Background

This was a project I am developing for the University of Sydney's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Scheme with the hope of working on this with Professor Judy Kay.

Description

Who, what, where, when and why are the five Ws that usually give us all the information we need to make sense of any given moment or situation. What am I doing and who am I with? Where am I? When is this happening? Why am I here, doing what I am doing? AWEAR is a project designed to use available information to help users fill in gaps in information and knowledge. For example, based on the available data on who, what and where, AWEAR will extrapolate an answer to when and why. The when and why corresponds to data the user does not currently have and this missing data may be impairing their situational sensemaking capabilities.

The AWEAR project is envisioned to develop technology to support individuals with special needs, such as adults with dyslexia, who often struggle with issues of confusion and disorientation in daily life. People who are suffering from face-blindness and other similar neurological disorders that result in the user missing or being unable to process data thus impairing situation sensemaking. It also has potential application to support the elderly, who are suffering from dementia. As dementia and other age-related mental degeneration can result in individuals suffering situational confusion due to missing data.

The “wear” part of AWEAR is a reference to how the missing data will be displayed to the user – Smart watches and other smart wearable technology. The focus on smart wearable technology is due to the discretion offered by something like a wrist watch. The focus of the project will also be on readily available consumer technology with the novelty and innovation of the project coming from researching data modelling, data analysis and data visualisation for supporting situational sensemaking. Establishing the concept of situational sensemaking in relation to ICT and human-computer interaction would also be a novel contribution of the project.

The data management engine behind AWEAR will be powered by an ontology that models users based on available data. This will then map to ambient information about the users environment that is freely available on the world wide web. Sources of ambient information can come from places like Wikipedia, news resources, Google Maps and other Google information repositories, as well as user-created content from websites hosting review, blogging etc.

There are some ethical considerations associated with this project as user interviews and evaluations will be undertaken. As such, the proper ethical clearance will be applied for and all data collected anonymously and in accordance with the University of Sydney’s ethics policy.

Outcome

I submitted an Expression of Interest for this project with the appropriate head of school. In this case, the School of Information Technologies. The outcome, however, was not favourable.