This week we got a lot of work done. We finished the pdf and video guides to TreatYoSelf, and have got quite a bit done on our paper. This week has been almost entirely iteration. We would send our finished products to Fernando (be that the draft of the paper, or the app materials), and he would give us advice as to what to change and we’d go back to the drawing board. As it stands, we still have paper edits to do. We completed the materials that need to be sent to PositiveLink on time though, which means that we should have participants soon.
As it turns out, there was more forum data then I realized, in that specific phrases from the individual forum posts are marked with qualitative tags. This means that it should be a significantly easier problem for the machine to start making accurate predictions. It’s seeming inevitable that we use natural language processing now, though.
Patrick is back, meaning that we got to learn about our mentor and possible related projects. Julia seemed interested in helping out with Patrick’s project on autism. It seems as if we are going to have a very busy summer.
The paper situation is also looking pretty interesting. The ARC study will not be complete by the end of the program by any stretch of the imagination, but we should get published regardless. Julia and I can make undergraduate papers on the ARC study and the forum data. The forum data should be complete by the end of the program, I intend to work hard on that. In addition to possibly submitting to the CHI undergraduate research competition by the January deadline with these papers, Patrick told us that we would be able to be co-authors on the full CHI paper he intends to submit in September, which is very exciting. We can also work on the project some remotely after the REU is officially done.
Here’s our updated timeline:
Week 1: Getting to know everyone, learning the ropes of the involved tech, and choosing mentors.
Week 2: Reading papers and getting familiar with the field. In addition some basic planning for how we would conduct our research.
Week 3: More in depth planning of our research.
Week 4: Finish up guides for the TreatYoSelf app and the structure for the ARC activities to make sure everyone is ok with them. Present them at the end of the week and make last minute edits. Either launch the facebook group here or at the beginning of week 5. Preparations for forum data (I had some extra time, so we’re a bit ahead of the game on this).
Week 5: Facebook group should be on by now (this is looking a little shakier now, we’re going to be doing more recruitment, and it’s hard to say when things are going to be fully set up). Since there’s going to be separation between the activities when we’re not handling immediate issues or focusing on the data right in front of us there will be a decent amount of downtime. During this downtime we will likely start putting effort into the forum data (I may end up putting even more effort into the forum data depending on how much wait there is for recruitment).
Week 6: Facebook should DEFINITELY be ready by this point, so week 6 will for sure look essentially like the original draft of week 5 if we don’t get the forum started next week.
Weeks 7- 8: Basically the same as week 6, conduct more activities (the order isn’t concrete now), continue reading and writing, and work with the forum data.
Week 9: This week we’ll likely be scrambling to finalize our deliverable, on top of everything else.
Week 10: Final touches and presenting of deliverables.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lzt8jrm0pq6f7lx/TreatYoSelf%20App%20Video.mp4?dl=0