Language immersion from birth is crucial to a child's language development. However, language immersion can be particularly challenging for hearing parents of deaf children to provide as they may have to overcome many difficulties while learning American Sign Language (ASL). We are in the process of creating a mobile application to help hearing parents learn ASL. To this end, we have interviewed members of our target population to gain understanding of their motivations and needs when learning sign language. We found that the most common motivation for parents learning ASL is better communication with their children. Parents are most interested in acquiring more fluent sign language skills through learning to read stories to their children.

Browsing a collection of information on a mobile device is a common task, yet it can be difficult due to the small size of mobile displays. A common trade-off offered by many current mobile interfaces is to allow users to switch between an overview and detailed views of particular items. An open question is how much preview of each item to include in the overview. Using a mobile email processing task, we attempted to answer that question. We investigated participants' email processing behaviors under differing preview conditions in a semi-controlled, naturalistic study. We collected log data of participants' actual behaviors as well as their subjective impressions of different conditions. Our results suggest that a moderate level of two to three lines of preview should be the default. The overall benefit of a moderate amount of preview was supported by both positive subjective ratings and fewer transitions between the overview and individual items.

Language immersion from birth is crucial to a child's language development. However, language immersion can be particularly challenging for hearing parents of deaf children to provide as they may have to overcome many difficulties while learning sign language. We intend to create a mobile device-based system to help hearing parents learn sign language. The first step is to understand what level of detail (i.e., resolution) is necessary for novice signers to learn from video of signs. In this paper we present the results of a study designed to evaluate the ability of novices learning sign language to ascertain the details of a particular sign based on video presented on a mobile device. Four conditions were presented. Three conditions involve manipulation of video resolution (low, medium, and high). The fourth condition employs insets showing the sign handshapes along with the high resolution video. Subjects were tested on their ability to emulate the given sign over 80 signs commonly used between parents and their young children. Although participants noticed a reduction in quality in the low resolution condition, there was no significant effect of condition on ability to generate the sign. Sign difficulty had a significant correlation with ability to correctly reproduce the sign. Although the inset handshape condition did not improve the participants' ability to emulate the signs correctly, participant feedback provided insight into situations where insets would be more useful, as well as further suggestions to improve video intelligibility. Participants were able to reproduce even the most complex signs tested with relatively high accuracy.

Evaluations of task guidance systems often focus on evaluations of new technologies rather than comparing the nuances of interaction across the various systems. One common domain for task guidance systems is warehouse order picking. We present a method involving an easily reproducible ecologically motivated order picking environment for quantitative user studies designed to reveal differences in interactions. Using this environment, we perform a 12 participant within-subjects experiment demonstrating the advantages of a head-mounted display based picking chart over a traditional text-based pick list, a paper-based graphical pick chart, and a mobile pick-by-voice system. The test environment proved sufficiently sensitive, showing statistically significant results along several metrics with the head-mounted display system performing the best. We also provide a detailed analysis of the strategies adopted by our participants.

In this paper we present the results of a study designed to evaluate the computer-based methods of learning American Sign Language (ASL). We describe a method including an initial instruction session along with receptive and generative language tests which were administered after a week-long retention interval. We show a strong correlations (r=.62, r=.57) between the initial session's instruction and the receptive and generative levels of vocabulary signing. Based on the results of our experiment, we establish a baseline for further exploration of ASL vocabulary acquisition and identify further paths for language based instruction.