Home page

When Ecuador was hit by a 7.8 intensity earthquake on April 16, 2016, the coordination efforts that unfolded relied heavily on the use and appropriation of social media such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. While studies on informal volunteers in crisis situations have largely examined digital volunteerism and visible online activities, behind-the-scenes interactions among informal volunteers on the ground remain understudied. We present a qualitative interview study of how Ecuadorian informal volunteers self-organized to provide relief efforts in response to the earthquake.

Captioning on Glass is an on-going project creating captioning eyeglasses with a companion Android phone app to assist the hard-of-hearing in everyday conversations. We are also working on another version of this app, "Translation on Glass", which will add the ability to translate languages.

Working with Dr. Denise Herzing of the Wild Dolphin Project, we are creating wearable computers for conducting two-way communication experiments with cetaceans. With CHAT, one researcher uses the waterproof system to broadcast a sound, associated with an object with which dolphin's like to play. A second researcher, upon detecting the sound, passes the object to the first. The researchers pass objects back and forth, further associating the sound with the object. The goal is to see if the dolphins mimic the sound in order to "ask" for the play object.