Ronald A. Metoyer

NSF Grant to Study Consumption Awareness

rametoyer — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:00:17 +0000

We were recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the use of feedback technologies and information visualization in helping people become more aware of their energy consumption habits and hopefully, change for the better. We’re looking for a Research Associate/Post Doc (see posting below) as well as a team of students excited about doing research in computing that will lead to a more sustainable future. In particular, I’m looking for graduate and undergraduate computer scientists interested in building tools/systems and studying how people use them. I’m also looking for undergraduates with a background in design to help with the extensive user-centered design studies planned for this work.

IGERT in Healthy Aging: LIFE in an Aging Society

rametoyer — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:50:09 +0000

I’m a Co-PI on a recently funded IGERT grant to support the development of interdisciplinary scientists who will lead efforts to improve sicence, products and policies aimed at helping older adults in our society to age indepedently. I’m looking for computer science graduate students interested in making a difference in this domain. The IGERT fellowship provides financial support for the first 2 years of the Ph.D. program (tuition and .49 GRA) after which the major advisor is expected to fund the student on a related grant.

There are tremendous opportunities in the HCI/Infovis field for computer scientists to study aging and how computing technology can contribute to optimizing function and helping individuals age independently. I’m particularly interested in understanding how technology can play a role in providing feedback to individuals aging at home in order to help them maintain awareness of their physical, psychological, and social well-being. For more information about the program and/or my research interests, email me (metoyer@eecs.oregonstate.edu) and visit the IGERT site.

I’m Hiring!

rametoyer — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:44:19 +0000

Project Description:We are living in a golden age of information where computing and sensing technology collect and generate tremendous amounts of data and the Internet facilities data storage and manipulation by the masses. A growing area of interest is how to provide this data back to the consumer to improve awareness of some aspect of his/her life. This project investigates the use of always-on interactive displays (much like a wall clock) to support awareness with a particular focus on awareness of energy consumption in the home. The goal is to identify how such displays can be designed and effectively integrated into the fabric of home life to support awareness of energy consumption habits. Researchers will investigate several important aspects of integrating feedback devices into the home, including:

The tradeoffs between aesthetics and utility
Data privacy considerations
The effect of such devices on home routines and vice versa
Supporting motivation and system adoption in a multi-inhabitant home
Supporting goal-setting and monitoring

These issues are most effectively addressed by studying real people in real households. Thus, researchers will employ user-centered methods to inspire, inform, and evaluate designs through fieldwork and long-term deployments of designs in real homes.

The results of this project will apply to not only energy consumption awareness, but more broadly to other areas where data feedback and reflection may promote personal awareness. Examples include supporting awareness of fitness and nutrition habits or feedback of activities of everyday life (medicating, sleeping, eating, etc.) for the elderly aging in place at home.

Key areas of responsibility: study implementation, data analysis, results publication

We seek to fill a Research Scientist position where the candidate will be responsible for co-organizing and executing the research project described above. In particular, the candidate will be responsible for:

Executing multiple studies including an in-home field study and an in-home participatory design study
Development and execution of a survey on visualization designs
Leading the design and implementation of prototype awareness systems
Leading the deployment of designs for longitudinal study
Data analysis after each study and/or deployment
Scientific publication of results in international venues including CHI, InfoVis, CSCW, etc.
Co-Development of curricular materials

Necessary Skills:

Human-computer interaction background

User-Centered Design

Contextual Design

Survey design

Statistical analysis

Grounded Theory

Visual/Interaction Design

Desired Skills:

Familiarity with sustainable energy research

Familiarity with information visualization/awareness/ambient technologies

Consults/Works With: The candidate will work closely with the PI, project GRA, and additional research team members to complete each phase of the research project.

Terms: The project will run for 2-years.

Compensation: Salary is competitive with a typical Postdoctoral Researcher/Research Scientist Position

Contact Info:

Ronald A. Metoyer, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Oregon State University

541 737 5553

metoyer@eecs.oregonstate.edu

Sabbatical at Microsoft Research

rametoyer — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:47:15 +0000

I have completed my sabbatical at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA with the VIBE research group under Mary Czerwinski. It was a fantastic experience…and collaborative work continues!

Diversity Visualization

rametoyer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:39:25 +0000

In this project, we address the problem of visualizing the diversity and depth of a set of objects. We propose a novel visualization for this purpose that is loosely based on parallel coordinates and uses opacity to convey depth information.

In most cases, measuring the overall diversity of a set of objects can be decomposed into an examination of diversity in each of a number of separate attributes. By diversity and depth in an attribute, we mean the degree of distribution and concentration of objects among possible values of that attribute.

In our proposed visualization, each attribute is represented by an attribute axis and attribute axes are arranged in parallel. Objects are represented as series of semi-transparent rectangles, which are laid out on each attribute axis. When objects occupy the same region of an attribute axis, the corresponding visual region becomes more opaque. We achieve the effect of filling visual space as objects become more uniformly distributed in attribute axes. Through this effect, diversity can be assessed pre-attentively.

Through user studies, we will measure effectiveness, usefulness, and efficiency of our method by comparing it to an existing, alternative method.

Publications

T.Pham, R. Hess, J. Ju, E. Zhang and R. Metoyer. Visualization of Diversity in Large Multivariate Data Sets. To appear in Proceedings of InfoVis 2010 ( .pdf )

T. Pham, R. Hess, C. Ju, R. Metoyer, J. Gilbert. What Does Diversity Look Like?. Poster Session at InfoVis 2009.
( .pdf )

Electricity Consumption Feedback

rametoyer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:38:07 +0000

The recent emphasis on sustainability has made consumers more aware of their responsibility for saving resources, in particular, electricity. Consumers can better understand how to save electricity by gaining awareness of their consumption beyond the typical monthly bill. We conducted a study to understand consumers’ awareness of energy consumption in the home and to determine their requirements for an interactive, always-on interface for exploring data to gain awareness of home energy consumption. In this paper, we describe a three-stage approach to supporting electricity conservation routines: raise awareness, inform complex changes, and maintain sustainable routines. We then present the findings from our study to support design implications for energy consumption feedback interfaces.

Publications

Riche, Y., Dodge, J., Metoyer, R. 2010. Studying Always-On Electricity Feedback in the Home, In CHI ’10: Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems, Atlanta, GA. pp. 1995 – 1998.
( .pdf )

Exercise Prescription Authoring

rametoyer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:38:04 +0000

Communicating dynamic motion content, such as exercise, with a static medium, such as paper, is difficult. The technology exists for presenting 3D animated exercise content to patients, however, the tools for allowing exercise domain experts to effectively author the content do not exist. We conducted two formative studies with exercise science domain experts to discover the requirements for an exercise prescription authoring notation. Based on our findings, we implemented a software prototype and performed a think-aloud study to understand its strengths and weaknesses. The results of our studies have implications for any software solution aimed at the authoring of physical activity content.

Publications
Dodge, J., Metoyer, R.A., and Gunter, K.B. 2009. Implications for An Exercise Prescription Authoring Notation, In Proceedings of the 2009 Symposium on Visual Languages and Human Centric Computing, Corvallis, Oregon. pp. 7 – 14. ( .pdf )

Explaining Real-Time Strategy Games

rametoyer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:33:35 +0000

Real-time strategy games share many aspects with real situations in domains such as battle planning, air traffic control, and emergency response team management which makes them appealing test-beds for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. We performed a formative study to uncover how experienced users explain game play in real-time strategy games. We report the results of our analysis of explanations and discuss characteristics of notations that would support experienced real-time strategy game users in specifying or annotating strategy-oriented behavior.

Publications

Metoyer, R., Stumpf, S., Neumann, C., Dodge, J., Cao, J. and Schnabel, A. Explaining How To Play Real-time Strategy Games, Knowledge-Based Systems Journal 23(4) 295-301
( .pdf )

Preparing for Impacts

rametoyer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:32:06 +0000

While a number of researchers have investigated what happens after and impact, few have addressed the moments leading up to an impending impace. In this work, we look at multiple solutions for preparing a character for an impact. In our first attempt, we present a psychology-inspired approach for generating a character’s anticipation of and response to an impending head or upper body impact. Protective anticipatory movement is built upon several actions that have been identified in the psychology literature as response mechanisms in monkeys and in humans. We combine our anticipation model with a physically-based dynamic response to produce animations where a character anticipates an impact before collision and reacts to the contact, physically, after the collision. In addition, in collaboration with our colleagues at UC Riversdie, we investigate motion capture based approaches to preparing for impacts.

Publications

Metoyer, R.A., Zordan, V.B., Hermens, B., Wu, C., and Soriano, M., 2008. Psychologically Inspired Anticipation and Dynamic Response for Impacts to the Head and Upper Body. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.14(1), 173-185.
( .ieee )

Zordan, V.B., Macchietto, A., Medina, J., Soriano, M., Wu, C.C., Metoyer, R., Rose, R. 2007. Anticipation from Example, ACM Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST), Newport Beach, California. pp 81-84.
( acm )

End-User Strategy Programming

rametoyer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:30:55 +0000

Rule-based programming systems can be fragile because they force the user to account for all logical alternatives. We investigate rule-based, end-user strategy programming by introducing our Interactive Football Playbook–a domain specific, end-user programming environment to allow American football coaches to create animated football scenarios by associating strategy information with virtual football players. We introduce visual language representations for logical and sequential “and to mitigate end-user confusion with the semantic meaning of these “and constructs. In addition, this project was used as a case study in applying the cognitive dimensions.

Publications
Neumann, C., Metoyer, R.A., and Burnett, M. 2009. End-User Strategy Programming. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 20(1), pp. 16-29.
( elsevier )

Dagit, J., Lawrance, J., Neumann, C., Burnett, M., Metoyer, R. and Adams, S. 2006. Using Cognitive Dimensions: Advice from the Trenches. Journal of Visual
Languages and Computing, 17(4), 302-327.
( elsevier )