Research seminar: Assistive Wearables: Delivering Personalized Support for Neurodivergent Adults through Smartwatch Applications

Smartwatch applications have a large potential to deliver personal assistance on demand across domains. However, to ensure interventions that are relevant for end users, the context where human-machine partnerships occur must be thoroughly understood. In this talk, I draw on 10-year experience investigating wearable technologies to discuss how assistive smartwatches can be employed to provide personalized support for neurodivergent adults. through user-centered design approaches we investigated the suitability of smartwatches for inclusive workplaces and postsecondary education. We conducted a series of user studies to design, implement and evaluate Wearable Life. The application builds on machine learning models for activity recognition and delivery of personalized assistance. I will conclude my talk providing recommendations for design and a critical reflection on the applicability of assistive wearables. 

Prof. Vivian Genaro Motti Bio (from George Mason University)

Vivian Genaro Motti is an associate professor in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology at George Mason University where she leads the Human-Centric Design Lab (HCD Lab). Her research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Wearable Health, and Usable Privacy. She is the principal investigator for a NIDILRR-funded project on assistive smartwatches for young adults in inclusive postsecondary education. Her research has been funded by NSF, TeachAccess, CCI, 4-VA, and URSP, among others. Before joining Mason, Dr. Motti was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Human-Centered Computing Division in the School of Computing - at Clemson University.

During her postdoc, she contributed to the NSF-funded Amulet project, investigating human factors, usability, and privacy of wearable devices for healthcare. Dr. Motti received her PhD from Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). During her PhD, she was a research assistant to the EU-funded FP7 Serenoa Project. Her PhD thesis concerns a multi-dimensional framework for user interfaces adapted to the context of use. She earned a BSc and a Master's degree from the University of São Paulo. In her Master's thesis, she investigated usability issues in a ubiquitous environment for learning. Her research was funded by CNPq and was conducted in ICMC (University of São Paulo) in São Carlos - SP. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Informatics from the University of São Paulo.