Kick off meeting of HANDS - so interesting, so joyfull

While we were planning the kick off we were excited. We were working a lot, mailing, planning and talking. This meeting could be the end of HANDS if we failed. But the meeting did not fail. In opposite. The meeting was exciting, informative and highly valuable. And not to forget: fun.

Afterwards I asked a couple of meeting participants to mail me their experience.

Director of IT-Vest and ICT-ethics expert, Thomas Ploug, Aalborg University/Copenhagen mailed me(30-06-2008 21:34)

"Thanks very much for the kick-off seminar in Aalborg.

I always find it most inspiring and stimulating to be among people with different fields of expertise. It is, however, also challenging when succesful, inter-disciplinary understanding and collaboration is required. Arriving in Aalborg I was thus filled with equal excitement and worries. I am happy to say now – upon the completion of the seminar – that my worries turned out to be unfounded. The seminar showed, I think, great courtesy, enthusiasm and true dedication among the participants – which I find most promising for the time to come.

Being involved with the Ethics Board I benefitted quite a lot from the many presentations that directly or indirectly added to my understanding of the psychology, thinking, habits etc. of people with autism. It is exactly those particular traits of autists that deepens and accentuates the ethical questions and problems already evident.

With great expectations and high hopes for the remaining time of the HANDS-project."

Thomas Ploug

Ildiko Kanizsai-Nagy, psychologist from Autism Foundation/Hungary mailed me(03-07-2008 22:53):

I was asked by Morten to give a personal „blog-account” on our excellent kick-off meeting in June. Here are some comments.

Before travelling to Slettestrand our hope - at the Autism Foundation and ELTE University - was that we would have the possibily to clarify our questions on the HANDS project. These were for example the division of tasks between partners, especially with London Southbank University or the software solutions. We also wanted to know if the partners have the same or at least similar educational, scentific and methdolocigal base and background regarding to autism spectrum disorders. We also had some queries on our own presentation: would it be approriate, useful and intelligible for our partners in HANDS project.

Lots of our doubts disappeared when we heard the presentation of collegues from Svedenskolan. Not only the methods and tools they use in education of their students, but the attitude and enthusiasm they represented was very prepossesing. At that time me, and I am sure also my collegues felt that we definetly would be able to find the common language.

The Testschools meeting gave us a great opportunity to discuss the scientific needs and aspects of our research. We hope we could clarify the main points of testing and evaluation and now we are working on refining the selecting criteria. We were also happy to hear positive feed-backs about our presentation.

Personally for me the software side of the project was a “gray area”. I did benefit a lot from the presentation of collegues from Wirtek Rumenia, now I know a bit more how we should think on the software design of HANDS.

Above this I was really impressed during the whole meeting how keenly and actively people discusses all the issues.

It was also important for me to develop personal reletionships with collegues we work together. Thanks to Morten excellent idea of mixing different people from differents partners during the dinner in the beautiful restaurant at the seaside, we had unique chance to get to know each other better. No doubt that the high spot of the performance was the chorus singing "The Abstract Song"...

And - although I know it is not a scientific aspect – we really-really enyojed the marvellous nature of Demnark, the sea, the wind, and also the food.

All together I can say – I guess in the name of my collegues in Budapest – that we all had a great and useful time in Slettestrand. And although we still have lots of things to discuss and work on I am sure now we have the common track to go along.

Ildiko Kanizsai-Nagy"

Softwarearchitect, Ghita Pop(he is male) from Wirtek Romania mailed me(25-06-2008 08:31):
"It’s my pleasure to say that from my point of view was a great experience since I have been participated for the first time to such kick off meeting.

I learned a lot off thinks about how the meetings are organized and also about talking with other people from other country that share the same ideas and have so much enthusiasm to work together for a commune goal.

Regarding the benefit, I think the visit to Egebakken School, was very important for us because we saw a lot of methods used by teachers in their working days, that can be developed in the Hands Tool. I was moved since I didn’t knew very much about autism disabilities and I’m very glad and enthusiast to be in the team that will accomplish the dream of creating a Tool that help a lot teachers in their dedicated work.

Alex shares the same thoughts about the experience and benefit.

I look forward to start our part in this long process."

Ghita Pop

I share Thomas, Ildiko and Ghitas experience: it was the best outcome of the meeting we could dream of. Good atmosphere, very nice people and stimulating talks.

Thanks to everyone. Thanks.

Morten

Downloads:

• High-quality photo of the participants of the kick off meeting
• HANDS songbook version 0.9
  

Advice on hardwareplatform

I got an interesting mail from Pernille Missel Danielsen, handicap consultant at "Videnscenter for Specialpædagogik" (Knowledge Center for chidren with special needs), the other day. She asked me:

I am a handicap consultant who have been asked to buy PDA to 3 teenagers with ASD. I have been traversing the market and found many very interesting product but I have gotten confused. Which PDA would you recommend?

My answer to Pernille Missel Danielsen was:
"It is a very good question, which we in HANDS do spend some time on. I am happy you ask me, but please do not wait for HANDS. We will enter the market in 2011!

Within the HANDS project have we not decied the hardwareplatform yet. We are eager to give the users influence and hear what they need. We experience there is a number of possibilities.

A pda(a mobile device without phone)
A windows mobile SmartPhone. Either small screen and small device or big(big screen and big device).
NOKIA SmartPhone
Alternative SmartPhones(nokia, Sony Erichsson, Samsung...)
General mobilephone(nokia, Sony Erichsson, Samsung...)

According to the big mobiletelecom exhibition in Barcelona(march 08) the productsegment "Smart Phone" are the fastest growing segment within the mobilephonesproductsegments. The consequense is, that we will see lots of productintroductions in "SmartPhone" productsegment in the nearest future. Iphone has been introduced, Google is about introducing Androids, and more is to come.

When choosing a pda for young people be aware that
You are choosing mobiles for young people, who would be happy, if mobile phone and pda is the same.
You need a large screen, but the gadget has to be as small as possible. I myself has a large SmartPhone(HP Ipaq hw6515 , dim: 15x8cm) which hardly fit in my pockets and because of that I tend to forget the pda everywhere.

Producers of mobilephones estimates the product lifelength to be 2 years. It will probably be true in your case. Possibly less. Your pda will be pedagogical tools and such equipment do have a risci life. The larger the pda is, the higher is the chance for shorter life because of weight and size.

The software we have spotted for individuals with ASD are all running on windows mobile on a pda. But our marketresearch has been orientated towards the best products and we do definitely not know all products.

I do expect, that HANDS will choose the Windows MobilePlatform with an Smartphone. But again do not use this knowledge as a foundation for your decision. It takes three years, before our software is on the market.

Sincerly yours,

Morten


============
There is updated info: the kickoff meeting of HANDS held in SletteStrand 15th to 18th of June made a decision about the hardwareplatform: The meeting decided to use Windows Mobile SmartPhone platform. The next question is, which models is accepted as HANDS mobilephones. The teachers wanted a relatively large screen, but what that means precisely is not known.

Morten Aagaard

Persuasive 08 - an inspiring and engaging conference

Participation in Persuasive 08 conference was great! 140 interesting and entusiastic researcher or practioners from 20 contries within the Persuasive Technology field was discussing, listening, laughing and overwhelming each other with good new research or good ideas.

HANDS was present too. With poster and presentation.
In the posting I have mentioned the most interesting talks, activities, articles and people.
It should give you an oppurtunity to study the programs or ideas in details. The talks, activities, articles or people I found most interesting was:

• Affective computing - Kerstin Höök, Stockholm University
• Digital Therapy - Elin Olsen, Changetech. com
• Rosalin Pickard autism, affective computing - Winslow Burleson, Arizona State University
• General purpose persuasive software components - Samir Chatterjee, Claremont graduate University
• Project management, BJ Fogg, Stanford University
• HANDS poster - "It might be Kairos"
• HANDS workshop - Morten Aagaard, Peter Øhrstrøm and Louise Glud Nørregaard AAU

Affective computing - Kerstin Höök, Stockholm University
Kerstin was the first keynote reader. For good reasons. She was talking about affective computing which is an area that considers how emotions can be an issue when using computers.
Highly relevant for the HANDES project. Kerstin showed three applications in her talk:
1. The use of puppets in games which makes it possible to show emotions with motions.
2. Emoto. SMS messages with visuals that is makes it possible to show emotions in SMS.
3. Emotions through motions. Kerstin and her crew had developed a gadget which you could shake/move and through those movements who could express emotions in SMS.

Who this concerns?
Cognitive psychologists, SW developers, teachers. I believe, that especially Emoto could be interesting to create.

Info
Her slides(A video is missing). Her article.

Digital Therapy - Elin Olsen, Changetech. com
Elin Olsen told about their digital therapy. Based on positive psychology a Oslo based compagny, Changetech has developed therapy on the computer that actually works. It targets depression, stop smoking, loosing weight and a couple of other behaviours/issues. It works alone(without a human therapist). Advantages of digital therapy to human therapy is 24-7 availability, personal, ready when problems occur.

Who this concerns?
Cognitive psychologists, teachers.

Info
Her slides. Their articles(WillPower, Digital Therapy)


Rosalin Pickard autism, affective computing - Winslow Burleson, Arizona State University
Winslow Burlesons wife, Camilla, introduced me the first day of the conference to Winslow. He has an fabulous cv including studying at Stanford and MIT and employed now at Arizona State University where he do research for LEGO. When he was studying at MIT he worked together with Rosalin Pickard who have developed affective computing gadgets for individuals with ASD. He invited himself to come to AAU and give a talk about her work and their collaboration. We have made an appointment August 1th. It will be an HANDS workshop on Affective Computing with more speakers.
You(HANDS partner) is welcome.

Who this concerns?
Teachers, psychologists, people i Aalborg.

Info
Rosalind Pickard on wikipedia, Contact me for info about the arrangement(the date might be changed)


General purpose persuasive software components - Samir Chatterjee, Claremont graduate University
Samir Chatterjee argued several times on the conference, that there must exist general purpose persuasive software components. I agreed with him, but had not the time to talk about it in details.
Samir Chatterjees own work included an diary. So did the digital therapy talk. In HANDS we talk about HIPD. There are other candidates for modellayer components with an persuasive properties.

Who this concerns?
SW developers.

Info
His slides, his article.


Project management, BJ Fogg, Stanford University
BJ is a very kind man and a generous man. And intelligent. BJ showed significant interest in HANDS. He participated in our HANDS workshop. Afterwards he warned us(Peter Ø. and I) that we had to manage the the softwaredevelopers very well. They do not necessary go into research for all the good intentions. To them it is business. The suggested, that we had to have a external management of the swdevelopment.

Who this concerns?
Management of HANDS.

Info
None.

HANDS poster - "It might be Kairos"
I had made a poster and a presentation about how to model Kairos mathematically. But nobody seems to understand me and nobody pays attention to it. I believe, that Peter Øhrstrøm, Lars Moltsen and my article is a very valuable contribution to the work within Persuasive Technology. For the Conference we wrote an 11 page article, "It might be Kairos". It combines Persuasive Technology, bayesian statistics(bayes net), psychology, rhetorics and software modelling. Difficult. We was ask to reduce to size to 4 pages. Even more difficult.


Who this concerns?
None I believe. The way to "sell" the idea is to use it in an experiment. Two of the businesscases of HANDS(impulscontrol) and Therapeutical Weatherforecast is candidates.

Info
The article. There exist an 11 pages long verision which is easier understandable.

HANDS workshop - Morten Aagaard, Peter Øhrstrøm and Louise Glud Nørregaard AAU
Actually it was Peter Øhrstrøm, Louise and I who made an presentation. Before our presentation there was a significant interest in HANDS at the conference. The comments to the presentation was primarily orientated towards the ethical concerns. (momentarily do I not remember the questions/comments).
One comment I remembered was a comment about naming the HANDS toolset. Robert Brigg said correctly, that the name of the software constitutes the users conception of the software. We(designers and teachers) call it HANDS, but what are the users naming their customisable software? And should the name be given by teacher(I believe yes)?

Who this concerns?
None.

Info
My slides.

Another interestering resume of the conference has Kristian Toennesen posted in his blog, protos.dk.

I brought a bike with me and I slept in a cabin in the woods 100 meters away from the Baltic Sea. I went swimming every morning. It was very nice. The Ouluans are very nice people.

The HANDS website - for spreading the ideas

At the Persuasive 08 Conference I had several talks with Kristian Tønnesen. Due to the fact, that the userrequirements not are easily identified, it would be highly valuable not consider the analysis of userrequirements as a project private activity, but let other relevant and qualified people get access to parts of the HANDS website. This posting is about how to do so.

Kristian Tønnesen is a very bright guy from Copenhagen with a good sense of humour. Kristian is writing an industrial phd for Danfoss, which is a huge danish(but very international) coorporation(probably 20.000 employee). For Danfoss innovation and design is a very important competitive factor. Due to that fact, supporting collaboration between salespersons, engineers, designers and ? is very important. Most of it can only take place through CSCW-tools(Computer Supported Collaborative Work). Kristian is writing about design and use of CSCW-tools. I asked him about advice for the designers and users of the HANDS CSCWtool(the present adress: hands.hum.aau.dk).

In a 10 minute conversation he gave several real good instructions.
I told him, that the HANDS CSCWtool should have three categories of users: a)general public, b) the partners of the consortium and c) interested and qualified individuals(parents, teachers, psychologists, researchers, ...).
The first category is easily supported.
The second category do have a core group of usecases, orientated around the work(making deliverables, getting overview of a WP, accesing templates. You could label them "Management & administration". All important usecases, but wellknown or easily identifiable. Another group of usecases would Kristian Tønnesen label "innovation and design". Such usescases is presentation of demos, discussion about demos or ideas, links to interesting articles and more.
The third category is interested and qualified individuals, which have no responsibility for the working proces. They are interesting for the HANDS project as technology early adopters. We(the HANDS project needs them because userrequirements is indeed very different. Valuable functionalities for this category is demodownloads, oppurtunity to comment on ideas and comment on comment, give links and possibly participate in open HANDS activities in Aalborg, Budapest and elsewhere.

He gave a number of good advices

1. We will manage category a and the usescase for c labeled "Management & administration". It is not a problem. "Innovation and design" usescases are the challenge.
2. There is no set of rules, which leads to a succesfull CSCW-tool supporting "Innovation and design" usescases. Usescases that is being uses.
3. Email is the alternative. Users would prefer to stick to this media, because they are familar with it and it is private.
4. Discussionsgroups, that work in the manner like Googlegroups, where users can receive postings from their forums in their mailbox and are able to reply in the mailclient to, are attractive.
5. User feel it is tirring to go to CSCW tools, where you can communicate with others - somewhere.
6. Activating the users are a important issue. They are not active by default.
7. Users are very annoyed when they experience functionalities that are not accesible to them. They give up searching for the functionalities, they need.

Brussels - a visit worth 3,5 mill €

We were excited. Henrik Sand administrator(who actually was terrible sick), Peter Øhrstrøm chairman and I. But we needed not be so. The meeting with Project Officer Anne Salaun was held in a relaxed and open atmosphere. We received new comments from Anne and hope we can get them done before March 5th.


Agenda
1. Bringing my soul to Brussels
2. Negotiations with Project Officer Anne Salaun
3. Afterthought

Bringing my soul to Brussels
I wanted to go to Brussels and experience the center of the European Commity, visit my cousin Henrik and bring my soul to with me to the meeting.
It was a good idea. My cousin Henrik is informationofficer at the European Parliment and he gave a experience of the EC Parliment and how it works. Henrik and his wife has been working in Brussels for almost 18 years. Furthermore he gave me an oppurtunity to meet the danish members of the Parliment, which was very valuable for HANDS. Especially to talk with xxx, who is member of the udvalg, which manage the budget of the ICT-research.
I had a little time by myself and a time with Henrik and his wife.


Negotiations with Project Officer Anne Salaun


The meeting was held in not to exciting 5 store concrete building in the ourskirts of Brussels.
Not very exciting but ok.
Anne Salaun appeared to be a kind woman who had the job to secure, that Annex I, our organisation and our documents made it possible to sign a contract and monitor the project.
The agenda of the meeting was the comments that the Evaluators had been giving in the "Evaluation Summary Report" and Annes own comments to the rewritten Proposal(now Annex I). All comments was about contractual or monitoring issues.
Small pieces of the Annex I was considered - never the overall goals.

The result of the meeting was yet another list of comments to our documents(Annex I and all the administrative stuff) which had to be corrected. At the moment, we do not know, how much work is needed.



Afterthought
We were very worried before hand. A lot. Afterwards we consider Anne Salaun as a collaborationpartner.
The comments that we have to work on is some which Peter, Henrik, I, Partners and Anne Salaun has to work on. She experienced that the main job were in the administrative area, which I agree. Some of the comment could possibly mean a lot of work.
But if we make it the grant will be given.

Having a good time with EU

The 6th of February is the deadline for the corrections of the HANDS proposal and 13th of February do we(Chairman Peter Øhrstrøm, Administrator Henrik Sand and I) have the Grant Agreement Negotations in Bruxelles with our Project Officer Anne Salaun.

The Commision did not have ureasonable critics against the proposal. As a extra exercise, the Commission asks us to change the Proposal to a document called "Annex I"(an Annex to the Grant Agreement document.) This demand forces me to read a couple of EU documents:

• Negotiation Guidance Notes(57 pages)
• Grand Agreement Preparation Forms(34 pages)
• Checklist for a Consortium Agreement for FP7 projects(17 pages)
• Guide to Intellectual Property Rules for FP7 projects(45 pages)
• User Guide for Coordinators and Participants(14 pages)
• Note for attention of the Consortium(15 pages)

I do not find it fun any more. Physically and mentally do I need a change.

People around me are working very hard to. Miklos and his folks in Budapest, Joseph & Julia in London, Peter Øhrstrøm & Henrik Sand and all our consultants. I feel very well supported in this stage of the proces, I need to see the work. See the pupils, having meetings with HANDS partners and so on.

And I need to know for sure, that the Commission wants to sign a contract with us. I can image, that I loose conscious, when negotiation with Project Officer in Bruxelles.

An invitation to Grand Agreement in Bruxelles February 13nd!!

Chairman Peter mailed me last week: "Look at this, I believe, we have to talk together". Peter had received a invitation to Grand Agreement negotiations in Bruxelles!! It was just wild! After talking, dreaming, thinking and hoping for almost one year, HANDS finally was choosen! From now on, HANDS only fails, in case the consortium is behaving idiotic. But all partners still needs to do some work. Bruxelles has only suggested, that the budget cut should be 3%!

I recalled the lyrics from "Once in a lifetime" by Talking Heads

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife

And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Last week I wrote a document to myself entitled "20 good reasons, that HANDS should not be realised and now I am in the middle of .... a dream? Or an adventure? Or have EU selected the most demanding, exciting research within the area "ICT for social marginalised people?" With the most exciting perspectives? With parcipation of the wildest combination of exciting personalities and competences: cognitive psychology, mobile telephone developers, Persuasive Technology, ethics, e-learning designcompetences and autism pedagogics?

I only know, that I need to comprehend this new situation.
Somebody has to tell me, what has happend!


Morten