Hi all,
We are organizing a one-day workshop at CHI'09 (April 4, in Boston) focusing on the development of free, publicly accessible multimodal datasets recorded in the homes of volunteer participants. Although this work was initially motivated by the lack of high quality sensor data on which to test activity recognition algorithms, we would like to extend the usefulness of such resources to other disciplines such as design and home ethnography.
Our lab is currently funded by the NSF to produce continuous (24/7) data recordings from at least four homes for six months each. Data will include anonymized audio and video recordings from most rooms, as well as activations from discreetly deployed sensing devices (motion sensors, RFID, environmental sensors, etc). We also have annotators on staff to label a subset of the activities in the dataset.
That said, we need a reality check. Would you actually consider using this sort of resource? We will provide online tools to view the datasets and search for instances of specific activities (e.g. exercising, watching TV) or for use of specific objects (e.g. toaster, phone, paper towels). I could speculate as to how a design professional might use such information, but would prefer to hear your ideas. If you believe the limitations of such datasets (e.g. participant selection, observer effects) would render them useless in your field, I'd also like to hear your critique.
Any suggestions for how we might improve the project overall would, of course, be welcome.
Feel free to discuss here. If you were planning to attend CHI and wish to have your opinions heard at the workshop, more information is available at the link below. We would like to have a least one voice representing the designer's perspective.
http://web.mit.edu/datasets/CFP.html Thanks for reading this far! Jason ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
