Joseph Coughlin | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (original) (raw)
Papers by Joseph Coughlin
All sufficiently-complex engineered systems require oversight by committees of technical experts.... more All sufficiently-complex engineered systems require oversight by committees of technical experts. Decision-making by these expert committees is poorly understood. A number of social dynamics might impact the sharing of information among expert specialists. Some of these could be beneficial to the decision process but some could lead to decisions that are not well-informed by all of the specialties represented. This research presents a quantitative empirical methodology for the study of technical expert committees based upon computational linguistic analysis of meeting transcripts. The Food and Drug Administration advisory panels are used as a case study. Output results include meaningful social network data that might potentially be used to gain insight into how the social dynamics of expertise interact with technical device attributes, ultimately leading to a committee decision.
Success of engineered systems and devices is contingent upon their approval by expert committees.... more Success of engineered systems and devices is contingent upon their approval by expert committees. For example, advisory panels to the Food and Drug Administration make crucial recommendations regarding the approval and diffusion of medical devices in the United States. Systems and devices are subject to opinions and institutional bias that might drive decision outcomes in an unfavorable direction. Computational linguistics algorithms, such as Latent Semantic Analysis, provide a quantitative metric for the dynamics of the multi-stakeholder decision making underlying approval meetings. Insights from the analysis can lead to recommendations for how such committees might be structured to improve system performance with minimal cost and rework.
Innovation in Aging, 2020
Previous research demonstrates that student loan debt disproportionately affects women and is bei... more Previous research demonstrates that student loan debt disproportionately affects women and is being repaid increasingly by older adults. Utilizing data collected through a mixed methods study at the MIT AgeLab (involving focus groups and a large national survey), we examine the impacts of repaying student loans on older women’s financial wellbeing. Findings focus on multiple areas, including the timing in which older women repaying student loans were able to pay down other debts, change jobs, get married, and pursue further education. Analysis also revealed that student loans impacted the amount that 63% of older women in the study were able to contribute to their retirement savings. Findings from this study suggest that repaying student loan debt for oneself and/or a family member can compromise older women’s near-term and longer-term financial being. Policy reforms are needed to support older women repaying student loans.
Traffic safety has been traditionally addressed through individual improvements to the car by man... more Traffic safety has been traditionally addressed through individual improvements to the car by manufacturers; improvements to the driver through education and enforcement; and, improvements to the infrastructure by government. While none of these approaches is incorrect, they are incomplete. The authors believe that further opportunities for enhancing safety are to be found in creatively exploiting the overlapping and interactive nature of the role of the vehicle, driver, and driving environment in accident prevention and mitigation. The authors apply wellness, as developed in the fields of health behavior and sports psychology, as an integrating framework to envision driver performance as dynamic and improvable. From this perspective, and building on advances in ambient intelligence, they propose the development of an AwareCar. The AwareCar concept would detect driver state (fatigue or stress); display that information to the driver to improve the driver’s situational awareness in r...
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2021
As college costs rise in the United States, many parents are forced to make difficult decisions a... more As college costs rise in the United States, many parents are forced to make difficult decisions about how to pay for their children’s higher education. Stress and conflict accompany financial issues and play a role in the financial picture for many families. Using Hill’s (Hill, Social casework 39:139–150, 1958) ABC-X model of family stress as a framework, this study describes results of a national survey of parents contributing to student loan payments for their child’s education and explores how this experience may play a role in familial conflict. Findings suggest marked gender differences in the relationship between contribution reason and the experience of conflict. Results also carry implications for financial professionals, suggesting a need for family-focused and gender-conscious financial education both before and during the student loan repayment process.
Sustainability, 2021
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) may significantly impact people’s choice of residential locations and s... more Autonomous vehicles (AVs) may significantly impact people’s choice of residential locations and spatial structures. The impact may vary across different countries, but few studies have focused on it. This study drew on China and the United States (US) as two cases to study car drivers’ knowledge of AVs and willingness to move farther if AVs were available by estimating ordered logistic regression models. The results showed that 42.3% of Chinese and 29.8% of US respondents were likely to consider moving farther away from the nearest city or the destination for the most frequent trip if they had an AV. The Chinese sample had less knowledge of AVs than the US sample, but they were more likely to consider a move. AVs may lead to a new round of urban sprawl, but the challenge may be greater for China. We captured the socio-economic and transport factors that affected this result.
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2021
Proceedings of the 8th International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training, and Vehicle Design: driving assessment 2015, 2015
This study examined differences in the impact of visual-manual and auditory-vocal based radio tun... more This study examined differences in the impact of visual-manual and auditory-vocal based radio tuning tasks on field driving performance. Engagement in visual-manual tuning tasks were associated with higher steering wheel reversal rates than baseline driving. Both visual-manual and auditory-vocal based tuning tasks were associated with higher variances in speed maintenance compared to baseline driving. Models were built to utilize driving performance measurements as input to a classifier that aimed to distinguish between the three states (i.e., baseline driving, visual-manual tuning, and auditory-vocal tuning). Baseline driving could be classified from visual-manual tuning at an accuracy of over 99% and from auditory-vocal based tuning at an accuracy of 93.3%. Models could differentiate between the modalities at an accuracy of 75.2 % and between the three classes at an accuracy of 81.2%. Results suggest that changes in driving performance associated with visual-manual based tuning are statistically distinguishable from auditory-vocal based tuning. While not being free of visualmanual demand, tasks that involve auditory-vocal interactions appear to differ from visual-manual in how they impact driving performance.
FINANCIAL PLANNING REVIEW, 2019
Robo‐advisors have recently been gaining interest as a technology‐enabled means to make financial... more Robo‐advisors have recently been gaining interest as a technology‐enabled means to make financial management easier. The aim of this study is to examine how people's self‐assessed financial experience, affective reactions, and the interplay with individual values influence their willingness to use a robo‐advisor. We argue that one's self‐assessed financial experience influences the willingness to use robo‐advisors as a result of different affective reactions (i.e., anxiety and joy) associated with its usage. We further posit that the mediating effect of anxiety varies with individual levels of a motivational factor—self‐enhancement—which has been found to regulate anxiety‐related feelings. Based on a large‐scale nationwide survey with an online sample of American adults, it was found that affective responses (i.e., anxiety and joy) explain (i.e., mediate) the effect of self‐assessed financial experience on the willingness to use robo‐advisor. Moreover, the mediating effect o...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2016
To investigate possible relationships between drivers’ sensation seeking and glance behavior whil... more To investigate possible relationships between drivers’ sensation seeking and glance behavior while interacting with human-machine interfaces, a total of 70 drivers’ eye-glance data, Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), and Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) data were collected and analyzed. Participants conducted radio tuning tasks with two standard production interfaces while driving on a highway, and their glance allocations to defined regions were recorded and manually annotated. Results showed that sensation seeking scores were related with self-reported violation scores, off-road glance patterns, and driving speed: (1) violation scores of DBQ were positively correlated with sensation seeking, (2) mean and standard deviation of off-road glance duration were positively correlated with sensation seeking for younger drivers (under 40 years), (3) total off-road glance time per minute and number of off-road glances per minute were positively correlated with sensation seeking for older dri...
Journal of Applied Gerontology, 2018
Objectives: To explore the effects of membership in a fitness program for older adults on social ... more Objectives: To explore the effects of membership in a fitness program for older adults on social isolation, loneliness, and health. Method: Using survey responses from SilverSneakers members and matched nonmembers, regression path analysis was used to examine the influence of SilverSneakers membership on physical activity, social isolation, loneliness, and health, and the interrelationships among these concepts. Results: SilverSneakers membership directly increased physical activity and self-rated health, directly decreased social isolation, and indirectly decreased loneliness. Decreased social isolation and loneliness were associated with better self-rated health: social isolation and loneliness had independent direct effects on health, while social isolation also had an indirect effect on health mediated through loneliness. Discussion: Members of SilverSneakers experienced better health through increased physical activity, reduced social isolation, and reduced loneliness. Future r...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2015
New technologies are increasingly being implemented into the automobile. However, little is known... more New technologies are increasingly being implemented into the automobile. However, little is known about what factors most influence user acceptance. This study investigates factors and relationships described in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the effects of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use on people’s attitudes and behavioral intentions to use new technologies in the automobile. In particular, this study draws upon in-vehicle voice interfaces as an example of rapidly evolving in-vehicle technologies. An experiment was conducted where an age- and gender-balanced sample of 80 participants completed tasks using voice interface in one of two vehicles while driving on-road. As part of the debriefing, participants answered a structured questionnaire about their experience with the technology. The results confirmed the applicability of TAM for describing the effects of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use on attitudes and behavioral intentions to u...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2016
Older drivers comprise an undue percentage of roadway crashes and fatalities, and existing data i... more Older drivers comprise an undue percentage of roadway crashes and fatalities, and existing data implicates decrements to situational awareness as one factor. Although forward attention in older drivers is well studied, rearward attention for this population is little explored. What evidence exists has suggested reduced mirror checks, especially under conditions of multitasking. Voice-enabled in-vehicle systems may represent a partial solution, requiring fewer resources and freeing drivers for behavior which maintains better rearward attention. The present study asked participants to drive on a highway in an instrumented vehicle under conditions of baseline driving, manual radio tuning, and radio tuning assisted by a voice-enabled interface. Results indicate that multitasking greatly reduced mirror checks for all groups. Older participants devoted a greater amount of time to mirror checks than younger participants when just driving, but dropped to levels similar to younger drivers wh...
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2015
Associations between user characteristics and system features to technology adoption have been di... more Associations between user characteristics and system features to technology adoption have been discussed in various domains. However, less is known about how different factors potentially affect the adoption of in-vehicle smart technologies. This study builds and tests a research model that describes the relationships of individual characteristics, preconceptions, and task performance and perceptions measured during a system experience to attitudes and expectations toward in-vehicle technologies. Based on empirical data from three research cases—voice-control interface, active parallel parking assist, and cross traffic alert—this study finds perceptions of a hands-on system experience to have strong associations with postexperience attitudes and expectations. Individual characteristics including age and health, general preconceptions, and task performance were found to have weaker relationships. Based on the findings, this article discusses implications for research in the emerging domain of smart technologies in automobiles, as well as for practice in design and delivery of in-vehicle technologies.
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, 2015
A Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5s were compared in a driving simulator where participants p... more A Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5s were compared in a driving simulator where participants performed visual-manual and auditory-vocal address entry tasks. Auditory-vocal tasks were associated with shorter task times, fewer off-road glances, lower workload ratings, and reduced impact on vehicle performance. Primarily nominal differences were found between devices. Older participants had more difficulty performing tasks across both modalities, and difficulties were amplified for visualmanual tasks. A pattern of performance advantages were found when participants used the same operating system as the one they personally owned, including faster task completion, fewer off-road glances, and lower reported workload coupled with lower impact on lane variability. One's familiarity with a smartphone may, to some extent, impact the apparent level of demand associated with its use while driving. These findings highlight a need for a more comprehensive understanding of how technology training can aid in minimizing interface demands.
Developments in electronics and lighting technology have allowed a recent increase in the number ... more Developments in electronics and lighting technology have allowed a recent increase in the number of dynamic, digital billboards (i.e. Commercial Electronic Variable Message Signs (CEVMS)) in the environment around roadways. While a growing body of research has evaluated the similarly increasing prevalence of electronics within the vehicle, very few studies have considered the effects of digital billboards on the visual attention and behavior of drivers. The authors report here on a preliminary analysis of naturalistic driving behavior in a large sample (n=74) of older and younger drivers in the greater Boston area. Unlike previous studies, the authors' target section of road was mostly free from extraneous signage or other visual confounds, allowing a more thorough characterization of driver glances before and after the electronic billboard. While conclusive results await further study, the authors report significant shifts in the number and length of glances toward the billboard. These results were particularly evident in older drivers.
Journal of Information Processing, 2012
Aging in place is a sustainable strategy for aging societies all over the world, although there a... more Aging in place is a sustainable strategy for aging societies all over the world, although there are still various issues to be resolved. One of those issues, the isolation of the elderly, is expected to be tackled by technology. We identify three concepts for designing systems to assist the elderly in communicating with their families: provide trigger for communication, provide control of communication, and effortless communication. We develop the e-Home system on the three concepts. e-Home is a communication system that includes home monitoring; it offers shared sticky notes and video-telephony for communication media while monitoring medication compliance. We conduct a two-month field study of four households, studying e-Home use and its impact on the subjects' communication habits. The results show enhanced communication in all households.
All sufficiently-complex engineered systems require oversight by committees of technical experts.... more All sufficiently-complex engineered systems require oversight by committees of technical experts. Decision-making by these expert committees is poorly understood. A number of social dynamics might impact the sharing of information among expert specialists. Some of these could be beneficial to the decision process but some could lead to decisions that are not well-informed by all of the specialties represented. This research presents a quantitative empirical methodology for the study of technical expert committees based upon computational linguistic analysis of meeting transcripts. The Food and Drug Administration advisory panels are used as a case study. Output results include meaningful social network data that might potentially be used to gain insight into how the social dynamics of expertise interact with technical device attributes, ultimately leading to a committee decision.
Success of engineered systems and devices is contingent upon their approval by expert committees.... more Success of engineered systems and devices is contingent upon their approval by expert committees. For example, advisory panels to the Food and Drug Administration make crucial recommendations regarding the approval and diffusion of medical devices in the United States. Systems and devices are subject to opinions and institutional bias that might drive decision outcomes in an unfavorable direction. Computational linguistics algorithms, such as Latent Semantic Analysis, provide a quantitative metric for the dynamics of the multi-stakeholder decision making underlying approval meetings. Insights from the analysis can lead to recommendations for how such committees might be structured to improve system performance with minimal cost and rework.
Innovation in Aging, 2020
Previous research demonstrates that student loan debt disproportionately affects women and is bei... more Previous research demonstrates that student loan debt disproportionately affects women and is being repaid increasingly by older adults. Utilizing data collected through a mixed methods study at the MIT AgeLab (involving focus groups and a large national survey), we examine the impacts of repaying student loans on older women’s financial wellbeing. Findings focus on multiple areas, including the timing in which older women repaying student loans were able to pay down other debts, change jobs, get married, and pursue further education. Analysis also revealed that student loans impacted the amount that 63% of older women in the study were able to contribute to their retirement savings. Findings from this study suggest that repaying student loan debt for oneself and/or a family member can compromise older women’s near-term and longer-term financial being. Policy reforms are needed to support older women repaying student loans.
Traffic safety has been traditionally addressed through individual improvements to the car by man... more Traffic safety has been traditionally addressed through individual improvements to the car by manufacturers; improvements to the driver through education and enforcement; and, improvements to the infrastructure by government. While none of these approaches is incorrect, they are incomplete. The authors believe that further opportunities for enhancing safety are to be found in creatively exploiting the overlapping and interactive nature of the role of the vehicle, driver, and driving environment in accident prevention and mitigation. The authors apply wellness, as developed in the fields of health behavior and sports psychology, as an integrating framework to envision driver performance as dynamic and improvable. From this perspective, and building on advances in ambient intelligence, they propose the development of an AwareCar. The AwareCar concept would detect driver state (fatigue or stress); display that information to the driver to improve the driver’s situational awareness in r...
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2021
As college costs rise in the United States, many parents are forced to make difficult decisions a... more As college costs rise in the United States, many parents are forced to make difficult decisions about how to pay for their children’s higher education. Stress and conflict accompany financial issues and play a role in the financial picture for many families. Using Hill’s (Hill, Social casework 39:139–150, 1958) ABC-X model of family stress as a framework, this study describes results of a national survey of parents contributing to student loan payments for their child’s education and explores how this experience may play a role in familial conflict. Findings suggest marked gender differences in the relationship between contribution reason and the experience of conflict. Results also carry implications for financial professionals, suggesting a need for family-focused and gender-conscious financial education both before and during the student loan repayment process.
Sustainability, 2021
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) may significantly impact people’s choice of residential locations and s... more Autonomous vehicles (AVs) may significantly impact people’s choice of residential locations and spatial structures. The impact may vary across different countries, but few studies have focused on it. This study drew on China and the United States (US) as two cases to study car drivers’ knowledge of AVs and willingness to move farther if AVs were available by estimating ordered logistic regression models. The results showed that 42.3% of Chinese and 29.8% of US respondents were likely to consider moving farther away from the nearest city or the destination for the most frequent trip if they had an AV. The Chinese sample had less knowledge of AVs than the US sample, but they were more likely to consider a move. AVs may lead to a new round of urban sprawl, but the challenge may be greater for China. We captured the socio-economic and transport factors that affected this result.
Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2021
Proceedings of the 8th International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training, and Vehicle Design: driving assessment 2015, 2015
This study examined differences in the impact of visual-manual and auditory-vocal based radio tun... more This study examined differences in the impact of visual-manual and auditory-vocal based radio tuning tasks on field driving performance. Engagement in visual-manual tuning tasks were associated with higher steering wheel reversal rates than baseline driving. Both visual-manual and auditory-vocal based tuning tasks were associated with higher variances in speed maintenance compared to baseline driving. Models were built to utilize driving performance measurements as input to a classifier that aimed to distinguish between the three states (i.e., baseline driving, visual-manual tuning, and auditory-vocal tuning). Baseline driving could be classified from visual-manual tuning at an accuracy of over 99% and from auditory-vocal based tuning at an accuracy of 93.3%. Models could differentiate between the modalities at an accuracy of 75.2 % and between the three classes at an accuracy of 81.2%. Results suggest that changes in driving performance associated with visual-manual based tuning are statistically distinguishable from auditory-vocal based tuning. While not being free of visualmanual demand, tasks that involve auditory-vocal interactions appear to differ from visual-manual in how they impact driving performance.
FINANCIAL PLANNING REVIEW, 2019
Robo‐advisors have recently been gaining interest as a technology‐enabled means to make financial... more Robo‐advisors have recently been gaining interest as a technology‐enabled means to make financial management easier. The aim of this study is to examine how people's self‐assessed financial experience, affective reactions, and the interplay with individual values influence their willingness to use a robo‐advisor. We argue that one's self‐assessed financial experience influences the willingness to use robo‐advisors as a result of different affective reactions (i.e., anxiety and joy) associated with its usage. We further posit that the mediating effect of anxiety varies with individual levels of a motivational factor—self‐enhancement—which has been found to regulate anxiety‐related feelings. Based on a large‐scale nationwide survey with an online sample of American adults, it was found that affective responses (i.e., anxiety and joy) explain (i.e., mediate) the effect of self‐assessed financial experience on the willingness to use robo‐advisor. Moreover, the mediating effect o...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2016
To investigate possible relationships between drivers’ sensation seeking and glance behavior whil... more To investigate possible relationships between drivers’ sensation seeking and glance behavior while interacting with human-machine interfaces, a total of 70 drivers’ eye-glance data, Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), and Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) data were collected and analyzed. Participants conducted radio tuning tasks with two standard production interfaces while driving on a highway, and their glance allocations to defined regions were recorded and manually annotated. Results showed that sensation seeking scores were related with self-reported violation scores, off-road glance patterns, and driving speed: (1) violation scores of DBQ were positively correlated with sensation seeking, (2) mean and standard deviation of off-road glance duration were positively correlated with sensation seeking for younger drivers (under 40 years), (3) total off-road glance time per minute and number of off-road glances per minute were positively correlated with sensation seeking for older dri...
Journal of Applied Gerontology, 2018
Objectives: To explore the effects of membership in a fitness program for older adults on social ... more Objectives: To explore the effects of membership in a fitness program for older adults on social isolation, loneliness, and health. Method: Using survey responses from SilverSneakers members and matched nonmembers, regression path analysis was used to examine the influence of SilverSneakers membership on physical activity, social isolation, loneliness, and health, and the interrelationships among these concepts. Results: SilverSneakers membership directly increased physical activity and self-rated health, directly decreased social isolation, and indirectly decreased loneliness. Decreased social isolation and loneliness were associated with better self-rated health: social isolation and loneliness had independent direct effects on health, while social isolation also had an indirect effect on health mediated through loneliness. Discussion: Members of SilverSneakers experienced better health through increased physical activity, reduced social isolation, and reduced loneliness. Future r...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2015
New technologies are increasingly being implemented into the automobile. However, little is known... more New technologies are increasingly being implemented into the automobile. However, little is known about what factors most influence user acceptance. This study investigates factors and relationships described in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the effects of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use on people’s attitudes and behavioral intentions to use new technologies in the automobile. In particular, this study draws upon in-vehicle voice interfaces as an example of rapidly evolving in-vehicle technologies. An experiment was conducted where an age- and gender-balanced sample of 80 participants completed tasks using voice interface in one of two vehicles while driving on-road. As part of the debriefing, participants answered a structured questionnaire about their experience with the technology. The results confirmed the applicability of TAM for describing the effects of perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use on attitudes and behavioral intentions to u...
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 2016
Older drivers comprise an undue percentage of roadway crashes and fatalities, and existing data i... more Older drivers comprise an undue percentage of roadway crashes and fatalities, and existing data implicates decrements to situational awareness as one factor. Although forward attention in older drivers is well studied, rearward attention for this population is little explored. What evidence exists has suggested reduced mirror checks, especially under conditions of multitasking. Voice-enabled in-vehicle systems may represent a partial solution, requiring fewer resources and freeing drivers for behavior which maintains better rearward attention. The present study asked participants to drive on a highway in an instrumented vehicle under conditions of baseline driving, manual radio tuning, and radio tuning assisted by a voice-enabled interface. Results indicate that multitasking greatly reduced mirror checks for all groups. Older participants devoted a greater amount of time to mirror checks than younger participants when just driving, but dropped to levels similar to younger drivers wh...
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 2015
Associations between user characteristics and system features to technology adoption have been di... more Associations between user characteristics and system features to technology adoption have been discussed in various domains. However, less is known about how different factors potentially affect the adoption of in-vehicle smart technologies. This study builds and tests a research model that describes the relationships of individual characteristics, preconceptions, and task performance and perceptions measured during a system experience to attitudes and expectations toward in-vehicle technologies. Based on empirical data from three research cases—voice-control interface, active parallel parking assist, and cross traffic alert—this study finds perceptions of a hands-on system experience to have strong associations with postexperience attitudes and expectations. Individual characteristics including age and health, general preconceptions, and task performance were found to have weaker relationships. Based on the findings, this article discusses implications for research in the emerging domain of smart technologies in automobiles, as well as for practice in design and delivery of in-vehicle technologies.
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, 2015
A Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5s were compared in a driving simulator where participants p... more A Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5s were compared in a driving simulator where participants performed visual-manual and auditory-vocal address entry tasks. Auditory-vocal tasks were associated with shorter task times, fewer off-road glances, lower workload ratings, and reduced impact on vehicle performance. Primarily nominal differences were found between devices. Older participants had more difficulty performing tasks across both modalities, and difficulties were amplified for visualmanual tasks. A pattern of performance advantages were found when participants used the same operating system as the one they personally owned, including faster task completion, fewer off-road glances, and lower reported workload coupled with lower impact on lane variability. One's familiarity with a smartphone may, to some extent, impact the apparent level of demand associated with its use while driving. These findings highlight a need for a more comprehensive understanding of how technology training can aid in minimizing interface demands.
Developments in electronics and lighting technology have allowed a recent increase in the number ... more Developments in electronics and lighting technology have allowed a recent increase in the number of dynamic, digital billboards (i.e. Commercial Electronic Variable Message Signs (CEVMS)) in the environment around roadways. While a growing body of research has evaluated the similarly increasing prevalence of electronics within the vehicle, very few studies have considered the effects of digital billboards on the visual attention and behavior of drivers. The authors report here on a preliminary analysis of naturalistic driving behavior in a large sample (n=74) of older and younger drivers in the greater Boston area. Unlike previous studies, the authors' target section of road was mostly free from extraneous signage or other visual confounds, allowing a more thorough characterization of driver glances before and after the electronic billboard. While conclusive results await further study, the authors report significant shifts in the number and length of glances toward the billboard. These results were particularly evident in older drivers.
Journal of Information Processing, 2012
Aging in place is a sustainable strategy for aging societies all over the world, although there a... more Aging in place is a sustainable strategy for aging societies all over the world, although there are still various issues to be resolved. One of those issues, the isolation of the elderly, is expected to be tackled by technology. We identify three concepts for designing systems to assist the elderly in communicating with their families: provide trigger for communication, provide control of communication, and effortless communication. We develop the e-Home system on the three concepts. e-Home is a communication system that includes home monitoring; it offers shared sticky notes and video-telephony for communication media while monitoring medication compliance. We conduct a two-month field study of four households, studying e-Home use and its impact on the subjects' communication habits. The results show enhanced communication in all households.