Anjchang's Media Lab HomePage

Currently I am an entrepreneur at TinkerStories.com My research interests are Interactive Narratives, Mobile Devices, Mobile Sensing, Electronic textiles andelectronic fashion .

Research Statement
I am currently developing tinkerable reading technology to enhance learning by encouraging people to become active learners. I'm extending my PhD work on literacy software to deploy to developing countries and low-SES populations. So far, my software has been seen by parents and children in Sierre Leone, Ethiopia, and across the US. My software is designed to prompt teaching and conversation between people. Encouraging discussion and communication people is the focus of the interfaces I build.

My PhD researched literacy learning from examining best practices in how children learn. The two things I am sure of are 1) parents are important to their children's development and 2)storytelling is the best way to teach young children to read. I performed ethnographic observations on how parents of avid young readers read to their children at home during storytime. I identified performative reading gestures that these parents use when reading to their children, and noted the collaborative behaviors between parent and child. These behaviors were different from what is widely reported in other academic research. I developed a concept called "tinkerability" that encouraged these performative behaviors and demonstrated the positive effect of tinkerability on parents and very young children (age 2-5) for literacy learning. Parents became better reading teachers, while children became active learners of print. Best of all, readers were becoming better storytellers and bonding socially over the stories they told. My conclusion is that young children love reading because their parents make learning to read playful, intimate, and intellectual. Learning to read is FUN. I believe these "tinkerable stories" encourage "literacy play" and are the best way for a child to learn to read.

My expertise is in inventing synesthetic, crossmodal, and audio-haptic experiences. My background areas are mechanical engineering, interface design, and haptic communication. In the past, I developed haptic interpersonal communication devices that elicited tactile gestures such as turntaking, mimicry and emphasis. People naturally express these gestures during remote conversation. Tactile gestures enhance communication by allowing elements of our physical presence to be communicated to the remote party. If given the right context, people develop their own rich codes (or languages) to communicate when provided with an available physical channel. At Motorola's Advanced Concepts group, I designed sensorial communication scenarios, developed intellectual property, and engineered prototypes for next-generation mobile communication experiences. Or work was shown at CeBit and various trade conferences to demonstrate how enhanced intimacy through multimodal, multisensory interfaces could make people happier, more social, and more productive.

Selected Publications
Interactive Narrative and Educational Play
	Chang, A. 2011.MIT PhD Thesis.
	Chang, A.,Breazeal,C., Faridi,F., Roberts, T., Davenport, G., Lieberman, H., and Montfort, N.. 2012. Textual tinkerability: encouraging storytelling behaviors to foster emergent literacy. In Proc. of the 2012 CHI Extended Abstracts 2012. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 505-520.
	Alonso, J., Chang, A., and Breazeal, C. Values Impacting the Design of an Adaptive Educational Storybook in Proceedings of The Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS2011)
	Angela Chang and Cynthia Breazeal. 2011. TinkRBook: shared reading interfaces for storytelling. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 145-148
	Stiehl, W. Chang, A., Wistort,R., Breazeal, C. The Robotic Preschool of the Future: New Technologies for Learning and Play, Finalist in the Como 4 Children Competition at IDC 2009, June 3-5, 2009, in Como, Italy.
Haptic Interpersonal Communication
	Knight, H., Chang, A., Stiehl, W., Breazeal, C. Real-time Social Touch Gesture Recognition for Sensate Robots to appear at IEEE Proceedings of Intelligent Robots and Systems 2009 (IROS 2009), October 11-15, 2009., St. Louis, Missouri, 2009.
	Chang, A., O'Sullivan, C. An Audio-Haptic Aesthetic Framework Influenced by Visual Theory, Haptic Audio Interaction Design, HAID 2008, Sept. 15-16, 2008 in Jyvaskyla, Finland.
	Chang, A. Chang, A. 2008. Touch proxy interaction. In CHI '08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Florence, Italy, April 05 - 10, 2008). CHI '08. ACM, New York, NY, 2665-2668.
	Chang, A., Gouldstone, J., Zigelbaum, J. and Ishii, H. Pragmatic Haptics. TEI'08, 251-255. in Bonn, Germany.
	Chang, A.O'Modhrain, S., Jacob, R., Gunther, E., & Ishii, H. ComTouch: Design of a Vibrotactile Communication Device Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques (DIS '02), London, England, ACM Press, 2002, 312, 320.
	Chang, A., Koerner, B., Resner, B., Wang, X. LumiTouch: An Emotional Communication Device. Extended Abstracts of CHI '01. Seattle, WA, USA, ACM Press, 2001, 313-314.
Sensorial Tangible Design
	Zigelbaum, J. Chang A., Gouldstone, J., Monzen, J., and Ishii, H. SpeakCup: Simplicity, BABL, and Shape Change. TEI'08, 145-146.
	Chang, A. and Ishii, H. Zstretch: A stretchy fabric controller. Presented at NIME 2007 at NYU, NY from June 6-10th.
	Chang. A., Zigelbaum. J, Gouldstone, J. and Ishii, H. Simplicity in Interaction design Presented by videoconference at Tangible & Embedded Interaction 2007 at LSU, Louisiana.
	O'Sullivan, C. And Chang. A. An Activity Classification Method for Vibrotactile Phenomena in the Proceedings of MultiVis 2006.
	Chang, A. and Ishii, H. Sensorial Interfaces. Proceedings of DIS 2006, presented on June 26-28 2006.at State College, PA.
	O'Sullivan, C. and Chang, A. Dimensional Design; Explorations of the Auditory and Haptic Correlate for the Mobile Device, Proceedings of International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2005).
	Chang, A. and O'Sullivan, C. Audio-Haptic Feedback in Mobile Phones. CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Portland, OR, USA, ACM Press, 2005, 1264 - 1267.
Exhibitions & Press
	Huffington Post "Researchers from Tufts University and the MIT Media Lab this Spring dropped off a few solar-powered tablets to kids in a small Ethiopian village, where there is no electricity and essentially zero literacy. With no instruction, the 20 children ages four to 12 began using the devices within 18 minutes. After the first week, the kids were using 47 apps. Being a digital native doesn't make that a slam dunk -- not even close." - David Sable 06.13.12
	Siggraph Emerging Technologies 2006. Exhibit Coordinator for Tangibles at Play \|\| Article
	Sensing Change Conference April 2004 Media Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland [Pictures]
	Squishy cellphones add buzz to calls (in New Scientist
	Extreme interfaces Conference at MLE Technology Exhibit
	"Get in Touch" in Linz, Austria- Ars Electronica Exhibition (TakeOver) [internal] Bottles InTOUCH Art Exhibit
	"Tangible Bits" in Tokyo, Japan- NTT Intercommunications Center Art Exhibit 2000.