Undergraduate Program - Undergraduate Research

Contact Information

• My Faculty Page
• Email Me
• If you would like to work in my laboratory, please email me your major(s), GPA, and a few days/times when you would be available for a face-to-face meeting. During that meeting, we will discuss a) how you would contribute to the project and b) whether you would be a good fit for the project.

Publications/Presentations with Undergraduate Students

• Jones, K.S., Farris, J.S., Elgin, P.D., Anders, B.A., & Johnson, B.R. (2005). A report on a novice user’s interaction with the Internet through a self-voicing application. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 99(1), 40-54.
• Jones, K.S., Elgin, P.D., Johnson, B.R., Swan, B.J., & Farris, J.S. (2004). Internet-based distance education materials: Does writing style matter? Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 48th Annual Meeting, 1543-1547.
• Farris, J.S., Jones, K.S., & Anders, B.A. (2002). Factors affecting the usefulness of impenetrable interface element borders. Human Factors, 44(4), 578-591.
• Jones, K.S., Farris, J.S., Elgin, P.D., Anders, B.A., & Johnson, B.R. (2002). Examining information searching on the World Wide Web with a screen-reader: A verbal protocol analysis. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, 1310-1314.
• Farris, J.S., Jones, K.S., & Anders, B.A. (2002). Using impenetrable borders in a graphical web browser: How does distance influence target selection speed? Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, 1300-1304.
• Farris, J.S., Jones, K.S., & Anders, B.A. (2002). Using impenetrable borders in a graphical web browser: Are all angles equal? Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, 1251.
• Elgin, P.D., Jones, K.S., Anders, B.A., & Farris, J.S. (2001). An investigation of Web writing styles and distance education. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 45th Annual Meeting, 1215-1219.

Reseach Interests

Human-computer interaction, internet navigation and accessibility

Responsibilities and Expectations for Undergraduate Research Assistants

Early on, undergraduate students working in my laboratory will be required to a) complete an on-line training program in research ethics and b) familiarize themselves with literature related to our research. After that, students will be rigorously trained to c) collect data and d) enter data in Excel and/or SPSS. These two activities will be the student’s primary responsibilities. In addition, undergraduates may be asked occasionally to complete general office work to assist project leaders.

Current Projects

People misestimate distance. Accordingly, training procedures were developed to correct the misestimations. Typically, these involved telling trainees the actual metric distance between themselves and a target immediately after the trainees estimated that distance. Such training, however, has unexpected side effects. For example, trainees who received distance estimation training throw an object to a target less accurately than people who did not receive the training. Recently, we developed a model that explains why distance estimation training hinders certain actions. On-going research projects tests this model in various ways.