Ep 127- Future of Work: Machine Learning and Ability-Based Design

Episode 127: Future of Work: Machine
Learning and Ability-Based Design

Episode Link: http://workolo.gy/ep127-wp

Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to the Workology podcast, a podcast for the disruptive
workplace leader. Join host Jessica Miller-Merrell founder of Workology.com as she sits
down and gets to the bottom of trends tools and case studies for the business leader.
HR and recruiting professional who is tired of the status quo. Now, here's Jessica with
this episode of Workology.
Jessica: [00:00:25] Everywhere I turn there seems to be conversations in the human
resources and recruiting industry centered around artificial intelligence. It is truly
permeating our landscape and myself along with PEAT found some pretty amazing
things that researchers are doing in the fields of accessibility and technology. One of
those emerging technology fields is in the area of touch screen technology allowing
those with motor impairments to be able to use and access technology. Today I'm
joined with Martez Mott. Mr. Mott is a six year Ph.D. candidate at the Information School
at the University of Washington where he is a member of the mobile accessible design
lab. His focus is designing touch interaction techniques for people with motor
impairments and also for people under the effects of situational impairments. Martez.
Welcome to the Workology podcast.
Martez: [00:01:20] Hi Jessica. It's great to be here.
Jessica: [00:01:21] Talk a little bit about your background because this is really a sense
of time digging into what you're working on is really interesting.
Workology Podcast | www.workologypodcast.com | @workology

Martez: [00:01:30] Yeah. Yes so yes my background I have a computer science
background so for my undergraduate master's degrees I received and computer science
at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green Ohio. And while I was at Bowling
Green I started working for a research group there and they were working on how to
make video games more accessible to people with different type of visual impairments
and that just got me really interested in the accessibility space. Overall, it kind of
opened my eyes to different design problems and challenges that I'll worry that I wasn't
aware of beforehand. So after my experience at Bowling Green I knew I wanted to go to
a Ph.D. because I wanted to continue to do research and build on these technologies.
So that led me to the University of Washington at information school where I'm advised
by Professor Jacob Walbrook and I'm a member of his mobile access Design Lab.
Jessica : [00:02:20] Can you talk to our podcast listeners more about your work in
improving artificial intelligence with those with motor impairments.
Martez : [00:02:29] Yeah. So what my work looks from my dissertation what I'm really
trying to do is I want to be able to improve to access touch enabled devices for people
with motor impairments so touch enable devices could be things like your smartphone
or tablet. It could be the public kiosks at the grocery store or at the airport. And what we
really want to do is we want to be able to create experiences for people that master
abilities. So when we approach technologies we approached them with a certain
assumptions I guess and what happens is that people may not always match the
assumptions that technology makes about them. So we will we want to be able to do is
we want to be able to train systems to be able to react to people as they are. So in that
case a touchscreen technologies people with Parkinson's there are multiple sclerosis or
cerebral palsy may touch in different ways that the system isn't expecting. So what we
want to do is instead of telling the user hey this system is inaccessible to you you need
to go find some work around to make it accessible. We kind of want to flip that we want
to kind of place the burden of adaptation on the system so we can use machine learning
to be able to to do that.
Martez: [00:03:42] So machine learning kind of and more general purposes might be
used by businesses of corporations to let's say figure out something about the browsing

behavior of their customers. So if you're Amazon and you really want to understand
what book preferences I have you might use some data about which books I've bought
in the past or what my browsing history might look like it and that allows you to make
some predictions that say hey Martez based on your past browsing history in your past
purchasing history these are some books that might be of interest to you. So what we
want to do is we want to train the systems to react to people not browsing behaviors or
purchasing behaviors but their touch behaviors. So some of the ways that people might
take their smartphone and try to use like speech like speech recognition if you ever use
the systems they might actually say like hey say a few words before you start using a
system so that we can calibrate it so that we can recognize your unique vocal patterns
for example. We want to to say but we want to look at people's unique touch patterns.
And once we can do that we can build models of their touch behavior and allow people
to have more pleasant accessible experiences with their touchscreens.
Jessica: [00:04:53] I like that and you think about how much touch screens have
become a part of our everyday life it's not just your mobile device or your tablet. I have
an Apple Watch. There's also touchscreens on your computer and also television. So
this is an area of design that is becoming what this technology is becoming more part of
our everyday lives.
Martez: [00:05:16] Yeah, yeah exactly. Yeah I mean just think about all the things you
might use a touch you might use a touchscreen device for in a given day. So yes so if
you're on your smartphone you might use it to send messages to people to take
photographs you know browse social media play video games. There's all these
different things that we do in our day to day lives that are now mobile base. So in terms
of thinking about technology and the accessibility of technology especially in the
workplace you have to we have to kind of shift this mindset from thinking of people only
sitting at their desk working at their workstation to people doing small bits of work on the
bus or doing you know replying to a quick e-mail while they're waiting in line for their
coffee or things like that. So as these technologies become more and more pervasive
more and more ubiquitous they're going to seamlessly integrate with what we do in our
day to day lives. And if we can improve the accessibility of these devices we can't just

allow for people more freedom more flexibility in how they work where they work and
the type of work that they want to do.
Jessica: [00:06:18] A lot of this podcast series has been focused on individuals with
disabilities focused on accessibility and also the freelancer the gig economy where your
work is more fluid and I think that having your technology embedded into phones tablets
kiosks at airports or whatever is going to allow these individuals like you said to be able
to do their work on the go whether it's a full time permanent job or something that
they're kind of doing you know on the side or maybe it's a full time job that they're just
picking up freelance work for.
Martez: [00:06:56] Yeah yeah I think that's exactly right. I had a situation where one of
my study participants was telling me. So he's a deejay and he was telling me about
some software that he wanted to use on the iPad. Some music I think is mixing software
or something like that and he was telling me about it and he was like oh I would love to
use it. But I just can't use an iPad. He has cerebral palsy and I pass just don't work for
him. So I think what we really need to look at is you know it's not just the access to
these devices it's all of the things that these devices allow us to do.
Martez: [00:07:29] All of the features and applications that they have it is how we use
these features and applications in an increasingly social and connected world. So yeah
if you want people to be able to have the flexibility art is musicians other different types
of creatives people who want to create their own businesses or work where and how
they were like. We really do need to think about improving the accessibility of mobile
technologies which in our current stage are predominately touchscreen based right. So
we have smartwatches smartphones are tablets all of these touch enable technologies
that could allow people to be able to be more productive to do more things to be able to
create more connections. But we really need to get the technology there to the point
where people feel confident comfortable using these technologies in a variety of
different situations.
Jessica: [00:08:19] I like the example that you provided and I think a lot of creatives
you know that the iPad or those tablets are so important. I think in design and also as

you're drawing or writing notes or using a stylus. It's becoming more touch based but
these are things that are such an important part of our everyday life and certainly our
work and we go into these workplace situations like maybe we're getting a PowerPoint
presentation and the polling or interaction for the individuals who are participating in the
presentation is done over their mobile device through touch. Having these kind of
smarts machine learning ways to enhance and make the technology accessible to all is
important for everyone.
Martez: [00:09:06] Yeah yeah. Yeah that's right. And I think when you look at too like it
has a lot of workplace things that you know that might require you know access to a
smartphone or tablet so even things like you know no two factor authentication. So it
might be something that you know your employer requires you to download something
for your phone so that when you log in you know you have to approve the request on
your mobile device for the two factor authentication. I mean just imagine how much of a
struggle that might be if you accidentally hit deny a set of approved when you want to
approve actually approve or request that you just have difficulties in general interacting
with these really ubiquitous you know systems that we're creating around security or our
productivity in all these different things.
Jessica: [00:09:49] So interesting about the two factor because I've been using Google
authenticator and so you have to log in. Like every time you log into your e-mail or your
Twitter or whatever you have to get to your smartphone open the authenticator app and
then there's a code that you have to plug in. But you have to slide through with your
touch screen to be able to get all those places and something like that's easy for me.
But for others it is probably a really difficult task that might be almost impossible.
Martez: [00:10:18] So yeah exactly. For some people it might be impossible for some
people it might take one person a colleague you know ten seconds and it might take
someone else five minutes or a few minutes. So yeah I think that's true for like a lot of
these different situations really looking at connectivity in terms of how much time does it
take a person to be able to complete a task. And what's the kind of bottleneck between
that. So yeah if you're waiting in line for coffee and you have a few minutes because it's
a long line that you want to send an e-mail you're not as great if you have two minutes

let me send this e-mail. But if you know hey I know this e-mail is going to take me 10
minutes because every time I try to type on a phone it always Hister all but in my
experience tremor. So I have difficulty being able to type to e-mail or send it or do all
these different things so yeah if we can look at these technologies in terms of what did
they allow people to do and how also is it accessibility these technologies holding
people back from being able to accomplish the things they want to do. I think we can.
Jessica: [00:11:20] That will give us a better perspective of kind of looking at how these
technologies influenced not just our work laws our social lives and now those things are
very interconnected a lot of different ways too.
Jessica: [00:11:31] Well let's take a bit of a reset here. This is Jessica Miller Merrell and
you're listening to the work Algy podcast in partnership with Pete. Today we're talking
about machine learning and touch screen accessibility technology with Martez maat.
You can connect with him on Twitter at Martez underscore Mottt or @martez_mott.
Sponsor Message: [00:11:52] The Workology Podcast Future of Work series is
supported by PEAT. The partnership on employment and accessible technology
program is designed to foster collaboration and action around accessible technology in
the workplace. PEAT funded by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability
Employment Policy. Learn more about PEAT and PEATworks.org that's
PEATWorks.org.
Jessica: [00:12:23] Let's get back to this. Can you talk about a little bit more about
maybe some other examples of technology in terms of accessibility as it relates to work.
We had the example which I think is a great one. Any other ideas in your work.
Martez: [00:12:40] Yeah. So yeah. So there might be certain cases so there might be
examples let's say at a factory or warehouse things like that where people might have to
do inspections or take inventory and maybe you duty's things now using an iPad or
some type of some type of tablet.

Martez: [00:12:58] You know you walk around or you navigate to these different
locations take notes or take inventory of things like that. So if there are situations in
which kind of the core tenet of your work is mobile based you know you're going out into
the world doing things so you know that may be somebody who's an electrician for
example who needs to take this step of wanting to take tons and tons of manual
physical documents with you. You might prefer to take an iPad with you with all these
documents on it stored with you.
Martez: [00:13:31] But if those technologies once again aren't accessible to you in
those might be careers or things that you may want to shy away from because you don't
believe that you could do the job adequately or you might feel self-conscious because
you feel that you can't do the job as adequately as some of your colleagues. So I really
think it is this this notion of there might be.
Martez: [00:13:52] Might be the situations in which there are certain jobs that require
just by their nature uses a mobile devices mobile technologies, and we have to look at
and say hey are these jobs that are inherently mobile based out in the world are out
doing things not just sitting in front of a desk all day. All those type of jobs accessible to
people because you know the underlying technologies might not be.
Jessica: [00:14:16] I think that's an important point to make. It's not just people who are
using tablets right? It's people who are out there maybe safety or they're in a warehouse
or they have a QR and they're responsible for making sure that products are running
down the assembly line the right way. Or I mean working with pets, I mean whatever it
is like you need to be able to use the tools to be successful in your job. One thing I was
thinking about as you were talking I think about like my world in human resources and
recruiting so much of our work for the employee populations contractors freelancers or
permanent employees is done over a mobile device email.
Also these mobile apps where you can input your time access your employee directory
log into your company portal put in your employee hours for the week. They're all done
over a mobile device so having your technology as part of the accessibility tools for your

employees is really critical I think to these individuals with motor impairments success
and the ability to be able to do their job as they should be able to.
Martez: [00:15:30] Yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely. And they like do it. You know how
they want to wear it they want to yeah like you know if you have all these work-based as
you know an inherently mobile base or that you could do it you know using mobile
technologies. It's just great to have that flexibility right to be able to say hey, I know I
don't have to go to my desk to do this. I can do this right now. At the coffee shop or I
can handle this later. You know when I have a minute or something so yeah like having
the flexibility and the freedom to be able to decide which technology do you want to use
and when and how you want to use them. You know that's just going to make the
workplace more enjoyable and more expressive for people. What are your thoughts on
Jessica: [00:16:12] Having or like the future plans for your technology particularly for
maybe people who are freelance or gig worker. So let's say that you are trying to go into
fiber and they have a mobile process for you to be able to as as an individual like select
work and sign up and you know even completing your profile. How would a company
like Fiverr engage you to be able to add the technology that you're working on and kind
of embed that into their current tech stack.
Martez: [00:16:46] Yes. So kind of the work that I'm looking at right now is is more what
I would call application agnostic. So what we're hoping for is a look at the underlying
technology and improve it so that if we can.
Martez: [00:17:02] So let's get someone I want to think about this as if we could retrain
systems to respond accurately to you and how you want to interact with them that will
then allow any application that runs on top of that technology to be inherently more
accessible. So kind of the view the vision that I have at this research is kind of like an
accessibility feature or a setting that will be available on touch enabled devices. So you
go out and you buy a new Android tablet or a Microsoft Surface or an iPad or something
and you turn on this accessibility feature the smartwatch accessibility feature a step you
do some type of calibration process where you know you tap on the screen a few times
to give us some examples of which are touch behaviors or like.

Martez: [00:17:48] So this is the analogy again to use in the speech recognition
software you say in a few of kind of preset phrases so that the system can train to be
attuned to your voice. We're doing a similar thing. We want to tune to your touch
behavior and once we do that. Now any application whether it be something specific
from a specific corporation that's worn it on the web or a specific app that you need to
download to be able to do your work securely. All of these things now will become more
accessible because the underlining technology at the system level not necessarily the
application level but at the system level is now more accurate. So that's kind of where
we want to be able to go. We want to be able to take this technology be able to put it on
these devices. Have it just as a feature that people could turn on and use it when they
need to and how they need to edit and now we'll just improved the accessibility of all of
the applications and services running on top, on top of the device.
Jessica: [00:18:44] I love it. And I think about like I have an Alexa at my house and it is
voice recognized but it does go through training right. And I can work with it and for not
just me but different members of my family within the house they can talk to Alexa and
she gets smarter and then can understand the differences between dialects and how we
speak so that she can provide a better experience for us when we ask her for certain
things. I feel like you're you're talking about the same thing but for these touch like
devices which I think is amazing.
Martez: [00:19:19] Yeah is actually yes. For the devices we need that we need a similar
type of afford it. So yeah you want your you know we might not think of it right now.
Right. So if you know if you use a smartphone right now it's like hey I could use it pretty
accurately Yes sometimes when I'm typing a message I might hit the wrong key and I
have to backspace but generally it works well for me right. So you might have debt
perspective in front of people it's like oh yeah. You know it takes me five minutes to try
to send one text message.
Jessica: [00:19:46] So how do we get your work in front of the mobile phone and the
tablet makers because is that is that the solution like to be able to add this to the iPhone
or the androids or your technology , your touch technology at the airport.

Martez: [00:20:04] Yes. I guess my my primary way been able to have that influence is
to really light my publication. So I view my role as a one as a doctoral student but after I
graduate as you know as a member of the academic community in general as to be
able to push ideas forward and then hopefully be able to disseminate those ideas to the
broader community for the community to take those ideas refine them and improved it
and hopefully you know.
Martez: [00:20:32] The hope is yeah you know I go to a conference and I'm up there
giving the presentation about this work. And yes somebody at Google is in the audience
and I like oh yeah that's a great idea and they take that back to their team and you know
they actually have the engineering power and prowess to be able to do these things.
You know one graduate student is trying to work on these things so I could create kind
of like proof of concept I can create testers and algorithms and show and kind of these
more limited situations like hey this seems to be promising this may be something that
we want to investigate in the future.
But I don't have that engineering powerhouse behind me that will allow me to go win
business ad change and make huge changes to software and to be able to update that
throughout time. So you know imagine me as one person trying to keep this up to date.
And every time there's a new Android update I have to go back and update the software
again. It's kind of it's not. It's not sustainable for a single person. So that's really
whereas you know academics we need to rely on industry to kind of do the right thing to
kind of say hey yeah you know you do have some accessibility features and those are
great and those are changing people's lives.
But you know there's more work we can do. There's more improvements we can make
and good now talking to people you know trying to be like an evangelist for accessibility
and to tell people like you know this is important and this you know this impacts more
people and you know they may think so.
Jessica: [00:21:58] Google, Apple, Anybody listening that's looking at accessibility
options for mobile devices monetizes is gone all the research and he's been doing some

really great work in this area. So it's something that I think they should consider. I mean
it makes sense to me and it provides a better experience for everyone.
Martez: [00:22:20] Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I think I forgot to mention for Yeah.
So one of the great things about these technologies is that you know when you when
you create technologies for people with disabilities or certain types of impairments you
actually do end up improving the technology for everyone. So we talk about things also
these things called situational impairments. You might think that if you know let's say if
you're trying to send a text message while you're holding grocery bags for example you
don't have access to your hands as much as you did before. So we would call you like
your situation and we impaired at this moment but if we could create technology that's
more accurate for people with Parkinson's disease then we can also create that make
sure cell phone or your smartphone more accurate while you're walking or jogging or
you're riding a bumpy bus or something like that. So there are situations in which we
could look at it like oh yeah.
You know we live in as you know this mobile world. We're not just sitting at the desk
anymore we have to think about these different context and situations in which we use
all these mobile devices and some of them in Paris in these ways and if we can create
technology to helps people with disabilities that can help a lot of people in general. And
that's kind of the one of the main hopes of our research is that we can show that we can
have this kind of effect that you know this is a pretty big return on investment if you
focus on accessibility.
Jessica: [00:23:38] So you're at you're a 6th year Ph.D. candidate. So what what is
next for you and your research.
Martez: [00:23:46] I'm so finishing up my dissertation so I have a few more projects I'm
finishing up over this upcoming academic year. I hope to graduate this year so that's my
focus is on writing the dissertation and yes so yeah we're just continuing to work on
these problems. So I mean there's so many problems in this space. Just to give you an
example in terms of machine learning machine learning typically requires you know lots
of data points. So the more more books I buy on Amazon the more confident Amazon

might be and try to predict what my next book might be. You bought one book you may
not know much about you but if you buy 200 books it may get a pretty accurate
representation of the type of book buyer you are.
Martez: [00:24:33] So if we look at that in terms of machine learning for touch
interaction we need to have to collect a lot of data and people's abilities change dropped
the day some people take medication to that are a touch behavior's might be a certain
way in the morning but at night after it's been a long day you're tired your fatigue your
touch behaviors and your medicines worn off your touch behaviors might be quite
different. So how can we collect enough data on the day the times that she/he might be
experiencing different effects so that we can create these more accurate models of what
your touch behaviors like. So there's so many different research questions research
directions that this work can go into and just kind of we're we're working on is just trying
to keep on improving and and making the systems better and more accessible.
Jessica: [00:25:16] I didn't even think about like your medication schedule or your
energy levels throughout the day. You know how that might impact your touches and it
is an individual with your mobile device or this technology.
Martez: [00:25:31] Yeah yeah. Like some people with maybe Parkinson's or multiple
sclerosis that you know experience tremor yeah they might say yeah I'm not taking my
medicine. You know I have less tremor but as the day goes on or if I'm feeling stressed
or things like that on my head episodes where I have might might have more tremor. So
yeah we really need to be able to to think about people's abilities not just as a single
snapshot of this it's who they are but as a person whose abilities change drought the
day and change with the different contacts. And if we can create systems that can be
aware of these things it will just create better experiences.
Jessica: [00:26:05] Martez thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people
go to learn more about you and the research and the work that you're doing.
Martez: [00:26:12] Thank you for having me. This is great. Been able to chat with you.
So yes I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington. So if people want to look

me up you could just kind of look up my google scholar Martez Ma to see some of my
publications about working on working on a new website that's going to be Martez dot
dot com and that should be coming up live probably within the next few weeks or so. So
people could definitely check me out there and see what I'm working on.
Jessica: [00:26:38] We'll have some links to some of Martez this publications and
different research and interesting work that's being done in this space. So thank you so
much for taking the time of joining us.
Martez: [00:26:49] Thank you so much Jessica has been great.
Jessica: [00:26:51] I love this conversation and I think that it's interesting research and
programs like these that are really going to push this technology and this accessible
inclusive technology forward. I love how we are looking at technology from different
angles and not just consumer focus but workplace productivity focus which is where I
challenge you to sit back and think about. How Technology Nameer current stock that
you have in your workplace or the tools that you have. Can be used to help make the
workplace better for all different types of employees. Thank you for joining the work Algy
podcast today. It's a podcast for the disruptive workplace leader who's tired of the status
quo. This is Jessica Miller-Merrell. Until next time you can visit Workology.com to listen
to all our previous Workology Podcast episodes.

Episode Link: http://workolo.gy/ep127-wp


Ep 127- Future of Work: Machine Learning and Ability-Based Design

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Ep 127- Future of Work: Machine Learning and Ability-Based Design