Mary Lou Maher

University of North Carolina at Charlotte | UNC Charlotte · Department of Software & Information Systems

This paper presents a novel approach to mitigating the spread of misinformation by presenting social media design principles based on users’ interaction tendencies. The focus of our design principles is to provide new design affordances to make the truth louder. This research leverages users’ high and low interaction tendencies to amplify truth by...

Serendipitous recommendations have emerged as a compelling approach to deliver users with unexpected yet valuable information, contributing to heightened user satisfaction and engagement. This survey paper presents an investigation of the most recent research in serendipity recommenders, with a specific emphasis on deep learning recommendation mode...

Public opinion provides policy makers with meaningful information on how the public feels towards a certain issue. Stance detection in social media is the problem of automatically determining the standpoint expressed in a specific tweet towards a target of interest such as a topic or an issue. One such application of stance detection is to gauge pu...

Computational co-creative systems in design allow users to collaborate with an AI partner on open-ended creative tasks in the design process. Co-creative systems can enhance design creativity by inspiring the exploration of novel design solutions in the initial idea generation. However, there are a lack of studies about the effect of co-creative sy...

This paper describes a co-creative system that enhances design creativity in the initial idea generation process. The Collaborative Ideation Partner (CIP) is a co-creative design system that selects and presents inspirational images based on their conceptual similarity to the design task while the designer is sketching. In this paper, we present a...

Stance detection is the task of detecting the standpoint of a user towards a target of interest, such as a controversial topic. Stance detection has various applications such as surveying and polling the public as an alternative to traditional instruments to measure public opinion. One of the implications of using stance detection on Twitter data t...

Human-AI co-creativity involves humans and AI collaborating on a shared creative product as partners. In a creative collaboration, communication is an essential component among collaborators. In many existing co-creative systems users can communicate with the AI, usually using buttons or sliders. Typically, the AI in co-creative systems cannot comm...

Human-AI co-creativity involves humans and AI collaborating on a shared creative product as partners. In a creative collaboration, communication is an essential component among collaborators. In many existing co-creative systems users can communicate with the AI, usually using buttons or sliders. Typically, the AI in co-creative systems cannot comm...

Human-AI co-creativity involves both humans and AI collaborating on a shared creative product as partners. In a creative collaboration, interaction dynamics, such as turn-taking, contribution type, and communication, are the driving forces of the co-creative process. Therefore the interaction model is a critical and essential component for effectiv...

Human-AI co-creativity involves humans and AI collaborating on a shared creative product as partners. In many existing co-creative systems, users communicate with the AI using buttons or sliders. However, typically, the AI in co-creative systems cannot communicate back to humans, limiting their potential to be perceived as partners. This paper star...

People turn to social media to express their opinion towards different topics and issues. This makes social media a valuable resource for mining public opinion. Stance detection is an approach to analyzing social media users’ content to determine public opinion. In this paper, we present a replicable methodology for coding tweets for stance detecti...

Metaphor is a design tool that can support designers in forming new design concepts during the design process. In addition to supporting creativity in designing, metaphorical references assist users in perceiving affordances of novel designs. Recent advances in interaction technologies are leading to a new era in the design of interactive buildings...

Human-AI co-creativity involves both humans and AI collaborating on a shared creative product as partners. In a creative collaboration, interaction dynamics, such as turn-taking, contribution type, and communication, are the driving forces of the co-creative process. Therefore the interaction model is a critical and essential component for effectiv...

This full research paper studies the correlation of self-efficacy in computer science as well as learning and social skills with students' academic performance and their emotions in collaborative learning environments. Self-efficacy is an essential part of social cognitive theory and provides the foundation for analyzing human thoughts, motivations...

Affective states, a dimension of attitude, have a critical role in the learning process. In the educational setting, affective states are commonly captured by self-report tools or based on sentiment analysis on asynchronous textual chats, discussions, or students’ journals. Drawbacks of such tools include: distracting the learning process, demandin...

Human-AI co-creativity involves both humans and AI collaborating on a shared creative product as partners. In a creative collaboration, interaction dynamics, such as turn-taking, contribution type, and communication, are the driving forces of the co-creative process. Therefore an interaction model is an essential component for designing effective c...

We have established a research-practice partnership (RPP) to establish a computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT)-focused STEM ecosystem at two middle schools. The STEM ecosystem model is used as a framework to address systemic barriers to student participation in computing. Creating a school-based CT/CS-focused STEM ecosystem through...

Smart environments and the use of interactive technology has the potential to improve the quality of life for the senior community as well as to support the connections among the senior community and the world outside their community. In addition to the increasing number of studies in the field of aging and technologies, research is needed to under...

This full research paper studies affective states in students' verbal conversations in an introductory Computer Science class (CS1) as they work in teams and discuss course content. Research on the cognitive process suggests that social constructs are an essential part of the learning process [1]. This highlights the importance of teamwork in engin...

This paper presents an AI-based co-creative system in which the interaction model focuses on emotional feedback, that is, the decisions about the creative contribution from the AI agent is based on the emotion detected in the human co-creator. In human-human collaboration, gestures, verbal communications, and emotional responses are among the gener...

This paper presents an embodied interactive system designed for older adults to promote creative and social engagement, called Move and Paint. We performed a study to investigate the engagement and behavior patterns of older adults as they used Move and Paint. We conducted a focus group and interview study to understand general attitudes towards th...

This paper presents an interactive AI system to enable academic advisors and program leadership to understand the patterns of behavior related to student success and risk using data collected from institutional databases. We have worked closely with advisors in our development of an innovative temporal model of student data, unsupervised k-means al...

This paper presents an interactive AI system to enable academic advisors and program leadership to understand the patterns of behavior related to student success and risk using data collected from institutional databases. We have worked closely with advisors in our development of an innovative temporal model of student data, unsupervised k-means al...

Learning analytics is an emerging discipline within data science. It is analytics that is concerned with developing methods for exploring the unique and increasingly large-scale datasets collected from educational settings, including the collection, analysis, and visualization of such educational data. The goal of the analyses and visualizations is...

A metaphor is a design tool that can support designers in forming and exploring new design concepts during the process of designing. Digital technologies embedded in built environments provide an opportunity for environments to be more intelligent and interactive. However, most architectural concepts associated with smart environments such as smart...

The most broadly agreed-upon definition of a creative artefact is one that is both novel and valuable. This chapter argues for measuring novelty as the violation of observers’ expectations instead of as the objective differences between artefacts. We discuss why models of novelty based on measuring the differences between known and new artefacts ar...

This paper presents a computational model for conceptual shifts, based on a novelty metric applied to a vector representation generated through deep learning. This model is integrated into a co-creative design system, which enables a partnership between an AI agent and a human designer interacting through a sketching canvas. The AI agent responds t...

We present a prediction model to detect delayed graduation cases based on student network analysis. In the U.S. only 60% of undergraduate students finish their bachelors’ degrees in 6 years [1]. We present many features based on student networks and activity records. To our knowledge, our feature design, which includes conventional academic perform...

This paper describes Pique, a web-based recommendation system that applies word embedding and a sequence generator to present students with a sequence of scientific paper recommendations personalized to their background and interest. The use of natural language processing (NLP) on learning materials enables educational environments to present stude...

This paper presents and evaluates a new method for inspiring creativity in a co-creative design system. The method uses a computational model of aconceptual shift based on clustering of deep features from a database of sketches. The co-creative sketching tool maps a user's sketch to a sketch of a distinct category that has high, medium, or low visu...

Sketching in design is typically a part of the ideation process. A common occurrence in sketching creativity is the conceptual shift, or when a drawn object is reinterpreted as belonging to a different object category.

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) enable physical affordances that encourage the spatial manipulation of multiple physical objects to interact with digital information. We claim that the affordances of tangible interaction can affect design cognition on spatial tasks. While many researchers have claimed that TUIs improve spatial cognition, there is a...

NatureNet is a citizen science project that, in addition to collecting biodiversity data, invites end-users to contribute design ideas to guide the its future design and development. This paper presents the NatureNet model of crowdsourcing design, then compares an analysis of the design process to published analyses of traditional face-to-face desi...

Computational creative systems have the potential to augment the creative design process, particularly in co-creative contexts. We present a computational model for generating visual conceptual blends in the domain of sketching. Our system is motivated by the desire to encourage curiosity, facilitate creative ideation, and overcome design fixation....

This paper describes and compares two categories of pedagogical design patterns that have emerged from CS education practice: lecture-based design patterns and active learning design patterns. Pedagogical design patterns provide faculty with combinations of generalized descriptions of problems and solutions that occur in teaching and learning. The...

This paper provides a framework for evaluating creativity in co-creative systems: those that involve computer programs collaborating with human users on creative tasks. We situate co-creative systems within a broader context of computational creativity and explain the unique qualities of these systems. We present four main questions that can guide...

NatureNet is a citizen science project that, in addition to collecting biodiversity data, invites end-users to contribute design ideas to guide its future design and development. This paper presents the NatureNet model of crowdsourcing design, then compares an analysis of the design process to published analyses of traditional face to face design p...

Our natural tendency to be curious is increasingly important now that we are exposed to vast amounts of information. We often cope with this overload by focusing on the familiar: information that matches our expectations. In this paper we present a framework for interactive serendipitous information discovery based on a computational model of surpr...

Data models built for analyzing student data often obfuscate temporal relationships for reasons of simplicity, or to aid in generalization. We present a model based on temporal relationships of heterogeneous data as the basis for building predictive models. We show how within- and between-semester temporal patterns can provide insight into the stud...

We present a system for identifying conceptual shifts between visual categories, which will form the basis for a co-creative drawing system to help users draw more creative sketches. The system recognizes human sketches and matches them to structurally similar sketches from categories to which they do not belong. This would allow a co-creative draw...

This paper explores how participants constructed and re-constructed their relationship with an interactive art installation. The piece, textit{the willful marionette}, was developed in collaboration between artists and researchers. It explores the dynamics of non-verbal communication by building (from a scanned image of a human figure) a stringed m...

A key benefit of case-based reasoning (CBR) and recommender systems is the use of past experience to guide the synthesis or selection of the best solution for a specific context or user. Typically, the solution presented to the user is based on a value system that privileges the closest match in a query and the solution that performs best when eval...

Interactive technology is increasingly integrated with physical objects that do not have a traditional keyboard and mouse style of interaction, and many do not even have a display. These objects require new approaches to interaction design, referred to as post-WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointer) or as embodied interaction design. This book pr...

Within the context of a program focused on learning concepts and practices for keeping watersheds healthy and then completing community-based projects, we explore ways that NatureNet, a prototype mobile and web-based technology, can support volunteer watershed stewards. Using a mixed methods approach, our analysis of the experiences of 50 volunteer...

The Personalised Curiosity Engine (PQE, pronounced “pique”) is a framework for computational design systems that models the curiosity of an individual user. This model is then used to synthesise designs that stimulate that user’s curiosity. PQE extends our previous research in modelling surprise and curiosity by adding a model of a specific user to...

While there are several descriptions of the methods and issues in interaction design (Sharp, 2003; Hanington and Martin, 2012; Schmidt, 2010), there are fewer articles and books devoted to the design issues specifically associated with tangible interaction design. Since designing for tangible interaction is highly context dependent, we review some...

In this book we present the concepts and significance of embodied interaction design, specifically for tangible and gesture-based interaction. Embodied interaction is very different from the way that we traditionally communicate with machines because the user can use their body in ways in which they are used to using them in the natural physical wo...

Gesture interaction can take many forms, from simply using a hand to target something on the screen to specific continuous movement using the whole body. Until recently, mid-air gestures have not been part of interaction design. Implementing gestures as part of the interaction design requires a careful consideration of the types of gestures that ar...

This paper presents a dual-cycle CBR model in the domain of recipe generation. The model combines the strengths of deep learning and similarity-based retrieval to generate recipes that are novel and valuable (i.e. they are creative). The first cycle generates abstract descriptions which we call “design concepts” by synthesizing expectations from th...

The Connected Learner is a re-orientation of undergraduate computing education that focuses on connecting students to peers, the profession, and purpose. The College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte—comprised of three departments with an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 1,500 students—is a large research institution in an urba...

Recent developments in interaction design provide gesture and tangible interaction as an alternative or complement to mouse, keyboard, and touch interaction. Tangible user interfaces provide affordances that encourage and facilitate specific actions on physical objects. There is evidence that gesture and action affect cognition, and therefore it is...

In this paper we describe a cognitive model for provoking gestural dialogue with humans, embodied in an interactive marionette. The cognitive model is a framework for the design and implementation of a gesture to gesture interaction. The marionette perceives gestures of humans using a Microsoft Kinect, reasons about perceived gestures to determine...

Citizen science projects adopt a crowdsourcing model for collecting and analyzing scientific data for the purpose of improving science and encouraging non-scientists to participate in science projects. For example, the iNaturalist model relies on crowds of citizen scientists to scale both the detection and identification of species from photo vouch...

This paper presents a cognitive model of goal formulation in designing that is triggered by surprise. Cognitive system approaches to design synthesis focus on generating alternative designs in response to design goals or requirements. Few existing systems provide models for how goals change during designing, a hallmark of creative design in humans....

Video usage in educational environments has increased significantly with the expansion of online learning opportunities. However, current video-based applications used for learning are designed for passive consumption of video content and do not support small-group collaboration. Specifically, they lack interaction affordances for active and collab...

While scientists need the contributions of members of the public if they are to document biological diversity across large spaces and over long periods of time, it is challenging to recruit enough volunteers. Since many people use their smartphones to take pictures when they are in nature, it may be beneficial to understand what they gravitate towa...