Publications

A note about publications- in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), publications are frequently tied with conferences, in which authors must submit original research papers which are peer reviewed. The conference proceedings are published as archival papers. For example, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) CHI Conference is a top tier publishing venue in which acceptance rates often range between 23-25%. In contrast, it is common for health-related research to be published in peer-reviewed journals. I have published in both journals and at conferences.

Click Here for Complete Publication List on Google Scholar

“I Miss Work:” Employment Experiences and Attitudes of Adults with Acquired Disabilities Who Use Assistive Technologies

Erin Beneteau, Heather Feldner, Wanda Pratt. 2023. “I miss work:” employment experiences and attitudes of adults with acquired disabilities who use assistive technologies. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology.

Purpose: This study explored employment experiences and attitudes of adults who acquired mobility, motor, and/or communication disabilities and who use assistive technologies.

Materials and Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven adults about their employment experiences after acquiring their disabilities. After analysis of interview results, six participants completed surveys about their attitudes towards crowdsourcing and remote work.

Results: Findings indicate that adults can continue working with accommodations when they feel supported and valued by their employer. However, participants frequently compared their pre-disability work performance with their post-disability performance and at times, left work because they did not feel they were performing to their own expectations, regardless of the support of their employer. Participants experienced feelings of loss, regret, and identity change after acquiring their disabilities and after leaving work. Most participants did not have specific knowledge of available work alternatives which could accommodate their health and accessibility needs. When presented with accessible work alternatives, the majority of participants increased their interest in learning more about those options.

Conclusions: Whether through work or other pursuits, individuals in this population retain a strong desire to participate and contribute to society. However, it should not be assumed that adults with acquired disabilities are inherently aware of available, alternative options to traditional work. Future research on increasing awareness of accessible options for societal engagement for this population should be explored.

Implications for Rehabilitation

Clinicians should not assume that clients are aware of the available range of work accommodations and alternatives.
Clinicians should share a variety of accessible, computer-based, flexible work alternatives with clients, including volunteer and active leisure activities.
Rehabilitation for adults with acquired disabilities should include addressing a change in identity, particularly when it comes to identity associated with contributing to society.

Link to “I miss work” paper here.

Telehealth Experiences of Providers and Patients Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

Erin Beneteau, Ann Paradiso, Wanda Pratt. 2021. Telehealth experiences of providers and patients who use augmentative and alternative communication. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

When trying to understand people’s perspectives, qualitative researchers in HCI often use methods which assume participants can easily communicate verbally. There are few dedicated resources in HCI which provide an overview of qualitative methods to effectively gather the perspectives of people who cannot easily communicate verbally; specifically, people who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). As a result, AAC users might be excluded from studies using methods such as interviews or focus groups, even if they fit the researcher’s target population. To address this problem, I review literature from both HCI and therapeutic AAC research fields to discuss methods used with AAC users. In addition, I present relevant case examples from my own qualitative research and propose a framework to guide HCI researchers on choosing appropriate methods when involving AAC users as central research participants. I also identify design opportunities for HCI researchers to innovate on the tools and methods used for qualitative research with AAC users. This paper provides an easily accessible overview of qualitative methods HCI researchers can use with AAC users as participants.

Link to "telehealth experiences" paper is here

Children’s Designs for the Future of Telehealth

Erin Beneteau, Ann Paradiso, Wanda Pratt. 2021. Children’s Designs for the Future of Telehealth. American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium.

Telehealth has increased dramatically with COVID-19. However, current telehealth systems are designed for able-bodied adults, rather than for pediatric populations or for people with disabilities. Using a design scenario of a child with a communication disability who needs to access telehealth services, we explore children’s ideas of the future of telehealth technology. We analyzed designs generated by six children and found three provocative over-arching design themes. The designs highlight how improving accessibility, accommodating communication preferences, and incorporating home based sensor technologies have the potential to improve telehealth for both pediatric patients and their physicians. We discuss how these themes can be incorporated into practical telehealth designs to serve a variety of patient populations¾ including adults, children, and people with disabilities.

PDF of “Children’s Designs for Telehealth” here

Mixed Abilities and Varied Experiences: A group autoethnography of a virtual summer internship

Kelly Mack, Maitraye Das, Dhruv Jain, Danielle Bragg, John Tang, Andrew Begel, Erin Beneteau, Josh Urban Davis, Abraham Glasser, Joon Sung Park, Venkatesh Potluri. 2021. Mixed Abilities and Varied Experiences: A group autoethnography of a virtual summer internship. In Proceedings of the 2021 International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS).

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to convert their daily work lives to a “virtual” format where everyone connected remotely from their home. In this new, virtual environment, accessibility barriers changed, in some respects for the better (e.g., more flexibility) and in other aspects, for the worse (e.g., problems including American Sign Language interpreters over video calls). Microsoft Research held its first cohort of all virtual interns in 2020. We the authors, full time and intern members and affiliates of the Ability Team, a research team focused on accessibility, reflect on our virtual work experiences as a team consisting of members with a variety of abilities, positions, and seniority during the summer intern season. Through our autoethnographic method, we provide a nuanced view into the experiences of a mixed-ability, virtual team, and how the virtual setting affected the team’s accessibility. We then reflect on these experiences, noting the successful strategies we used to promote access and the areas in which we could have further improved access. Finally, we present guidelines for future virtual mixed-ability teams looking to improve access.

Link to "Mixed Abilities and Varied Experiences" paper is here

Who Are You Asking?: Qualitative Methods for Involving AAC Users as Primary Research Participants

Erin Beneteau. 2020. Who Are You Asking?: Qualitative Methods for Involving AAC Users as Primary Research Participants. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

PDF of “Who Are You Asking” available here

Parenting with Alexa: Exploring the Introduction of Smart Speakers on Family Dynamics

Erin Beneteau, Ashley Boone, Yuxing Wu, Julie A. Kientz, Jason Yip, and Alexis Hiniker. 2020. Parenting with Alexa: Exploring the Introduction of Smart Speakers on Family Dynamics. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Smart speakers have become pervasive in family homes, creating the potential for these devices to influence parent-child dynamics and parenting behaviors. We investigate the impact of introducing a smart speaker to 10 families with children, over four weeks. We use pre- and post- deployment interviews with the whole family and in-home audio capture of parent-child interactions with the smart speaker for our analysis. Despite the smart speaker causing occasional conflict in the home, we observed that parents leveraged the smart speaker to further parenting goals. We found three forms of influence the smart speaker has on family dynamics: 1) fostering communication, 2) disrupting access, and 3) augmenting parenting. All of these influences arise from a communally accessible, stand-alone voice interface which democratizes family access to technology. We discuss design implications in furthering parenting practices and behaviors as the capabilities of the technology continue to improve.

PDF of “Parenting with Alexa” available here

Assumptions Checked: How Families Learn About and Use the Echo Dot

Erin Beneteau, Yini Guan, Olivia K Richards, Mingrui Ray Zhang, Julie A Kientz, Jason Yip, and Alexis Hiniker. 2020. Assumptions Checked: How Families Learn About and Use the Echo Dot. In Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. 4, 1 (March 2020), 3:1-3:23. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3380993

Accompanying Tableau Visualization for Assumptions Checked paper can be found here on Tableau Public here.

Users of voice assistants often report that they fall into patterns of using their device for a limited set of interactions, like checking the weather and setting alarms. However, it’s not clear if limited use is, in part, due to lack of learning about the device’s functionality. We recruited 10 diverse families to participate in a one-month deployment study of the Echo Dot, enabling us to investigate: 1) which features families are aware of and engage with, and 2) how families explore, discover, and learn to use the Echo Dot. Through audio recordings of families’ interactions with the device and pre- and post-deployment interviews, we find that families’ breadth of use decreases steadily over time and that families learn about functionality through trial and error, asking the Echo Dot about itself, and through outside influencers such as friends and family. Formal outside learning influencers, such as manufacturer emails, are less influential. Drawing from diffusion of innovation theory, we describe how a home-based voice interface might be positioned as a near-peer to the user, and that by describing its own functionality using just-in-time learning, the home-based voice interface becomes a trustworthy learning influencer from which users can discover new functionalities.

PDF of “Assumptions Checked” available here

“Eavesdropping”: An Information Source for Inpatients

Erin Beneteau, Shefali Haldar, Sonali R. Mishra, and Wanda Pratt. “Eavesdropping”: An Information Source for Inpatients. Computers, Informatics, Nursing: CIN.

Healthcare providers in the hospital setting must discuss patient information to ensure continuity of care and patient safety. This study explores how patients perceive the information they hear discussed between healthcare providers and how the concept of “eavesdropping” can be addressed by healthcare providers and in the field of medical informatics. Using an inductive analysis of interviews with 14 adult inpatients, research findings indicate that patients value receiving information in the hospital setting, including information received through eavesdropping. Patient eavesdropping opportunities include eavesdropping by design events, such as during bedside shift changes and handoffs, as well as unintended eavesdropping events, such as listening to healthcare provider conversations outside of the patient’s room. Healthcare providers and medical informaticists have opportunities to address eavesdropping in the inpatient setting. Informatics systems which address “eavesdropping by design” and “unintended eavesdropping opportunities” can improve patient-provider communication and satisfy patient preferences for receiving medical information.

Link of “'eavesdropping” paper is here

Where Are My Parents?: Information Needs of Hospitalized Children

Erin Beneteau, Sonali R Mishra, Shefali Haldar, Calvin Apodaca, Ari Pollack, and Wanda Pratt. 2020. Where Are My Parents?: Information Needs of Hospitalized Children. Late-Breaking Work in Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

We explore the information needs of hospitalized children by analyzing co-design prototypes created by children. We facilitated two simultaneous, yet separate co-design sessions with mixed groups including both children who had been hospitalized and siblings of children who had been hospitalized. The sessions focused on identifying information needs in the inpatient hospital setting. Our findings revealed that both hospitalized children and their siblings view information needs from multiple perspectives, including those of their parents, their physician, and of the hospitalized child themselves. Both co-design groups identified similar needs, including: communicating with people outside their room, tracking important people, and having entertainment for the hospitalized child.

PDF of “Where Are My Parents?” available here

Communication Breakdowns Between Families and Alexa

Erin Beneteau, Olivia K. Richards, Mingrui Zhang, Julie A. Kientz, Jason Yip, and Alexis Hiniker. 2019. Communication Breakdowns Between Families and Alexa. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 243:1–243:13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300473

We investigate how families repair communication breakdowns with digital home assistants. We recruited 10 diverse families to use an Amazon Echo Dot in their homes for four weeks. All families had at least one child between four and 17 years old. Each family participated in pre- and post- deployment interviews. Their interactions with the Echo Dot (Alexa) were audio recorded throughout the study. We analyzed 59 communication breakdown interactions between family members and Alexa, framing our analysis with concepts from HCI and speech-language pathology. Our findings indicate that family members collaborate using discourse scaffolding (supportive communication guidance) and a variety of speech and language modifications in their attempts to repair communication breakdowns with Alexa. Alexa's responses also influence the repair strategies that families use. Designers can relieve the communication repair burden that primarily rests with families by increasing digital home assistants' abilities to collaborate together with users to repair communication breakdowns.

PDF of “Communication Breakdowns” available here

Anchored Audio Sampling: A Seamless Method for Exploring Children’s Thoughts During Deployment Studies

Alexis Hiniker, Jon E. Froehlich, Mingrui Zhang, and Erin Beneteau. 2019. Anchored Audio Sampling: A Seamless Method for Exploring Children’s Thoughts During Deployment Studies. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8:1–8:13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300238

Many traditional HCI methods, such as surveys and interviews, are of limited value when working with preschoolers. In this paper, we present anchored audio sampling (AAS), a remote data collection technique for extracting qualitative audio samples during field deployments with young children. AAS offers a developmentally sensitive way of understanding how children make sense of technology and situates their use in the larger context of daily life. AAS is defined by an anchor event, around which audio is collected. A sliding window surrounding this anchor captures both antecedent and ensuing recording, providing the researcher insight into the activities that led up to the event of interest as well as those that followed. We present themes from three deployments that leverage this technique. Based on our experiences using AAS, we have also developed a reusable open-source library for embedding AAS into any Android application.

Functional Performance Using Eye Control and Single Switch Scanning by People with ALS

Gibbons Chris and Beneteau Erin. 2010. Functional Performance Using Eye Control and Single Switch Scanning by People With ALS. Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication 19, 3 (September 2010), 64–69. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1044/aac19.3.64

Eye control and switch scanning are commonly considered as augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) access options by people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the same clinical intervention point. Choosing optimal access methods must be supported by performance and qualitative feedback, as well as considerations of cognitive changes sometimes associated with ALS. We present quantitative and qualitative data comparing access methods used by five people with ALS and five adults without ALS. Each participant accessed an on-screen keyboard during repeated exposure to two conditions: single switch scanning and eye control. Participants were required to copy sentences presented on a computer screen. Keyboard letter organization was held constant between conditions, and rate enhancement and word prediction techniques were not used. Measures of speed and accuracy revealed a significant speed advantage for eye control and a significant accuracy advantage for single switch scanning. Speed and accuracy for both access methods improved with practice. Predictably, people with ALS performed significantly slower than participants without ALS using both access methods. Participants rated eye control as the more efficient access method overall. Participants without ALS rated both access methods significantly more fatiguing than people with ALS. Post study interviews revealed that eye control was the preferred access option for people with ALS. Clinical implications and extensions of this study are discussed.

PDF of “Functional Performance of Using Eye Control and Single Switch Scanning by People with ALS” available here.

A Critical Analysis on the Effects of Negative IS Stereotypes on Underserved Populations

Mina Tari, Hala Annabi, Yvette Iribe Ramirez, Erin Beneteau, and Stephanie Ballard. 2019. A Critical Analysis on the Effects of Negative IS Stereotypes on Underserved Populations. AMCIS 2019 Proceedings (July 2019). Retrieved from https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2019/social_inclusion/social_inclusion/6

Low student enrollment in information systems (IS) programs across the U.S. persists, despite an increase in job opportunities for IS graduates. One approach to meet this increased demand for IS employees is the recruitment and retention of underserved populations. Beyond meeting demand for employees, creating more equitable environments is an issue of social justice essential to the vitality of the IS field. Negative stereotypes about IS are one of the major factors contributing to lack of student interest. In this paper, we synthesize relevant literature on gender and racial stereotypes and existing stereotypes about IS, describe the theoretical foundation of our proposed work, and outline our research approach. In this emergent research, we aim to contribute a theoretical understanding of underserved groups in relation to IS stereotypes. Findings from this work will contribute to the design and deployment of curriculum, pedagogy, and recruitment strategies that enhance equitable IS programs.

Service

I have peer reviewed for a number of journals and conferences, including: CHI, DIS, IDC, CSCW, Ublicomp/IMWUT, JMIR, BMJ Open Paediatrics, AMIA, and IJHCS.

Workshops

I co-hosted “What We Learn When Designing with Marginalised Children” at the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference with Seray Ibrahim, Emeline Brulé, Laura Benton, Anthony Hornof, Oussama Metatla, Nikoleta Yiannoutsou, and Katta Spiel.

I was a co-author on a workshop paper at the CHI 2020 Workshop on Detection and Design for Cognitive Biases in People and Computing Systems with Steven R. Rick, Regina Casanova-Perez, Cezanne Lane, Colleen Emmenegger, Janice Sabin, Wanda Pratt, Andrea Hartzler, and Nadir Weibel.