CMSC 838G - Projects

Students are encouraged to form small multi-disciplinary groups who will conduct one research project throughout the semester. While there will be 3 project checkpoints during the semester, only the final version of the project will be graded. At each checkpoints, the current status of projects will presented and discussed in class. The goal of the project is for you to produce a research paper suitable for submission to a conference.

Particulate Level Animations in Chemistry. This research is part of a doctoral study on the use of particulate-level computer animations in general chemistry (such as this cristal disolving in water). Literature has shown that learners who are novices in a content area often do not know how to attend to relevant cues or details provided by an animation (Rieber, 1990; Molecular Visualization in Science Education Workshop, 2001). Students, who are considered “novices” in the field of chemistry, see only surface features such as lines and shapes when presented with animations, while instructors, considered “experts” in the field, see the chemical processes being represented (Kozma & Russell, 1997). Using our eye tracking system, study the differences between expert and novice understanding of animations in chemistry. (Starting point: "Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice" by Duchowski.)
Evaluation of the VirTouch mouse. Evaluate the performance of the VirTouch mouse, a mouse designed to help blind and visualy impaired people to interact with computers.
Evaluation of the MIRACLE system using an eye tracking system. Combining search systems with machine translation yields new capabilities, enabling discovery of documents in many of the world's major languages using a single query. Polyglots (people who speak many languages), serious searchers willing to pay for professional translations, and researchers looking to see what has been written on a subject in languages they normally would not see could all find such systems useful. The challenge is to design experiments that assess the utility of specific features of the MIRACLE system that we have built here at Maryland to support these tasks. (Starting point: "Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice" by Duchowski.)
Evaluation of a mouse for older adults. Jerry Fails designed a mouse for older adults and ran a pilot study to evaluate its performances. Looking at the result of his pilot study, improve upon the design and design a new study to evaluate the comfort and performance of the mouse for older adults.
Improving search query using eye tracking as input. Users typically express their interests using short queries submitted to systems like Google. This is only one way to elicit user intentions. Another way may be to use eye-tracking devices attached to a monitor or on a tabletop to track where in a document a user looks. Using the eye-tracker output it may be possible to infer user interests based on which parts of a document they examine closely and how they use the information they view. Experimental options for this project include: (a) working with structured documents to infer user interests based on which sections are skipped or studied and (b) studying report writing to determine interests based on the level of correlation between what information is read in a document and what is typed immmediately in a report. This project may involve working with a real eye tracker and may begin by using data provided by the 2005 Eye Tracking Challenge. (Starting point: "Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice" by Duchowski.)
The role of visual feedback in two-handed interaction techniques. While studying the effect of merging, I gathered data that seems to imply that while interacting with ToolGlass, some users are slowed down by the fact that they have to divide their attention between both hands. Design a study (using our eye tracking equipment) to either confirm or infirm this conjecture. In the former case, characterize the importance of the effect. (Starting point: "Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice" by Duchowski.)
Cascading menu performance. Cascading menus are now used extensively in modern user interface, yet very little empirical studies have been carried out to study their performance. Design a study which will help us understand better the parameters influencing cascading menu selection time. (starting points: Accot et al, Steering law paper, Masatomo et al. paper on cascading menu traversal.)
Transition from visual feedback to muscle memory. Several command selections techniques such as Marking Menu and FlowMenu can be used by expert users without visual feedback. Design a study (using our eye tracking equipment) to investigate how the transition from novice to expert takes place (starting point: "Eye Tracking Methodology: Theory and Practice" by Duchowski)
Using the PADD infrastructure as an ethnographic tool. The Paper Augmented Digital Document infrastructure can be used to collect data about the life of a document from its creation to the its final printout. Using the PADD infrastructure, design an ethnographic study aimed at understanding better the life of a digital document.
Use of paper during a meeting. We will soon be starting the interactive digital table project. One of the key goal of this project is to design a user interface as easy to use as paper. Design and run an ethnographic study showing how people are handling paper during meetings. Key questions will include: What kind of documents do people bring to meetings? How do they annotate them during meetings? How do people interact while working together on a document? How do they move paper around? What happen to the pieces of paper at the end of the meeting?
Proofreading. How do people proofread documents? There are many parameters involved in proofreading a document: Should one first proofread and then correct, or is it better to proofread and correct a the same time? Should one proofread on the screen or is it better to proofread on paper then make the correction on the screen? While proofreading, is it better to use a keyboard or is it better to use a pen? Design a user study that will help us understand better the key factors involved in the proofreading task.
Evaluating the MALACH user interface. Oral history archives are a potentially potentially powerful and inspiring source of information about past events, generally through videotaped interviews with those who experienced or witnessed them. Typical users of such systems include teachers, historians and documentary film makers. The Natural Language Processing group have been building an end-user search interface to help teachers search an archive of interviews with survivors, witnesses and rescuers of the Holocaust. The project will involve the design and execution of an experiment to compare our oral history search system with one provided by the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, who assembled the archive.
Your own project. If you wish, you may design your own project. In that case, please contact me as soon as possible so that we can discuss about you idea and be sure that its format and scope is compatible with the class.