Search for: All records

People often turn to online health communities (OHCs) for peer support on their specific medical conditions and health-related concerns. Over time, core members in OHCs build a shared understanding of the medical conditions they support. Although prior work has studied how individuals function differently in active sensemaking mode compared to habitual mode, little is known about how OHCs disseminate their advice once their core members operate primarily in habitual mode. We qualitatively observe one such OHC, 'Surviving Antidepressants', to understand how collectively-built protocols are disseminated in the important domain of discontinuing psychiatric drugs. Psychiatric drugs are widely prescribed to treat mental health diagnoses, but, in certain cases, discontinuation might be clinically advisable. Unfortunately, some people experience severe withdrawal symptoms upon discontinuation, even when following medical advice, and thus turn to OHCs for support. We find that collectively-built protocols resemble medical advice and are delivered in a top-down fashion, with staff members being the primary source of informational support. In contrast, all members provide emotional support and exchange advice on navigating the medical system, while many express their distrust of the medical community and pharmaceutical companies. We also discuss the implications of OHCs offering advice outside of the medical system and offer suggestions for how OHCs can collaborate with healthcare providers to advance scientific knowledge and better support people living with medical conditions. 

We introduce SearchGazer, a web-based eye tracker for remote web search studies using common webcams already present in laptops and some desktop computers. SearchGazer is a pure JavaScript library that infers the gaze behavior of searchers in real time. The eye tracking model self-calibrates by watching searchers interact with the search pages and trains a mapping of eye features to gaze locations and search page elements on the screen. Contrary to typical eye tracking studies in information retrieval, this approach does not require the purchase of any additional specialized equipment, and can be done remotely in a user's natural environment, leading to cheaper and easier visual attention studies. While SearchGazer is not intended to be as accurate as specialized eye trackers, it is able to replicate many of the research findings of three seminal information retrieval papers: two that used eye tracking devices, and one that used the mouse cursor as a restricted focus viewer. Charts and heatmaps from those original papers are plotted side-by-side with SearchGazer results. While the main results are similar, there are some notable differences, which we hypothesize derive from improvements in the latest ranking technologies used by current versions of search engines and diligence by remote users. As part of this paper, we also release SearchGazer as a library that can be integrated into any search page. 

We introduce WebGazer, an online eye tracker that uses common webcams already present in laptops and mobile devices to infer the eye-gaze locations of web visitors on a page in real time. The eye tracking model self-calibrates by watching web visitors interact with the web page and trains a mapping between features of the eye and positions on the screen. This approach aims to provide a natural experience to everyday users that is not restricted to laboratories and highly controlled user studies. WebGazer has two key components: a pupil detector that can be combined with any eye detection library, and a gaze estimator using regression analysis informed by user interactions. We perform a large remote online study and a small in-person study to evaluate WebGazer. The findings show that WebGazer can learn from user interactions and that its accuracy is sufficient for approximating the user's gaze. As part of this paper, we release the first eye tracking library that can be easily integrated in any website for real-time gaze interactions, usability studies, or web research.