Katherine Everitt


    I'm a PhD student at the University of Washington, specializing in human-computer interaction. My research interests include multimodal interfaces, collaborative interaction using tabletop surfaces and large displays, and applications for ubiquitous computing. I have a M.Sc. in Computer Science from The University of California, Berkeley, where I worked with the Group for User Interface Research, and a B.Sc. in Computing and Information Science from Queen's University.




Recent Projects


   

Sustain

The current consumption of energy and water is unsustainable. Green energy technologies are not enough; in order to build a sustainable society, we must reduce consumption. However, people often do not know how their behaviour affects consumption. By providing real time and in depth feedback of how activities such as washing the dishes, using the TV or turning on a light affect energy and water usage, people can better understand what changes to their life are likely to be helpful.


   

DocuDesk

Knowledge workers often undertake tasks that involve a variety of information artifacts, including both paper and digital documents. In this paper, we first summarize findings from a study that illustrate some of the challenges of managing tasks that include both paper and digital content. DocuDesk is a prototype interactive desk that demonstrates interaction techniques for establishing many-to-many linkages among paper and digital documents which can be used to quickly “rehydrate” task state.

DocuDesk: An Interactive Surface for Creating and Rehydrating Many-to-Many Linkages among Paper and Digital Documents, Tabletop 2008


   

Evaluating Translation between unsupported language pairs

This project involves evaluating the quality of an automatic translation system between languages where no bilingual dictionary exists, such as Turkish to Swahili.

In cooperation with the University of Washington Turing Center


   

Interference in Password Faces

This study of multiple graphical passwords to systematically examine the effect of frequency of access to a graphical password, the effects of interference resulting from interleaving access to multiple graphical passwords, and the effect of patterns of access while training multiple graphical passwords. We find that all of these factors significantly impact the ease of authenticating using multiple facial graphical passwords.

A Comprehensive Study of Frequency, Interference, and Training of Multiple Graphical Passwords in CHI 2009


   

Improving Speech Recognition Using Physical Context
(2006-2007) at the University of Washington in cooperation with Intel Research Seattle

Speech has great potential as an input mechanism for ubiquitous computing. However, the current requirements necessary for accurate speech recognition, such as a quiet environment and a well-positioned and high-quality microphone, are unreasonable to expect in a realistic setting. In a physical environment, there is often contextual information which can be sensed and used to augment the speech signal. We investigated improving speech recognition rates for an electronic personal trainer using knowledge about what equipment was in use as context. We performed an experiment with participants speaking in an instrumented apartment environment and compared the
recognition rates of a larger grammar with those of a smaller grammar that is determined by the context.

Disambiguating Speech Commands using Physical Context In Multimodal Interfaces ICMI '07.


   

UbiFit
(April 2005 - Oct 2005) aAt the University of Washington in cooperation with Intel Research Seattle

Obesity is linked to several serious health problems and medical conditions. Medical experts agree that physical activity is critical to maintaining fitness, reducing weight, and improving health, yet many people have difficulty increasing and maintaining physical activity in everyday life. Houston is a prototype mobile phone application for encouraging activity by sharing step count with friends. We have also developed four design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity that we derived from a threeweek long in situ pilot study that was conducted with women who wanted to increase their physical activity.

Design Requirements for Technologies that Encourage Physical Activity, CHI 2006