Projects | Alison Lee |
OverviewHCICSCW Alison LeeHome PagePortfolio Publications Resume (HTM) Contact Information www.webcollab.comMain PageBibliography Portholes Course Publications
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Multimodal Interaction, Speech, and AccessibilityMy most recent work focused on mechanisms and frameworks to enhance user experiences in Eclipse, Eclipse rich clients and Web; specifically in the areas of multimodal interaction, speech, and accessibility. Several projects were conducted as part of this research:
Java + VoiceXML Programming ModelThis is an effort to leverage the XHTML + VoiceXML (X+V) programming model for non-Web platforms and to more broadly reuse voice artifacts. As with X+V, J+V enables Java developers to voice-enable GUI applications for multimodal deployment without having to learn a whole new language. Specifically, through the use of prepackaged dialogs and reusable VoiceXML code, the J+V APIs enable Java developers to add voice dialogs to their Java-based GUI widgets. The voice dialogs can be built by designers well-versed in speech interfaces; voice dialogs can be re-used by Java developers whose expertise lies in GUI design. Reuse of voice dialogs extends across different applications as well as different application container types (e.g., Web, Java). Aspects of Rich Accessibility User ExperiencesWe developed a broad-based approach to providing accessibility in graphical applications that employs the capabilities of the Eclipse platform and aspect-oriented programming (AOP) in a way that leverages the strengths of each. Writings
Web Accessibility ScaffoldingThe following is one prototype accessibility scaffolding from the work on Web Accessibility. The accessibility scaffoldings prototypes exploit our group's Web Adaptation Technology and my novel page segmentation heuristic. The scaffoldings present the elements, pathways, and organization of a Web page to users with minimal Web experience and varying cognitive limitations. Writings
New Paradigms for Web-Based CollaborationMy work on CSCW explored new paradigms for collaboration in the of e-commerce (e.g., electronic marketplaces, collaborative customer care) and ways in which social groups can enrich e-commerce experiences. This research had three foci. The first identified and incorporated into computational environments, the kinds of social information that can foster social interactions and collaboration among participants in online spaces and that can foster the formation of social groups in online spaces. The second developed collaboration tools, techniques, and infrastructures to support such activities in online spaces. The third studied the impact of such computational environments on social interactions in online spaces. Several projects were conducted as part of this research:
Socio-Technical PatternsIn collaboration with Catalina Danis and John C Thomas, we tried to codify and apply knowledge from social sciences and HCI and to use the patterns to help designers and developers to build social-technical applications. Building Social Interaction Web SitesI was involved in the development of two social interaction Web sites CHI 2002 Online Interactions known as CHIplace and Summer 2001 Co-op Program at IBM TJ Watson Research Center known as Portkey. The former is archived and available for public perusal where as the latter is closed to the Summer 2001 Co-op community members of mentors and students. The CHIplace site was such a success for CHI 2002 that CHI 2003 continued the project under the direction of Kia Hook and Martin Svenson from SICS. Since the end of CHI 2003, Loren Terveen and his group at University of Minnesota are evolving CHIplace to be a portal for professionals involved in human-computer interaction. Writings
Online Communities and Design of Social Interaction EnvironmentsIn collaboration with Catalina Danis and two summer students, this project focussed on:
Much of this work influenced the efforts to create a seed of a socially meaningful online space that can evolve through the social interactions of its participants. We explored a spatially-based social information system that visualizes the people, their activities, and the social interactions at eCommerce web sites. With a CMU interaction design student (Younghee Jung) during summer 1999, we explored the design of an online collaborative environment, known as ePlace, for fostering and sustaining online communities for eCommerce application domain. With a Georgia Tech CS student (Todd Miller) in the summer of 2000, we built a prototype of ePlace for the Shop IBM site. This work is not only about interaction design but also social visualization. Unlike information visualization which has as its goal of helping users digest information more effectively or data visualization which has as its goal of helping users analyze and see trends in the data, social visualization has as its goal of creating awareness and catalyzing social interactions among its users. It draws on knowledge from fields of architecture, urban design, social psychology/sociology, computer graphics, and interaction design to devise mechanisms to achieve its end goal. With the visualizations, end users can use interaction mechanisms built into the visualization to interact with other end users. Writings
Collaborative Customer CareI worked with a real bank to incorporate a novel customer care technology (called CLIVE) developed by my IBM colleagues within the bank's web site. This technology allows a customer connected via a modem to speak and share data with a CSR located behind the bank's electronic firewall. I worked with the bank to identify the applications and uses of this technology as well as gathering requirements and developing the design and scenarios of use. This project reinforced the need to think about how to provide users with a context for and expectation for using collaborative technologies. Clicking on a link, aside from a overloading of semantics, was not the right metaphor for initiating a collaboration with another individual. Writings
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