 switches over the 27.5-minute study exposure. Participants had little insight into their switching activity and recalled their switching behavior at an average of only 12 percent of their actual switching rate revealed in the objective data. Younger individuals switched more often than older individuals, but other individual differences such as stated multitasking preference and polychronicity had little effect on switching patterns or gaze duration. This overall pattern of results highlights the importance of exploring new media environments, such as the current drive toward media multitasking, and reinforces that self-monitoring, post hoc surveying, and lay theory may offer only limited insight into how individuals interact with media.

In the cases of paralysis so severe that a person's ability to control movement is limited to the muscles around the eyes, eye movements or blinks are the only way for the person to communicate. Interfaces that assist in such communication are often intrusive, require special hardware, or rely on active infrared illumination. A nonintrusive communication interface system called EyeKeys was therefore developed, which runs on a consumer-grade computer with video input from an inexpensive Universal Serial Bus camera and works without special lighting. The system detects and tracks the person's face using multiscale template correlation. The symmetry between left and right eyes is exploited to detect if the person is looking at the camera or to the left or right side. The detected eye direction can then be used to control applications such as spelling programs or games. The game ldquoBlockEscaperdquo was developed to evaluate the performance of EyeKeys and compare it to a mouse substitution interface. Experiments with EyeKeys have shown that it is an easily used computer input and control device for able-bodied people and has the potential to become a practical tool for people with severe paralysis.

How is our gaze dispersed across the screen when watching television? An exploratory eyetracker study with a custom-designed show indicated a very strong center-of-screen bias with gaze points following a roughly normal distribution peaked near screen center. Examining the show across time revealed that people were rarely all looking at the same location, and the amount of gaze dispersion within frames was highly variable. Different forms of programming yielded different levels of dispersion: static network 'bumpers' created the tightest visual groupings, and gaze dispersion for frames with show content was less than the dispersion for commercials. Advertising frames with brand logos generated higher dispersion than the non-branded advertisement portions, and repeated advertisements generated higher dispersion than their first-run counterparts.

Until recently children with very profound disabilities-children who cannot speak and can move only their eyes or head-could be made comfortable, but by and large could not be educated. Assistive technologies now enable them to communicate and to be educated alongside their non-disabled peers. This is a wonderful development. But what is the financial cost? In this paper we look in detail at the costs associated with the education of two children who have used assistive technologies developed at our university and compare them with the educational costs had they not started using the assistive technologies. For these two children the costs of the technologies and special teachers hired are offset by savings from the tuition and transportation of sending them to special schools.

We present a wearable real-time shiver monitor based on the MIThril LiveNet system, a flexible distributed mobile platform that can be used for a variety of proactive healthcare applications. In this exploratory study, we demonstrate that shivering can be accurately determined from continuous accelerometer sensing. Our preliminary results also indicate that shivering characteristics may be correlated with core body temperature, indicating the potential for creating a real-world cold exposure monitoring and classification wearable system.

In this paper we describe the MIThril 2003 wearablecomputing research platform. MIThril 2003 is a proven,accessible architecture that combines inexpensive,commodity hardware, a flexible sensor/peripheralinterconnection bus, and a powerful, light-weightdistributed sensing, classification, and inter-processcommunications software layer to facilitate thedevelopment of distributed real-time multimodal andcontext-aware applications.MIThril 2003 extends the previous MIThril modulararchitecture into the domain of large-scale wirelessgroup applications by leveraging the availability ofinexpensive Linux-based PDA hardware combined withinnovative open-source software and custom sensorhardware. We demonstrate the power and functionalityof MIThril 2003 by describing compelling real-worldwearable research applications created using MIThril2003 technology.

Single switch scanning is the access method of last resort for powered wheelchairs, primarily because drift is a significant problem. To correct a drift to the left or the right, the user must stop going forward, wait for the scanning device to get to the arrow for the direction of choice, click to turn the chair, stop turning, wait to scan to forward and then click to move forward again. Robotic assisted control can improve the ease and speed of driving using single switch scanning. Under robotic control, sensors are used to correct the drift problem and to avoid obstacles. The user is only required to give commands to change direction, for example "left" at an intersection. BACKGROUND Powered wheelchairs can be driven with a variety of access methods. The method of first choice is a joystick. If a person is unable to drive with a joystick, a multiple switch array such as a sip and puff system or a head switch array could be used. If a person can not use a multiple switch array, a single switch scanning device is used. Single switch scanning is the access method of last resort. With traditional powered wheelchairs, the need for frequent corrections to counteract drift and to move around obstacles makes driving difficult for single switch scanning users. Work on robotic wheelchairs has resulted in systems that can navigate indoor environments by taking commands from the user and carrying out the commands safely using sensors on the robot (for example, [Levine et al., 1990] and [Miller, in press]). Most of the work on robotic wheelchairs does not address the issues of access methods; the primary focus is on the navigation system. While it is important to have a safe navigation system, it also is important to consider how a person will be able to use the system. Simpson and Levine [1997] studied voice control as an access method for the NavChair system. Yanco and Gips [1997] investigated eye control as an access method. In this paper, we study single switch scanning as an access method for our robotic wheelchair system, Wheelesley, and compare these results to traditional control of a powered wheelchair with single switch scanning devices. The wheelchair system [Yanco, in press] consists of a robotic wheelchair and a user interface. To provide robotic assistance, the wheelchair uses infrared, sonar and bump sensors and an on-board processor to avoid obstacles and to keep the wheelchair centered in a hallway. The robotic wheelchair makes the necessary corrections to the current heading whenever one or more sensors indicate that an obstacle or wall is getting too close to the wheelchair. The user gives commands through the user interface, which runs on a Macintosh Powerbook. The switch is a Prentke Romich rocking level switch which is connected to the Powerbook using a Don Johnston Macintosh switch interface. For these experiments, the user interface consists of four large arrows and a stop button. The user interface was designed to look and function like a standard single switch scanning device. The interface scans to the forward arrow, the right arrow, the left arrow and the back arrow until the user selects a command by hitting a switch. The interface pauses at each possible selection for two seconds. Since all test subjects are able-bodied, the commands are latched. To stop driving or turning, the user hits the switch again. After the stop command is given, scanning starts again on the forward arrow. RESEARCH QUESTION Does robotic assistance improve driving performance compared to traditional manual control for a person using single switch scanning as an access method for a powered wheelchair? SINGLE SWITCH ROBOTIC WHEELCHAIR CONTROL METHODS To determine the answer, we designed an experiment to test the performance of subjects under robotic assisted control and under traditional manual control. Fourteen able-bodied subjects (7 men and 7 women), ranging in age from 18 to 43, were tested. At the beginning of a session, the subject was shown the wheelchair. Sensors that are used in robotic assisted control were pointed out and explained briefly. Safety measures, such as the power button, were discussed. Then the two driving methods were explained to the subject. After this introduction, the subject was seated in the wheelchair and the user interface was connected to the wheelchair. The single switch scanning interface was explained to the subject, who practiced using the interface first with the motors turned off. Once the subject was comfortable with the interface, the session entered a practice phase in which the subject first tried robotic assisted control and then traditional manual control. The subject practiced both methods until he expressed an understanding of each control method; subjects usually spent about two minutes trying each method. All practice was done off of the test course, so that the subject was not able learn anything that would assist him during the test phase. The course was designed to include obstacles (several couches and chairs, a fire extinguisher mounted to the wall 30 cm above the ground, a trash can, and a table) and turns to the left and to the right. A diagram of the course is given in Figure 1. The test phase consisted of four up-and-back traversals of the test course, alternating between the two control methods. Half of the subjects started with robotic assisted control and the other half started with traditional manual control. Each upand-back traversal consists of two parts: running the course from the couch area to the hallway and then the return trip. The turn in the middle of the course is not counted as part of the run, as turning completely around in the middle of the hallway is not a normal driving occurrence. The total session time for each subject was approximately 45 minutes. Most data collection was done by the computer which was running the user interface. The researcher only recorded the number of scrapes made by the chair. At the completion of the test, the user was asked to rank traditional manual control and robotic assisted control on a scale from 1 (worst) to 10 (best). RESULTS There were four experimental performance measures collected by the computer: (1) the number of clicks required to navigate the course, (2) the amount of time spent scanning to get to the necessary commands, (3) the amount of time spent moving or executing the given commands, and (4) the total amount of time spent on the course (scanning time plus moving time). Results are summarized in Table 1. Data for each experimental measure was analyzed using an ANOVA test. The differences between robotic control and manual control were highly significant with p<.0001 for all measures. On average, robotic control saved 60 clicks over manual control, which is a 71% improvement. Total time for robotic assisted control was 101 seconds shorter than manual control on average, which is a 25% improvement. The differences between the two trials were significant for clicks (p=.003) and for time spent scanning (p=.015). There was not a significant difference between trials for moving time or total time. Couch Chair Table Chair

Two video-based human-computer interaction tools are introduced that can activate a binary switch and issue a selection command. "BlinkLink," as the first tool is called, automatically detects a user's eye blinks and accurately measures their durations. The system is intended to provide an alternate input modality to allow people with severe disabilities to access a computer. Voluntary long blinks trigger mouse clicks, while involuntary short blinks are ignored. The system enables communication using "blink patterns:" sequences of long and short blinks which are interpreted as semiotic messages. The second tool, "EyebrowClicker," automatically detects when a user raises his or her eyebrows and then triggers a mouse click. Both systems can initialize themselves, track the eyes at frame rate, and recover in the event of errors. No special lighting is required. The systems have been tested with interactive games and a spelling program. Results demonstrate overall detection accuracy of 95.6% for BlinkLink and 89.0% for EyebrowClicker.

Education of people with very severe physical disabilities - people who cannot speak and are quadriplegic - can be greatly facilitated by the internet and by new computer access technologies. Five students between the ages of 17 and 24 have completed courses over the internet using access technologies that allow them to control the mouse pointer on the computer screen by moving just their eyes or head.

Tracking methods are evaluated in a real-time feature tracking system used for human-computer interaction (HCI). The Camera Mouse, a HCI system for people with severe disabilities that interprets video input to manipulate the mouse pointer, was improved and used as the test platform for this study. Tracking methods tested are the Lucas-Kanade tracker and a tracker based on normalized correlation. Both methods are evaluated with and without multidimensional Kalman filters. Two-, four-, and six-dimensional filters are tested to model feature location, velocity, and acceleration. The various tracker and filter combinations are evaluated for accuracy, computational efficiency, and practicality. The normalized correlation coefficient tracker without Kalman filtering is found to be the tracker best suited for a variety of HCI tasks.

The "Camera Mouse" system has been developed to provide computer access for people with severe disabilities. The system tracks the computer user's movements with a video camera and translates them into the movements of the mouse pointer on the screen. Body features such as the tip of the user's nose or finger can be tracked. The visual tracking algorithm is based on cropping an online template of the tracked feature from the current image frame and testing where this template correlates in the subsequent frame. The location of the highest correlation is interpreted as the new location of the feature in the subsequent frame. Various body features are examined for tracking robustness and user convenience. A group of 20 people without disabilities tested the Camera Mouse and quickly learned how to use it to spell out messages or play games. Twelve people with severe cerebral palsy or traumatic brain injury have tried the system, nine of whom have shown success. They interacted with their environment by spelling out messages and exploring the Internet.