Conference Presentations by Leilah Lyons
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20), 2020
Data-driven dashboards have been increasingly integrated into various contexts, particularly in e... more Data-driven dashboards have been increasingly integrated into various contexts, particularly in educational settings. There is a growing need to understand how to design learning dashboards to help educators support learning experiences by providing real-time formative feedback. We are studying the design of a learning dashboard that can support educational facilitation tasks in a museum setting. In our approach, we use discrete facilitation tasks as the cornerstone of our design process. Using this task-based approach , we conducted pilot studies and participatory design sessions to better understand the context of design. In this paper, we offer preliminary findings and design considerations for supporting and digitally augmenting facilitation tasks in a highly interactive, open-ended learning environment .
CHI 2019, 2019
Immersive open-ended museum exhibits promote ludic engagement and can be a powerful draw for visi... more Immersive open-ended museum exhibits promote ludic engagement and can be a powerful draw for visitors, but these qualities may also make learning more challenging. We describe our efforts to help visitors engage more deeply with an interactive exhibit's content by giving them access to visu-alizations of data skimmed from their use of the exhibit. We report on the motivations and challenges in designing this reflective tool, which positions visitors as a "human in the loop" to understand and manage their engagement with the exhibit. We used an iterative design process and qualitative methods to explore how and if visitors could (1) access and (2) comprehend the data visualizations, (3) reflect on their prior engagement with the exhibit, (4) plan their future engagement with the exhibit, and (5) act on their plans. We further discuss the essential design challenges and the opportunities made possible for visitors through data-driven reflection tools. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Interface design pro-totyping; Empirical studies in ubiquitous and mobile computing.
Papers by Leilah Lyons
International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 2017
Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work - GROUP '16, 2016
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, Jun 24, 2013
ABSTRACT This paper describes an empirical study conducted to explore the expressive design space... more ABSTRACT This paper describes an empirical study conducted to explore the expressive design space for what we dub "effortful interaction." Effortful interaction is a form of human-computer interaction where different degrees of physical effort are intentionally incorporated into the interaction design in order to communicate information. In this sense effortful interaction is similar to haptics, where devices provide physical force feedback to users, except the perceived feedback occurs entirely within users' proprioception: i.e., users' perception of their own bodies. Our larger design goal is to use effortful interaction to communicate quantitative information to children who aren't yet proficient with graphs. First, though, we had to establish if we could reliably induce sensations of effort. This study examined the sensitivity of children to three different design parameters (the duration of interaction, the intensity required by the interaction, and the physical modality of the interaction), and compares their responses to those of adults.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2016
The long term costs of numeracy difficulties. London, Every Child A Chance Trust.
Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2007
Informal learning environments, e.g. children's science museums, provide special challenges for e... more Informal learning environments, e.g. children's science museums, provide special challenges for educational software design: the software must (1) be immediately accessible, (2) convey educational content within short episodes of use, and (3) should allow multiple users to participate at the same time. While mobile technology allows for multiple simultaneous users, significant scaffolding is required to allow groups to walk up and productively use it. Using a design experiment approach, my research focuses on the design and evaluation of distributed scaffolds that enable informal learners to use mobile technology effectively.
Proceedings of the 2014 Conference, Jun 17, 2014
Recent advances in handheld and Tablet based technology have paved the way for a unique style of ... more Recent advances in handheld and Tablet based technology have paved the way for a unique style of simulation. Drawing upon Participatory Simulation research at the University of Michigan and the MIT Media Lab [1], the MultiUser Simulations with Handheld Integration (MUSHI) framework provides a powerful simulation medium to address issues of scale and emergence, and to facilitate collaboration among students. This multi-device framework allows multiple users to employ handheld computers to simultaneously view and interact with a simulation environment at different levels of granularity. This demo will feature MUSHI-Life: a simple natural selection simulation built using the MUSHI framework.
... me, especially Cassie Byrd and Melody Yang, who were always ready to help lug equipment, oper... more ... me, especially Cassie Byrd and Melody Yang, who were always ready to help lug equipment, operate video cameras, and provide their pleasant company ... Beier, Eric, Lars, Steffen, Scott, & Shawn) helped in hundreds of small ways over the years, and didn't mind that I made the ...
Interactive learning environments can provide learners with opportunities to explore rich, real-w... more Interactive learning environments can provide learners with opportunities to explore rich, real-world problem spaces, but the nature of these problem spaces can make assessing learner progress difficult. Such assessment can be useful for providing formative and summative feedback to the learners, to educators, and to the designers of the environments. This work adds to a growing body of research that is applying EDM techniques to more open-ended problem spaces. The open-ended problem space under study here was an environmental science simulation. Learners were confronted with the real-world challenge of effectively placing green infrastructure in an urban neighborhood to reduce surface flooding. Learners could try out different 2D spatial arrangements of green infrastructure and use the simulation to test each solution's impact on flooding. The learners' solutions and the solutions' performances were logged during a controlled experiment with different user interface designs for the simulation. As with many open-problem spaces, analyzing this data was difficult due to the large state space, many good solutions, and many alternate paths to those good solutions. This work proposes a procedure for reducing the state space of solutions defined by 2D spatial patterns while maintaining their critical spatial properties. Spatial reasoning problems are a problem class not extensively examined by EDM, so this work sets the stage for further research in this area. This work also details a procedure for discovering effective 2D spatial strategies and solution paths, demonstrates how this information can be used to give formative feedback to the designers of the interactive learning environment, and speculates about how it could be used to provide formative feedback to learners.
We present the MUSHI (Multi-User Simulation with Handheld Integration) framework, which was desig... more We present the MUSHI (Multi-User Simulation with Handheld Integration) framework, which was designed to support middle and high school students in the acquisition of scientific concepts rooted in complex, multi-scalar phenomena. In designing a learning environment that is conducive to collaborative inquiry learning, we have combined a dynamic simulation with wirelessly-connected handheld devices. This is a novel use of technology, so we first had to ensure that this new multi-device paradigm would not, via extraneous cognitive load, interfere with inquiry learning tasks. In this pilot study, we confirmed that the multi-device interface can be used by the lower age range of our target demographic, and that its use does not impair the execution of inquiry learning tasks of the sort we have designed for the learning environment. We also observed the collaborative behaviors that naturally emerged from the use of MUSHI, to develop recommendations for scaffolding collaborative inquiry tasks.
In this panel, six informal science projects discuss how instructional and technological design e... more In this panel, six informal science projects discuss how instructional and technological design elements interact with the unique affordances and constraints of informal environments to impact learning. A central goal of the panel is to engage colleagues in examples that illustrate design decisions that inform research trajectories to move the field of CSCL forward in the design of informal learning environments.
Planning Theory & Practice, 2015
ABSTRACT
Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference adjunct papers on Ubiquitous computing - Ubicomp '10, 2010
We present a new low-cost paper-based user interface strategy (Paper-to-Parameters) for making in... more We present a new low-cost paper-based user interface strategy (Paper-to-Parameters) for making interaction with simulations of complex systems pragmatic within an Environmental Science curriculum. Students specify initial simulation conditions by sticking pieces of paper to a wall, and can experiment with the simulation by repositioning the pieces of paper. Computer vision recognizes the paper-based symbols and converts them into parameters used by the simulation. This tangible input approach contrasts with current slider-and programmingbased approaches for interacting with simulations. We hypothesize that the affordances of this interaction strategy better supports manipulations of spatial simulation parameters. We report here on the initial prototype of the system, and present plans for future work studying its impact on spatially-rooted understandings
Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI EA '11, 2011
Many claims have been made regarding the potential benefits of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs). P... more Many claims have been made regarding the potential benefits of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs). Presented here is an experiment assessing the usability, problem solving, and collaboration benefits of a TUI for direct placement tasks in spatially-explicit simulations for environmental science education. To create a low-cost deployment for single-computer classrooms, the TUI uses a webcam and computer vision to recognize the placement of paper symbols on a map. An authentic green infrastructure urban planning problem was used as the task for a within-subjects with rotation experiment with 20 pairs of participants. Because no prior experimental study has isolated the influence of the embodied nature of the TUI on usability, problem solving, and collaboration, a control condition was designed to highlight the impact of embodiment. While this study did not establish the usability benefits suggested by prior research, certain problem solving and collaboration advantages were measured.
Uploads
Conference Presentations by Leilah Lyons
Papers by Leilah Lyons