HANDS projectmanager wishes all a Merry Xmas!

Dear partners of HANDS!
It has been a terrific year: experience the birth of HANDS, the organization of HANDS and the creation of the HANDS proposal. I am sure, that I talk for all the people here in Aalborg, that we are very thankful for your work, enthusiasm and dedication. It has been and is wonderful. We have received the evaluators score of the HANDS proposal and HANDS is still in the race. We are waiting for the final judgment from Bruxelles which is expected to appear in the end of January(positive answer) or in the end of March(negative answer). We wait, with excitement and worries.
Will HANDS be accepted?



Jesper Thestrup from the "Confederations of Danish Industries", the one of our most experienced EU-consultants, received the Evaluation Report December 15th.

Jesper mailed me shortly after this note:
"I would like to congratulate you with the remarkable good evaluation. A score on 13 points is very very good. I believe, HANDS can make it. The limit is usually between 12,5 and 13. Let us wait and see. You might end up on the reserve list instead.
But - wow, I am very happy, that you have made it this far. Let us press the thumbs and hope you will make it to the negotiations in Bruxelles"


Morten Aagaard


______________________________________

Agenda
1. The proposal has received its score - How are the chances?
2. Interpretation of the score and comments
3. The wish for next year
4. The X-mas gift



1. The proposal has received its score - How are the chances?
Chairman Peter Øhrstrøm mailed the result of the evaluation of the HANDS proposal december 14h. It consisted of a score and comments to the proposal. The score was 13 points out of maximum 15 points. HANDS received 4,5 points in the areas "Technical and Scientific quality" and in "Dissimination". And 4 point in "Management".
This score means that the HANDS proposal has passed the threshold(12 points) and is a qulified proposal.

Afterwards is he HANDS proposal ranked together with all the other proposals and the Commission chooses the ones with the highest score. Depending on budget for the objective ICT-2007.7.7.2 they will fund one or more. We do not know. And we do not know, how our competitors score are.
The HANDS proposal shall pass an ethical review and that was what we wanted.

The conclusion is:
The HANDS proposal is still in the race and do still have a fair chance.


2. Interpretation of the score and comments
After designing the HANDS project and writing the proposal it is very nice to read how it is evaluated. Quite a few of our values, efforts and ideas have actually evaluated positively. E.g they find Ethics valuable and do make an ethical review of the proposal. E.g. they find the examination of the state of the art satisfying. Eg they do believe, that the proposal can have significant impact. And furthermore: some of the week spots in the proposal has not been registered!

One critical comment which I actually agree upon is(and I know at least Joseph Mintz,LSBU do to) is this:
"However, it is insufficiently explained how the proposed tests (WP2, WP3) are interrelated, how
their results are transferred into SW and HW functional requirements and specifications and
communicated in an operational fashion to the SW development of WP5."

If we are invited inside the Berlaymont building we will have to consider this in more details.


About the score you can comment on it in many ways.
1. The scores we have received in the 3 evaluationareas are 4 and 4.5. The Commission describes 4 and 5 scores like this:
"4 -Good. The proposal addresses the criterion
well, although certain improvements are possible.
5 -Excellent. The proposal successfully addresses all relevant
aspects of the criterion in question. Any shortcomings are minor."

That is a victory.

2. My concern after the submission was, that the three evaluators would have very different background(read: they are recruited from different scientific branches) on the Technical and Scientific Quality. But that seemed not to be the case. They agree in many ways. And at least one of the three evaluators give the HANDS proposal the topscore 5.
Very satisfying.

I believe, that if you have 3 reviewers with different background, other proposals will have difficulties getting the topscore 5 points.

3.That is not the case with the "Management score. Judgment of Management differs not that much from one scientific branch to another(it is a ICT call and the evaluators come from the ICT area). The HANDS proposal do only get an 4, which I do not understand when reading their comment. At least are the critical comments valuable and should be used to optimize the overall project plan.

4. The score for the Impact do I interpret as a "feel good"-judgement. Much of the content in the Impact section of the HANDS proposal is happy smalltalk, with very few consequences. If I where evaluator, I would not find the considerations within such an sections very interesting. But they did find our Impact section worth giving either 4 or 5. My interpretation is, that
1) the evaluators believe the involvement of testschools having a positive effect on the impact,
2) the evaluators found the intention of the proposal read in the name of the proposal("HANDS") positive for the impact and finally
3) the evaluators felt good after reading the previous sections and wanted the HANDS proposal to be accepted.


But the one judgment, that I enjoy the most is this applause to you, dear HANDS partner:
"All of the partners have relevant experience in the area and the coordinator and all of the academic
partners are leading figures in their fields. Complementarity and balance is fine. It is particularly
interesting to have several schools involved as partners."



3. The wish for next year
Since the submission of the HANDS proposal I have heard a lot of different music, but one piece of music seems to reside permanently in my head: Over the Rainbow. A central part of the lyrics sounds like this:

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
There's a land that I've heard of once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true

Could it be next year?


4. The X-mas gift
I have uploaded a X-mas gift for all partners of HANDS. I experience, that some partners believe, that Persuasive Technologies are thoughts, which only can be realized, when spending minimum 3 software developers in 3 man month. That is not the case. Persuasive Technology has its roots in rhetorics and quite a few of the ideas can be integrated in everyday electronic communication with very few additional costs. The Xmas gift is therefore a paper, that I have created with the title "Designing Persuasive Technology for a dollar a day".
If HANDS is accepted in Bruxelles I would find it valuable, if Persuasive Technology not only is tested theory, but communication-praxis of HANDS partners.

Download your gift now!

Merry Xmas and a happy new year!

Morten Aagaard

B.J. Fogg visits Aalborg University November 8nd

The author of "Persuasive Technology using the computer to change the way we think and do" visited Aalborg University November 8nd. I was luckily invited by Professor Per Hasle together with a dozen others.

It was an informal gathering where he talked a little and the audience had an oppurtunity to give B.J. Fogg questions in about two hours. My complete summary of the talks is downloadable here.- 3 pages. Afterwards he gave an TV-interview(in english) to the danish magazine "Computerworld". It has not appeared on their webpage yet.

First he told a little about the history of Persuasive Technology and his present interests. The field first started to become something after his book "Persuasive Technology" was published. But since then, the interest has been growing rapidly. The first Persuasive Technology conferences has been held and a scientific group is about to establish.
His interests is mobile persuasion because he believes, that it will be the platform for persuasion.

Second the invited audience got a chance to ask questions. I was first to ask him. Unfortunately did I only have the oppurtunity to ask one question and I did ask any of the questions, that partners of HANDS mailed me. I am sorry.
I asked BJ if he had a need for new softwaretools which support the ideas of Persuasive Technology. And he did. He pointed out a couple of areas, where new tools and functionalities(read the summary) was needed. I could name a couple more.

Afterwards the was a longer debate about ethics initialised by a question from Peter Øhrstrøm. B.J. Fogg was very concered with the ethical aspects of Persuasive Technology and was eager to promote knowledge about the "dark side" of Persuasive Technology.

Finally he was asked to point out challenges of the researchfield "Persuasive Technology" and he pointed to areas out: Ethics and methodology.

When the all-too-fast-session was over I managed to ask him to dedicate my copy of his book, "Persuasive Technology". He happily accepted the invitation.

Proposal Submission Party Meeting November 2nd - the summary

The Party Meeting did not have any agenda and therefore a normal summary is not possible to write. The main objective of the Party Meeting was to have a good time together without any need to make decisions, give talks or simular. Just be together and talk and drink a good glass of non-alcoholic wine.

Participants(named as they sit on the photo to the left):
Myself, Michael Sørensen(Principal of Egebakken) Søren Madsen (Departmentmanager at Egebakken),Kristian Wolling(teacher at Egebakken), Chairman Peter(Professor at Aalborg University), Susan Gulstad(teacher at Egebakken), Carsten Nielsen(teacher at Ullerødskolen), Kirsten Sams(teacher at Egebakken) and Lars Moltsen(Softwaredeveloper at Wirtek).


Personally speaking I had a wonderful night. MeetingParticipants was in a good mood, singing, talking and laughing. So did I.

From the perspective of the proposal the partnership was strengtend.

• The HANDS network seems even stronger. Socially too.
• The Partymeeting sang the first two HANDS songs, "Send a mail"(lyrics, graphics, melody) and "Congratulation"(lyrics, graphics). The lyrics was in version 1.0 and there are room for improvements. The lyrics are opensource and version 2.0 is wanted.
  
• The first HANDS speeddating-algoritm designed by Wirtek worked excellent. Everybody was talking to everybody!
  
• The song contest "Which part of the proposal is singable and with which melody?", was won by Søren Madsen, who discovered, that the proposals abstract could be singed on the danish nationalhymn "Der er et yndigt land". Listen and sing!
  
• A HANDS drink greeting was invented. See the photos.
  

Only one mistake found its place at the Party Meeting: the non-alcoholic wine was absolutely undrinkable!

Morten

Proposal Submission Party Meeting November 2nd

Friday November 2nd will we have a small celebration for the succesfull proposal writing. In this post I will explain why we do it, how we do it and how you can contribute. The invitation for the Party Meeting is by itself a Party -download the PDF-version!

Why do we celebrate the submission of the HANDS proposal?
There are two reasons:
1. Because Partners of HANDS have joy being together, but not have had any chance to do so. We have been together at meetings, meetings and mail. The Party Meeting is the fun part of HANDS.
2. Because the work for creating a FP7 ICT proposal was huge. In terms of money I would estimate the price of the HANDS proposal to be around 30-35.000€. A lot of people did a great job, but the physical product the papers does not seem much.

How do we celebrate the submission?

1. We have this Proposal Submission Party Meeting. Download and colorprint the poster(cut the white margins away to see what it is like. Hopefully we have fun!
2. We hope you, as a partner will send participate virtually with a video. Send appr. 30 second video clip or upload it to youtube.

What can you do to support the HANDS proposal?

1. Participate in the Party Meeting(30€). Yipppi!
   
2. Read more about Persuasive Technology. Download and read the "Compilation for Partners".
3. Consider a Plan B. If the proposal is rejected, what then? Consider national and european oppurtunities. Contact and discuss your ideas with me. Before X-mas. Best before December 1nd.
   

Morten

Submission of HANDS – a great feeling

Five days after the submission I still suffer: I am still all too tired and I have absolutely no need to work effectively for any goal. Luckily do we have the autumm holiday and I will celebrate it by being together with my children. Henrik is on holiday too, Lars have not mailed anything since tuesday and my mailbox is as empty as it can be. It is almost scary. Only chairman Peter and Professor Per Hasle is still active.

Eventhough I still are a very tired my mind is filled with a feeling of thanksfulness to alle those people, who have helped the proposal to be qualified.
I have a feeling of being carried by a lot of people, rather than working alone.

The days before the final submission
Three weeks did I work very intense on the proposal and got approx. 20 HANDS mails pr day, Very little sleep and lots of decisions. At the same time I had to produce papers and participate in meetings.
But it was great joy too. People around me kept being entusiastic and encouraged me to continue. And the engagement of the HANDS involved never failed.

The projectplan of the proposal writing, a evolving prototype, appeared in the final stage to be a good one. All the major considerations was in place before the last two weeks. We had to focus on getting the EU-terminology right and complete the argumenations in various small subsections.

While writing I had a rhetorical discussion going on with myself. Many people involved in HANDS tells me, that I am very entusiastic and it influence them. In the EU application it is emphasised many times, that you have to be sober and formel. In writing and in the argumentation. How can I put my entusiasm in to the proposal? That discussion continued to fill my free timeslots. A week before submisssion I got the clue: the proposal has to argue for the proposal on every single sentence of the proposal. New arguments or variants but endless argue for the ideas of HANDS. Likewise when we argue for taking ethical concerns serious we do not only do so because we believe it is right, but because it is a more efficient in terms of persuasive efficiency.

Looking back on the work I wish I knew all about EU proposal writing that we do know now. The quality of the the proposal would probably be simular due to the fact, that the core idea of HANDS would have been the same. But the details of the proposal would be better and the organisation of the work would too.


But anyway:
Thank you very much!

Morten

Why the HANDS proposal succeed or fail?

The HANDS proposal might get accepted. It might not. The decision is in the hands of the FP7 administrators and their evaluators. It is a partly an sound and rational decision, partly an political decision and partly an matter of national interests.
In the sense that it is a rational proces, we can argue for both.

The HANDS proposal is being accepted because

It is indeed a new approach to caretaking of individuals with ASD

• The results of the HANDS project will have impact on caretaking of people with cognitive disabilities and generally the Mobile Persuasive Healthcare field.
• Persuasive Technology will take a giant step forward - in the Aalborg schools interpretation.
  
• All the ethical considerations are important and new
  
• The consortium is well balanced - geographically, economically, organisationally
  
• The impacts are great and fits well with the EU policies on the areas like: elderly people, marginalised people, the labourforce and more.
  

The HANDS proposal is being rejected because

• Teenagers with ASD is an minority, a too small minority.
• The proposal lacks hardcore ICT research. Design of Gadgets and simular. (We do not agree - knowledge about the users are very important.
  
• The consortium lacks an genuin partner with track record within ICT research for individuals with ASD.
• The ethical concerns plays are to large role in the proposal.
  

HANDS Partner meeting in Aalborg 14/9

Before the meeting, I asked Tobias Berglund from Svedenskolan in Stockholm to be "Guestblogger". He accepted the invitation and here is his story about the visit in Aalborg.
Morten Aagaard

The small delegation from UP Svedenskolan in sweden arrived in Aalborg on Wednesday 12:th.

It was me (Tobias Berglund) teacher at Svedenskolan and Gun-Marie Wicksen our principal.

13/9 Visit at Egebakken

After a good nights sleep we were picked up at our hotel by Kenneth Westergaard from Egebakken.

Once at Egebakken we got to meet head of departement Søren Madsen and principal Mikael Sørensen . We all had a short presentation and then we were shown a ppp about the PDA project at Agernhuset, which were very interesting.

We got some good information about Egebakken as school and we had some reflections about the similarities and differences in swedish and danish schoolsystems.

The tour at Egebakken was very interesting and we saw that when it came to the TEACCH inspired pedagogical systems Egebakken had many similarities to Svedenskolan.

It was in all a good visit and we all agreed that even though the HANDS project does not go through we would all benefit from some kind of cooperation and exchangesystem between the schools. It is always fun and interesting to meet proffesionals that got bit by the “autism fly”, and even more when they also are as nice and bonzer as the staff at Egebakken.

Thank you all for a nice visit!

Then it was off too see Morten at AAU.

And so we meet again. Was a little bit of my thoughts when i once again met this enthuseing dane. We also met professor Miklos Gyori from ELTE University in Hungary.

We sat down in the HANDs office and had a nice meeting wit Morten and Miklos where we discussed HANDs in general.

Morten is showing Gun-Marie the basis of HANDS

Dinner at MadDonna

At Thursday night there where a few of us that enjoyed a good meal and had a really good time together. Although swedes and danes in history have been united under different kings, both danish and swedish ones we have a lot of differences in our culture. One of the biggest one is the relationship to alcoholic beverages, this is nothing that got to be a problem this night , but it was discussed as many other things. A real nice evening ... ( it was a bit tidy for a swede in denmark)

Mad means food in danish so the restaurants name had nothing to do wit a crazy woman

14/9 HANDs Partner meeting

And so the time had come to do what we actually came to do.

I can honestly say that i first was a bit nervous about this, me at this EU project thinggy!? With a lot of professionals in different areas, and we were supposed to talk about economics and budgets... well it was just to get there and “get the party started”

The meeting was very interesting and full of meanigfull discussions. It was obvious that we all came from different professional areas and saw things from different point of views but it seemed like we all were going in the same direction.

Present at the meeting was;

Professor Miklos Gyori, ELTE University

Morten Aagaard, project manager

Henrik Sand, Aau fond raising

Jesper Krab, Senario

Lars Moltsen, Wirtek

Carsten Nielsen, teacher Ullerød Skolen

Julia Jespersen, persuasive design Aau

Gun-Marie Wicksén, principal Svedenskolan

TobiasBerglund, teacher Svedenskolan

Kristian Wolling, teacher Egebakken

Søren Madsen, head of department Egebakken

Mich

ael Sørensen, principal Egebakken

Søren Madsen, head of department at Egebakken held a short welcoming and we all had a short introduction.

At first it was professor Peter Ohrstrom who was going to have the initial introduction to the HANDs project. Altho

ugh he was not there in person he did it anyway –by letting us see a movie where he did the presentation

PeterOhrstrom- the movie-

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes.... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

Then it was all ears toward whoever was standing in front of the slides!

It was much information and as written earlier we had some giving discussoions.

Here is a short “who said what” and “what was decided”

Objectives and the Proposal

Projectmanager Morten Aagaard

Morten talked about the importance to get the proposal to contain what we actually want to do, and also the importance in writing it in the right way

Heexplained about FP7 and that HANDS is a STREP; Specific Target Research Project. Further he explained what parts the proposal consist of, and how the evaluators scoreboard works. He pointed out the values and properties of HANDs , Persuasive technology, Open source, Usercentric design, the consideration of ethics, Interdisciplinary work with involvement of the proffessional practitioner.

He had some considerations concerning, collaboration between research and development., the role of ethics, and his role in the project.

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

We also had time for lunch, a good and well needed pause in all the "infoinput". It was a modern kind of smorrebrod, (open9faced sandwich) it tasted well.

Suggestions and questions about research methodology in HANDS

Ass.

Professor Miklos Gyori, ELTE University

Miklos gave us some understanding when it came to research and the importance in having a
standard testing system of the pupils that will be a part of the project.

He also talked about the need to have a control group, or else it will not be possible to have some way of evaluating once the procject is finished.

Miklos Gyori

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes... but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

WorkPackage, who do what, when?

Projectmanager Morten Aagaard

We got introduced to the meaning of what a “Workpackage” is and the workpackages of HANDS. We pointed out workpackage leaders and who was to participate in wich workpackage. Timeplans were shown, who is supposed to do what and when and how long it is supposed to take. Morten also showed a estimated amount of manmonths dedicated to every workpackage.

Carsten, Lars and Jesper are looking thoughtfull

...at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes but i just cant wait to get the proposal through and get the tests started with my pupils)

Part a & Budget – an overwiev

Henrik Sand AAU Fund raising and HANDs coordinator

Well what can i say... Coordinator rules....

But... . participants can negotiate

Here it got to be a lot of economic galimatias wich i dont think is necessary to be written here, the core of the HANDS and what we are working with now is pretty much said in the text above.

... at the same moment in my head.... (Interesting ,, yes but i just cant wait to get the proposal thru and get the tests started with my pupils

We , Gun-Marie and i finished our visit in Aalborg having a beer with Kristian and Carsten before we got a lift to the airport....

I did promise to keep it short .. but i just couldnt ...

Thank you all for a really nice visit hope to see you all again...

Proof of Concept activity shows, that not only ASD-pupils are unique – so are ASD-teachers!

Better late than never!

In the middle of a busy June(to be exact: June 8th) I planned, arranged and carried through a Paper prototype test with three teachers from Egebakken as a HANDS Proof of Concept activity. Unfortunately have I not had time to analyse the data from the experiment, but I have a strong personal need to tell about the immediate results from the experiment.

I believe, that my working hours will be dedicated to writing the HANDS proposal.

The main conclusions of the test are in the bottom of this post.

The motivation for this Proof of Concept activities was a need to prove – theoretically – the benefit of the HANDS concept.

The experiment setup was:

• Nice and for the testteachers familiar surroundings – in a classroom at Egebakken
• Three teachers who each was given 3 real world pedagogical problems, which they had to consider thinking aloud one after the other. All teachers were from Egebakken: Susan Gulstad, Kristian Wolling and Søren Madsen.
• They could solve the problem by taking or sketching solutions.
• I was testleader asking them positive yes questions and possibly suggesting to them computertools to be a part of the solution.
• Each realworld problem case was elaborated in approximately 15 minutes.
• The datacollection methods were videorecording of the whole test and written a report.
  Special thanks to Anne-Katrine Kjaer Christensen and Julie Leth Jespersen, students at Aalborg University, Institute of Communication.

The immediate impression of the test was overwhelming. Very. While the test took place, Anne-Katrine, Julie and I was overwhelmed by knowledge, considerations, interesting perspectives and much, much more. This made it nice to end the session so that I did not get any more new information, even though that I knew, I had to continue and get as many data out of the experiment as possible.

The test in other words was well functioning. The real world problems were relevant and the teachers were more than willing to think-aloud. They did not by themselves suggest solutions the problem by using Pdas.

Main test conclusion are

• Teachers are different. The three teachers did not have the same methodology to solve the same problems.
• They were open towards solution with pdas, but they did not suggest it themselves.

• Internal motivation of the pupil was always considered.

• They referred to a common set of methods, which they wanted to apply in different situations.

• One method – Simple Safe Success – seems very valuable to put into a pda.

The fact that the three teachers seemed to have differentways of elaborating a real world problem seems troublesome. Unique teachers’ hers personalities. Uak! But they had several things in common the most valuable, they had methods in common. Most profound was the use of SSS, Simple Safe Success’. A method which can easily be formalized and turned into a computerprogram.

In general methods are formalizations of everyday pedagogical work and these methods should be integrated into the pda.

If I had time to analyze the video and testreport several other very interesting testresults will appear.

The HANDS project aims to integrate the teachers' professional intuition and this experiment was the first study in the field.

An interestering and valuable experiment.

HANDS-whole-day-seminar in July - valuable and chearfull day

July 31th was selected to be a HANDS-whole-day-seminar at Aalborg University.

The invited partners was the core group in Aalborg: Aalborg University(Persuasive Design group), Egebakken – school for children with ASD and Wirtek(Romania)

9 persons participated in a valuable, interesting and cheerful day together.

In the seminar the first real version of the proposal(version 1) was published and critized.

The mainresult of the seminar was

Establishment of the writing group: Henrik Sand, Lars Moltsen(Wirtek), Susan Gulstad(Egebakken), Miklos Gyori(Budapest), Tia Hansen(AAU) and Morten Aagaard(AAU)

Establishment of The marketanalysisgroup: Morten Aagaard(AAU), Søren Madsen(Egebakken)

Establishment of The usecasescenario group: Morten Aagaard(AAU) and Kristian Wolling(Egebakken)

Agrement, that a HANDS meeting for all partners of HANDS is a good idea. Should be placed primo September.

Several participants had each an item on the agenda, which they had to resume. The resumes differ a lot.

The agenda was

HANDS soft roles

1. Presentation of the participants and the agenda
2. A personal introduction /Morten Aagaard – the slides, the resume.
   I gave a talk about core projectvalues of HANDS. In headlines it is: HANDS have some valuable European perspectives for the partners in Aalborg, user participartory design, an interdisciplinary design project demands openness towards other peoples ideas and the acronym HANDS is an oppurtunity to have fun together and create an open projectatmosphere.
   
   
3. Some perspectives on Persuasive Design/ Professor Per Hasle, AAU The resume
   Unfortunately had Per Hasle become ill and the Anne-Katrine Kjaer Christensen(Elite-student at Aalborg University) managed to be plan B. She had participated(May 2007) in the conference “Persuasive Technology 2007” at Stanford and told us, what state of the art in Persuasive Technology. A clear trend is mobile persuasion. Much work within the area is dedicated to experiments using the terms identified in B.J. Foggs book,”Persuasive Technology”. But to call research.. Anne-Katrine Kjaer Christensen was not sure. She was sure, that HANDS would be valuable to present at the next Persuasive Technology conference in Oulu 2008.
   
   
4. Why does progress in the teaching and caretaking of individuals with ASD have wider perspectives and how domight it interest professionals in other pedagogical areas? / Michael Sørensen, Manager of Egebakken, Vodskov – the slides the resume
   Michael presented the problem of being an individual with an autismdiagnosis. Lack of communication skills, social abilities and lack theory of mind. And he told about Egebakkens value of using pdas: to structure a chaotic everyday for the children with autism diagnosis.
   
   
5. How is the HANDS userexperience?/Morten Aagaard – the slide
   The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item. But the slides are available..
   
   
6. Preevaluation of the HANDS proposal/ Tommi Nielsen og Lone Grøndahl Kristensen, AAU fundraising office - the resume
   Tommy and Lone gave a razor sharp and very critical walkthrough of the proposal. They pointed out several very important problems in the proposal. Simple technical errors but also very many big mistakes was evident. The most important one was, that the objectives were not understandable. Furthermore, we asked Lone and Tommi, who they would recommend as the Head of HANDS. They did not doubt a second and pted at Peter Øhrstrøm.
7. Management structure, Ressource control and Risk management is needed too!/ Henrik Sand, Fundrasing & project manager, Institut for Kommunikation, AAU - the resume
   Henrik Sand talked about the importance of writing a good proposal and the core of a good proposal is to have objectives, which respond to the challenge.
   Furthermore Henrik stressed the importance of partners, who are familiar with each know the objectives well. He suggested(strongly supported by Lars Moltsen from Wirtek) that we should arranged an meeting in September for all partners. The participants agreed.
   
   

The meeting decided to make decisions instead of receiving new input.

The decisions were
Establishment of the writing group: Henrik Sand, Lars Moltsen(Wirtek), Susan Gulstad(Egebakken), Miklos Gyori(Budapest), Tia Hansen(AAU) and Morten Aagaard(AAU)

Establishment of The marketanalysisgroup: Morten Aagaard(AAU), Søren Madsen(Egebakken)

Establishment of The usecasescenario group: Morten Aagaard(AAU) and Kristian Wolling(Egebakken)

Agrement, that a HANDS meeting for all partners of HANDS is a good idea. Should be set for September.

8. Ethical concerns and WorkPackages. How to share Workpackage responsibility? / Morten Aagaard
   The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item.
9. Gift to particpants and establishment of the HANDS proposal in the EU’ EEPS proposal database.
   The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item.
10. Eventually
    The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item.

All in all a good seminar which pushed the HANDS proposal further.

Proof of Concept activity – Talk and debate on Institute of Communication/AAU

I made a personal walkthrough of the HANDS project objective and organzational challenges. It was positively but critically debated by an audience primarily from Aalborg University. But there where a couple of participators from HANDS partners.
The debate about HANDS was orientated towards
a) how to incorporate ethics in the design process
b) What type of testing and how to use the empirical data and
c) The main objective should be measurable.
Many valuable comments where given. Thank you to all participants of the meeting. The summary was written by Julie Leth. Thank you. My slides is here.

My motivation for this Proof of Concept meeting was the expectation, that the HANDS proposal will not be evaluated by qualified proposal-evaluators. Either will the evaluator have a Computer Science background, a cognitive psychology background or they will have an Human Computer Interaction background. Persuasive Technology is far new too the proposal evaluators.

In other words is this Proof of Concept activity my own desire to make a critical and Persuasive Technology competent review of the HANDS project.

In reality there where two obstacles to make succeed: first I had change from being in “Selling-mode” to an academic critical mode. Localize and explain the weak issues in HANDS and tell it to an audience which could be very critical. Second I had to explain the actual status of the design of HANDS within one hour.

The first obstacle was managed during the preparation of the talk. But it was initially difficult. To be open and to hope for critical comments. Unfortunately was the audience very positive and eager to make the project “come true” and wanted to contribute very constructively. It was a nice feeling but somehow too easy.

The second obstacle, introducing HANDS within one hour, was difficult. Even though the audience was knowledgeable about Persuasive Technology it wasn’t enough. Introducing HANDS software components demands that you describe the persuasive aims, you describe how you can achieve credibility and then you can explain the use of the functional triad. And when you talk about social actors things really become “scientific” or spectacular. Even a knowledgeable audience isnot familiar with the design choices. It takes a while to explain and it takes even more to digest.

Despite these reservations the meeting was valuable. It was not a complete walkthrough of the objectives of HANDS and all the challenges. But several vital HANDS issues were debated.

I will mention three issues here

1. Ethical issues.
The design of the social actor may introduce ethical problems. If the user gets too dependent of the social actor and too involved - how do you handle that? Ethical issues should (in a Scandinavian Persuasive tradition) be involved in the design process, not afterwards or at milestones, but a part of the systemdevelopment process.

b) What type of testing and how to use the empirical data.

Due to the fact that many research fields and traditions are included in the HANDS project it is not known how the empirical experiment should be designed. Very very true. Furthermore 1) the dataset size will be small(100<) 2) single individual with ASD have similarities with other individuals with ASD. And differs too. 3) The testsites will have to adapt the experiment to the single individuals which requireso not one experiment but many experiments.

c) The main objective should be measurable.

The meeting had a debate on the main objective of the proposal. The experienced EU-participators stressed explicitly, that it is very important to make the objective measureable. The same with all WorkPackages. EU needs projects which are not a risky business. The research design of HANDS makes it worthwhile to consider this very much. Quantitative research is far more easy to measure and HANDS will be a research
project primarily based on qualitative data.

There where other valuable comments. All valuable comments that will be integrated in the proposal. Thank you to the contributors.

Visit to London South Bank University - success!

I met Joseph Mintz from London SouthBank University at the Meeting of Minds conference back in February. Joseph teaches at a PostGraduate Program for Teachers specializing in children with ASD. At the moment he is presenting his paper tothe Emotions 2007 conference in the Autum. Issues in his work are children with ASD or Asperges syndrome that have a life in mainstreamschools, where they act differently than the other pupils and have to manage that somehow. It is a central issue in caretaking of children and teenagers with ASD.

But before Joseph Mintz started teaching and researching at LSBU, he had a carrier in the IT-industri, which in this project can be of great value.

Before going to London we had several negotiations.
Firstly I had asked Egebakken, if one member from the management could participate. I did so, because I emphazise teachers experience very much. Their knowledge, experiences, and competences should have a central and large role in the HANDS project. If we had the opportunity to visit a school in GB it would be nice. Informationofficer Susan Guldstad was asked to participate and it was a good choice. She is eager to push the project forward, openminded and critical. And as an surplus value she is taking an NLP-education and is always in a good mood.

Secondly while I started negotiation with Joseph, it happened that his father had a very larger operation and Joseph's time and attention was neded there. I must admit, I was pushy and Joseph managed to handle both his father and planning a very large and interesting program for Susan and me.

We had one day together at LSBU together with interesting and qualified staffmembers. We meet

• Peter Winbourne, reader in Mathematics Education
• Caty March, Senior Lecturer in Professional Studies,and a teacher with considerable experience in working with children with ASD
• Xristine Faulkner, Reader in Human Computer Interaction(I have used her books in my own teaching!!)
• Julia Power, European Programmes Manager at LSBU
• and finally Sally Inman, Head of Department

The invited people represented very different views on ICT and ASD which made it valuable and interesting. Through the talks we had to explain and argue for the HANDS project in a new manner.

Especially was it interesting to consider

• Research methodology
• The term "Social inclusion"

According to Research Methodology we tried to elaborate a methodology based on a combination of qualitativeve dataand quantitative data. We tried, but - I believe - we agreed, that the terms in Persuasive Technology and the intention of the project had to be proved first and it limited our debate to a vague conclusion that HANDS should rather be considered to be several qualitative experiments. This was the first argument. The second argument was - that our empirical data will not form a massive amount of quantitative data, (rather the opposite due to the fact, that the phenomena we will observe is behaviors of teenagers with ASD) which makes it possible to make clear and simple verification of HANDS software.

From the applications point of view it is fully acceptable. FP7-challenge 7 objective 2 states, applications should be considered to be Proof-of-Concept projects.

Furthermore it was noted by Joseph and I, that the HANDS project allow space for a new (in ASD research) type of methodtriangulation: the classical data is some kind of observation by researcher. In the HANDS project we have a very unique source of data: the uninterpretated logfiles which is a registration of the actual use of the HANDS software.

The term social inclusion played an important role in the design of schooloffers to the children with ASD in GB. The politicians in GB wants more children with ASD to attend mainstreamschools and the term social inclusion of young marginalized people from the EU-FP7 challenge 7 objective is in GB context interpreted to be a support of that intention.

The clear preproject conclusion was, that more testsiteschools should be mainstreamschools integrating children with ASD.

After this long and interesting day we finalized the talks with the head of department, Sallyre Inman. She warned us in believing that good EU-proposals always areaccepted. I believe she is right.

LSBU gave two valuable offers more:

• Julia Power offered to read the proposal through before uploading to ESSP
• Xristine Faulkner offered to make an evaluation of the userinterface of HANDS.
  

The day at LSBU together with Joseph and his colleageus was indeed a valuable day.

Joseph promised to send the "Letter of Intent".

Thrilling complications - new informations appears!

While I was in Budapest, Miklos and I talked about the process of writing an EU proposal. I said I expected that there would appear information one day - while writing - that will change the whole proposal. Miklos replied, that he agreed and the only thing you can do is to talk with as many people as possible.
It happened June 7th: new information appeared and should the whole project be put in the trash? Luckily not!

I joined a EU-application information meeting in Aarhus together with Lars Moltsen from Wirtek. I met Anette Fløcke Lorentzen, from the Danish Research and Innovationsministerium, who initially was the person(together with others) who funded the HANDS preproject. While talking with her, she thought that the HANDS proposal did not match the objective(FP7-challenge 7, 2d)! Eventhough she had been funding the HANDS project and implicitly verified the match between proposal and objective!
A true Catch 22 situation - a bureaucratic problem, which should not have existed!

She was very polite(!) and recommended that I call the Danish EU-employee responsible for that challenge and talk with him("....every word in an FP7-objective is very seriously considered - the proposal has to aim to achieve the objective exactly").

She gave me a telephone, where the danish EU-employee phonenumber(Peter Wintlev-Jensen) was dialed, and I just had to press "Call". I got the feeling like someone was giving me a pistol and asking me to commit suicide!
I had to refuse her offer, and plan the talk with Peter Wintlev-Jensen.
It was four days before I could call him. His answer was a clear "Yes, the users in focus of the HANDS project are for sure a socially marginalized group of young people and very interesting".
And more. It was very interesting to get an interpretation of the FP7-text direct from the source.
The most valuable ....were:

• EU wants Proof of Concepts research projects.


• EU wants projects with high quality research foundation.


• EU wants small projects


• EU wants innovative Proof of Concept projects, which afterwards can be the foundation of a larger project, which include products which hits the market.


• Every proposal must seriously consider the expected impact of the project.


• Peter Wintlev-Jensen expected, that he gaming industry will send in a couple of proposals.
  

All summed up: HANDS fits those demands very well and my expectations to the success of HANDS were raised remarkably after the phone call.

HANDS visit to Stockholm June 5th - success!

I hitted SvedenSkolan in Stockholm a little north to the citycenter in time. And had a joyfull and interesting talk and negotiation with Tobias(Teacher), Niklas Ahlstrom(VCEO), Gun Marie Wicksen (CEO), Agneta(assisting CEO. We ended our meeting by signing the “Letter of Intent”.

Coming to Stockholm and Svedenskolan was like coming home. It was not that frighting and different as visiting Budapest. First we discussed whether we should held the meeting in English or Skandinavian. We decided it should be hold in English.

Some facts
Svedenskolan has 70 pupils, it is based on TEACCH-pedagogical methods, the pupil/teacher ratio is similar to Egebakken in Denmark, the potentially involved teachers are invited to the meeting, and the management are nice and informal. And they used one PDA for one pupil. Equipped with asoftware “HANDI2” - well-known in Denmark.

Michael(Principal of Egebakken) evaluated beforehand, that Svedenskolan and Egebakken share many values and properties and after visiting SS I still have that viewpoint.

SS is going to be “my” testsite in HANDS and I feel very comfortable about that. HANDS is in good hands in Swedan skolan.

After I had made my presentation(view my slides here and more) I was gently asked to leave the room, so that they could make their own decision. Meanwhile I was given a tourdeforce of Svedenskolan by two very kind psychologists.

Critical comments on HANDS ideas

During the discussion afterwards Swedan Skolan raised several important issues or themes. The most valuable was:

• They commented that personal rights to own data is an ethical issue in HANDS which should be seriously considered. The laws might differ from one country to another.
  
  I fully agree. The ethical Advisory Board must work it out.
  
  

• They commented that working within HANDS could be timeconsuming and this should not be done at the expense of caretaking of the children.
  
  I fully agree. But the division between HANDS work and teaching will in many cases be difficult to draw.
  

I commented, that the level of IT-competences seemed week, and it should be considered how it could be raised. I suggested, that the management started(if the HANDS application goes through) out by using the pdas themselves.

Success - signing "The Letter of Intent"

As previously stated SvedenSkolan(management and teacher) signed the Letter of Intent. While Tobias(the teacher) commented, that many of the core ideas in HANDS is what he had been dreaming of.