Research Paper: An exploratory study of people with vision impairments adjusting to new environments
Team with: Qiong Yuan
For people who are blind or visually impaired, adjusting to a new physical environment can be a difficult but important step towards living independently. In this project, we investigated how a small sample of people who are blind perceived physical surroundings and common obstacles they encounter. We used a multi-methods approach which included a literature review of related work and interviews with four people that had visual impairments.
Major findings include: 1) how people with visual impairments define a "new environment"; 2) how they rely on their hearing; 3)the source of difficulty in setting up the space; 4) causes of different levels of self-recognition; 5) available assistive techniques for their daily life; and 6) wrong assumption from average people. We believe that insights presented in this paper will be helpful to the design of future products aimed at people who are visually impaired.
Research Paper: An exploratory study: Monitor children's health condition involving different contributors
We all have experience of record keeping; taking photos, keeping a diary, memorizing every moment in life, those things that make us who we are. The behavior of record keeping all started with photos when we were in our mother's belly and the documentation that stated our health conditions. From the time we were babies, our parents keep record for us, then when we are growing up, we keep those memory to ourselves; until we meet someone and have our children, we then will repeat the steps of our parents. These habitual behaviors give us information about ourselves from time to time. However, in United State, due to the lack of communication, guardians mostly rely on themselves to manage family health record, and also because of this disadvantage, it is hard to maintain the habit of record keeping. The motivation has been weakened in result of those technology that would improve the communication seems to favor in medical profession but not patients.
The researcher will first compares different media that commonly used by guardians in order to monitor and document their children's health condition. Second, this paper will address the obstacles of health record documentation for guardians nowadays. Then the researcher tries to provide a possible solution that would have fewer burdens for guardians, and furthermore, regarding to the paper of Grimes, Tan, and Morries, which proposed the consideration for supporting family reflections on health data efficiently through technology, the researcher will then discuss the possibility of different parties of contribution that helps with health record keeping.