Projects

Leveraging the Internet to motivate energy-saving behavior

This project combines psychological research on persuasion with communication technologies to motivate people to conserve energy. We have been exploring techniques such as personalized feedback, public commitment, and individually tailored recommendations for action in the context of a website accessed via computer or mobile devices. Our initial work focused on developing a website testbed, StepGreen.org, to explore methods of motivating people to conserve energy. We later modified the site for use in the CALSGreen project, in which students and staff in Cornell campus buildings could explore energy saving options and commit to taking action. Most recently, graduate student Xiying Wang has been working on the development and evaluation of a mobile phone application that combines some of the original StepGreen features, such as suggestions for actions, with new collaboration features for families and housemates who need to collectively manage their energy use. The work was initially funded by NSF grants #0745885 and #0803733.

Recently completed projects

Large Scale Collaboration

This project, with Sara Kiesler at CMU and Suzanne Weisband at University of Arizona, examined how people distribute their time, effort, and communication across multiple partners, tasks, and work teams. One line of research, conducted by former CMU doctoral student Peter Scupelli and Yan Xiao and colleagues at the University of Baltimore Medical Center, focused on understanding how features of the physical environment of OR suites influences how people communicate and coordinate using large displays. A second line of research, conducted by CMU doctoral student Aruna Balakrishnan, examined how visual information displays such as social network diagrams can improve collaborative intelligence analysis.

Gestural Communication in Collaborative Physical Tasks

This collaborative project with Jie Yang and Jane Siegel examined the types and functions of gestures in collaborative physical (3D) tasks and develops technologies to allow remote gesturing in video conference systems. We developed the DOVE system that allows remote communicators to draw directly on live video feeds from a local worksite, making it easy for them to point out objects and locations in the workspace. The value of DOVE for collaboration was demonstrated in our 2004 HCI journal article. For more information and initial publications, please see our project website.

Communication and Social Interaction in Online Support Forums

This project, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health e-Technologies Initiative, focused on developing measures to evaluate the health benefits of participation in online support forums such as chatrooms, electronic bulletin boards, and email distribution lists. Discourse analysis and other techniques are being used to understand the impact of online support on the development of social relationships, participants’ knowledge of their illness, and attitudes toward treatment.

The Importance of Shared Visual Spaces for Collaborative Tasks

This large project was a collaboration with Robert Kraut, Jane Siegel, and Jie Yang at Carnegie Mellon University, and Susan Brennan at SUNY Stony Brook. The project combined theoretical analysis of the communications requirements of collaborative tasks, stylized and applied laboratory studies of the effects of visual information on communication and performance in collaborative physical tasks, and the development of new video technologies.

The Development of Shared Mental Models and Group Performance

This collaborative project with Javier Lerch, Bob Kraut, and Alberto Espinosa, used lab and applied field studies to understand how groups achieve mental models, the trade-offs between the development of shared mental models and cognitive overload, and the effects of these models on team coordination and overall effectiveness.