
Carman NeustaedterSimon Fraser University · School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Carman Neustaedter
PhD
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231
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Publications (231)
Collaborative play not only provides entertainment but also nurtures connections and strengthens community ties. In family and intergenerational contexts, collaborative activities and play can engage family members in quality conversations and meaningful connections over distance. To explore participants' preferences, practices, and interaction dyn...
Telemedicine systems that involve the use of video conferencing technologies have been available for more than three decades. Yet, they have primarily been used for specialist appointments or within healthcare facilities. We are now seeing a shift with the proliferation of commercial technologies such as smartphone apps that allow people to have ap...
Wilderness search and rescue (WSAR) is a command-and-control activity where a Command team manages field teams scattered across a large area looking for a lost person. The challenge is that it can be difficult for Command to maintain awareness of field teams and the conditions of the field. We designed RescueCASTR, an interface that explores the id...
In the coming years, emergency calling services in North America will begin to incorporate new modalities for reporting emergencies, including video-based calling and picture sharing. The challenge is that we know little of how future call-taking systems should be designed to support emergency calls with rich multimedia and what benefits or challen...
In this introduction to the special issue on First-Person Methods in (Human-Computer Interaction) HCI, we present a brief overview of first-person methods, their origin, and their use in Human-Computer Interaction. We also detail the difference between first-person methods, second-person, and third-person methods, as a way to guide the reader when...
In this chapter, we focus on longitudinal first-person research methods in HCI. First-person research involves data collection and experiences from the researcher themselves, as opposed to external users (or participants). We present three projects where longitudinal ‘auto-approaches’ to research and design in HCI were applied, namely one auto-ethn...
Telepresence robots allow users to be spatially and socially present in remote environments. Yet, it can be challenging to remotely operate telepresence robots, especially in dense environments such as academic conferences or workplaces. In this paper, we primarily focus on the effect that a speed control method, which automatically slows the telep...
Wilderness search and rescue (WSAR) is a carefully planned and organized team operation, requiring collaboration and information sharing between many volunteers who are spread out across various locations in the outdoors. Workers play a variety of roles, both on the ground and at a command post, and they need information and awareness specific to t...
When family and friends live apart, they often want to connect over distance to stay in touch and be a part of each other’s lives. Yet this can be challenging with existing technologies. Video chat systems begin to bridge this gap by providing views into remote spaces and of remote people. However, such systems are often designed to support convers...
Wilderness search and rescue (WSAR) requires careful communication between workers in different locations. To understand the contexts from which WSAR workers communicate and the challenges they face, we interviewed WSAR workers and observed a mock-WSAR scenario. Our findings illustrate that WSAR workers face challenges in maintaining a shared menta...
Many digital technologies, such as social media, community systems, and public displays, have been studied to explore how people engage with each other in their community. Yet little is known about how one form of technology, location-based games (LBGs), can support urban residents in community awareness, city exploration, and placemaking as they n...
Outdoor activities are an important way for friends, family, and couples to spend time with one another and share exploration activities. Yet when people become separated by distance it can be difficult if not impossible to participate in outdoor activities together. We propose a design called Teledrone that uses a drone with video conferencing dis...
In North America, people phone the number 9-1-1 to obtain emergency services. In the near future, such services will incorporate new communication modalities such as video calling where callers can show visuals of the emergency to call takers. This information can then be shared between dispatchers and first responders such as firefighters. We cond...
Many studies have proposed different ways of supporting flying in embodied virtual reality (VR) interfaces with limited success. Our research explores the usage of a user's lower body to support flying locomotion control through a novel "flexible perching" (FlexPerch) stance that provides user with leg moving ability while sitting. We conducted an...
First-person research (i.e., research that involves data collection and experiences from the researcher themselves) continues to become a viable addition and, possibly even, alternative to more traditional HCI methods. While we have seen the benefits of using methods such as autoethnography, autobiographical design, and autoethnographical research...
In the near future, emergency services within Canada will be supporting new technologies for 9-1-1 call centres and firefighters to learn about an emergency situation. One such technology is drones. To understand the benefits and challenges of using drones within emergency response, we conducted a study with citizens who have called 9-1-1 and firef...
In future, emergency services will increasingly use technology to assist emergency service dispatchers and call taker with information during an emergency situation. One example could be the use of drones for surveying an emergency situation and providing contextual knowledge to emergency service call takers and first responders. The challenge is t...
Many working professionals commute via public transit, yet they have limited tools for learning about their urban neighborhoods and fellow commuters. We designed a location-based game called City Explorer to investigate how transit commuters capture, share, and view community information that is specifically tied to locations. Through a four-week f...
Over the past decade, there has been an increase in educational software use within classrooms as well as continuing demand on K-12 teachers extending beyond in-class activities. Yet, we still do not have a deep understanding of current teacher behaviors outside the classroom. Our paper presents insights on how to better design for technology use i...
Telepresence attendance at academic conferences is now a reality and allows people who cannot attend in person with the opportunity to still be “present.” This is valuable for people who face accessibility challenges, cost or travel restrictions, or limited time for travel. We have deployed and studied the use of telepresence robots at three ACM co...
Computer mediated-communication tools (CMC) support loved ones in maintaining connections with one another over distance, yet it can be difficult to do activities together. We studied the use of telepresence robots for supporting distance-separated loved ones in engaging in the joint activity of shopping over distance. One partner shopped in person...
Many couples live in long distance arrangements due to a variety of reasons from work opportunities to family obligations. However, current computer-mediated communication tools are not designed to support the entire range of communication behaviors that couples engage in during daily life. Our research explored how telepresence robots might fit in...
We present a tangible interface for supporting wilderness search-and-rescue (SAR) managers in maintaining awareness of a large SAR incident, where there are numerous field teams searching for a lost person in a wilderness area. This interface consists of physical and digital representations of the search area and elements of the search activity (e....
In the future, emergency calls to the number 9cscwp1 in North America will include the ability to make video calls with 9cscwp1 call centers yet little is known about how to design such technologies, so they map to people's real emergency needs. We explore this design space by investigating systems that can allow 9cscwp1 callers to stream a surrept...
Many researchers have suggested that tangible user interfaces (TUIs) have the potential to support learning for children. While several tangible reading systems have been developed for children, few systems have been designed that explicitly target the first stage of reading where many children struggle, which is the alphabetic principle (letter-so...
Emergency services in North America have relied on the use of audio calls to the phone number, 9-1-1, since the late 1960s. In the coming years, 9-1-1 services will move to integrate media-rich calling capabilities such as video-based calling. We explore how video calling services should be designed through an interview study with people who have c...
Families preserve memories of their special and everyday experiences, though it can be hard to capture all these moments in everyday life. We explore the concept of automated forms of capturing family life and presenting them through situated, tangible everyday artifacts in the home. We designed Time-Turner, an always-on video recording system alon...
In the coming years, emergency calling services in North America will begin to incorporate new modalities for reporting emergencies, including video-based calling. The challenge is that we know little of how video calling systems should be designed and what benefits or challenges video calling might bring. We conducted observations and contextual i...
Distance separated grandparents and grandchildren often face challenges in staying connected. To explore this topic, we designed G2G, a shared calendar and video messaging system to connect young children (ages 5-10) with their grandparents over distance. Our design focused on providing grandparents and grandchildren with an awareness of each other...
Farmers in rural areas of Kenya generally rely on traditional agricultural practices inherited from past generations. However, population increases and climate changes have put pressure on resources such as land and water. These resource pressures have created a need to broaden and expand farming practices. We conducted an exploratory study with fa...
People often enjoy sharing outdoor activities together such as walking and hiking. However, when family and friends are separated by distance it can be difficult if not impossible to share such activities. We explore this design space by investigating the benefits and challenges of using a telepresence robot to support outdoor leisure activities. I...
In this document we explain the need and plans for a SIG Meeting at CHI on telepresence robots. We describe the organization of this SIG, our expected attendees, procedure and schedule of topics to be discussed, as well as our recruitment plan. Our goal is to provide a forum to discuss key issues surrounding the uses and usefulness of telepresence...
In this paper we describe the practices used by alternate reality game (ARG) designers to engage fans with the issues and effects of global climate change under the scientific guidance of key non-profit organizations. Our multiple case study is based on three projects: Future Coast (2014), the Disaster Resilience Journal (2014) and Techno Medicine...
In real-life escape rooms, players try to escape a locked room by solving a series of puzzles. Currently, escape rooms involve collocated collaboration; however, there is potential for them to be distributed. We explored the design of a distributed escape room that connected two distance-separated rooms through audio/video links and shared artifact...
Smartwatches are growing in usage, yet they come with the additional challenge of regulating their usage during the taking of academic tests. However, it is unclear how effective they are at actually allowing students to cheat. We conducted an experiment that examines the use of smartwatches for cheating on Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ) and Short...
Design thinking is a collaborative problem solving and human-centric approach that fosters
innovation by elevating participants’ creative thinking abilities. Design thinking techniques and
practices have been implemented into different curricula in secondary and post-secondary
education to address the need for new skills to be learned for the twent...
Photo and video capture is currently dominated by the use of digital cameras, often in the form of smartphones. Yet there is easily the chance that one can miss capturing a precious moment. We explored the idea of automated video recording in the home as a form of memory collection and display for families through the autobiographical design of Mom...
We designed a videochat experience where one participant can experience a remote environment from a 360° camera. This allows the remote user to view and explore the environment without necessitating interaction from the local participant. We designed and conducted an observational study to understand the experience, and the challenges that people m...
Real-life escape rooms involve players being locked in a room where they have to solve puzzles in order to escape. We conducted an observational and interview study with 38 escape room players to understand how groups of people collaborate in escape rooms, what opportunities escape rooms present as learning environments for improving collaboration,...
Couples in Long Distance Relationships (LDRs) often rely on the use of video chat systems to help maintain their relationship. However, designs are typically limited to only supporting face-to-face conversations or providing narrow fields of view. We designed and evaluated MyEyes, a First Person View (FPV) video streaming technology probe made with...
Families enjoy capturing digital media about their life and replaying moments, yet it is not always easy to do so. To explore this design space, we created a physical, ambient, and situated visualization prototype called Time-Turner specifically designed for a home setting that records video of family activities and allows families to review their...
Collaboration is a core component of work activities amongst flight attendants as they work to promote onboard safety and a high level of customer service. Yet it can be difficult to maintain efficient communication, situation awareness, and information exchange given the technologies currently available on airplanes. We present a prototype called...
Family members often rely on technology to connect and maintain their relationships over distance. Yet because of conflicting schedules and time zone differences, it can be hard to communicate synchronously with others. To help address this problem we explored the design of an asynchronous media sharing application called Mimo. Mimo allows family m...
Many people use public transit on a recurring basis to travel for work, school, or other activities. Yet rides can be isolating despite encountering the same people on a regular basis. We designed City Explorer, a city exploration transit game, to provide transit riders with a channel to strengthen the sense of community. In City Explorer, players...
Mobile video communication helps people connect with friends and families over distance. However, it is challenging to use existing commercial video chat systems (e.g., Skype, FaceTime) to prototype new types of futuristic experiences. Existing video communication tools are limited in granting designers access to augment video frames and control th...
Shared leisure activities are important for family life but difficult to do with people who live far away. To explore how family and friends might be able to participate in outdoor leisure activities together over distance, we prototyped a shared bicycling technology probe using mobile video streaming. We conducted a study where half of our partici...
Telepresence robots have the potential to better replicate the qualities of in-person interactions than traditional communication tools, however, there are few studies of their use in domestic contexts. In our study, we explored how two long distance couples used commercially available telepresence robots called Beam® Smart Presence systems (Beam+...
Telepresence robots offer a relatively new way for people to project their presence remotely. However, these experiences have only been studied in controlled or small scale installations. To broaden our understanding of the successes and limitations of telepresence robots in large-scale venues, we conducted a study at CHI 2016 where five factors in...
Tangibles may be effective for reading applications. Letters can be represented as 3D physical objects. Words are spatially organized collections of letters. We explore how tangibility impacts reading and spelling acquisition for young Anglophone children who have dyslexia. We describe our theory-based design rationale and present a mixed-methods c...
Video communication systems work relatively well for family members and friends when they want to converse with each other between their homes. Yet it is much more challenging to share activities together using mobile video conferencing in outdoor settings. We explored the design of mobile video conferencing systems that focused on allowing family...
Many couples live apart due to work, educational situations, or frequent travel. While technology can help mediate these relationships, there is a lack of designs that allow couples to share a sense of touch over distance. We present a design case study of a tangible communication system called Flex- N-Feel--a pair of gloves that allows distance-se...
Long-Distance Relationships (LDRs) are fairly common nowadays where couples rely on computer-mediated tools to stay connected. Yet few systems have explored how couples can share fun and playful activities together over distance. In this paper, we present the design of Puzzle Space, a distributed tangible jigsaw puzzle that allows LDRs to play remo...
Collaboration is a core component of work activities amongst flight attendants as they work to promote onboard safety and a high level of customer service. Yet it can be difficult to maintain efficient communication, situation awareness, and information exchange given the technologies currently available on airplanes. We present a prototype called...
Current telepresence systems are limited by the use of standard, narrow field-of-view cameras and are mainly designed to support indoor conversations. We propose a novel immersive telepresence system designed for long distance couples called "BeWithMe" which presents the entire 360-degree view of a partner's location with an independent perspective...
Many couples live apart due to work or study reasons, experiencing the challenge of maintaining a long-distance relationship. These couples rely heavily on existing communication technologies, which are limited to textual, verbal, and visual mediums. Our approach was to provide couples with a haptic experience of affective touch through vibrotactil...
In this study, we investigated how an interaction-design-thinking course benefited secondary-school students in
grades nine and ten. We studied the potential benefits of design thinking for students within a design class and, unlike previous studies, we also looked at the potential benefits for students to utilize design-thinking skills when solvin...
Dramatic advances in sensor and computing miniaturization for personal data collection are making Personal Informatics (PI) tools a reality. Yet, advances in data collection have not been matched with similar advances in tools to promote, support, and facilitate reflection on this data. This gap leaves people with large swaths of data, but very lit...
Family members in Kenya rely on technology to connect between rural and urban regions, yet little is known about the specific communication challenges they face and how to overcome them through new communication technology design. To explore this topic, we conducted two studies along with design work. First, we conducted an interview-based study th...
8,000-word book chapter describing the history of Canada's Quartier des Spectacles, a digitally-augmented managed public space that spans one-square kilometer in Montreal's CBD. This research consisted in the study of primary sources from local archives, interpretation of empirical data gathered from field observations and analysis of interviews co...
Mobile devices have begun to raise questions around the potential for overuse when in the presence of family or friends. As such, we conducted a diary and interview study to understand how people use mobile devices in the presence of others at home, and how this shapes their behavior and household dynamics. Results show that family members become f...
People are increasingly using mobile video to communicate, collaborate, and share experiences while on the go. Yet this presents challenges in adequately sharing camera views with remote users. In this paper, we study the use of semi-autonomous drones for video conferencing, where an outdoor user (using a smartphone) is connected to a desktop user...
Our research explores the idea of using a human proxy to attend a class on one's behalf where video streaming is used to share the class with the remote student. We explored this idea through an online survey and in-class participation. Survey results show that people favored "top students" to represent them where gender and race played a much less...
Twitch.tv is a flagship platform for live game streaming between players and viewers. It allows players to broadcast their gameplay to a public audience where viewers chat with each other and discuss gameplay. Current tools for analyzing live game streaming and chat rooms are limited. In this paper, we describe the design of TwitchViz: a new visual...
This panel will bring together experts on robotic telepresence from HCI and related fields. Panelists will engage the audience in a discussion of visions, opportunities and challenges for the future of telepresence robots.
We are observing an increase in the use of smartphones and wearable devices in public places for streaming and recording video. Yet the use of cameras in these devices can infringe upon the privacy of the people in the surrounding environment by inadvertently capturing them. This paper presents findings from an in-situ exploratory study that invest...
The infusion of mobile and collaborative technologies into our everyday lives enables new forms of pervasive games and play. We use the term pervasive play as shorthand for technology-mediated, playful experiences that are tethered to our everyday lives through the physical and virtual spaces we inhabit. This includes a variety of game and play gen...
Outdoor leisure activities are important for public health as well as family cohesiveness, yet environmental factors may easily affect someone’s ability to participate in such activities. We explored this with a focus on the social web-based treasure hunt game called Geocaching. We collected data on all US and Canadian geocaches from OpenCaching.co...
Attending and presenting at conferences is a core part of academic and industrial research. Yet it can sometimes be challenging to attend conferences due to travel restrictions, time limitations, or accessibility challenges. To understand how people may be able to attend conferences remotely, we explored the use of commercial telepresence robots ca...
Interviewing comes in many forms and is a valuable tool for collecting information from study participants. Yet, more frequently it seems difficult to find participants who live in close proximity to the researchers and match specific demographic requirements for a study. Moreover, research projects may focus on studying participants in different r...
Home environments are complex, family life is highly dynamic, and technology use is deeply embedded in the dynamic complexity of everyday practices and relationships. These facts present serious challenges to designing and evaluating technologies for the home: understanding the nuances of family life to inform design may be hard, determining family...
Performing research and technology design for domestic life is by no means easy. Research and design methods commonly used in the field of human-computer interaction for conducting studies of other settings may not easily translate to studying domestic life, given its richness and complexity. This book documents the new ways in which researchers ar...
Given the challenges in replicating domestic settings in a lab environment, field trials are commonly used for studying and evaluating domestic technologies. Yet field trials are not always easy to conduct and can be especially challenging when used to evaluate systems that connect multiple homes together. We discuss the use of field trials in dome...