Tony Bergstrom

• PhD
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Usability is widely recognized as a problem in the context of the administration of access control systems. We seek to relate the notion of declarative semantics, a recurring theme in research in access control, with usability. We adopt the concrete context of POSIX ACLs and the traditional interface for it that comprises two utilities getfacl and...

Real-time collaborative visualization of conversation affects small group dynamics and encourages balanced participation. Visual feedback plays the role of a gentle moderator encouraging a speaker to yield the floor. To better evaluate the effect of visual feedback on collaboration, we purposefully distorted the apparent balance in the Conversation...

Real-time visualization of conversation alters small group dynamics and encourages balanced participation. Visual feedback acts as an automatic moderator that encourages people to balance their relative contribution with that of other group members, but can their contribution be actively shaped by distorting the visualization? To better evaluate th...

Inspiring and maintaining student participation in large classes can be a difficult task. Students benefit from an active experience as it helps them better understand the course material. However, it's easy to stay silent. Opportunities to participate in conversation allow students to question and learn. The Fragmented Social Mirror (FSM) provides...

In this work, we present the social data analysis of group interaction as a tool to influence behavior. People are curious about other people and how they compare. By selecting and visualizing a live data stream meaningful to a community, the community becomes more insightful and aware of itself. Individuals and the community at large adapt and cha...

Background: Many people with developmental disorders like Asperger's Syndrome (AS), high functioning autism (HFA), non-verbal learning disorder (NVLD), and pervasive developmental delay – not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) have difficulty with conversational interaction: turn-taking, interrupting, conversational dominance, turn length and emphasis...

A social mirror is a specific type of visualization for group interaction. Three examples of social mirrors emphasize different motivations for visualizing vocal conversation: the power of visualization to influence conversation in real time, the addition of anonymous input into group visualization, and idea formation over time. Social visualizatio...

In face-to-face group situations, social pressure and organizational hi- erarchy relegate the less outspoken to silence, often resulting in fewer voices, fewer ideas, and groupthink. However, in mediated interaction like email, more people join in the discussion to offer their opinion. With this work, we aim to combine the benefits of mediated comm...

Conversation Clusters explores the use of visualization to highlight salient moments of live conversation while archiv- ing a meeting. Cheaper storage and easy access to recording devices allows extensive archival. However, as the size of the archive grows, retrieving the desired moments becomes increasingly difficult. We approach this problem from...

In this work we study the actual requirements of a multimedia chat system for helpdesks by quantifying the verbal imagery communication in 115 real transcript s. The data shows that in chats which use verbal imagery, it corresponds to about 25% of the total time, most of it (75%) coming from the agent. These results clearly show that multimedia sup...

In the last decade, blogs have exploded in number, popularity and scope. However, many commentators and researchers speculate that blogs isolate readers in echo chambers, cutting them off from dissenting opinions. Our empirical paper tests this hypothesis. Using a hand-coded sample of over 1,000 comments from 33 of the world's top blogs, we find th...

The existing 3^rd party chat services for help desk are text based only and more effective communication between user and agent for better help desk support in multimedia chat services is called for. It would be a very expensive approach to totally re-write the code to convert the current text based chat product for supporting multimedia...

In this paper, we look at projects leveraging human knowledge and understanding in computer systems for extracting conversational topics. Tasks like speech recognition are difficult for computers, but simple for people engaged in conversation. This task is a cornerstone of transcription, speech summarization, and topic recognition. We propose using...

Using audio visualization, we seek to demonstrate how nat- ural interaction is augmented with the addition of interaction history. Our Conversation Clock visualization captures and represents audio in a persistent and meaningful representation to provide social cues not avail- able in an otherwise ephemeral conversation. In this paper we present us...

Aural conversation is ephemeral by nature. The interaction history of conversation fades as the present moment demands the attention of participants. In this paper, we explore the nature of group interaction by augmenting aural conversation with a persistent visualization of audio input. This visualization, Conversation Clock, displays individual c...

Isochords is a visualization of music that aids in the classification of musical structure. The Isochords visualization highlights the con- sonant intervals between notes and common chords in music. It conveys information about interval quality, chord quality, and the chord progression synchronously during playback of digital music. Isochords offer...

In this work we describe Conversation Votes, a visualization to create new backchannels in conversation and augment collocated interaction. We expand the idea of a social mirror, a reflection of interaction, to incorporate direct user feedback in the form of anonymous voting. By capturing user input, the mirror becomes more demonstrative of context...

In this work we describe the iterative design process in the evolution of Conversation Votes, an augmented tabletop visualization that creates new backchannels in collocated interaction. This work presents a reflection of interaction with direct user feedback in the form of anonymous voting. The design of Conversation Votes has evolved as the subtl...

Strong social connections permeate one's daily life. With the numerous means available, these connections can easily dominate one's communications, though one only wants to convey and have a sense of presence in each other's lives. Portal Frame fosters this feeling of connection between individuals while keeping the amount of active communication t...

In this paper, we create social visualizations of aural group conversation. These visualizations are tailored to a table setting. Examples of such settings are a family sitting about a table eating dinner or colleagues sitting about a table in a meeting. The form of the visualization is highly coupled to its function. People sit about the table str...

In face-to-face group situations, social pressure and organizational hierarchy relegate the less outspoken into silence, often resulting in fewer voices, fewer ideas, and group-think. However, in mediated interaction, such as email, it has been shown that more people join in the discussion. With this work, we aim to combine the benefits of mediated...

Inspiring and maintaining student participation in large classes can be a difficult task. Students benefit from an active experience as it helps them better understand the course material. However, it’s easy to stay silent. There are few opportunities for students to speak and evaluation anxiety often discourages them. The Fragmented Social Mirror...