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.