Nathan G. Freier (freien@rpi.edu)
Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction
Language, Literature, and Communication
Joint Appointment in Information Technology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Home SEED Lab Publications Teaching CV

Peer-Reviewed Publications and Presentations

Journal Articles

      1. Freier, N. G. (2009). Accounting for the child in the design of technological environments: A review of constructivist theory. Children, Youth and Environments, 19(1), 144-169. Available online at http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/19_1/.
      2. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Gill, B. T., Hagman, J., Severson, R. L., Freier, N. G., Feldman, E. N., Carrere, S., & Stolyar, A. (2008). A plasma display window? – The shifting baseline problem in a technologically-mediated natural world. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28(2), 192-199. [pdf]
      3. Friedman, B., Freier, N. G., Kahn, P. H., Jr., Lin, P., & Sodeman, R. (2008). Office window of the future? – Field-based analyses of a new use of a large display. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66(6), 452-465. [pdf]
      4. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Ishiguro, H., Friedman, B., Kanda, T., Freier, N. G., Severson, R. L., & Miller, J. (2007). What is a human? Toward psychological benchmarks in the field of human-robot interaction. Interaction Studies, 8(3), 363-390. [pdf]
      5. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Perez-Granados, D., & Freier, N. G. (2006). Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 405-436. [pdf]
      6. Waddell, P., Borning, A., Noth, M., Freier, N., Becke, M. & Ulfarsson, G. (2003). UrbanSim: A simulation system for land use and transportation. Networks and Spatial Economics, 3(1), 43-67. [pdf]

Chapters

      1. Friedman, B. & Freier, N. G. (2005). Value sensitive design. In Fisher, K E., Erdelez, S., & McKechnie, E. F. (Eds.). Theories of Information Behavior: A Researcher's Guide. (pp. 368-372). Medford, NJ: Information Today.

Conference Proceedings

      1. Freier, N. G., Nelson, E.J., Rotondo, A., & Kong, W.K. (2009). The moral accountability of a personified agent: Young adults' conceptions. Extended Abstract of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2009). Boston, MA. [pdf]
      2. Zalinger, J. & Freier, N. G. (2009). Ethnochat: An instant messenger program for ethnography. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2009). Boston, MA. [pdf]
      3. Nelson, E. & Freier, N. G. (2008). Push-me, pull-me: Describing and designing technologies for varying degrees of reflection and invention. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2008). (pp. 129-132). Chicago, IL. [pdf]
      4. Freier, N. G. (2008). Children attribute moral standing to a personified agent. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2008). (pp. 343-352). Florence, Italy. [pdf]
      5. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Freier, N. G., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Ruckert, J. H., Severson, R. L., & Kane, S. K. (2008). Design patterns for sociality in human-robot interaction. Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2008). (pp. 97-104). Amsterdam, NL. [pdf]
      6. Freier, N. G. (2007). Children distinguish conventional from moral violations in interactions with a personified agent. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2007). (pp. 2195-2200). San Jose, CA. [pdf] [Awarded 2nd Place in the CHI 2007 Student Research Competition.]
      7. Gold, K., Fasel, I., Freier, N. G., & Torrey, C. (2007). Young researchers' views on the current and future state of HRI. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2007). (pp. 357-364). ACM/IEEE. [pdf]
      8. Freier, N. G. (2006). Towards an interactional model of children's relationships to personified adaptive systems. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Cognitive Science (ICCS 2006) (pp. 9192). Vancouver, B.C, Canada. [pdf]
      9. Silverstein, J., Nissenbaum, H., Flanagan, M., & Freier, N. G. (2006). Ethics and children's information systems. Proceedings of the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T 2006). Austin, Texas. [pdf]
      10. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Alexander, I. S., Freier, N. G., & Collett, S. L. (2005). The distant gardener: What conversations in the Telegarden reveal about human-telerobotic interaction. Proceedings of the 14th Annual Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN ’05) (pp. 13-18). Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [pdf]
      11. Friedman, B., Freier, N. G., & Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2004). Office window of the future? Two case studies of an augmented window. Extended Abstacts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2004) (pp. 1559). Vienna, Austria. [pdf]
      12. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Freier, N. G., Friedman, B., Severson, R. L., & Feldman, E. (2004). Social and moral relationships with robotic others? Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN ’04) (pp. 545-550). Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [pdf]
      13. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B. Perez-Granados, D. R., & Freier, N. G. (2004). Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2004) (pp. 1449-1452).  Vienna, Austria. [pdf]

Conference Posters, Presentations, and Technical Demos

    1. Nathan, L. P., DeLap, A. S., Edwards, P. E., & Freier, N. G. (2009). Institutional Review Boards: Ethics, Regulations and the Research Agenda. Panel presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST '09), Vancouver, Canada.
    2. Freier, N.G. (2009). Children Make Social and Moral Attributions to a Personified Agent. Paper presented in the (Freier, N. G., Kahn, P. H., Jr., Symposium Chairs) "Children in Technological Environments" paper symposium at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, Colorado.
    3. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Freier, N. G., Severson, R. L., Ruckert, J. R., & Gill, B. T. (2009). Children's Social and Moral Relationship With a Humanoid Robot: Behavior and Reasoning. Poster presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Denver, Colorado.
    4. Efthimiadis, E., & Freier, N. G. (2007). IR toolbox: An experiential learning tool for teaching information retrieval. Technical demonstration presented at SIGIR ’07. Amsterdam, NL.
    5. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Gill, B., Hagman, J., Severson, R. L., Freier, N. G., Feldman, E. N., Carrère, S., & Stolyar, A. (2007). Does it matter that nature's "real"? -- A plasma window's effect on heart rate recovery from low level stress. Presented at SRCD ’07: Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Boston, MA.
    6. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Severson, R. L., & Freier, N. G. (2007). Toward a new comparative paradigm in developmental psychology: Human-robot interaction. Presented at SRCD ’07: Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Boston, MA.
    7. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Gill, B., Hagman, J., Severson, R. L., Freier, N. G., Feldman, E. N., Carrère, S., & Stolyar, A. (2006). Does it matter that nature's "real"? -- A plasma window's effects on looking behavior and heart rate recovery from low level stress. Presented at the Jean Piaget Society Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD. June 1-3, 2006.
    8. Stanton, C., & Freier, N. G. (2006). A robot companion for children with autism: Functional design recommendations. Presented in the Student Designer Competition at the 15th Annual Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN ’06), University of Hertfordshire, UK.
    9. Freier, N. G. (2005). Children's social and moral conceptions of embodied software agents: The influence of visual form. Presented at iConference 2005, Penn State University.
    10. Freier, N. G. & Holland, K. (2005). An evolution in information science's essential building block: Has the time come to move beyond the user model? Peer reviewed abstract accepted for panel presentation at iConference 2005, Penn State University, Penn.
    11. Kahn, P. H. Jr., Friedman, B., Alexander, I. S., Freier, N. G., & Collett, S. L. (2005). The distant gardener: What conversations in a telegarden reveal about the user experience of telepresence. Short paper presented at CHI 2005 (alt.chi session). Portland, OR.
    12. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Perez-Granados, D. R., & Freier, N. G. (2004). Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Presented at Jean Piaget Society Annual Meeting, 2004, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, June 3-5, 2004.
    13. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Perez-Granados, D. R. & Freier, N. G. (2003). Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Presented at SRCD ’03: Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, April 24-27, 2003, Tampa, FL.

Other Publications and Presentations

Invited Presentations and Panels

      1. Freier, N. G. (2008). Child Development and Personified Technologies. Invited lecture at Cornell’s SIGCHI Invited Lecture Series. Ithaca, NY. April 21, 2008.
      2. Scasselatti, B. (moderator), Dautenhahn, K., Kozima, H., Lee, G., Freier, N. G., & Gold, K. (2007). Invited panel: What is the future of HRI? ACM 2007 Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Arlington, VA.
      3. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Perez-Granados, D. R., & Freier, N. G. (2006). Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Invited talk at the 5th International Conference on Cognitive Science workshop titled: Toward Social Mechanisms of Android Science, organized by Karl MacDorman and Hiroshi Ishiguro.
      4. Freier, N. G. & Hagman, J. (2002). Robotic companions? AIBO in the lives of children and other human beings. Presented at the Student SIGCHI Chapter Meeting, University of Washington, November 4, 2002, Seattle, WA.
      5. Freier, N. G. & Miller, D. (1999). UrbanSim data preparation software interface. Presented at the University of Washington’s PRISM Forum ‘99.

Invited Editorials

      1. Freier, N. G., & Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2009). (Eds.) Special Issue on Children in Technological Environments, Children, Youth, and Environments, 19(1). (Includes an introduction by Freier and Kahn.) Available online at http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/19_1/.

Book Reviews

    1. Freier, N. G. (2009). Review of the book Media and the American Child. Children, Youth, and Environments, 19(1).

Recent Workshop Papers and presentations

    1. Zalinger, J. & Freier, N. G. (2008). To Be Continued: Technology, Mood, and Darkness. Presented at the CHI 2008 Workshop on Night and Darkness: Interaction After Dark.  Florence, Italy. [pdf]

Technical Reports

    1. Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Freier, N. G., and Severson, R. (2003). Coding manual for children's interactions with AIBO, the robotic dog - The preschool study. UW CSE Technical Report 03-04-03. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. [pdf]

Dissertation

    1. Freier, N. G. (2007). Children distinguish conventional from moral violations in interactions with a personified agent. Ph.D. Dissertation. The Information School, University of Washington. Seattle, WA, USA. [pdf]