Mary Czerwinski

We present “Lightwear”, a series of garment-based, lightweight, light-emitting wearables designed to administer light therapy for on-the-go treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Bright Light Therapy (BLT) has been used to treat SAD for more than 25 years. While lightboxes continue to serve as the predominant method of treatment, it often requires a user to sit at a dedicated location for a sustained period of time (30-60 minutes), rendering therapy inconvenient and resulting in… Show more

We present “Lightwear”, a series of garment-based, lightweight, light-emitting wearables designed to administer light therapy for on-the-go treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Bright Light Therapy (BLT) has been used to treat SAD for more than 25 years. While lightboxes continue to serve as the predominant method of treatment, it often requires a user to sit at a dedicated location for a sustained period of time (30-60 minutes), rendering therapy inconvenient and resulting in unsatisfactory compliance rates. To date, there have been few successful products developed for wearability and portability to ease the uncomfortable nature of light box treatment. However, new low-profile, light-emitting sources yield opportunities for less cumbersome textile integration and wearability. We explore the integration of light into textile substrates that focus on fashion-forward wearables which can,in turn, address BLT efficacy, usability, and convenience.
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Recognizing when computer users are stressed can help reduce their frustration and prevent a large variety of negative health conditions associated with chronic stress. However, measuring stress non-invasively and continuously at work remains an open challenge. This work explores the possibility of using a pressure-sensitive keyboard and a capacitive mouse to discriminate between stressful and relaxed conditions in a laboratory study.

Effective communication between patients and their clinicians during clinical encounters has a positive impact on health outcomes. Technology has the potential to help transform this synchronous interaction, but re-searchers are still at early stages of developing interventions to assess and improve patient-clinician communication. In this workshop, we envision opening up a dialogue among researchers and clinicians who wish to discuss directions for future research in this domain. In… Show more

Effective communication between patients and their clinicians during clinical encounters has a positive impact on health outcomes. Technology has the potential to help transform this synchronous interaction, but re-searchers are still at early stages of developing interventions to assess and improve patient-clinician communication. In this workshop, we envision opening up a dialogue among researchers and clinicians who wish to discuss directions for future research in this domain. In particular, the workshop will focus on exploring how technologies available today, as well as projected for the future, can support the communication needs of clinicians and patients. Show less

Effective communication between patients and their clinicians during clinical encounters has a positive impact on health outcomes. Technology has the potential to help transform this synchronous interaction, but re-searchers are still at early stages of developing interventions to assess and improve patient-clinician communication. In this workshop, we envision opening up a dialogue among researchers and clinicians who wish to discuss directions for future research in this domain. In… Show more

Effective communication between patients and their clinicians during clinical encounters has a positive impact on health outcomes. Technology has the potential to help transform this synchronous interaction, but re-searchers are still at early stages of developing interventions to assess and improve patient-clinician communication. In this workshop, we envision opening up a dialogue among researchers and clinicians who wish to discuss directions for future research in this domain. In particular, the workshop will focus on exploring how technologies available today, as well as projected for the future, can support the communication needs of clinicians and patients. Show less

We present AffectAura, an emotional prosthetic that allows users to reflect on their emotional states over long periods of time. We designed a multimodal sensor set-up for conti-nuous logging of audio, visual, physiological and contex-tual data, a classification scheme for predicting user affec-tive state and an interface for user reflection. The system continuously predicts a user's valence, arousal and engage-ment, and correlates this with information on events, com-munications and data… Show more

We present AffectAura, an emotional prosthetic that allows users to reflect on their emotional states over long periods of time. We designed a multimodal sensor set-up for conti-nuous logging of audio, visual, physiological and contex-tual data, a classification scheme for predicting user affec-tive state and an interface for user reflection. The system continuously predicts a user's valence, arousal and engage-ment, and correlates this with information on events, com-munications and data interactions. We evaluate the interface through a user study consisting of six users and over 240 hours of data, and demonstrate the utility of such a reflec-tion tool. We show that users could reason forward and backward in time about their emotional experiences using the interface, and found this useful. Show less

We present LineSets, a novel visual representation of sets consisting on a continuous curve connecting all elements of a set. We demonstrate that this technique has advantages over concave shapes techniques present an application of our technique in the context of a data analysis task in a map.