Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 116-120). / Computational thinking has been described as a basic skill that should be included in the educational curriculum. Several online screen-based platforms for learning computational thinking have been developed during the past decades. In this thesis we propose the concept of Embodied Spatial Programming as a new and potentially improved programming paradigm for learning computational thinking in space. We have developed HyperCubes, an example Augmented Reality authoring platform that makes use of this paradigm. With a set of qualitative user studies we have assessed the engagement levels and the potential learning outcomes of the application. Through space, the physical environment, creativity and play the user is able to tinker with basic programming concepts that can lead to a better adoption of computational thinking skills. / by Anna Fusté Lleixà. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Page 82 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 76-81). / In this thesis, I explore how interactive technologies can positively impact human wellness and flourishing. I investigate this in the context of pediatric inpatient care. Children and their parents may undergo challenging experiences when admitted for inpatient care at pediatric hospitals. While most hospitals make efforts to provide socio-emotional support for patients and their families during care, gaps still exist between human resource supply and demand. The Huggable project aims to close this gap by creating a social robot able to mitigate stress and anxiety and to promote positive affect and physical activity in pediatric patients by engaging them in playful interactive activities. We ran a randomized controlled trial study at a local pediatric hospital to study how three different interactive mediums (a plush teddy bear, a virtual agent on a screen and a social robot) affects the child patient's physical activity, affect, joyful play, stress and anxiety. In this thesis, I analyze the social, emotional, linguistic and physical behaviors of the patients, caretakers and medical staff with the video data collected during the Huggable study. Results from the behavioral analyses show that a social robot promotes more physical movement, more emotional verbal expressions, and more dynamic patient-caretaker-medical staff interaction than the virtual character and the plush interventions. Then, I extend the findings from the in-hospital experiment and develop an autonomous virtual avatar mobile application that provides personalized positive psychology interventions. A three-week longitudinal study with smartphone users showed that the interactive virtual avatar resulted an immediate improvement on people's affect and the users' engagement with the avatar increased over time due to the personalization algorithm implemented in the system. The findings from the randomized clinical trial in the pediatric hospital and the longitudinal study with smartphone users suggest the potential benefit of an autonomous and personalized social robot in pediatric inpatient-care contexts on young patients' social and emotional wellbeing. / by Sooyeon Jeong. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 73-77). / Studies have shown that children's early literacy skills can impact their ability to achieve academic success, attain higher education and secure employment later in life. However, lack of resources and limited access to educational content causes a "knowledge gap" between children that come from different socio-economic backgrounds. To solve this problem, there has been a recent surge in the development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to provide learning benefits to children. However, before providing new content, an ITS must assess a child's existing knowledge. Several studies have shown that children learn new words by forming semantic relationships with words they already know. Human tutors often implicitly use semantics to assess a tutee's word knowledge from partial and noisy data. In this thesis, I present a cognitively inspired model that uses word semantics (semantics-based model) to make inferences about a child's vocabulary from partial information about their existing vocabulary. Using data from a one-to-one learning intervention between a robotic tutor and 59 children, I show that the proposed semantics-based model outperforms (on average) models that do not use word semantics (semantics-free models). A subject level analysis of results reveals that different models perform well for different children, thus motivating the need to combine predictions. To this end, I present two methods to combine predictions from semantics-based and semantics-free models and show that these methods yield better predictions of a child's vocabulary knowledge. Finally, I present an application of the semantics-based model to evaluate if a learning intervention was successful in teaching children new words while enhancing their semantic understanding. More concretely, I show that a personalized word learning intervention with a robotic tutor is better suited to enhance children's vocabulary when compared to a non-personalized intervention. These results motivate the use of semantics-based models to assess children's knowledge and build ITS that maximize children's semantic understanding of words. / "This research was supported by NSF IIP-1717362 and NSF IIS-1523118"--Page 10. / by Ishaan Grover. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 36-38). / Communication within natural systems of eukaryotes and prokaryotes typically entails message transmission between and among cells via small-molecule messengers being funneled from the sender to the receiver cell. Nucleic acids are rarely used as extracellular messengers due to their labile nature and proclivity for enzymatic digestion. Eliminating these obstacles will allow for a larger array of messages to be sent with minimal cellular machinery. Exploiting the bacterial twin-arginine translocation (TAT) pathway and a nucleic-acid binding protein sourced from bacteriophage MS2, we have engineered a message-sending system in Escherichia coli capable of specifically exporting a "pre-written" circularized RNA message to the extracellular environment. This RNA message maintains its integrity over the course of at least four hours in extracellular growth medium, and this system serves as the first demonstration of versatile, stable messaging with nucleic acids, specifically with RNA, in the extracellular environment. / by Lisa Nip. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 43-46). / Efforts to model computation in biological neural networks require knowledge of the structure of the network, the dynamics that play across it, and a network simple enough to be tractable to our incipient analyses. The simplicity of the 302-node nervous system of the nematode C. elegans and its transparency have made it an attractive model organism in neuroscience for several decades. Indeed, Caenorhabditis elegans has long been touted as the only species for which the connectome is known, reconstructed by hand from electron micrographs. However, while the number and identity of neurons in C. elegans appears fixed across animals, the variability in the connections between them has not been sufficiently characterized by the above efforts, which examined only a handful of animals and required many years of human labor. Such a characterization, and, moreover, an ability to accurately assess shifts in these neural graphs on timescales compatible with the pace and statistical rigor of scientific research would significantly accelerate efforts to understand neural computation. This thesis lays the groundwork for the development of such a framework. The expansion microscopy tissue preparation platform provided the basis for the set of experiments described within, in which strategies for molecular annotation of C. elegans and the subsequent protocols for readout are examined. / by Nicholas C Barry. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 90-96). / This thesis presents a collaborative human-machine crowdmapping approach to creating socio-spatial maps that represent both spatial and social aspects of communities. Our implemented system combines satellite image analytics, a mobile mapping app, and social survey data. The system is designed to provide an end user experience that aligns institutional interests with grassroots interests, resulting in a self-sustaining system. In collaboration with the global health organization Partners in Health, we tested our approach with local health workers in Rwanda. Better maps can improve local visibility and empower communities to share knowledge, trade goods, and access medical services. Assisted by automatically annotated satellite maps, the community-driven mapping resulted in detailed spatial and social maps for four rural villages. With the collected data, we designed a novel socio-spatial map for this community that combines knowledge about household locations, paths, inhabitants of those homes, and social relations between residents. Generalizing from this map, we propose a framework to organize people, places, paths, and relationships to reason about the intersection of social and spatial mapping. Furthermore, we derive design characteristics of our human-machine mapping system that can guide the development of new systems in related contexts. Socio-spatial maps have the potential to be used as critical decision-making tools for individuals and organizations alike. / by Raphael Schaad. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 75-78). / In recent years, there has been a growing interest in tools and strategies to support computational thinking, emphasizing a systematic application of computational ideas to problem solving. In this thesis, I focus instead on computational tinkering, exploring tools and strategies to support playful and iterative experimentation with physical and computational materials. I propose two different ways to look at computational tinkering: bringing the playful attitude of tinkering to building with code, and integrating computation into physical tinkering activities. Through four case studies, I describe the design and facilitation of activities for children in different contexts, using a particular tool LEGO Programmable Art Machines. For each case, I share my observations and reflections about children engaging with the activity, to iteratively improve the design of the experience. I conclude by identifying some key characteristics of learning through computational tinkering and proposing directions for further work in the design and outreach of computational tinkering activities and ideas. / by Carmelo Presicce. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-99). / [Color illustrations] Figure 0-1. Key elements within a Molecular Design Interactions interaction loop. Be it information embodied within rain, the oceans, a dinner plate, or human tears; the flow of information through fluids provides insights into the biological and chemical states of systems. Yet a large portion of our everyday experience with these systems remain inaccessible to users, designers and engineers whom operate outside the context of chemical disciplines. This thesis introduces a design framework coined Molecular Design Interactions, along with a toolbox of material based input-output devices termed Organic Primitives to facilitate the design of interactions with organic, fluid-based systems. The design methodology utilizes organic compounds from food for the development of color, odor and shape changing information displays. Activated by units of fluid information called droplets, this thesis focuses on pH signals in fluid as a model to demonstrate how molecular scale phenomena can be brought from materials into applications for interaction with a range of organic systems. A design language and vocabulary, drawing from signaling theory and molecular associations, offer designers a method with which to translate sensor-display output into meaningful experience designs for human perception. The design space showcases techniques for how the Organic Primitives can transcend beyond mere input-output devices to achieve higher order complexity. Passive and computational methods are presented to enable designers to control material interface output behaviors. An evaluation of the individual output properties of the sensors-actuators is presented to assess the rate, range, and reversibility of the changes as a function of pH 2-10. Strategies for how the materiality of objects can be augmented using Organic Primitives are investigated through several applications under four contexts: environmental, on-body, food, and interspecies. Molecular Design Interactions offers a process and toolbox to create interfaces between humans and molecules in fluids, across scales, from the nano to the macro systems. / by Viirj Kan. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 79-85). / While technological development of vehicular autonomy has been progressing rapidly, a parallel discussion has emerged with regard to the moral implications of a future wherein people hand over to autonomous machines the controls to a mode of transportation. These discussions have entered a new phase with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) releasing a 15-point policy that requires manufacturers to explain how their AVs will handle "ethical considerations". However, there is a huge gap in our understanding of the ethical perception of Al, as there have been few large-scale empirical studies on human moral perception of outcomes to autonomous vehicle moral dilemmas. Additionally, public engagement is a very important piece of the puzzle, especially given the emotional salience of traffic accidents. With that in mind, I co-developed the "Moral Machine" (http://moralmachine.mit.edu). Moral Machine is a platform for gathering a human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as AVs. The web site went viral, and got covered in various media outlets. This web site has also been a valuable data collection tool, allowing us to collect the largest dataset on Al ethics ever collected in history (with 30 million decisions by over 3 million visitors, so far). This thesis will introduce the Moral Machine platform as a data-gathering platform. Moreover, insights about the human perception of the different routes to full automation will be covered in the thesis, with the data collected through other online platforms. / by Edmond Awad. / S.M.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 86-90). / In this thesis, I explore relationships between form generation, material properties, and design constraints in search of a new framework for designing with unpredictable or unstable material systems using glass 3D printing as a case study. Molten glass forming has always been difficult to accurately predict or model, but also offers a high degree of geometric complexity or hierarchy through organic formations. Top-down design approaches to material tunability and control are enabled by new digital fabrication tools and technologies that offer some of most successful attempts to design at scales approaching that of nature [38] [20]. Bottom-up, material-driven systems design functionality, itself, around organically formed structures to challenge our perspective of designing for utility, and how to define that utility [18]. The glass 3D printer, developed by The Mediated Matter Group in collaboration with the MIT Glass Lab, has been an important case study long in the making. A novel type of glass forming quickly gave way to a dialogue with highly unstable material behaviors, structures too complex to model in real time and visually compelling, frozen in time with cooling temperatures. The process generates new types of glass structures and visual output, enabling new design typologies for the product and architectural scale. Here I present an array of over a hundred unique design experiments that offer insight into this brand new design space created by complex glass behavior under control of a digital machine and harnessing structural instability. Close study not only of the objects generated but also their behavior during fabrication is key to understanding how the glass responds to the motion of the machine. Analysis of the project workflow itself provides the foundation for a framework capable of handling an active and complex material system, identifying how and when machine control can be used directly, how and when organic material formation can take place, and how the two interface from design tool to fabrication tool to design product. Finally, I look ahead to the potential for new product and architectural functionalities enabled by this platform, and I establish concepts for using the highly complex forms with the mapped "design space" as a guide for what we understand to be possible. The goal is to form new knowledge about material-informed digital fabrication through the generation of new glass forms and designs. / by Daniel Lizardo. / S.M.