IU sends Five to CHI … Again.

For the second consecutive year, it appears the IU School of Informatics will send five teams to Florence, Italy to compete in the next round of the CHI Student Design Competition. Now in the fifth year of the event, IU has won the competition twice, placed in the top four six times, and sent a total of 19 teams to this major conference for human-computer interaction.

This is a more impressive feat than in the past given this is the first year the submissions were not conducted as a blind review. To allow five of twelve teams to be from the same school reflects the quality of the work. Including my own project, I know of three other teams who submitted ideas but did not advance.

While fantastic for the program, the news is bittersweet. Vinay, Adam and I worked hard starting in mid-December to generate 49 concepts, push through two HSC-approved studies, and write a unique argument for a systemic intervention to strengthen opportunities for economically challenged to find meaningful employment. All of this was done over the holidays. The result—Community Weekend: Facilitating Social and Economic Opportunity—was a risk, with only a high-level concept that needed every word in the alloted six pages to make our case.

Other concepts we decided against on the last moment included using the Wii platform for a series of freely-distributed serious games about social issues (“Frii Wii”), and a microlending system managed by individuals through an ad-hoc network of organizations. I’m as proud of that paper as any other, but I think the combination of the short timeframe, risky proposal, and both quality and quantity of IU submissions worked against us.

Congratulations to the second-round competitors from Indiana University this year:

aSister
Homeless women need special care and attention especially during pregnancy or while trying to overcome substance abuse. We present a solution to help counselors working with these women. The solution allows the counselor to send text messages, which can be used to remind women of their daily schedule, as well as provide them with health and nutritional information. The system will also serve as a persuasive tool to help them develop positive behavior through the delivery of encouraging messages. Cell phone technology usage is increasing rapidly among the homeless population. The system uses text messaging which is an inexpensive and non-obtrusive method of communication. Our study contains details on the design of such a system and also attempts to evaluate the efficacy of such a text messaging system.
Members: Kshitij Gupta, Adwait Joshi (CS), Jamie McAtee, and Nigel Vaz (CS).

Effective Empathy
People who are homeless in the United States lack adequate amounts of nutritious food which is detrimental to their health. We are designing a grocery shopping assistance device that strategically requests affordable food donations that charitable organizations need to feed the homeless. We target grocery shoppers, since doing so allows us to leverage mass participation, as well as balanced community participation. This device employs persuasive technology to elicit emotions of empathy and alter the behavior of grocery shoppers to encourage them to donate. The device provides the shopper with an enhanced, personalized shopping experience making it appealing to use.
Members: Rajasee Rege, Jennifer Allen, Eric Drewski

HealthShare
We are developing a web-based system that helps improve the health of homeless individuals by aiding healthcare professionals in identifying, locating, and contacting homeless patients in order to initiate and continue effective healthcare. Poor health is both a significant cause and a symptom of homelessness, carrying high costs for the general public as well. Our system addresses health problems amongst the homeless by allowing healthcare professionals and other homeless service professionals from multiple organizations to better share, manage, and communicate information vital to effective healthcare.
Members: Ashley Engelhardt, James Pierce, Jung Youn Yim

C4
Enroll Me! A Portable Device to Facilitate Homeless Student Enrollment—We are designing an information transfer device to expedite the enrollment of homeless children to schools. Homeless children change schools often, seriously disrupting their educational experience. Our design uses existing, familiar technology to unobtrusively facilitate the enrollment process for both the school staff and the homeless parents.
Members: Eugene Chang, Hillary Elmore, Jun Youp Kim, Xi (Alex) Zhu

NestEgg
A portable budgeting device embedded with RFID debit card technology designed to help people on the edge of homelessness learn basic money management skills.
Members: Augusto Alves and Susan Coleman Morse

Note that a few of those names also appear on the registration roster for Bloomington Startup Weekend. It’s not too late to sign up to join and congratulate them in person.