The Internet-of-Things (IoT) promises to enhance everyday objects with computing, but rarely enables directly authoring or composing that behavior. Lightweight IoT approaches attach identifiers (e.g., RFID tags) to objects to enable networked services. Typically these tags are passive, and so, depend on activity recognition and predefined context. This limits interaction to invoking predetermined behavior. Instead, this work presents The IoT Codex: a lightweight approach to customizing everyday objects with IoT by enabling interactive attachable IDs (aIDs) to compose software-supported behavior in situ. This work contributes 1) paper engineering techniques to construct aIDs that embody state, and 2) a tangible, end user programming (EUP) language for customizing IoT within symbolic and idiosyncratic contexts. Here, we provide preliminary validation of our approach with an empirically informed design space, sample applications, and a small co-design workshop. In doing so, we offer preliminary evidence for tangible, end user programming to enable meaningful control over IoT services.

The demands of daily work offer few opportunities for workers to take stock of their own progress, big or small, which can lead to lower motivation, engagement, and higher risk of burnout. We present Highlight Matome, a personal online tool that encourages workers to quickly record and rank a single work highlight each day, helping them gain awareness of their own successes. We describe results from a field experiment investigating our tool's effectiveness for improving workers' engagement, perceptions, and affect. Thirty-three knowledge workers in Japan and the U.S. used Highlight Matome for six weeks. Our results show that using our tool for less than one minute each day significantly increased measures of work engagement, dedication, and positivity. A qualitative analysis of the highlights offers a window into participants' emotions and perceptions. We discuss implications for theories of inner work life and worker well-being.

The Internet-of-things (IoT) embeds computing in everyday objects, but has largely focused on new devices while ignoring the home's many existing possessions. We present a field study with 10 American families to understand how these possessions could be included in the smart home through upcycling. We describe three patterns for how families collaborate around home responsibilities; we explore families' mental models of home that may be in tension with existing IoT systems; and we identify ways that families can more easily imagine a smart home that includes their existing possessions. These insights can help us design an upcycled approach to IoT that supports users in reconfiguring objects (and social roles as mediated by objects) in a way that is sensitive to what will be displaced, discarded, or made obsolete. Our findings inform the design of future lightweight systems for the upcycled home.

Consumer-fabrication technologies potentially improve the effectiveness and adoption of assistive technology (AT) by engaging AT users in AT creation. However, little is known about the role of clinicians in this revolution. We investigate clinical AT fabrication by working as expert fabricators for clinicians over a four-month period. We observed and co-designed AT with four occupational therapists at two clinics: a free clinic for uninsured clients, and a Veteran's Affairs Hospital. We find that existing fabrication processes, particularly with respect to rapid prototyping, do not align with clinical practice and itsdo-no-harm ethos. We recommend software solutions that would integrate into client care by: amplifying clinicians' expertise, revealing appropriate fabrication opportunities, and supporting adaptable fabrication.

The internet-of-things (IoT) carries substantial costs by urging households to replace their possessions with new, internet connected versions of everyday objects. Beyond financial, these costs include waste, work to arrange and orchestrate objects to suit households, and that of acquiring new skills. Upcycling domestic objects could offer households greater discretion and control over these costs by supporting the ability to tailor IoT to the home. To understand how households might do this, we conducted a home study with 10 diverse American households over 7 days to surface the approaches families are likely to use when tailoring IoT to their existing possessions. We asked family members to enact their process using endowed sticker props---IoT Stickers---to modify objects in their home. We develop a framework of how families make light weight modifications of domestic possessions, summarize trends of their object modifications, and describe the burdens such a system could impose.

Current symbol-based dictionaries providing vocabulary support for persons with the language disorder, aphasia, are housed on smartphones or other portable devices. To employ the support on these external devices requires the user to divert their attention away from their conversation partner, to the neglect of conversation dynamics like eye contact or verbal inflection. A prior study investigated head-worn displays (HWDs) as an alternative form factor for supporting glanceable, unobtrusive, and always-available conversation support, but it did not directly compare the HWD to a control condition. To address this limitation, we compared vocabulary support on a HWD to equivalent support on a smartphone in terms of overall experience, perceived focus, and conversational success. Lastly, we elicited critical discussion of how each device might be better designed for conversation support. Our work contributes (1) evidence that a HWD can support more efficient communication, (2) preliminary results that a HWD can provide a better overall experience using assistive vocabulary, and (3) a characterization of the design features persons with aphasia value in portable conversation support technologies. Our findings should motivate further work on head-worn conversation support for persons with aphasia.

Symbol-based dictionaries of text, images and sound can help individuals with aphasia find the words they need, but are often seen as a last resort because they tend to replace rather than augment the user's natural speech. Through two design investigations, we explore head-worn displays as a means of providing unobtrusive, always-available, and glanceable vocabulary support. The first study used narrative storyboards as a design probe to explore the potential benefits and challenges of a head-worn approach over traditional augmented alternative communication (AAC) tools. The second study then evaluated a proof-of-concept prototype in both a lab setting with the researcher and in situ with unfamiliar conversation partners at a local market. Findings suggest that a head-worn approach could better allow wearers to maintain focus on the conversation, reduce reliance on the availability of external tools (e.g., paper and pen) or people, and minimize visibility of the support by others. These studies should motivate further investigation of head-worn conversational support.