Notification Systems Research @ VT

Faculty
Scott
McCrickard
PhD Candidates
Shahtab
Wahid
Jason
Lee
Laurian
Vega
Tejinder
Judge
Stacy
Branham
MS Students
Saurabh
Bhatia
Brian
Sciacchitano
Yeong-Tay
Sun

Notification systems attempt to deliver current, important information to the user in an efficient and effective manner. Examples of familiar notification systems include instant messaging systems, system and user status updates, email alerts, and news and stock tickers. With the popularity of these systems skyrocketing in recent years, our group explores the effects of incoming notifications on ongoing computing tasks, creating models for their design, implementation, and evaluation. Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments about our work.
Selected Designs
seeVT
Leverages location-based technology for on-the-go handheld and Tablet users, providing appropriate notification of nearby events of interest.
See also: Mobile Spatial Interaction workshop paper, Sampat thesis
Online Enlightenment
Leverages instant messenger data in an off-the-desktop semi-public display showing online presence data and history.
See also: CSCW 2006 note
ClassroomBRIDGE
Notifies middle- and high-school teachers of progress on cross-classroom group science projects using large displays of aggregate project data in the classroom.
See also: UIST '03 overview paper, SEKE '04 design case study
Methods and Toolkits
LINK-UP
Provides a web-based development environment for notification systems; targeted for use in classrooms for educating students about HCI, by interface designers developing notification systems, and across disciplines by a variety of researchers.
See also: CADUI '03 paper on the design vision, E-Learn '04 paper on its potential use in education
Claims Library
Captures knowledge about notification systems in designer-digestible packets called claims, that can then be searched, augmented, and otherwise used by tools like LINK-UP.
See also: IRI '03 paper on the original vision, HICSS '05 paper detailing usage case studies, HCII '05 paper on envisioned future directions
Real World Interfaces toolkit
Supports the creation of off-the-desktop displays with any pluggable electronic device using X10 technology.
See also: web page

 

  
Lab News

January 2008 kicks off our NSF-sponsored partnership with Meridium, targeted at integrating our "Agile usability" methodology into the Meridium product development plans--toward an Agile usability tool for use by Meridium and its clients. Lab member Jason Lee is taking the lead on the project, splitting his time between Virginia Tech and Meridium.

Summer 2008 marked the third year of the Center for HCI's NSF-sponsored Research Experience for Undergrads program led by Scott McCrickard and Woodrow Winchester. Prior years we have hosted students from North Carolina A&T, Norfolk State, Hollins, Jackson State, and UPRM, and also from Georgia Tech, Wellesley College, Oberlin, TCNJ, and (of course) Virginia Tech. Visit the REU website for more details.

M.S. student Miten Sampat received the Department of Computer Science Outstanding Graduate Student award in 2008. In receiving the award, he was cited for his bridges with people in other departments, best quantified by his seven publications (including his thesis) with fifteen different co-authors or committee members from three different departments or university centers. Miten is now at Feeva Technology in San Francisco. Visit the lab alumni page to catch up with other alumni activities.

 
Selected Publications

These selected articles provide an overview to the type of work that is ongoing in our lab, and in the field of notification systems. Please visit our full publication list for additional articles.

D. Scott McCrickard and C. M. Chewar. "Attuning Notification Design to User Goals and Attention Costs." Communications of the ACM, 46 (3), March 2003, pp. 67-72.

D. Scott McCrickard, C. M. Chewar, Jacob P. Somervell, and Ali Ndiwalana. "A Model for Notification Systems Evaluation -- Assessing User Goals for Multitasking Activity." ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction (TOCHI), volume 10, number 4, pp. 312-338, December 2003.

Jason Chong Lee and D. Scott McCrickard. " Towards Extreme(ly) Usable Software: Exploring Tensions Between Usability and Agile Software Development." In Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Agile Software Development (Agile 2007), Washington DC, August 2007, pp. 59-70.