Reference Information:
Title: Supporting Medical Communication with a Multimodal Surface Computer
Author: Anne Marie Piper
Venue: CHI 2010
Summary:
Piper notes that the number of people over age 60 is rapidly growing. As a result, she used large multitouch surfaces with a shared speech interface (SSI) in order to help these older adults transition into a more technological hospital experience. Using the SSI adults with hearing problems or deaf patients are able to communicate without the use of a human sign language interpreter. The doctor would simply have to speak into a microphone and his dialog would be converted into text. The deaf patient would use a keyboard to converse with the doctor. Using this system, the patients would experience a faster means of communication as well as independence. Piper wishes to conduct further study on the effects of using this SSI system. She hopes to find the answer to questions such as if the SSI system causes the patient to converse differently than they usually would.
Discussion:
This seems like an excellent method for helping patients with hearing disabilities communicate with doctors. I believe that if I were put in their shoes, I would appreciate the independence of talking to the doctor by myself. I wonder if there are any plans to adapt this so that the hearing impaired can use sign language with motion capture gloves that would be translated into text. Another possible use would be providing real time communicate between people who speak different languages.
You know, I also wondered how they might get the ASL translation involved! Motion capture gloves seem like they would do the trick, but do you think there might be another way, one that's more user-friendly? Some people might find motion capture gloves uncomfortable or intimidating.
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