Categories: graduate school

Congratulations to my colleagues on being accepted as CHI finalists. Below are the teams and designs that are advancing to the next round and heading to Florence, Italy.

1. aSister
   Homeless women need special care and attention especially during pregnancy or while trying to overcome substance abuse. We present a solution to help counselors working with these women. The solution allows the counselor to send text messages, which can be used to remind women of their daily schedule, as well as provide them with health and nutritional information. The system will also serve as a persuasive tool to help them develop positive behavior through the delivery of encouraging messages. Cell phone technology usage is increasing rapidly among the homeless population. The system uses text messaging which is an inexpensive and non-obtrusive method of communication. Our study contains details on the design of such a system and also attempts to evaluate the efficacy of such a text messaging system.

   Members: Kshitij Gupta, Adwait Joshi (CS), Jamie McAtee, and Nigel Vaz (CS).

2. Effective Empathy
   People who are homeless in the United States lack adequate amounts of nutritious food which is detrimental to their health. We are designing a grocery shopping assistance device that strategically requests affordable food donations that charitable organizations need to feed the homeless. We target grocery shoppers, since doing so allows us to leverage mass participation, as well as balanced community participation. This device employs persuasive technology to elicit emotions of empathy and alter the behavior of grocery shoppers to encourage them to donate. The device provides the shopper with an enhanced, personalized shopping experience making it appealing to use.

   Members: Rajasee Rege, Jennifer Allen, Eric Drewski

3. HealthShare
   We are developing a web-based system that helps improve the health of homeless individuals by aiding healthcare professionals in identifying, locating, and contacting homeless patients in order to initiate and continue effective healthcare. Poor health is both a significant cause and a symptom of homelessness, carrying high costs for the general public as well. Our system addresses health problems amongst the homeless by allowing healthcare professionals and other homeless service professionals from multiple organizations to better share, manage, and communicate information vital to effective healthcare.

   Members: Ashley Engelhardt, James Pierce, Jung Youn Yim

4. C4
   Enroll Me! A Portable Device to Facilitate Homeless Student Enrollment—We are designing an information transfer device to expedite the enrollment of homeless children to schools. Homeless children change schools often, seriously disrupting their educational experience. Our design uses existing, familiar technology to unobtrusively facilitate the enrollment process for both the school staff and the homeless parents.

   Members: Eugene Chang, Hillary Elmore, Jun Youp Kim, Xi (Alex) Zhu

5. NestEgg
   A portable budgeting device embedded with RFID debit card technology designed to help people on the edge of homelessness learn basic money management skills.

   Members: Augusto Alves and Susan Coleman Morse