For a robot to repair its own error, it must first know it has made a mistake. One way that people detect errors is from the implicit reactions from bystanders - their confusion, smirks, or giggles clue us in that something unexpected occurred. To enable robots to detect and act on bystander responses to task failures, we developed a novel method to elicit bystander responses to human and robot errors. Using 46 different stimulus videos featuring a variety of human and machine task failures, we collected a total of 2,452 webcam videos of human reactions from 54 participants. To test the viability of the collected data, we used the bystander reaction dataset as input to a deep-learning model, BADNet, to predict failure occurrence. We tested different data labeling methods and learned how they affect model performance, achieving precisions above 90%. We discuss strategies (manual labelling, failure-vs-control, and failure-time) used to model bystander reactions and predict failure, and how this approach can be used in real-world robotic deployments to detect errors and improve robot performance. As part of this work, we also contribute with the “Bystander Affect Detection” (BAD) dataset of bystander reactions, supporting the development of better prediction models.

Electric Agents is a multi-player game that uses augmented reality on mobile phones to facilitate in-room collaboration and promote joint media engagement around interactive educational television content in the home. Joint media engagement describes 'collaborative' consumption of media and has potential learning benefits. Our research examines whether technology can support joint media engagement, through the use of a series of prototypes that combine handheld augmented reality with web-based video. In pilot testing, sibling play patterns showed evidence of the kind of in-room collaboration and joint media engagement that previous research has shown to facilitate children in making sense of media content.

We introduce People in Books with FlashCam technology, a system that supports children and long-distance family members to act as characters in children's storybooks while they read stories together over a distance. By segmenting the video chat streams of the child and remote family member from their background surroundings, we create the illusion that the child and adult reader are immersed among the storybook illustrations. The illusion of inhabiting a shared story environment helps remote family members feel a sense of togetherness and encourages active reading behaviors for children ages three to five. People In Books is designed to fit into families' traditional reading practices, such as reading ebooks on couches or in bed via netbook or tablet computers. To accommodate this goal we implemented FlashCam, a computationally cost effective and physically small background subtraction system for mobile devices that allows users to move locations and change lighting conditions while they engage in background-subtracted video communications. A lab evaluation compared People in Books with a conventional remote reading application. Results show that People in Books motivates parents and children to be more performative readers and encourages open-ended play beyond the story, while creating a strong sense of togetherness.

To effectively design for families, we must understand familial relationships, which exert a significant influence on children's growth, learning, and play. In particular, siblings can be influential play partners and teachers, providing important scaffolding to each other. We report our observations of eight sibling pairs between ages 6 and 10, playing four popular games of different gaming paradigms. We found that certain patterns of sibling behavior persisted through all game sessions, regardless of the play patterns afforded by the different games, and that parents reports were consistent with our observations. We also observed instances where game design seemed to influence sibling play dynamics. We share our insights into considerations for designing for sibling play, including specialized social dynamics, opportunities for scaffolding, and the particular challenges they present.

Electric Agents is a cross-media game that presents new ways for children to actively engage with television content. In the game Manny, a member of the Pranksters, steals words out of the mouth of Hector, a member of The Electric Company team, and hides them to prevent the story from progressing. Children collaborate through a mobile augmented reality experience to find and collect the missing vocabulary words relevant to the show narrative. The players return the stolen words back to the show by "throwing" the words towards the television using their mobile devices. This blend of a narrative and a game strives to make educational television content more engaging and participatory while fostering collaborative play and use of specific vocabulary words.

This paper outlines a series of experiments to develop asynchronous messaging systems for preschool aged children. Three unique systems build on a foundational design called Toaster, a jack-in-the box toy with embedded mobile phone that allows children to playfully take and share electronic media. Orange Toaster allows children to create and share self-portraits; Family Toast allows children to browse family photos with physical tokens, and shares their self-portrait reactions with remote family members; Play with Elmo allows children and distant adults to asynchronously share playful video messages. Observations with over 30 children suggest that asynchronous photographic or video messaging with very young children is possible. The results of these studies indicate specific guidelines including (1) children's UI's need to be playful and immediate (2) UI designs for children should create the "here and now" feel of real-time interaction, and (3) adults' UI's must provide emotionally meaningful feedback from children to engage adult users.

How might we build on the physical interactivity of children's play to help children communicate over a distance? Pokaboo is a networked toy for children ages 2--5 to physically play even when they are far apart. Envisioned almost like a low-frame rate video chat, the system combines physically-linked buttons with photo and audio communication. A child will press a button down to take their own photo, and their self-portrait will pop up on their partner's device. The device was tested with both photo sharing and video chat. Children were most engaged when the buttons were part of a mobile video chat, where one child could press a button down and see their partner's button pop up in front of their far-away playmate. When the playmate responded with a button press, their button would magically pop up in front of them, in a form of physical call-and-response. Pokaboo shows how networked toys can help children to form engaging connections through physical play over a distance.

StoryVisit allows children and long-distance adults to experience a sense of togetherness by reading children's story books together over a distance. StoryVisit combines video conferencing and connected books: remote grown-up and child readers can see and hear each other, and can also see and control the same e-book. We report on research with 61 families - over 200 users including parents, children and long-distance readers - who used StoryVisit in their homes with a long-distance reader for at least one reading session. In addition, we report qualitative findings regarding nineteen of the families who participated in telephone interviews and four families who were monitored and interviewed by researchers at home. Results show that connected e-book video chat sessions last about five times as long as the typical video chats reported in previous research on families with young children. Moreover, the addition of an animated character increased session lengths by another 50%. StoryVisit usage peaked for families with three year olds, showing that sustained distance interactions with very young children are possible if communication technologies incorporate joint activities that engage children and adults.

This ethnographic study of 22 diverse families in the San Francisco Bay Area provides a holistic account of parents' attitudes about their children's use of technology. We found that parents from different socioeconomic classes have different values and practices around technology use, and that those values and practices reflect structural differences in their everyday lives. Calling attention to class differences in technology use challenges the prevailing practice in human-computer interaction of designing for those similar to oneself, which often privileges middle-class values and practices. By discussing the differences between these two groups and the advantages of researching both, this research highlights the benefits of explicitly engaging with socioeconomic status as a category of analysis in design.

In this work, we introduce Interactive Rich Reading, a new enhanced book experience designed to run on smartphones and a tablet device. Interactive Rich Reading is characterized by a video-based conversational agent that asks questions or makes comments about the current page and is specifically designed to promote engagement with the contents of children's books. We use video compositing techniques to overlay the conversational agent directly over the book contents, creating a magical experience for children by bringing the book to life. We describe technical issues related to enabling this experience on mobile platforms for easier adoption of this technique by other researchers and practitioners.

This paper describes investigation of a mobile communication system that helps alleviate fear experienced in the urban context. In order to obtain empirically grounded insights for the concept design, urban females in their twenties and thirties and living in Bangalore, New Delhi and San Francisco, were studied. More than 200 females filled in an online survey. Extensive qualitative data for 13 participants were collected through week long diaries, semi-structured interviews, and situated participative enactment of scenarios. Fear-related concerns were voiced both in India and the U.S., suggesting that reducing fear, particularly in a pedestrian context after the onset of darkness, could be a globally applicable need. User research findings into subjective experiences of fear, contexts in which they occur, and behavioral strategies were used to design a mobile service titled ComfortZones. This concept was developed to the level of a high fidelity prototype and tested in a field trial in India. The investigation highlights further opportunities for design, particularly the notion of emphasizing positive and socially successful qualities of cities to communities concerned with their safety and security.

We introduce Family Story Play, a system that supports grandparents to read books together with their grandchildren over the Internet. Family Story Play is designed to improve communication across generations and over a distance, and to support parents and grandparents in fostering the literacy development of young children. The interface encourages active child participation in the book reading experience by combining a paper book, a sensor-enhanced frame, video conferencing technology, and video content of a Sesame Street Muppet (Elmo). Results with users indicate that Family Story Play improves child engagement in long-distance communication and increases the quality of interaction between young children and distant grandparents. Additionally, Family Story Play encourages dialogic reading styles that are linked with literacy development. Ultimately, reading with Family Story Play becomes a creative shared activity that suggests a new kind of collaborative story telling.

In this paper, we explore the benefits of videochat for families and the corresponding work that home users engage in to make a video call run smoothly. We explore the varieties of social work required, including coordination work, presentation work, behavioral work, and scaffolding work, as well as the technical work necessary. We outline the benefits families enjoy for doing this work and discuss the ways in which families use videochat to reinforce their identity as a family and reinforce their family values, in effect making - as in creating - love. We conclude with recommendations for improving videochat and for designing with family values in mind more generally.

Increasingly, smartphones are being used to access all manner of information: email messages, Facebook status updates, tweets, RSS feeds, photographs and more. Approaches to dealing with this multi-faceted information stream developed on the desktop, such as switching between multiple applications or multiple browser windows, are unwieldy and scale poorly for mobile devices. In this paper, we propose the combination of the universal inbox and a system called 'Lenses' for extracting information of interest as part of a solution to this problem. These mechanisms allow the user to easily specify ways to sort, filter and manage their universal inbox in an intuitive way. We culminate with a discussion of implications for mobile phone interface design.

What is the future of digital imaging? Mobile imaging technologies have been changing rapidly and will continue to do so. We explore new developments in cameraphone photography with the goal of improving the design of the next generation of mobile imaging devices. We equipped 26 diverse participants with cameraphones, photo uploading and sharing software, and access to online photo-accounts for 3–5 months. This study allowed us to identify emerging practices in mobile photoware. We report on new and continuing practices across the lifespan of photos in this new imaging environment, including image capture, upload, annotation, archiving, sharing, and viewing. Based on these results, we develop design criteria and implications for designers and makers of mobile devices, mobile imaging and sharing software, and desktop and online photo software.

During recent years, mobile devices have become tools for versatile activities related to multimedia content. Especially mobile phones have emerged in this field, integrating the features of music players and digital and video cameras into mobile communication technologies. Multimedia messaging has followed text messaging, and Mobile TV is taking its steps towards large audiences. This workshop aims to gather researchers and practitioners who look at existing and anticipated end-user trends and usage culture in using and creating mobile multimedia content, as well as novel applications and ideas related to human computer interaction with mobile multimedia devices.

In this paper we describe an investigation into linkages to multimedia content from individual items in photographs and other printed images. We describe prototypes for authoring and playing such "active photos", and give the results of informal trials. We conclude with lessons learned and next steps.

Enterprise-scale storage systems, which can contain hundreds of host computers and storage devices and up to tens of thousands of disks and logical volumes, are difficult to design. The volume of choices that need to be made is massive, and many choices have unforeseen interactions. Storage system design is tedious and complicated to do by hand, usually leading to solutions that are grossly over-provisioned, substantially under-performing or, in the worst case, both.To solve the configuration nightmare, we present minerva: a suite of tools for designing storage systems automatically. Minerva uses declarative specifications of application requirements and device capabilities; constraint-based formulations of the various sub-problems; and optimization techniques to explore the search space of possible solutions.This paper also explores and evaluates the design decisions that went into Minerva, using specialized micro- and macro-benchmarks. We show that Minerva can successfully handle a workload with substantial complexity (a decision-support database benchmark). Minerva created a 16-disk design in only a few minutes that achieved the same performance as a 30-disk system manually designed by human experts. Of equal importance, Minerva was able to predict the resulting system's performance before it was built.

The evolution of the Andrew File System (AFS) into a wide-area distributed file system has encouraged collaboration and information dissemination on a much broader scale than ever before. We examine AFS as a provider of wide-area file services to over 100 organizations around the world. We discuss usage characteristics of AFS derived from empirical measurements of the system. Our observations indicate that AFS provides robust and efficient data access in its current configuration, thus confirming its viability as a design point for wide-area distributed file systems.

This paper investigates the problem of finding an optimal static pessimistic replica control scheme. It has been widely accepted that coteries (proposed by Garcia-Molina and Barbara) provide the most general framework for such schemes. We demonstrate that voting schemes, a very small subset of static pessimistic schemes, are optimal for fully connected networks with negligible link failure rates, as well as for Ethernet systems. We also show that voting is not optimal for somewhat more general systems. We propose a modification of the algorithm of Z. Tong and R.Y. Kain (1988) for computing optimal voting in operation independent case, so that it runs in linear (rather than exponential) time. Finally, we propose the first efficient algorithm for computing the optimal vote assignment and appropriate thresholds for fully connected networks when relative frequencies of read and write operations are known. We also extend this result to Ethernet systems.>

Distributed computing environments are expected to offer highly available services. Replication of data is one of the main techniques used to achieve this goal. Protocols that achieve optimal performance in replicating data for ring networks are discussed. Coteries, proposed by H. Garcia-Molina and D. Barbara (1985), provide the most general framework for analyzing static pessimistic protocols. It is shown that a simple voting scheme, a very small class of the coterie scheme, provides optimal performance for several variations of the ring interconnection topology.>