The Wisdom of the Customer

For a couple of months now, Lawrence, Jie, and I have been brainstorming with a professor from the UCSD Medical School about some potential assistive listening devices that Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people may benefit from. This is a really cool prospect because it's not only a compelling application for the computer audition research that I am interested in, but also an opportunity to help develop technology for a community that has seen few technological breakthroughs.

Before beginning any implementation, we wanted to first share and discuss our ideas with our customer, the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community. The most important question: Will these devices even be useful? And similarly: In what scenarios would these devices be used in? How should the device look and how should it be worn? What other features would be useful?

We were lucky to work with a team from the medical school that was actively involved with the local Deaf Community Services (DCS) group. They helped us with everything from advertising to coordinating participant schedules while we prepared speeches and rehearsed with ASL interpreters. It took a substantially nontrivial amount of time, something that always takes me, the engineer/non-people-person, by surprise. But we finally had three focus groups take place right before winter break with two deaf groups and one hard-of-hearing group.

Meeting the participants and then facilitating discussion was really a tremendous experience. People were thoughtful and articulate and honest and, surprisingly supportive. Most of them were very excited about our ideas and encouraged us to "hurry and go make these things!" They not only gave us feedback for our devices, but also a glimpse of what their every-day life looks/feels like (In hindsight, this turned out to be infinitely more useful than had they simply answered our questions).

I learned so much from these discussions. People told stories of how they (along with family members and close friends) have learned to adapt their lives around their hearing loss, but not without continued daily frustrations -- people like doctors or restaurant workers or cashiers often ignore the fact that they are deaf or hard of hearing. Abnormal sounds such as a faucet left running for hours or a flight delay announcement at the airport are difficult, if not impossible, to detect, and often lead to extraordinary amounts of inconveniences and hassle. Most expressed English as their second language, ASL their first, how the two languages differ in structure, and consequently, how that impacts their proficiency for spoken and written English. They also advised us on potential legal matters, as well as where previous assistive listening devices had failed.

The more honest version of the story, however, would not overlook the fact that conducting each of these focus groups actually felt like running a marathon; they were ridiculously draining. I would stand there for two hours at a time before people who have and continue to overcome short and long term challenges that I will never know, and feel deeply humbled and intrigued by everything that was said. At the same time, I was overwhelmed by this continual outpour of emotion and information from the 8 or 9 participants who were all eager to sign their thoughts and opinions and stories. Some would veer off subject or misunderstand device functions. Others would sign out of turn, making it difficult for the single participant-side interpreter. Each exchange of dialogue also experienced some lag time as interpreters had to catch up with the spoken speech/signing, so I'd try to choose my words carefully as to minimize the number of sentences that needed to be signed.

There are some big ideas that I came away with in the end. First, the discussions gave me a much better understanding of the diversity in experiences/needs that come with different degrees of hearing loss, and consequently, the realization that no assistive device will be able to meet the needs of everyone. At the same time, a better understanding of this diversity is important as it may contribute to more cleverly designed devices that may be multi-functional and thus useful for more people -- perhaps even those not specifically deaf or hard of hearing.

As expected, some were wary of the role that new technologies would play. They voiced their concerns regarding the unpredictability of systems and the lack of support when needed, and how inappropriate it would be, for example, to even think for a second that these technologies could take the place of human interpreters at this point, especially in emergency situations. We just want more options, they say. The goal is to create more alternatives, not a revolution.

Finally, many people expressed their disappointment, not simply at the lack of technological advances in the area of assistive devices, but mainly, the lack of care and voice put into the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community. A hearing person could buy a cellphone for $100. A deaf or hard-of-hearing person must spend over $1000 for extended features on the same phone, to accommodate their disability. Excited movie-goers pile into the theatre expecting closed captioning (as advertised), only to be told that there were technical difficulties that day and no closed captioning would be provided.

For most of us, the last two decades have brought pivotal advancements in science and technology, and as a result, we've seen these technologies play increasingly larger roles in our daily lives. But we sometimes fail to see that as universal as these technologies seem to be, they are still marketed toward a specific demographic. Minorities have different needs and are quickly forgotten.

At the time, I was also in the middle of reading Jeffrey Sach's "The End of Poverty" -- a very good book. A related idea that Sachs emphasizes throughout the book is how rich and poor countries are in need of vastly different technologies (not just in the digital sense, but also in medicine, agriculture, etc.) These technologies are not simply a subset of rich country technologies (as many people might think), but whole new creatures of its own. We, as a people, can be known for developing the most advanced cloning procedures or the most sophisticated computing technologies. But if there are still minorities (those who are poor, those with disabilities, heck, at one point, even those who are not male) who still feel like they are living in the stone age...then...is there something wrong? There are arguments for all kinds of answers to this question, but it will still never feel/be right.

In the end, I have no idea if we'll be able to achieve any of the fancy stuff we proposed at the focus groups, or even if they'll be any good. I feel torn as both the marketer and the engineer; I feel, in some ways, deeply accountable for my words now that I have personally interacted with all of these dear people, but at the same time knowing very well the limits of current machine learning/audio processing methods, as well as my own capabilities as a researcher. Perhaps I am taking this all too seriously, but who knows. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Jorge Can Read My Mind

Uncanny.

...Or are we just that easy to predict?

HOLY CRAP

This movie was so well done. I don't even know if I liked it, but it was still extremely well done. Good, or bad, I left the theater feeling like I had just stepped off of a wildly themed rollercoaster ride. Even after an hour, I was still fighting feelings of nausea and an abnormally high heart rate.

The first person camera/documentary style of shooting turned what could have been another Godzilla/Independence Day/The Day After Tomorrow into something completely novel. It was neither horror nor sci-fi nor drama. It was not an epic film or a movie with a moral. Instead, it was personal, first-hand, and most importantly, uninformed. Nobody really knows what's going on.

When tragedy hits away from home, the first instinct of the curious bystander is to figure out what is going on and why. But here, the moviegoer does not take on the conventional role of bystander. Instead, the moviegoer becomes the victim, and the victim does not have the luxury of turning on the evening news. This thriller is so unique because it doesn't feed off of the climactic satisfaction that most people get when they learn the full details of a gruesome plot. There is no plot here -- only events and consequences.

Of course, what drew me to the movie in the first place was my fascination for big, green, sea monsters. And I definitely got what I asked for. The only thing more frightening than this lanky, gargantuan monster was the fact that you rarely got a good look at the thing throughout the entire movie! In fact, I'd be hard-pressed for a description except that it made Godzilla look adorable. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 = haha, cheesy big, green, monster, and 10 = i'm gonna crap my pants, this one would be a pretty solid 9.

When Code Gets Scary...

Me: ugh, i have to revisit my sight-reading tutor code
Me: it's so scary
Sk: haha
Me: it's like discovering a box of take-out that's been sitting in the back of your fridge for half a year
Me: i'm scared to see what it looks like

Our paper on The Sight-Reading Tutor (our temp name 'till we figure out something cooler (but not as cool as 'Guitar Hero Unplugged' (which is *too* cool))) has been accepted to ICASSP 2008. This means two things: 1) Roadtrip to Vegas in March! and 2) We actually have to get our program to work for the demo... d'oh.

Getting the program to work again wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that I haven't looked at the code in over seven months. Seven months ago, I was rushing to meet a paper deadline, in the middle of implementing a new feature, swapping out old stuff for new, altering code structure, nothing was compiling (let alone documented) and things were in complete disarray... and then after the paper deadline was over, another project came along and I pretty much drop-kicked The Sight-Reading Tutor project into researchland's State of Denial; haven't touched it since.

Extending/fixing up old, undocumented code might be one of the most nightmarish things you can ask of a programmer. But, here it goes... opening XCode... decoding my then-brilliant (now, completely confusing) file-naming scheme... bracing for the worst.... If you never see me again, it means my code has eaten me alive.

Asians Who Like Garrison Keillor

Yesterday, Shiaokai and I went to the San Diego Civic Center for a Garrison Keillor concert (concert? show? whatever you want to call a man who is able to bring in a full house by simply sitting on a stool and telling stories). Shiaokai is a big fan of Praire Home Companion, and I bought him tickets to the show as a Christmas present.

I didn't realize, however, until after we'd arrived at the venue, that we seemed to be quite the outliers as far as demographics go. There were few people under the age of, like, 40, and even fewer people who were not White. I'd happily spot an asian once or twice throughout the entire event, but would silently note that they all had significant others who were caucasian. It was like going to a symphony concert, but even worse. It was like going to my big, white church back in Seattle, but much, much worse.

The communities that I have been a part of since college have all been so diverse or academic-based that I sometimes forget that I am still a minority in this country. I proudly call myself an American, cook American food, wear American clothing, engage in American politics, read American books, and obsess over American tv shows...but throw me into a pool of all white people (especially older, white people), and I start getting a little fidgety.

I've lived in the U.S. all my life, but while growing up in Richland, WA from my elementary thru highschool years, I seemed to continually be bombarded with reminders that 1) I was Chinese, and 2) I would never fit in. Richland is a small town in desert-like Eastern Washington that is over 90% White; I was one of maybe 5 asian people in my entire highschool class of over 300, and the only chinese.

It is much better now, but when I was a kid, I swear, there were people there who had never seen an asian person before. I would watch as my parents were scoffed at, for things like not knowing where the line started at a grocery store or how to follow the menus at a restaurant, and then watch as they tried to apologize in broken english; on the flip side, adults would sometimes assume that I couldn't speak english and talk about me while I was still within earshot. I despised the kids at school who ridiculed me for my straight-from-Taiwan outfits that my parents made me wear; I didn't grasp the concept of buying clothes from 'The Mall' until after hitting highschool. I hated that my piano teacher seemed to care more about proper public ettiquete than music, and how she would desperately 'educate' me on proper manners before she took me to performance classes or concerts or auditions that were mostly populated by old white ladies, like herself, leaving me embarassed at the implication that it was beyond the scope of my parents' knowledge. I could go on.

It might not be a stretch to say that when I was little, I was intimidated by white people. They were confident and beautiful and lived in gorgeous homes and the women wore huge earrings and bright red lipstick and lots of fur. I couldn't measure up because I didn't wear fashionable clothing, because my parents couldn't get through the grocery line without having an awkward exchange with the cashier, because my dad didn't watch football and my mom didn't cook steak, and because we never once bothered to make our dingy apartment space look presentable. My parents were far too occupied with the arduous job of raising a kid while finishing their Ph.Ds, and had little time to care about assimilating to the American culture.

Moving to Seattle for college was a relief, and in just a couple of months, I felt more at ease there than I ever did in my 10-year home at Richland. A lot of my childhood anxiety was forgotten. But now and then, I would still see some subtle shades of ignorance. For example, during my prospective graduate student visit to University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaigne, I had the following, very odd, exchange with another prospective grad from Texas:

Him: Where are you from, originally?
Me: Oh, well my parents are from Taiwan, but I was born in Oregon.
Him: Oh. [pause]. Well, your english is very good.
Me: Um, thanks, but I was born in the U.S.
Him: Yes, but still, your english is very good.
Me: Well, I've lived here my entire life so...my english should be about as good as your english.
Him: I see. No, but still, I think it's very impressive. You should be proud.
Me: ...

It should probably be evident by now that this post is not about the Garrison Keillor concert. But since it is in the title, I'll say a couple of things about that too. In fact, Garrison Keillor was very good; the old man lumbered onto stage wearing huge red shoes and showed much talent as he sat on a small stool before a crowd of thousands and delivered hilarious stories from Lake Wobegon for the next two hours. People were friendly. The crowd was receptive. Mr. Keillor was quite endearing. And as I waited in a long line for the women's bathroom, I felt only a small twinge of anxiety when I found myself packed into a small room with dozens and dozens of old, white ladies wearing huge earrings and bright red lipstick and lots of fur.

Can I Get a w00t w00t for Hillary?

Following the presidential primaries has been exciting. However, it also constantly reminds me that I would never, ever, cut it as a politician. Or anything even remotely related. Like Hillary, I'd be all "Well, that hurts my feelings...", but like, times a billion.

I don't know how these people sleep at night, being attacked left and right, having their words twisted out of proportion, their good intentions portrayed as bad. Obama says in his book, "My wife will tell you that by nature I'm not somebody who gets real worked up about things", and maybe that's just what it takes. But, me...I get stressed out just watching them on tv. (However, people should also know that I am the person who gets stressed out playing board games.)

I also can't really tell if nationally televised debates are useful to me; the candidates spend so much of their colloquial efforts dodging potentially harmful phrases that barely anything concrete comes through. It's like everything is glossed up/airbrushed, like Photoshop, the Politician Edition or something. What are we looking for? The candidate that you'd be most comfortable inviting over for dinner? The candidate that is the least sarcastic, bitter, or prone to name-calling? The candidate that doesn't have a chip on his/her shoulder? The candidate that exudes the most social grace or scholarship or compassion? When it comes to televised debates, it seems inevitable that personality has more pull than issues.

So, Hillary has won over New Hampshire. However great that is, it is not the point of this post. This is. Taken from hillaryclinton.com, Hillary bullet points her "innovation agenda":

5. Triple the number of NSF fellowships and increase the size of each award by 33 percent. At present, the NSF offers approximately 1,000 fellowships per year, similar to 1960s levels, although the number of college students graduating with science and engineering degrees has grown three fold...

Hillary cares about grad students!

6. Support initiatives to bring more women and minorities into the math, science, and engineering professions. Increasing the educational attainment of women and minorities, particularly in math, science and engineering, is critical to our future as an innovative nation...

Hillary cares about getting women into engineering!!

It's weird seeing these issues mentioned outside of the tech/grad school bubble. I live in such a specialized world that I forget it is ultimately the outside world that we are potentially trying to benefit. Consequently, these issues should be very important to everybody. Call me nerdy, but the mere acknowledgement and formulation of these problems as publicly important issues -- especially the part about getting women into engineering -- makes me giddy. And that is why Hillary deserves a great and heart-felt w00t.

Disclaimer: A 'w00t' does not necessarily imply a 'vote'. According to Facebook, I am still very much undecided :)