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Browsing by Author "Faiola, Anthony"
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Item Advancing Critical Care in the ICU: A Human-Centered Biomedical Data Visualization Systems(2011) Faiola, Anthony; Newlon, ChrisThe purpose of this research is to provide medical clinicians with a new technology for interpreting large and diverse datasets to expedite critical care decision-making in the ICU. We refer to this technology as the medical information visualization assistant (MIVA). MIVA delivers multivariate biometric (bedside) data via a visualization display by transforming and organizing it into temporal resolutions that can provide contextual knowledge to clinicians. The result is a spatial organization of multiple datasets that allows rapid analysis and interpretation of trends. Findings from the usability study of the MIVA static prototype and heuristic inspection of the dynamic prototype suggest that using MIVA can yield faster and more accurate results. Furthermore, comments from the majority of the experimental group and the heuristic inspectors indicate that MIVA can facilitate clinical task flow in context-dependent health care settings.Item The Aesthetic Dimensions of U.S. and South Korean Responses to Web Home Pages: A Cross-Cultural Comparison(2011-01) Faiola, Anthony; Ho, Chin-Chang; Tarrant, Mark D.; MacDorman, Karl F.Culturally influenced preferences in website aesthetics is a topic often neglected by scholars in human-computer interaction. Kim, Lee, and Choi (2003) identified aesthetic design factors of web home pages that elicited particular responses in South Korean web users based on 13 secondary emotional dimensions. This study extends Kim et al.'s work to U.S. participants, comparing the original South Korean findings with U.S. findings. Results show that U.S. participants reliably applied translations of the emotional adjectives used in the South Korean study to the home pages. However, factor analysis revealed that the aesthetic perceptions of U.S. and South Korean participants formed different aesthetic dimensions composed of different sets of emotional adjectives, suggesting that U.S. and South Korean people perceive the aesthetics of home pages differently. These results indicate that website aesthetics can vary significantly between cultures.Item The audio/visual mismatch and the uncanny valley: an investigation using a mismatch in the human realism of facial and vocal aspects of stimuli(2011-03-16) Szerszen, Kevin A.; MacDorman, Karl F.; Faiola, Anthony; Bolchini, Davide; Lu, Amy ShirongEmpirical research on the uncanny valley has primarily been concerned with visual elements. The current study is intended to show how manipulating auditory variables of the stimuli affect participant’s ratings. The focus of research is to investigate whether an uncanny valley effect occurs when humans are exposed to stimuli that have an incongruity between auditory and visual aspects. Participants were exposed to sets of stimuli which are both congruent and incongruent in their levels of audio/visual humanness. Explicit measures were used to explore if a mismatch in the human realism of facial and vocal aspects produces an uncanny valley effect and attempt to explain a possible cause of this effect. Results indicate that an uncanny valley effect occurs when humans are exposed to stimuli that have an incongruity between auditory and visual aspects.Item Augmenting Consciousness through Invasive Technologies: How Do Cochlear Implant Patients Engage Activity in the World?(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Finch, RJ; Srinivas, Preethi; Karanam, Yamini; Koval, Olesia; Faiola, AnthonyBackground: Our ability to understand the mind has focused primarily on the explanation of behavior, leaving the question of conscious experience untouched and quite enigmatic [1]. The psychology of consciousness pertains to functional notions of the inner state of being and intrinsic internal governing structures such as self-inwardness, self-awareness, attention, voluntary control, knowledge, etc [2]. Vygotsky stated that the: “social dimension of consciousness is primarily in time and in fact,” where “individual consciousness is derivative and secondary” [3]. He held to the philosophical grounding of the theory of activity [4], arguing that to adequately understand the individual, one must recognize the societal implications related to individual lives and their conscious engagement with the social world. Based on his “cultural-historical activity theory” (CHAT), he posited that cognitive operations are specifically sociocultural structures and processes [5] that incorporate cultural artifacts into activity or the cultural mediation of action. As such, CHAT can be used to observe the socially embodied self [6, 7], where consciousness is augmented by fusing minds and tools or technologies, what Dourish stated as embodied experiences of what we “see and understand” [8]. Within this sociocultural model, consciousness can be mediated through invasive technologies. For example, human-machine augmentation (HMA) exists in corrective medical procedures that implant technologies that restore, enhance, or correct the human function of hearing, vision, or cognition. In each case, these enhancements have the potential to make our lives better, while also being augmented and increasingly artificial. Problem: Surgically inserted into the inner ear, cochlear implants provide access to sound to the deaf by stimulating nerve fibers through auditory information received from the external world [9]. Studies have shown that after six months of implantation, children have a significant enhancement in mental shifting aptitude, picture vocabulary capability, working memory, and psychomotor speed [10]. While children with cochlear implants appreciate the opportunities afforded them through the implants, they still seem to suffer from social difficulties involving friendship and “fitting in” especially during adolescence. In some instances, studies have shown that adolescents with cochlear implants began to feel alienated and depressed because they perceive themselves as different from their peers [11]. Adult patients also experienced feelings of estrangement after implantation. One phenomenological study of a 50-year-old deaf woman (after a cochlear implantation) suggested that her embodied world experience of consciousness became distorted, while manifesting signs of paranoia, fear, anxiety, and danger [12]. Due to increasing use of augmenting technologies (such as cochlear implants), we argue that consciousness is being transformed by means of extending bodies and minds [13, 14]. We also hold that the blurring of the boundaries between natural consciousness and artificial systems is an evolutionary transition from mere humancomputer interaction to HMA. As such, we ask, if, and to what degree are invasive technologies changing self-awareness and the inner life of consciousness in the context of human activity? Are augmenting technologies positively impacting the evolution of consciousness and enhancing the sociocultural experience of implant recipients? Methods: Participants will include 30 adults between the ages of 18 and 50: 15 with cochlear implants and 15 without. The study will involve three methods of data collection: (1) A controlled in-lab study will include virtual 3D animated scenes in a CAVE, ranging from a calm natural environment with progressive degrees of complex change in the images and sounds, (2) A one-week observation using the Experience Sampling Method (7x per day cognitive/emotional logging), and (3) Post-test face-to-face interviews and questionnaire. We will also compare participants using physiological bio-sensory tracking during all three methods, including: heart rate (cardiac trends), galvanic skin response (moisture/electrical conductivity, skin temperature (body temp patterns), and heat flux (heat dissipation). Data analysis will help to determine patterns and correlations between cognitive activity, consciousness of surrounding (persons, things, and context) and physiological bio-readings. Broader Impact: The last two decades have seen the exponential emergence of mediational change in human consciousness due to the ubiquitous use of information technology. The intertwining nature of technology is profoundly influencing our relationship to the world. We argue that the synthesis of mind with technology (as psychological tool) is facilitating a different construction of consciousness: a product of an artificially assimilated system that convergences natural and artificial bodies and minds. This study hopes to identify significant differences in the affects of invasive technology on consciousness between users and non-users of cochlear implants.Item Building Healthy Social Media for All: Investigating How Different Cultures Seek and Process Health Information(Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Ansah-Koi, Kate; Faiola, Anthony; Srinivas, Preethi; Strzeszkowski, Deborah; Gross, MikaylahThe percentage of people accessing online health information in the U.S. has created a spike in knowledge that continues to impact personal health outcomes. Three events that have amplified interest in accessing such information have been: (1) Local/national programs promoting healthy life-styles and disease prevention, (2) The effects of increasing immigration to North America, and (3) The passing of the Affordable Care-Act. Aligning with these factors are health statistics that show African Americans with the highest mortality rate of any racial/ethnic group for all cancers combined—contributing to the lowest life expectancy of any ethnic group. Second, there are 55.2M Spanish speakers in the U.S., of which 20% (7.2M) say their level of English proficiency is fair-to-non-existent. This research is an investigation (in two-parts) into the role of cultural cognitive preferences in the design of online health social media and its potential for improving the health and well-being—with a focus on African-American and Latino populations. This study focuses on the former. Ten African Americans, ages 40 to 60, participated in phone open-ended interviews to identify their perception of the quality and availability of online health information. The interview consisted of 14 questions and lasted for approximately 15 minutes. Findings suggest that participants seek health information from a wide array of sources, with a preference for people as the source rather than online, e.g., physicians, health clinics, family and friends, co-workers, campus events, and church. While none of the interviewees answered yes to a question about whether they participated in online health networks, most did have knowledge of the dissemination of health information through social media, which most had experience using. Finally, the most mentioned factor regarding satisfaction with online health information was related to trust and verifying the sources, which most interviewees said they do through their personal physician.Item Consolidation of CDA-based documents from multiple sources : a modular approach(2016-09) Hosseini Asanjan, Seyed Masoud; Jones, Josette F.; Dixon, Brian E.; Vreeman, Daniel J.; Faiola, Anthony; Wu, HuanmeiPhysicians receive multiple CCDs for a single patient encompassing various encounters and medical history recorded in different information systems. It is cumbersome for providers to explore different pages of CCDs to find specific data which can be duplicated or even conflicted. This study describes the steps towards a system that integrates multiple CCDs into one consolidated document for viewing or processing patient-level data. Also, the impact of the system on healthcare providers’ perceived workload is evaluated. A modular system is developed to consolidate and de-duplicate CDA-based documents. The system is engineered to be scalable, extensible and open source. The system’s performance and output has evaluated first based on synthesized data and later based on real-world CCDs obtained from INPC database. The accuracy of the consolidation system along with the gaps in identification of the duplications were assessed. Finally, the impact of the system on healthcare providers’ workload is evaluated using NASA TLX tool. All of the synthesized CCDs were successfully consolidated, and no data were lost. The de-duplication accuracy was 100% based on synthesized data and the processing time for each document was 1.12 seconds. For real-world CCDs, our system de-duplicated 99.1% of the problems, 87.0% of allergies, and 91.7% of medications. Although the accuracy of the system is still very promising, however, there is a minor inaccuracy. Due to system improvements, the processing time for each document is reduced to average 0.38 seconds for each CCD. The result of NASA TLX evaluation shows that the system significantly decreases healthcare providers’ perceived workload. Also, it is observed that information reconciliation reduces the medical errors. The time for review of medical documents review time is significantly reduced after CCD consolidation. Given increasing adoption and use of Health Information Exchange (HIE) to share data and information across the care continuum, duplication of information is inevitable. A novel system designed to support automated consolidation and de-duplication of information across clinical documents as they are exchanged shows promise. Future work is needed to expand the capabilities of the system and further test it using heterogeneous vocabularies across multiple HIE scenarios.Item Consumer Health Informatics: Empowering Healthy-Lifestyle-Seekers Through mHealth(Elsevier, 2016) Faiola, Anthony; Holden, Richard J.; Department of Biohealth Informatics, School of Informatics and ComputingPeople are at risk from noncommunicable diseases (NCD) and poor health habits, with interventions like medications and surgery carrying further risk of adverse effects. This paper addresses ways people are increasingly moving to healthy living medicine (HLM) to mitigate such health threats. HLM-seekers increasingly leverage mobile technologies that enable control of personal health information, collaboration with clinicians/other agents to establish healthy living practices. For example, outcomes from consumer health informatics research include empowering users to take charge of their health through active participation in decision-making about healthcare delivery. Because the success of health technology depends on its alignment/integration with a person's sociotechnical system, we introduce SEIPS 2.0 as a useful conceptual model and analytic tool. SEIPS 2.0 approaches human work (i.e., life's effortful activities) within the complexity of the design and implementation of mHealth technologies and their potential to emerge as consumer-facing NLM products that support NCDs like diabetes.Item Correlating the effects of flow and telepresence in virtual worlds: Enhancing our understanding of user behavior in game-based learning(2013-05) Faiola, Anthony; Newlon, Christine; Pfaff, Mark; Smyslova, OlgaRecent research on online learning suggests that virtual worlds are becoming an important environment to observe the experience of flow. From these simulated spaces, researchers may gather a deeper understanding of cognition in the context of game-based learning. Csikszentmihalyi (1997) describes flow as a feeling of increased psychological immersion and energized focus, with outcomes that evoke disregard for external pressures and the loss of time consciousness, issuing in a sense of pleasure. Past studies suggest that flow is encountered in an array of activities and places, including those in virtual worlds. The authors’ posit that flow in virtual worlds, such as Second Life (SL), can be positively associated with degrees of the cognitive phenomenon of immersion and telepresence. Flow may also contribute to a better attitude and behavior during virtual game-based learning. This study tested three hypotheses related to flow and telepresence, using SL. Findings suggest that both flow and telepresence are experienced in SL and that there is a significant correlation between them. These findings shed light on the complex interrelationships and interactions that lead to flow experience in virtual gameplay and learning, while engendering hope that learners, who experience flow, may acquire an improved attitude of learning online.Item Cybersurfer: A One Window Internet BrowserRoychowdhury, Dipankar; Faiola, AnthonyThe Web browser interaction model popularized by NCSA Mosaic in 1993 contributed to the exponential growth of the Internet and has remained largely unchanged since then. However, even with multiple windows and bookmarks, it has become ineffective as a tool for managing Web pages, because the number of Web sites visited by users has increased. This study analyzes Internet browsing patterns and, based on that analysis, proposes a new interaction model that facilitates efficient Web browsing in a single window using two novel tools: “clone” and “mark.” The innovative interface that embodies this interaction model improves access to visited pages and enhances the management of links on a page. This study also compares Web browsing performance using the interface of the Cybersurfer Web browser to that of Internet Explore 6.0. The findings reveal the drawbacks of the currently used multiple window browsers and the potential efficiency, convenience, and pleasure of a new interface for single-window browsers.Item The Design Enterprise: Rethinking the HCI Education Paradigm(2007-06) Faiola, Anthony