A Study of User Intent in Immersive Smart Spaces


Studying Online learnersOnline learning has gained increased popularity in recent years. However, with online learning, teacher observation and inter- vention is lost, creating a need for technologically observable characteristics that can compensate for this limitation. The present study used a wide array of sensing mechanisms including eye tracking, galvanic skin response (GSR) recording, facial expression analysis, and summary note-taking to monitor participants while they watched and recalled an online video lecture. We explored the link between these human- elicited responses and learning outcomes as measured by quiz questions. Results revealed GSR to be the best indicator of the challenge level of the lecture material. Yet, eye tracking and GSR remain difficult to capture when monitoring online learn- ing as the requirement to remain still impacts natural behavior and leads to more stoic and unexpressive faces. Continued work on methods ensuring naturalistic capture are critical for broadening the use of sensor technology in online learning, as are ways to fuse these data with other input, such as structured and unstructured data from peer-to-peer or student-teacher interactions.Smart spaces are typically augmented with devices capable of sensing various inputs and reacting to them. Data from these devices can be used to support system adaptation, reducing user intervention; however, mapping sensor data to user intent is difficult without a large amount of human-labeled data. We leverage the capabilities of head-mounted immersive technologies to actively capture users’ visual attention in a unobtrusive manner. Our contributions are three-fold: (1) we developed a novel prototype that enables studies of user intent in an immersive environment, (2) we conducted a proof-of-concept experiment to capture internal and external state data from smart devices together with head orientation information from participants to approximate their gaze, and (3) we report on both quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the data logs and pre- /post-study survey data using machine learning and statistical analysis techniques. Our results motivate the use of direct user input (e.g. gaze inferred by head orientation) in smart home environments to infer user intent allowing us to train better activity recognition algorithms. In addition, this initial study paves a new way to conduct repeatable experimentation of smart space technologies at a lower cost.
Collaborators
  • Kelsey Rook, Andrews University
  • Brendan Witt, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
  • Reynold Bailey, Department of Computer Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Peizhaou Hu, Department of Computer Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Ammina Kothari, School of Communications, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Publications
  • Kelsey Rook, Brendan Witt, Reynold Bailey, Joe Geigel, Peizhao Hu, Ammina Kothari. A Study of User Intent in Immersive Smart Spaces. In Third International Workshop on Pervasive Smart Living Spaces (PerLS) at PerCom 2019. Kyoto, Japan. March 11-15, 2019.