Short-form video (SFV) platforms are increasingly popular, yet the rapid context switching and their potential effects on children’s cognitive functions are not well understood. In this work, we conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 180) to examine how YouTube Shorts affects young children’s short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM), measured using the forward and backward digit span tasks. The study focused on two core platform features of SFV: the easy-to-use swipe interface and the recommendation system. Using a 2 × 2 factorial design, we compared four SFV group conditions that varied by interaction mode and content source, complemented by two long-form video baseline conditions (one with constant context switching and one without). Our results show that the feature combinations and the baseline comparisons were not associated with changes in STM or WM. However, swipe interaction increased video switching, while recommendation-based content increased category switching. The higher combined levels of video and category switching across participants were associated with marginal effects on working memory performance, while STM remained unaffected.

The ubiquity of technology and the “zero-cost” nature of cloud services result in users overlooking the environmental impact of their online usage. While some cloud services (e.g., LLM inference) have significantly higher environmental impact, this work focuses on emails, a service widely used yet representing one of the smallest usages of cloud resources. Just as recycling a piece of paper may not have a great impact but can contribute to environmental awareness, deleting emails symbolizes a small yet meaningful behavior change - a ’gesture’ toward environmental responsibility. In this work, we propose E-litter, a mobile system combining a bulk-delete UI with eco-feedback to encourage email deletion. By representing email storage in tangible terms (e.g., sheets of paper), E-litter nudges users to become more aware of cloud usage. A user study with Gmail users shows that E-litter significantly increases email deletion, highlighting the potential of UI and eco-feedback in impacting cloud usage behavior.

In this paper, we present the Connected Consumption Network (CCN) that allows a community of consumers to collaboratively sense the market from a mobile device, enabling more informed financial decisions in geo-local context. The mobile application allows one to log one's wish list and itemized list of transactions to form a social network around the list of interests. Individuals can share this data to inform and guide others in a timely, personal and contextual manner when they are shopping for a product or seeking a service. It can also help people connect opportunistically in a local area to make group purchases, to pick up an item for a friend, and to perform reverse auctions. We present the design, architecture and concept prototype. We simulate a social network with three months of existing credit/debit card transaction data in various geographical areas to analyze the mutual information and recommendations that can be shared among networked consumers.

We present the architecture, user interface and prototype implementation of fluid voice, a proximity based mobile group communication system for opportunistic social exchanges. It is designed for coordinating people in outdoor settings, spreading news during emergency responses and supporting impromptu social exchanges by exploiting the inherent broadcast nature of wireless and mobility of people. It supports diverse media: live audio, asynchronous audio, text messages, audio messages, audio polls and wish lists. In this paper, we focus on the audio support and the design for intermittent connectivity characteristics of mobile systems with limited range. Users can transition from live to asynchronous audio communication in a fluid manner depending on the wireless environment. When every node is able to hear each other, the receiver mixes all sources and provides the user with a "push to listen" interface to "tune in" to who they want to listen to. When the wireless channel is congested, it transitions to a "push to talk" interface (without taking over the whole channel) to reduce collisions while allowing people to barge in. When nodes cannot hear each other, Fluid Voice caches content for future delivery using a dynamic multi-stream mixer with time shifting (Tivo) functionality. The system was prototyped on the Nokia N810's for real world testing and we discuss its technical and social limitations.

This paper discusses the software architecture of Impromptu, a mobile IP-based audio computing platform, with an associated set of network-based applications and services. Impromptu merges the communication properties and universal mobility of the telephone with the multi-tasking and open protocol world of the handheld PC. Its supporting architecture handles multiple streaming audio applications, provides speech services for consistent audio user interfaces across applications, and enables user management of these varied applications running simultaneously.