Tag: writing (Page 1 of 3)

New Blog on Medium: a personal story

August 24, 2020 / kateringland / 0 Comments

I’ve posted a blog over on medium: https://medium.com/@kateringland/my-world-building-story-of-a-disabled-academic-cc9633560494

I wrote this blog post over a year ago and have sat on it since then. Today is the 5th anniversary of my most personally traumatic experience with the US healthcare system — the birth of my oldest child. Because of this anniversary I have chosen today to finally push the button and publish this. There is a lot going on in the world right now, but I am honoring myself by giving myself a little space to tell my own story.

There is a LOT going on in the world right now. However, on a personal level, it's an important anniversary for me and I felt like I needed to honor myself. So here is a part of my story: https://t.co/lc9Max91vF #disability #academia #trauma #bipolar #neurodivergent
— Dr. Kate Ringland⁷ (@liltove) August 21, 2020

My World Building: Story of a Disabled Academic

August 20, 2020 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Dirt path winding through a shady forest. — Photo by Zack Silver on Unsplash

I have found myself at a cross-roads these last few months. Where am I going to be working next? What kind of work do I want to do next? That’s the privilege of being a researcher with a PhD. I find the problems that are interesting to me, seek out funding to solve them, and then spend my energy doing just that. My recent soul-searching has been brought on because I am working on the latest iteration of my job application materials. How do I want to position myself as a job applicant? What facets of my researcher identity are most important to display?

At the same time as this soul-searching, I have been working closely with my dear cousin Annie. We have been gobbling up readings on Indigenous Studies and methods and thinking about a future research agenda that firmly re-centers disenfranchised communities at the heart of the research agenda, instead of privileging Western science and thought.

To this end, I’ve read Indigenous Methodologies by Margaret Kovach (you can read my twitter thread about it here). One of the key things I’ve learned is that personal story and who you are as a researcher are integral to the research process and to the outcomes of the research. As someone trained in Western science, I’ve been taught to obfuscate myself from the research. Clearly delineate where my data and I are in time and space. But that’s not entirely possible. In fact, in recent papers in my field of HCI, I am seeing more and more scholars (usually earlier in their careers) put “positionality” statements. We are here in our research. We chose our field sites and our data collection methods for a reason. If we are solving problems, hopefully, they are things we are passionate about.

Somewhere along the way, my story had been lost. Perhaps not lost, but very carefully hidden — tucked away only to come out in darker moments with close confidants. My friends and family have joked at how good I am at compartmentalizing. Now, at this cross-roads, I feel the need to reconcile these different parts of my life. I need to be more open about who I am, at least in a small way, in order to tell the true story about my research and my career.

I am bipolar. I was diagnosed at 19 years old during my first year of undergraduate. This is not unusual.

I was only diagnosed after a tumultuous few months of beginning college. Moving away from my parents and friends was hard. Having real autonomy over my own schedule was exhilarating, but also hard. I decided to see the school therapist. This is also not unusual for a first year college student.

The first couple of weeks of seeing the therapist were fine. We talked about my dreams and the stress of getting used to college level work. Then things, as they say, went off the rails.

One day I went to the therapist and said, rather off-handedly, I thought, that was feeling kind of low that day. I mean this was the reason I was seeing her in the first place. But instead of sitting down and chatting about it, she marched me down the hallway to the registered psych nurse. In what became a bewildering appointment, where I mentioned at least once a family history of bipolar (something I had suspected in myself since I was sixteen), I walked out with a bottle full of antidepressants. Turns out this was not a great move on the nurse’s part, but also the quickest way for me to prove my theory about being bipolar [this is sarcasm, I did not take the pills simply to test my mental health].

This was not the first time I had been discounted in my own health care. Women experience this all the time. However, this marked the moment in my life when I went from being mildly annoyed at being ignored by clinicians to experiencing true violence and oppression by the system. And this has followed me ever since.

It took months to get a diagnosis after that incident and was only made possible by my wonderful mother who knew who how to navigate the medical system. It took me additional years to really “recover” from the trauma of that first year of college. There were periods of trying different medications and therapy. Despite my initial engagements with mental health care, I did go back (to other clinics, more carefully researched). But there were lots of ups and downs trying to learn triggers, figure out what was going to work for me and what didn’t, and finding a new normality. Getting through this period of my life did not happen without the constant support of my family, my partner, and close friends. I would argue that I will never fully recover and that the emotional scars from that experience shape everything I do even today.

One real tangible way this has impacted me was my continual marginalization in my own healthcare. As soon as the official diagnosis was in my medical charts, I was no longer a reliable or trustworthy patient. I had “severe mental illness” after all. I was denied pain medication after a root canal. I was ignored by doctors and nurses and almost died during childbirth in what was otherwise a normal pregnancy. Let me say it again: I very nearly died. If it wasn’t for a kind night shift nurse two days after my c-section, I wouldn’t even have been told. I wouldn’t have been given the information needed when planning the delivery of my second child (at a completely different hospital in a different state).

This ripple effect just keeps going. My grades in undergrad were understandably horrendous. I had plenty of teachers and fellow students who didn’t believe in me and told me so. Having my ability and trustworthiness questioned repeatedly has taken its toll. This is, I imagine, what imposter syndome on steroids might look like. Some days I question if what I am experiencing and feeling is real or not — luckily, these days have become fewer and far between in recent years. However, those early days of mistrusting myself and hearing that mistrust echoed all around me still haunt every decision I make, especially the big life decisions.

My anger and pain became fuel. I wanted to do the work to help other people experiencing disenfranchisement. I have had wonderful mentors who supported me as I aspired for a PhD and a wonderful advisor who took a chance on me. I successfully completed a PhD in Informatics within the normative time frame (5 years) while being bipolar and while having two children (and almost dying).

I carefully toed the line in my research. Always studying disability, but never bipolar. Careful to help brethren close to me, but never to reopen those wounds hiding just below the surface. I discovered disability studies and social justice. Suddenly, the world was a better place because there were answers beyond subjugation in a medical context. I could push the boundaries of my own field by showing how oppression is happening right here in our own backyards.

Then I began a postdoc in digital mental health. I told myself I could handle it. It would hit close to home, but that it was going on 15 years since The Incident and my subsequent diagnosis. Unfortunately, I found the experience harder than I ever imagined. All of the sudden there are daily reminders of the “severe” nature of bipolar (because we focus on depression and anxiety). There are small cuts that bring back ghosts of oppression and violence. I lived in fear of “coming out” and the implications of what that means in a space that specifically studies mental illness. And I worried how this will impact my steps forward. How does this change my career trajectory? Can I still do the work I want to do and help the communities who need my help the most?

Those cuts remind me why I began this journey in the first place. I want to go to people where they are and help them. Whether that’s giving them access to healthcare or giving them a safe space that isn’t the institution that is our healthcare system. I want to bring back joy through sociality and play.

Beyond my own body of research, I want to be a mentor to others coming after me facing challenging barriers to their work. My advisor took a chance on me and I want to be able to pay that forward with future generations of students.

I’ll leave you with words 18 year-old me wrote, that, in some ways, are still hauntingly true today:

I am the shadow on the wall in your mind
I am the one gallantly dancing across the brick
But the shadow you see, it can’t possibly be all of me
I have faded into nothing
Becoming the invisible, the ignored, and the tormented
I am the shadow
On the wall In your mind.

old computer monitor with black background, green text that reads "critical failure detected, do not panic.. do not panic... do not panic..."

My Paper Pipeline

June 13, 2019 / kateringland / 0 Comments

Being early career as an academic researcher, publications are the biggest metric of success (or failure). The saying does go, “publish or perish.” I wanted to share how I keep track of my own publications. This system used to be analog, but I’ve finally gotten to the point in my career where I have too many projects and other floating responsibilities to rely on notebooks or paper calendars alone. This is where Trello has been a life saver. I’ve moved all my project management exclusively to Trello. In this blog, I would like to share my “Papers Pipeline.”

Picard pointing with text that reads "Publish or Perish. Make it so."

For those who don’t know, Trello is a project management platform that consists of “boards.” Boards are then made up of “lists” and the columns contain “cards.” Both lists and cards are moveable within a board. They can just be picked up and dragged to a new location. This makes for really easy task management. Imagine a board for writing a research paper. You might have 4 lists: to do, doing, done, and additional resources, notes, and information. To do list might contain cards labeled things like “draft lit review” or “finish introduction.” As these get completed, you can then move them along the lists from doing (as you’re doing them) and done (when they are done). These boards can have multiple users, so you can imagine the possibilities as multiple coauthors organize themselves around the task of completing a paper. (Yes, tasks can be assigned and there’s a commenting ability, etc.) I plan on having my students use this as a way to keep us all in communication for various research projects.

So, my paper pipeline is a board that I have starred and is at the top of my list whenever I log into Trello. My lists are as follows:

Ideas (things that might lead to good papers or seeds for future projects, essentially my “promise box”)
Needs reviewing and reworking
Data Collection
Data Analysis
Draft on Deck
With Coauthors
Out for Feedback (from labmates, etc)
Under Review
R&R (Revise and Resubmit)
Camera Ready (Final version prep)
Published (This is a good time to add to your CV!)
Dust Bin (Graveyard of papers/ideas that didn’t pan out)

Then within each of these lists, I have cards. There are cards for the start of a potential idea or something I want to come back to after I have finished current work. I rename cards as I go along and the paper becomes more coherent. I add labels for the papers I am lead author on or mentoring students on (thanks, Jen Nicholas for that great suggestion!). I can add notes or links to documents. I also attach other Trello boards that specifically are dedicated to each paper (with those to do, doing, done lists mentioned above).

In this image you can see the different columns or “lists” with each “card” as a different paper.

This method gives a really nice visual layout of the work. You can see right away if there is a backlog of papers on my desk that I need to get out for feedback or to coauthors. I can also quickly assess what’s currently under review (and potentially get a sense for what is coming back soon).

I highly recommend this method for getting organized. What have you found that helps? Are there other great tools that early career researchers should know about?

CHI 2019 Recap Part 3: Social Impact

June 1, 2019 / kateringland / 0 Comments

This is a continuation of my series of blogs recapping CHI 2019. You can catch up with the first blog, if you missed it, and the second blog on self-care at conferences. For this week’s blog post, I am focusing on social justice and the social impact of research. A number of problems with accessibility arose during the CHI conference, which led to, among other things, a protest by disabled scholars during the CHI Town Hall.

But on a more positive note, this year at CHI, my advisor, Gillian Hayes, won the social impact award. You can and I highly recommend watching the full speech about doing socially impactful work in the CHI community.

As researchers, we are in an enormous place of privilege to be able to do the work we are doing. This privilege did not necessarily come easily and those that are more junior have to work harder than ever to earn that privilege. We have worked hard to educate ourselves. Speaking of which, if you want the list of recommended books from Gillian Hayes’s talk check it out here. However, the number of articles coming out about grad student mental health (as in, they are not healthy) is growing. Young scholars coming from marginalized groups are finding it more challenging to stay in academia, with many leaving altogether. How can we leverage the privilege we have not only to help the communities we work with, but elevate them? How do we elevate those within our own walls that get discounted or even out-right oppressed? This work is hard, but we do not need to make it so very hard, especially if we have any hopes of increasing diversity.

Social impact in research means building relationships in the communities we work in. And relationships means building trust and a true understanding what people need. My own Autcraft work is an example of how I worked closely with a community to help them understand their practices and they were able to leverage my work to help them reach their own goals.

A paved road starting in foreground and going to horizon, fall leaves on trees in mid-ground, and snowy mountains in the background. — The road ahead is for you to choose, but remember the choices you make impact everyone.

As a sneak peek: Along with my cousin, the wonderful Annie Forsman-Adams, I am in the process of co-founding a nonprofit organization, The Kaina Institute for Equitable Research, to continue some of my community-based work. There are many paths to doing research that has a positive impact on communities and still furthers one’s own research agenda. Let’s all keep up the good work and push ourselves even further. Let’s see what kind of force for good we can be in the world.

A sunset over the tops of trees in minecraft.

“Autsome”: Fostering an Autistic Identity in an Online Minecraft Community for Youth with Autism

March 16, 2019 / kateringland / 2 Comments

Preview: Autism is a medical diagnosis that has attracted much attention in recent decades, particularly due to an increase in the numbers of children being diagnosed and the changing requirements for getting the diagnosis. In parallel online communities around autism—both those supporting individuals, families seeking treatment and those supporting embracing the autism identity—have grown. Other work has shown support groups can be useful for those encountering hardship in their lives. In this paper, I illuminate the tension in claiming the autistic identity within this community. The walls of the community work to keep community members safe, but also set them apart from others on the internet. I see that the Autcraft community goes beyond being a support group for victims of targeted violence, to one that redefines and helps community members embrace their own autistic identities.

What is autism and what impact does the label of autism have?

Autism has been the topic of much public concern in recent decades, especially since the sensationalized “autism epidemic” swept through the media. As a medical diagnosis, autism focuses on challenges for individuals; such as whether they are verbal, make eye-contact, or are sensitive to change. Often, as a label, autism is given to youth in order to gain accommodations in school, or for medical treatment. Autistic youth often experience various ways in which this label is used to disempower and disenfranchise them.

This is the case for many youth that are a part of an online community, “Autcraft,” a community centered on a Minecraft virtual world for autistic youth. While those with autism are often the target of harassment and violence in online spaces, the Autcraft community has been actively engaged in making themselves a safe space for youth with autism. Beyond simply keeping bullies out, however, the community has taken the label of “autism” and turned it into something positive—a label worth identifying with.

In the Autcraft community, I have found that the label acts both as a target and as a way for community members to redefine their identities.

Targeting Autism

Concerns over safety of children is an ongoing concern for parents and other caregivers. This is particularly true of those with autistic children, as those with autism tend to be targeted both by their peers and by strangers [32]. Much like other marginalized groups, “autism” is used as a derogatory term. Further, threats of violence can be found across the internet, including in the comments section of YouTube videos, a site used by Autcraft community members. This is especially meaningful as other related work has shown the embodied experience in these online spaces can be as impactful as in physical spaces [29]. Unfortunately, these threats of violence can also result in actual physical harm.

Harassment, threats of violence, and comments about autistic people killing themselves can have a large impact on those targeted, such as additional stress and other psychological harm [22]. The harm, however, does not stop with verbal and written threats. Like other marginalized communities, those with autism face the very real threat of violence against them [14,15].

Here is a video related to these threats of violence in the autistic community at large.

Redefining Autism

There is evidence throughout the Autcraft community of those who are expressing their autistic identity. Autcraft community members may be learning to understand and accept themselves or their child as an autistic individual, but they are also learning to deal with challenges found outside the Autcraft community where they may not find themselves accepted and face opposition.

New word created by the players of @Autcraft: Autsome.
"Having autism and being extremely impressive" pic.twitter.com/CoPUmOvZNt
— Stuart Duncan (@autismfather) January 25, 2019

[alt-text for embedded tweet picture: autsome, adjective, Having autism and being extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration. “My autsome child makes me proud everyday!” synonyms: breathtaking, awe-inspiring, magnificent, wonderful, amazing, stunning, staggering, imposing, stirring, impressive; informal extremely good; excellent. “The band is truly autsome!”]

Adopting “autism” and various forms of the word—as seen in the name of the community “Autcraft”—lends to a sense of identity with others who have the same or similar medical diagnosis. Aside from using “aut” or “autistic” in their user names (i.e., the names that are displayed with their avatars and forum posts, rather than a real-world name), the Autcraft community displays this acceptance through the creation of autism-centric words, such as “autsome.” According to a community post, “autsome” means, “Having autism and being extremely impressive or daunting” and “extremely good; excellent.” Scholars have described how those with disability are often held to a higher standard and those who are “extreme” tend to be held up as inspirational. This type of “inspiration” frames disability as something to be overcome, while achieving difficult objectives. However, I argue that having language such as “autsome” is meant to be inspirational not for others looking in to the Autcraft community, but for the autistic children who are otherwise dealing with a barrage of negative language about autism. This reframes autism as an identity that is worth embracing, rather than overcoming.

Autcraft community members actively work to reshape the mainstream dialog about autism. First and foremost, members try to lead by example, following a set of tenets set out by community founders that encourage and promote good behavior. Community members also engage in outreach to both educate others and to make their own expressions of their autistic identities more visible to others. Members of the Autcraft community engage in activities—much like creating memorials for victims of violence—that purposefully shed light on the hardships they have faced. These efforts are examples of how those with marginalized identities fight back against oppression. As scholars, by listening to these community members and understanding their activities, we can begin to elevate the voices of those who have long been silenced.

For more details about our methods and findings, please see my paper that has been accepted to iConference 2019 (to appear in April 2019). Full citation and link to the pdf below:

Kathryn E. Ringland. 2019. “Autsome”: Fostering an Autistic Identity in an Online Minecraft Community for Youth with Autism. In iConference 2019 Proceedings. [PDF]

Acknowledgements: I thank the members of Autcraft for the warm welcome to their community. Thank you to members of LUCI for their feedback and special thanks to Severn Ringland for his diligent editing. I would also like to thank Robert and Barbara Kleist for their support, as well as the ARCS Foundation. This work is covered by human subjects protocol #2014-1079 at the University of California, Irvine. This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (T32MH115882). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

Because it’s a FAQ: What is the T32?

February 9, 2019 / kateringland / 1 Comment

At Northwestern University, I am a NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow in the Multidisciplinary Training Program in Digital Mental Health, funded by the T32 Institutional Grant at the NIH. Yes, I realize that’s a lot of words, so I will take this blog post to break that down a little bit. This is especially foreign for HCI scholars, where postdocs are mostly funded under project grants.

What is the T?

In the medical sciences, such as Psychology, it seems that additional training after earning a PhD via a postdoc is much more the norm than it is in fields such as HCI (although with the academic job market being what it is, postdocs are just becoming more common across the board). NIH has a number of grants for scholars to apply to at the various stages of their careers. Briefly, these are:

Training Grants such as the K and T
R
P50

They even have a handy infographic of how this breaks down over a career.

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/training/awards

Basically, the grants are set up such that when you graduate with your PhD, you have a T lined up to do for up to 3 years. Then, while working in the T, you are applying to your K. The K then gives additional mentorship and training years as you transition into independent faculty. Finally, as you advance in your career, you are well-set up to apply to larger grants, such as the R01.

The T32, specifically, are training grants that include research activities with mentors, as well as training in grant writing, publishing, and career planning. Teaching is not an expected part of early career training, under these programs.

So, what’s an HCI scholar doing in a T?

As a part of the Multidisciplinary Training Program in Digital Mental Health, I am on an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Not only am I working with two mentors, one from Psychology (David Mohr) and another from HCI (Madhu Reddy), but also with 3 other postdoc trainees.

Two of the postdocs are from fields in Behavioral Health and two of us are HCI-oriented. We are then able to cross-train each other in our respective disciplines. We are also working closely together on projects, often with a Behavioral Health lead and an HCI lead. This gives us a chance to learn enough of another discipline to work on these projects, have some publications in venues appropriate to each field, and widen our breadth of our research.

This training grant is also an opportunity to know our own discipline more deeply by having to teach outsiders some of the nuances and our language. This has been especially enlightening to compare publication cultures, with HCI being a field that values our conference papers as compared to Behavioral Health, which is journal-oriented.

This postdoc fellowship has been a unique experience for me, as an HCI scholar. I am learning how to work on interdisciplinary teams, find common ground, and bridge our scholarly work in order to meet our shared goals.

Rolling chairs in front of a blank projector screen.

Kate’s Paper Management Guide

February 1, 2019 / kateringland / 0 Comments

How to handle multiple authors, get a your paper written, and not drive everyone crazy

For those just starting out in the paper writing process: Welcome! It’s an exciting journey! In the field of HCI, having multiple coauthors is normal. So, in the spirit of helping everyone out, here is a handy guide to help manage the project of getting a paper written when there are multiple coauthors. (And honestly, some of this is probably good if you’re solo on a paper, too.)

A PDF version of this guide is available here.

An open notebook on a dark wood desk with cursive writing in dark pen and a flower in the center of the book.

Step 1. Establish norms among the authors.

Versioning: how will you handle multiple versions of the paper? Where will they be stored? Who will have access to them? What software will you be using?
Along with versioning, set clear norms around document names and stay consistent for the entire lifecycle of the paper.
Authorship: clearly identify tentative author order, explain community norms to outside authors, establish expectations of % contribution
- This also means establishing when various authors on the team will be involved. Some may come in at the end to shape the discussion while others might help with literature review. This should be decided upon now to avoid surprises down the road.
Set deadlines. Be flexible. Know that everything will probably take 3x longer than you expect.

Step 2. Early-stage Drafts.

Adhere to versioning established in step 1.
Co-writing or tandem writing is fine for early stages of writing. This includes splitting up the sections between different authors. Be sure everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing to avoid doubling up on the work.
When making big conceptual decisions about the paper, consult all of the authors involved for feedback.

Step 3. Later-stage Drafts.

After some agreed-upon time (as most sections are filled in, for example), move to writing in sequence, rather than parallel. This helps avoid having a choppy sounding paper and makes sure things like the overarching thread is pulled throughout the paper.
- This means someone will have the “lock” on the paper. Establish norms around how this is specified and handled. This can be a simple “I have the lock” to the group via email (or slack), meaning no one else should be working on the draft. Or using file names in the shared folder to indicate when a draft is “in progress” or “done.”

Step 4. Final Draft & Submission.

Congrats on getting to a final draft! Be sure all authors have signed off on the final version before submitting.
Be sure to send the final version after submission for everyone’s records.

Step 5. Revisions & Camera Ready.

Co-authors are great for sharing the joy of an acceptance or commiserating over a rejection. Be sure to be clear about who will be helping with revisions if needed.
If a paper is being resubmitted to another venue, this entire process starts over again. Good luck!

Other Thoughts:

Clear, frequent communication is key. Ghosting your co-authors isn’t cool.
This process is hard and everything I mentioned above are skills. That means the only way to get better is through practice.

An open notebook with cursive writing in the center and an open fountain pen with lid on top of the page.

What other things are important to remember about the writing process? Leave a comment below!

February 3, 2018 / kateringland / 0 Comments

In exciting news, Stuart Duncan’s TEDx Talk, How I used Minecraft to help kids with autism, is now featured on the ted.com front page! Check it out (and spot our research being highlighted)!!

Virtually Neurodiverse: A New Photo Blog about @Autcraft

January 19, 2018 / kateringland / 0 Comments

As part of my dissertation work, I have been going through all of my old screen shots and analyzing all my collected data. I decided to launch a photo blog to bring to life some of my findings and make them available to all the wonderful people who have helped me with my research. I’ll be posting new blogs every week until I am through all of my screen shots. I would love feedback and comments.

You can visit the photo blog here: https://virtuallyneurodiverse.com

Research Statement

January 15, 2018 / kateringland / 0 Comments

A downloadable PDF version of this article is available here.

The ability to access social interactions is important for everyone, but many people may often be denied access or experience reduced access because of physical, cognitive, or social barriers. A lack of quality access leads to impoverished social experiences and a host of other problems such as loneliness, depression, and anxiety. My research agenda aims to understand how we can design and develop technology to support social interactions – exploring how sociality crosses into both physical and virtual spaces. For physical environments, I have designed and developed assistive technology as a therapeutic tool using whole-body interactive systems to expand modes of communication. Beyond physical spaces, my dissertation focuses on social interactions within and across social media platforms, including a Minecraft virtual world for children with autism, through ethnographic methods. In my future research, I will explore how individuals navigate access not only from platform to platform, but also from the physical world to the virtual and back again. Insight from this work will lead to theoretical and practical contributions of how individuals with disabilities and their social networks adopt, use, and modify technical systems that facilitate social interactions. Further, my work will lead to a better understanding of these communities and how to design more inclusive technology.

Assistive Technology for Children with Autism

Whole-Body Interactive Systems

A shape of a strawberry that has been colored in red and green, with the coloring going outside the lines.

Figure A. Strawberry outline colored by the user.

A silhouette of a boy's legs with a red target that has been painted over in green.

Figure B. A target with the silhouette of the user in the background.

Access to otherwise prohibitively expensive (e.g., money, time, energy) therapy is made possible by using whole-body interactive technology and augmenting the therapeutic and home environments for users. I conducted research of two systems using whole-body interactions – SensoryPaint and DanceCraft – which augmented therapies already being employed by children with autism. Both systems were developed using the Kinect, an inexpensive device that can be placed in a user’s home or doctor’s office. These projects allow for a more inclusive therapeutic environment by creating accessible, inexpensive solutions.

SensoryPaint uses a projection on a wall that the users interacted with using rubber balls. The user receives visual feedback of their activity via a silhouette displayed on the projection. The system allows for multiple types of interaction. For example, the user can digitally “paint” with the Kinect, tracking the ball and displaying the ball’s path in various colors on the wall (See Figure A). The user can also throw the ball at the projection to get a “splash” effect (See Figure B). From the results of the pilot study of SensoryPaint, I found that whole-body interactions can be more engaging for children than traditional therapies by giving participants different interactive options that suit their specific sensory needs. Including a flexible interface allows both therapists and children to use relevant segments of the program and change settings as needed. I presented these results at the Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) where I was nominated for a Best Paper award [8].

A shadow puppet with grass and clouds and birds flying in the background.

Figure C. Shadow puppet interface of DanceCraft.

Following the SensoryPaint study, I led a team of undergraduates to design and develop the DanceCraft system. The interface uses a similar silhouette feature that gives the user visual feedback on their activity. The user follows along with pre-recorded dances displayed as a “paper doll” figure (See Figure C). By including a feature to replay recorded dances on-the-fly, therapists and instructors can record dances specific for each child and session. The replay feature also allows for children to watch their own dance choreographies, giving them instant feedback. A therapist can then track a child’s progress across sessions through their saved recordings. Future iterations of the DanceCraft software will calculate whether the user’s captured dance moves are the correct dance moves as prescribed by the therapist. A pilot study of DanceCraft showed the feasibility of augmenting therapy in the home. I coauthored these preliminary findings, which were presented at the ACM Tapia Diversity conference [1], and a manuscript for the Transactions of Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) journal is currently in progress. Future work on these whole-body interactive systems will focus on creating intelligent software that can adapt to a growing, developing child’s needs and be intuitive for parents and therapists.

3D Printing from User-created Models in the Minecraft Virtual World

Minecraft is a popular virtual “sandbox” – with currently over 27 million units of the software sold – where players can build and create objects, environments, and worlds with a high degree of freedom. The multiplayer-capabilities of virtual worlds in Minecraft make it an ideal system for examining how technology facilitates and drives social interactions between users. I designed and programmed software that allows players to 3D print models of objects they have created within Minecraft. The application takes the coordinates of an object and translates it into a file that can be sent to a 3D printer, making their creations come to life in a sense. I designed the software to leverage the familiar interface by creating it as an add-on for Minecraft. To use the program, the user creates the 3D printing “magic wand” object within the virtual world, types in commands for the wand in the Minecraft interface, and then saves the files to the local computer. This program has potential in establishing engaging social interactions with greater accessibility due to the inherent nature of virtual environments, where conditions such as geographical or physical limitations are less hindering. Future work in this project will explore how users experience blending virtual creation of 3D objects with their tangible, physical representations. As part of a campus-wide effort to retain underrepresented students in STEM, this work was presented by my undergraduate mentee at the UCI Summer Research Symposium [9].

Exploring Virtual Worlds as a Support for Social Play in Children with Disabilities

Autcraft is a specific iteration of a Minecraft virtual world dedicated to children with autism and their allies. Drawing from work in Disability Studies, my dissertation examines data collected from ethnographic research conducted over three years in Autcraft (See Figure D). My research has uncovered how the Autcraft community works to create a safe, inclusive space through both social and technical means [6]. Parents actively work to maintain safety and accessibility in the Autcraft community through modifying Minecraft and other mainstream technology to create assistive devices [5]. Additionally, the findings from this work indicate the importance of a supportive communication framework (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch) that has emerged in the Autcraft community [7]. This constellation of social media is comprised of different platforms used in tandem to create a social, community experience. Community members can thereby empower themselves through online activism that supports better treatment of individuals with disability [2]. This also gives the children an outlet to express themselves creatively on safe online platforms [4]. Ultimately, I found the community searches for, practices, and defines sociality through the various communication channels and means of communication indicating evolving definitions of what it means to be social [3,7]. Results from this research project have appeared in multiple venues, including Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW).

A Minecraft character next to a pond wearing a white lab coat with brown hair.

Figure D. A screen shot of my avatar, ResearcherKate – used to complete my virtual world ethnography.

Contributions of Dissertation

My dissertation contributes an empirical understanding of how access is granted to some individuals and not to others, creating an uneven distribution of experiences when interacting with technologies. This includes an exploration of how the intersectionality of multiple identities of community members, such as autistic or child, impacts social play online and how social play enables the performance of these identities. Insight from my work can help shape our scholarly understanding of how users approach technology, as well as some of the work marginalized users do to fully experience interactions. This includes some of the “Do-It-Yourself” activities individuals engage in to make systems more usable for themselves and their communities.

In this work, I highlight the value of virtual social interactions for marginalized users. When scholars, designers, therapists, or parents privilege physical, face-to-face social interactions over virtual ones, they run the risk of making invisible those who prefer, or have better access to, virtual social interactions. My dissertation challenges the mainstream discourse and contributes to normalizing social play as it occurs in virtual spaces for children with autism. Often, society tells these children they should focus solely on their physical-world engagements, while their online relationships and experiences are discounted. Children with autism are just one example of a subset of people who may prefer virtual interactions.

Finally, my work contributes a new way for HCI researchers to define and study social media. This work expands the definition of social media to include games and virtual worlds, beyond the scope of other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. The ethnographic methods used in this project also exemplify how HCI researchers should look beyond the bounds of a single social platform to understand a user or a community of users. Social media platforms work together to create an organic network for social interaction. This holistic lens of research allows for a far more complete understanding of users, which is necessary to create access and inclusion.

Research Agenda

My future research program will continue to explore the frontier where physical and virtual interactions no longer simply coexist, but are seamless. My work will encompass the following three themes: 1) understanding how people use a constellation of social platforms, 2) understanding disabled embodied experiences as mediated by technology, and 3) using the lens of intersectionality to represent a more complete person regardless of ability. To explore these threads, my research lab will engage in community-based work with individuals with disability and relevant organizations. Together we will answer questions regarding how we can design and develop sustainable technology that mediates social interactions and how access to these social interactions will improve quality of life. Research activities will include: designing and developing software for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) platforms in tandem with whole-body sensors; holding workshops with marginalized individuals to both help with the design of these systems and to test the efficacy of the systems; and outreach programs with students in the department with local groups and schools.

This research will not only further the field in terms of understanding how people can build innovative technology, but also aid in the academic STEM pipeline for underrepresented students. As with my previous work, I will continue to mentor graduate and undergraduate students who are interested in working with marginalized populations in the areas of technology, games, and media studies. Results from this work will be published in conferences and journals geared towards HCI (such as CHI, Ubicomp, and ASSETS). My goal is to produce scientific results from multiple, diverse perspectives that will ensure a broader impact.

References

[1] J.K. Brown, K.E. Ringland, and G.R. Hayes. 2016. DanceCraft: A Whole-Body Dance Software for Children with Autism. Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing 2016.

[2] K.E. Ringland. 2017. On Being “Autsome”: An Exploration of Online Social Play as a Means of Empowering Autistic Youth. Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association.

[3] K.E. Ringland. 2017. Minecraft as a Site of Sociality for Autistic Youth. QGCon 2017.

[4] K.E. Ringland, L.E. Boyd, H. Faucett, A.L.L. Cullen, and Gillian R. Hayes. 2017. Making in Minecraft: A Means of Self-Expression for Youth with Autism. In Proc. IDC 2017, ACM.

[5] K.E. Ringland, C.T. Wolf, L.E. Boyd, M. Baldwin, and G.R. Hayes. 2016. Would You Be Mine: Appropriating Minecraft as an Assistive Technology for Youth with Autism. In Proc. ASSETS 2016, ACM.

[6] K.E. Ringland, C.T. Wolf, L. Dombrowski, and G.R. Hayes. 2015. Making “Safe”: Community-Centered Practices in a Virtual World Dedicated to Children with Autism. In Proc. CSCW 2015, ACM.

[7] K.E. Ringland, C.T. Wolf, H. Faucett, L. Dombrowski, and G.R. Hayes. 2016. “Will I always be not social?”: Re-Conceptualizing Sociality in the Context of a Minecraft Community for Autism. In Proc. CHI 2016.

[8] K.E. Ringland, R. Zalapa, M. Neal, L. Escobedo, M. Tentori, and G.R. Hayes. 2014. SensoryPaint: A Multimodal Sensory Intervention for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders. In Proc. UbiComp, ACM.

[9] Tamimi, A., Ringland, K.E., Hayes, G.R. 2016. “Developing a User-Friendly System to 3D Print Minecraft Creations.” UCI Summer Research Colloquium. Irvine, CA.