Saturday, June 07, 2008

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
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.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Really interesting to hear about the conference and especially the digital therapy application.

Joe Mintz