This paper presents Eclipse, a platform for low-cost urban environmental sensing using solar-powered and cellular-connected devices. Dense sensor networks promise to monitor pollution at fine spatial and temporal resolutions, yet few cities have actually implemented such networks due to high costs and limited accuracy. We address these barriers by developing an end-to-end framework for urban air quality sensing with minimal infrastructure requirements. We designed an unobtrusive device that collects data on fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ), temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pres-sure. A modular design further includes four low-cost gas sensors - Ozone (03), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO 2 ), Sulfur Dioxide (SO 2 ), and Carbon Monoxide (CO) - selected based on local priorities. We deployed 115 devices across Chicago, reliably collecting data for over 90% of expected sensor-hours from July 2 - September 30, 2021. We further developed a calibration strategy that reduced errors by 41.2 – 98.8%, improving accuracy to levels recommended for hotspot detection (PM 2.5 and 03) or education (NO 2 and SO 2 ). Through this work, we offer insights on the real-world deployment of a replicable, large-scale, end-to-end platform for hyperlocal urban environmental sensing.

Distributed sensor networks are increasingly used to collect high-resolution environmental data over extended time periods. However, it is unclear how to best design a sensor network to capture temporal and spatial variability of environmental factors in urban areas. This paper presents a real-world study to collect particulate matter and meteorological data via handheld sensing devices. The results show the power of mobile sensing networks in collecting spatially dense data and demonstrate their potential to capture temporal variability. The contributions of this work include a novel mobile sensor study design and affirmation that mobile sensing is worthwhile for urban data collection.

Year-round ultraviolet exposure silently causes skin damage that goes unnoticed until sunburn. Current personal wearables for monitoring UV exposure have not seen significant uptake, which may be attributed to their one-size-fits-all aesthetic or inapplicability to people with different skin tones. We present EcoPatches, inkjet-printable chemical patches that mediate a person's relationship with their environment by allowing them to create designs and formulations that resonate with them. Supporting human- and machine-interpretability for EcoPatches' visual changes means that users can glance at their EcoPatch during the day to see large exposure changes or take a picture of their EcoPatch with a smartphone app for more accurate and precise readings. We conducted an online survey to elicit visual design recommendations that support these features. We also evaluated both interpretation methods, finding that they achieved strong Pearson correlation coefficients with the \projectnames' known exposure levels (human: 0.79, app: 0.90).

Year-round ultraviolet exposure silently causes skin damage that goes unnoticed until sunburn. Current personal wearables for monitoring UV exposure have not seen significant uptake, which may be attributed to their one-size-fits-all aesthetic or inapplicability to people with different skin tones. We present EcoPatches, inkjet-printable chemical patches that mediate a person's relationship with their environment by allowing them to create designs and formulations that resonate with them. Supporting human- and machine-interpretability for EcoPatches' visual changes means that users can glance at their EcoPatch during the day to see large exposure changes or take a picture of their EcoPatch with a smartphone app for more accurate and precise readings. We conducted an online survey to elicit visual design recommendations that support these features. We also evaluated both interpretation methods, finding that they achieved strong Pearson correlation coefficients with the \projectnames' known exposure levels (human: 0.79, app: 0.90).

Understanding how racial information impacts human decision making in online systems is critical in today's world. Prior work revealed that race information of criminal defendants, when presented as a text field, had no significant impact on users' judgements of recidivism. We replicated and extended this work to explore how and when race information influences users' judgements, with respect to the saliency of presentation. Our results showed that adding photos to the race labels had a significant impact on recidivism predictions for users who identified as female, but not for those who identified as male. The race of the defendant also impacted these results, with black defendants being less likely to be predicted to recidivate compared to white defendants. These results have strong implications for how system-designers choose to display race information, and cautions researchers to be aware of gender and race effects when using Amazon Mechanical Turk workers.

Environmental hazards often go unnoticed because they are invisible to the naked eye, posing risks to our health over time. Project Calico aims to raise awareness of these risks by augmenting everyday fashion with color-changing chemical sensors that can be observed at a glance or captured by a smartphone camera. Project Calico leverages existing cosmetic and fabrication processes to democratize environmental sensing, enabling creators to make their own accessories. We present two fashionable instantiations of Project Calico involving UV irradiation. EcoHair, created by hair treatment, is UV-sensitive hair that intensifies in color saturation depending on the UV intensity. EcoPatches, created by inkjet printing, can be worn as temporary tattoos that change their color to reflect cumulative UV exposure over time. We present findings from two focus groups regarding the Project Calico vision and gathered insights from their overall impressions and projected use patterns.

Nonvisually Accessible Video Calling (NAVC) is a prototype that detects visual conversation cues in a video call and uses audio cues to convey them to a user who is blind or low-vision. NAVC uses audio cues inspired by movie soundtracks to convey Attention, Agreement, Disagreement, Happiness, Thinking, and Surprise. When designing NAVC, we partnered with people who are blind or low-vision through a user-centered design process that included need-finding interviews and design reviews. To evaluate NAVC, we conducted a user study with 16 participants. The study provided feedback on the NAVC prototype and showed that the participants could easily discern some cues, like Attention and Agreement, but had trouble distinguishing others. The accuracy of the prototype in detecting conversation cues emerged as a key concern, especially in avoiding false positives and in detecting negative emotions, which tend to be masked in social conversations. This research identified challenges and design opportunities in using AI models to enable accessible video calling.

This paper describes a micro-stress intervention system for information office workers in the workplace, their responses to the interventions and machine learning models to predict the most opportune timing for providing the interventions. We studied 30 office workers for 10 days and examined their work patterns by monitoring their computer and application usage, sleep, activity, heart rate and its variability, as well as the history of micro-stress interventions provided through our desktop software. We analyzed temporal patterns of stress intervention acceptance/rejection and the relationships between their subjective and objective responses to the interventions and perceived work engagement, challenge and stress levels. We then developed machine learning models to predict better stress intervention delivery timing based on this multi-modal data. We found that features from computer and application usage, activity, heart rate variability and stress intervention history showed up to 80.0% accuracy in predicting good or bad intervention timing using a multi-kernel support vector machine algorithm. These findings could help practitioners design the most effective, just-in-time, closed-loop, stress interventions. To our knowledge, this is one of the first papers to review opportune stress interventions' delivery timing research, which could have a big influence in designing stress intervention technologies.

If plants could talk to us, what would they say? Equally important how might they respond to us if we could converse with them? How might these conversations evolve and expand our ability to better relate with the Natural World? Project Florence is an artistic representation of a Plant-Human Interface Experience that is built on top of a scientific analysis of the plant and its environment. Paired with the ability to receive human input, the plant can return a response, thus promoting a two-way conversational experience. Combining Biology, Natural Language Research, Design, and Engineering? we have created an instantiation of a plant to human interface through the power of language. Project Florence enables people to converse with a plant by translating their text sentiment into a light frequency the plant can recognize and respond to.

While email provides numerous benefits in the workplace, it is unclear how patterns of email use might affect key workplace indicators of productivity and stress. We investigate how three email use patterns: duration, interruption habit, and batching, relate to perceived workplace productivity and stress. We tracked email usage with computer logging, biosensors and daily surveys for 40 information workers in their in situ workplace environments for 12 workdays. We found that the longer daily time spent on email, the lower was perceived productivity and the higher the measured stress. People who primarily check email through self-interruptions report higher productivity with longer email duration compared to those who rely on notifications. Batching email is associated with higher rated productivity with longer email duration, but despite widespread claims, we found no evidence that batching email leads to lower stress. We discuss the implications of our results for improving organizational email practices. Author

Given the importance of creativity for both personal and societal achievements, there have been consistent efforts to stimulate creative ability. But an important environmental factor --- blue (i.e., short wavelength) light --- has been relatively unexplored to date. Blue light improves a number of cognitive processes (e.g., attention, working memory and sleep) known to influence our creative abilities. In this study, we investigate the effects of blue light on enhancing creativity in tasks and compare it to the effects of walking, which has been shown to stimulate creative ability. Based on data from 21 participants over 2 weeks, we found that blue light resulted in a 24.3% increase in convergent thinking ability, while walking improved divergent thinking by 18%. We discuss the implications of the findings within the context of UbiComp research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of the impact of blue light on convergent and divergent thinking ability.

Positive wellbeing in the workplace is tied to better health. However, lack of wellbeing in the workplace is a serious problem in the U.S, is rising continually, and can lead to poor health conditions. In this study we investigate factors that might be associated with workplace wellbeing. We report on an in situ study in the workplace of 40 information workers whose mood was tracked for 12 days. We used a mixed-methods study using Fitbit actigraphs to measure sleep and physical activity, computer logging, and repeated daily surveys. We found that sleep and perceived productivity are positively correlated with affect balance (the balance of positive and negative affect), whereas concentration difficulty, and amount of time on workplace email, are negatively correlated with affect balance. Our model explains 48% of the variance of workplace mood. We discuss the value and challenges of multi-faceted measures of health as we move towards designing interdisciplinary digital health research.

While email has been shown to be beneficial in the workplace, studies have reported that extensive email use can bring costs. In this study we investigate exactly how time spent on email might be related to perceived productivity and stress in the workplace. We conducted a mixed methods approach using computer logging, biosensors and daily surveys with 40 information workers in their in situ workplace environments for two workweeks. We found that the more time employees spent on email, the lower was their perceived productivity and the higher their level of stress. The relationship between email use and productivity was mediated by a difficulty in focusing. We also found an effect of users’ email-checking habits: people who primarily check email in response to email notifications reported lower productivity compared to those who self-interrupt to check email. We discuss the implications of our results for improving organizational email practices.

We present Tattio, a fabrication process that draws from current body decoration processes (i.e., jewelry-like metallic temporary tattoos) for the creation of on-skin technology. The fabrication process generates functional components such as NFC tags, circuitry, to Thermochromic tattoos, while maintaining the aesthetics and user experience of existing metallic temporary tattoos. The fabrication process is low cost, accessible and customizable; we seek to enable individuals to design, make, and wear their own skin technology creations. We present the fabrication flow, fabricated components, and also an initial user study probing perceptions towards wearing Tattio circuitry.

While email provides numerous benefits in the workplace, it is unclear how patterns of email use might affect key workplace indicators of productivity and stress. We investigate how three email use patterns: duration, interruption habit, and batching, relate to perceived workplace productivity and stress. We tracked email usage with computer logging, biosensors and daily surveys for 40 information workers in their in situ workplace environments for 12 workdays. We found that the longer daily time spent on email, the lower was perceived productivity and the higher the measured stress. People who primarily check email through self-interruptions report higher productivity with longer email duration compared to those who rely on notifications. Batching email is associated with higher rated productivity with longer email duration, but despite widespread claims, we found no evidence that batching email leads to lower stress. We discuss the implications of our results for improving organizational email practices.

In HCI research, attention has focused on understanding external influences on workplace multitasking. We explore instead how multitasking might be influenced by individual factors: personality, stress, and sleep. Forty information workers' online activity was tracked over two work weeks. The median duration of online screen focus was 40 seconds. The personality trait of Neuroticism was associated with shorter online focus duration and Impulsivity-Urgency was associated with longer online focus duration. Stress and sleep duration showed trends to be inversely associated with online focus. Shorter focus duration was associated with lower assessed productivity at day's end. Factor analysis revealed a factor of lack of control which significantly predicts multitasking. Our results suggest that there could be a trait for distractibility where some individuals are susceptible to online attention shifting in the workplace. Our results have implications for information systems (e.g. educational systems, game design) where attention focus is key.

We present Tattio, a fabrication process that draws from current body decoration processes (i.e., jewelry-like metallic temporary tattoos) for the creation of on-skin technology. The fabrication process generates functional components such as NFC tags, circuitry, to Thermochromic tattoos, while maintaining the aesthetics and user experience of existing metallic temporary tattoos. The fabrication process is low cost, accessible and customizable; we seek to enable individuals to design, make, and wear their own skin technology creations. We present the fabrication flow, fabricated components, and also an initial user study probing perceptions towards wearing Tattio circuitry.

Various wearable sensors capturing body vibration, jaw movement, hand gesture, etc., have shown promise in detecting when one is currently eating. However, based on existing literature and user surveys conducted in this study, we argue that a Just-in-Time eating intervention, triggered upon detecting a current eating event, is sub-optimal. An eating intervention triggered at "About-to-Eat" moments could provide users with a further opportunity to adopt a better and healthier eating behavior. In this work, we present a wearable sensing framework that predicts "About-to-Eat" moments and the "Time until the Next Eating Event". The wearable sensing framework consists of an array of sensors that capture physical activity, location, heart rate, electrodermal activity, skin temperature and caloric expenditure. Using signal processing and machine learning on this raw multimodal sensor stream, we train an "About-to-Eat" moment classifier that reaches an average recall of 77%. The "Time until the Next Eating Event" regression model attains a correlation coefficient of 0.49. Personalization further increases the performance of both of the models to an average recall of 85% and correlation coefficient of 0.65. The contributions of this paper include user surveys related to this problem, the design of a system to predict about to eat moments and a regression model used to train multimodal sensory data in real time for potential eating interventions for the user.