Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-81). / With the digitization of media, computers can be employed to help us with the process of classification, both by learning from our behavior to perform the task for us and by exposing new ways for us to think about our information. Given that most of our media comes in the form of electronic text, research in this area focuses on building automatic text classification systems. The standard representation employed by these systems, known as the bag-of-words approach to information retrieval, represents documents as collections of words. As a byproduct of this model, automatic classifiers have difficulty distinguishing between different meanings of a single word. This research presents a new computational model of electronic text, called a synchronic imprint, which uses structural information to contextualize the meaning of words. Every concept in the body of a text is described by its relationships with other concepts in the same text, allowing classification systems to distinguish between alternative meanings of the same word. This representation is applied to both the standard problem of text classification and also to the task of enabling people to better identify large bodies of text. The latter is achieved through the development of a visualization tool named flux that models synchronic imprints as a spring network. / by Cameron Alexander Marlow. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-76). / Car accidents are a serious problem. The measures currently being taken are not very successful in preventing accidents. To reduce the number of accidents, driver support and warning systems are built. Part of their solution is the use of education, in the form of educational warning systems. However, issuing warnings might distract the driver from the driving task exactly when the stress level is high and immediate action is required. This work concentrates on educational warning systems in the framework of cars and driving. It proposes an innovative design that is demonstrated via a prototype of an educational warning system. One of the main objectives of the research presented here is to test if delaying warnings and feedback (to prevent stress and distraction) improves the learning ability and the performance of drivers using them. Are delayed (educational) warnings superior to immediate warnings? Using the 300M IT Edition, an experiment to test the effects of delayed feedback on the learning process in two driving tasks was carried out. The findings showed significant evidence of better performance overall, while yielding marginal significant of improvement in task understanding, and some indication, although not significant, of faster and stronger improvement in task performance of the delayed feedback group. The main impact of the work is some evidence that delayed warnings in driver learning tasks are superior. More importantly, it is not evident that it is inferior, which makes it preferable to immediate feedback that may distract the driver from the driving task. / by Taly Sharon. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, June 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "June 2011." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 138-154). / The goal of this thesis is to show that social support created through face-to-face interaction is a driving factor in a number of important outcomes. Through a series of studies we show that social support, operationalized using face-to-face network constraint (information clearing), is positively related to important outcomes such as productivity and job satisfaction and that changes in social support are positively related to changes in these outcomes. We then discuss a two-phase study where we experimentally modify break structure to increase network constraint and demonstrate a corresponding positive change in outcomes. Finally, we show that network constraint is also qualitatively related to outcomes and is an effective proxy for social support. To conclude we situate this research under a larger framework that provides direction for future research. / by Benjamin Nathan Waber. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-92). / This thesis presents ComTouch, a new device for enhancing interpersonal communication over distance through use of touch. The ComTouch approach investigates how the sense of touch can be remotely represented by means of a vibrotactile, or touch-and-vibration, interface. Touch has potential to improve existing remote communication by allowing tactile cues to augment the audio-visual information in real-time. The approach of ComTouch is to use this vibrotactile mapping for conveying the pressure exerted by each finger of the transmitter as patterns of vibration against the corresponding finger of the receiver. The implementation is a hand-held device that allows a user to transmit and receive patterns of vibration to and from a remote user. A pair of prototypes was built to allow exploration of remote communication using this vibrotactile mapping. The hypothesis is that the vibrotactile mapping can be used in remote communication of tactile gestures, or expressive uses of touch. User studies will be performed to gauge the information content of the signals transmitted and received using the vibrotactile device in remote communication. A report of the observed usages of the vibrotactile channel will be given. This research will allow us to identify patterns of tactile communication that may inform the design of new tactile communication devices, languages and methods. / by Angela Chang. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-136). / The study of complex social systems has traditionally been an arduous process, involving extensive surveys, interviews, ethnographic studies, or analysis of online behavior. Today, however, it is possible to use the unprecedented amount of information generated by pervasive mobile phones to provide insights into the dynamics of both individual and group behavior. Information such as continuous proximity, location, communication and activity data, has been gathered from the phones of 100 human subjects at MIT. Systematic measurements from these 100 people over the course of eight months has generated one of the largest datasets of continuous human behavior ever collected, representing over 300,000 hours of daily activity. In this thesis we describe how this data can be used to uncover regular rules and structure in behavior of both individuals and organizations, infer relationships between subjects, verify self- report survey data, and study social network dynamics. By combining theoretical models with rich and systematic measurements, we show it is possible to gain insight into the underlying behavior of complex social systems. / by Nathan Norfleet Eagle. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 166-169). / Computation is a powerful way of knowing and exploring the world that finds its application in a broad range of human activities, from art making to mathematical modeling. Historically, this way of knowing has been taught in a canonical, top-down abstract fashion. This thesis presents a critical historical analysis of computers and computation in order to arrive at a framework for design of spaces for introducing computational concepts. Existing work is revisited before presenting a new system called CTRLSPACE, specifically built to as an alternate method of conveying computational concepts to young children ages four to seven. / Andrew Sempere. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-137). / The idea and formative design of a blended reality character, a new class of character able to maintain visual and kinetic continuity between the fully physical and fully virtual; the technical underpinnings of its unique blended physical and digital play context and the evaluation of its impact on children's play are the contents of this thesis. A play test study with thirty-four children aged three and a half to seven was conducted using non-reactive, unobtrusive observational methods and a validated evaluation instrument. Our claim is that young children have accepted the idea, persistence and continuity of blended reality characters. Furthermore, we found that children are more deeply engaged with blended reality characters and are more fully immersed in blended reality play as co-protagonists in the experience, in comparison to interactions with strictly screen-based representations. As substantiated through the use of quantitative and qualitative analysis of drawings and verbal utterances, the study showed that young children produce longer, detailed and more imaginative descriptions of their experiences following blended reality play. The desire to continue engaging in blended reality play as expressed by children's verbal requests to revisit and extend their play time with the character positively affirms the potential for the development of an informal learning platform with sustained appeal to young children. / by David Yann Robert. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-41). / Shopping is driven by needs (to eat, to socialize, to work), but it is also a driver of where we go. I examine the transaction records of 80 million customers and find that while our economic choices predict mobility patterns overall, at the small scale we transact unpredictably. In particular, we bundle together multiple store visits, and interleave the order in which we frequent those stores. Individual predictability also varies with income level. I end with a description of how merchant composition emerges in US cities, as seen through the lens of credit card swipes. / by Katherine (Coco) Krumme. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, February 2005. / MIT Institute Archives Copy: p. 101-132 bound in reverse order. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-132). / The prevalence and affordability of personal and environmental recording apparatuses are leading to increased documentation of our daily lives. This trend is bound to continue and it follows that academic, industry, and government groups are showing an increased interest in such endeavors for various purposes. In the present case, I assert that such documentation can be used to help remedy common memory problems. Assuming a long-term personal archive exists, when confronted with a memory problem, one faces a new challenge, that of finding relevant memory triggers. This dissertation examines the use of information-retrieval technologies on long-term archives of personal experiences towards remedying certain types of long-term forgetting. The approach focuses on capturing audio for the content. Research on Spoken Document Retrieval examines the pitfalls of information-retrieval techniques on error-prone speech- recognizer-generated transcripts and these challenges carry over to the present task. However, "memory retrieval" can benefit from the person's familiarity of the recorded data and the context in which it was recorded to help guide their effort. To study this, I constructed memory-retrieval tools designed to leverage a person's familiarity of their past to optimize their search task. To evaluate the utility of these towards solving long-term memory problems, I (1) recorded public events and evaluated witnesses' memory-retrieval approaches using these tools; and (2) conducted a longer- term memory-retrieval study based on recordings of several years of my personal and research-related conversations. Subjects succeeded with memory-retrieval tasks in both studies, typically finding answers within minutes. / (cont.) This is far less time than the alternate of re-listening to hours of recordings. Subjects' memories of the past events, in particular their ability to narrow the window of time in which past events occurred, improved their ability to find answers. In addition to results from the memory-retrieval studies, I present a technique called "speed listening." By using a transcript (even one with many errors), it allows people to reduce listening time while maintaining comprehension. Finally, I report on my experiences recording events in my life over 2.5 years. / by Sunil Vemuri. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72). / More and more, web users are moving from simply consuming content on the web to creating it as well, in the form of discussion boards, weblogs, wikis, and other collaborative and conversational media. Despite this, the web remains largely read-only; web designers create sites that are designed to be consumed by the public, much like other, traditional mass media. In this thesis, I explore free, shared annotation as a means of making the web more writable. In doing so, I hope to empower readers to engage more deeply with web content by actively participating in its production, and to have a voice on equal footing with those of the media producers whose content they consume. This thesis details the design and evaluation of Webbed Footnotes, a system for publicly annotating web documents. Though it is not the first such system, its design is novel in that it is sensitive to the needs of both the would-be annotators and the owners of the websites being annotated. In particular, annotators would like their additions to be highly visible, yet website owners demand that their sites be presented in the manner they intended. Webbed Footnotes attempts to fulfill both of these conditions by making annotations highly visible, yet ensuring that the underlying documents remain legible. / (cont.) If Webbed Footnotes can partially solve the tension between annotators and authors, then public, shared annotation on the web may have a chance for widespread success, leading to savvier and more engaged readers. / by Scott Andrew Golder. / S.M.