MAPS - LifeLine
(Distributed Support System)
Stefan Carmien
11/4/2003
L3D
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Challenge • Individuals with cognitive disabilities are often unable to
live on their own because of deficiencies in memory,
attention, and executive functionalities.
• Computationally enhanced prompting systems can provide
a bridge to independence.
•Unacceptably high abandonment rate (50% - 70%) of
expensive (~.5-4 K$) Assistive Technology (AT)
• Difficult (re) configuration contributes to abandonment
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Research Objectives
• Lower abandonment
– Dual user interface design
• Provide safety net functionality
– Panic button
– Caregiver monitoring
• Context aware cognitive assistance
– Dynamic prompt generation
– Effective error detection and correction
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
MAPS
(Memory Aiding Prompting System)
• Hand held prompter
– to display plans
• Caregiver script editor
– To create, modify and share plans
• Interface to LifeLine
– Safety net/dynamic context aware prompting
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Plans, Errors? What are you talking about?
• What is a plan/script?
– A task of the right size broken down into small atomic chunks
– Made into a script (of visual and verbal prompts) that can be
followed
• What is an error or error state ?
– A detected deviation from the plan
– Sensors provide input
– Boolean tests of expected states
• Example: <bus GPS and your GPS are the same and distance
between correct stop and bus is getting larger >
• How do you correct a detected error?
– User templates provide ‘lookup table’ written in script data
structure
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
MAPS Prompter
MAPS Prompter (user interface)
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Caregiver Script Editor
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Demo here
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Conceptual Framework
• User modeling
– Templates support static user modeling in configuration
– Templates for error trapping/correction
• Information ecologies
– Users with cognitive disabilities
– Caregivers
– System components
• Distributed Cognition
– Dynamic prompt generation
– Sensor & table driven
• Situated Action
– Expect & plan for failed plans (driven by breakdowns)
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
MetaDesign, Plans
and Situated Action
Key
Designer
Envisioned
Use
Caregiver Client
Envisioned
Context
Actual
Context
Time
Tool
Design
Plans
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Situated
Action
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
LifeLine prototype
Andrew Gorman’s LifeLine project
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Conceptual Design
Information ecology supporting caregivers and users with cognitive disabilities
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Distributed Support System
• Distributed
– Prompting (MAPS) is inherently distributed
cognition
– Knowledge to maintain system stability is
distributed between:
user/caregiver/maps/lifeline/sensors/database
• Support
– Caregiver is supported by ensuring safety
– User activity is supported to afford
independence and inclusion
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Demo 2 here
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
User Modeling & Error
Trapping / Correction
• Reusable rules
• Templates for tasks & segments of tasks
• Error
– Trapping (how do I recognize an error for this person)
– Correction (how do I correct an error for this person)
– Embedded in script database records (schema)
• Caregiver combinatorial explosion dilemma:
(User type) X (task segment) X ( |prompts in this segment| )
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
MAPS – Error Detection & Correction
Tom
(more cognitive
resources)
Missed
Bus Stop !
Anne
(less cognitive
resources)
Tell the
Bus driver
your problem
Wait on bus
for
Caregiver
• Template based dynamic error detection & correction
• Lifeline monitors the running script, detects error states & contacts
caregiver as needed
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Context Sensitive Prompting
• Dynamic prompting
– Loop till event
• wait for your bus
– Fork
• employment (if this then do this….. else do that)
• Error (trapping and correction)
– Sensors
– User type
– Task segment
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
MAPS – Context Awareness and Dynamic Prompting
This is
not
your bus
Wait
here for
your bus
Here is
your
bus, get
on it.
•Dynamic prompt generation
•Blocking for event driven prompt
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Meta Design
• Abandonment strongly influenced by lack of a
tool to reconfigure/add content
– Empowering and enabling caregivers to be
designers of scripts
– Leverage existing skills
• Tool needs to provide just enough support to
make script generation easy but not so much
that it itself needs a configuration tool
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Meta Design II
• User Modeling
– User model
– Task and task segment error trapping/correction
• Critiquing
– Verbiage
– Image attributes
• Sharing scripts
– Scripts as templates
– Community building
• MAPS odd twist on MetaDesign
– Phased/tiered metadesign
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Shifting gears now….
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Tools for Living
Tools for Learning
• Initial insight from AT world
– Enabling learning
– Enabling daily life
• Examples
– Eyeglasses
– Learning to read / use maps & schedules
• Grey areas and argument able issues
– Hand calculators
– Scanners/readers & dyslexia
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Tools for living
External, Fitting You, & Permanent
• You require this tool to accomplish
this task - otherwise you cannot
• The tool rarely changes or is
abandoned (in the sense of ‘graduate’)
• It is specifically tailored to you
• Your use of it does not typically
change over time
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Tools for Learning
Internalized, Changing You, & Scaffolded
• Is your skill in the tools domain
significantly greater (such that you no
longer need the tool to perform
meaningful work) as a result of
using/experiencing this tool?
•
Are you different as a result of using
this tool?
•
Is there a method of having this tool
disappear
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Design Implications
• What would you do to make a TfLea
– Low entrance cost
– Tool adapts over time (Scaffolding)
• What would you do to make a TfLiv
– Use of the tool will not change over time
– Need for good personalized fit at the beginning
– robust (crutches, eyeglasses)
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Arguments against this idea
• Too amorphous
• Not useful (Just YetAnotherDumbAcronym)
i.e. yada yada yada
• Not really news (other ideas like this)
• What do you think?
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder
Thanks
CLever: Building Cognitive Levers
to help people help themselves
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
University of Colorado at Boulder