The first lab we visited on our 2014 CMU Field Trip was the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. We became members of an interdisciplinary team of programmers, psychologists, education designers, software architects, and computer engineers. Our third and fourth grade research fellows helped the team test their computer generated tutor as it interacted with our students to test the effectiveness of Virtual Mentors and Real-Life Learning. The first team interacted with a virtual tutor,Alex, under the direction of Samantha Finkelstein (PhD student on Cultural Congruence project), Alex Papangelis (postdoc), David Slebodnick (3D animator for Alex project), Debbo Datta (visiting researcher on Connection Machines project).
Sitting on the medicine ball of knowledge, Miriam bravely took the first turn, hesitantly at first then with more confidence. She worked to form questions and make hypotheses about the animals pictured for her and her virtual friend. Each student’s interaction was recorded by multiple cameras to analyze later for body language, depth and range of questions and responses, facial expressions and other factors the team is using to hypothesis, test, and reflect on their software interface.
A second team joined the Connection Machines Project with Zhou Yu (PhD student on Connection Machines project) and Evelyn Yarzebinski (lab manager). They looked at previously recorded interactions and had the kids generate testable variables to uncover and measure the quality and effectiveness of learning interactions.
The depth of inquiry struck Owen. He is creating a Mobile app using Processing to help people who need to refocus their attention during a cognitively hard task. So far, his focus has been on preparing the app to be pleasing to him. The brief time in the Institute has him considering how to test his design based on how others will use it.
Casey, preparing a 3D scale model of Baden Academy in MinecraftEdu for his project, was struck with the software that created the virtual mentor. The 3-D rendering software, Maya, is one he has heard of but not yet tried to program with. His experience in both Minecraft and Alice led him to some interesting questions about how the various gestures and facial expressions got created.
Kadie explained her project to the team, a website selling print on demand souvenirs to raise money to bring a Dream Flight Adventure Installation to the media lab. The lessons learned about interaction will be revisited as the website goes live and she begins to get analytics about how people look at her website and what they click on.
Eli talked about the documentaries he is making of each of the research fellows. Through his camera lens he captured moments from the day, but I also caught him checking out the multiple cameras filming the student-computer interactions and overheard a comment about how much footage they were creating. Even in fourth grade, Eli has grasped the tedious moments of research looking through hours of footage for the meaningful and revealing.
The researchers in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute had us looking ahead to having virtual technology partners in research yet focused on our efforts for the rest of the year on how we measure the usability of what we are creating.