Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2011

In this paper, we present three different ways of interrupting people to posture guidance. We developed an ergonomically adjustable office chair equipped with four sensors measuring the office worker’s posture. It is important that users do some training after bad posture and be alerted of this; therefore, we implemented three different alert modalities (Graphical Feedback, Physical Feedback, and Vibrotactile Feedback), with the goal to find out which of the techniques is the most effective interruption modality without causing a huge disruption effect. To measure the task-performance, we conducted a formal user study. Our user study results show there are different effects on performance and disruptiveness caused by the three interruption techniques. While the vibrotactile feedback might have higher information awareness benefits at the beginning, it causes a huge intrusion side-effect. Thus, the physical feedback was rated less disruptive to the workflow as the other two feedback modalities.

Exergames combine entertainment and exercise in an effort to encourage people to be more physically active. Although exergames require active input, interactions are less physical than those experienced in real-world exercise. Interactions can feel artificial, limiting the captivating experience exergames aim to provide. To address this problem,

haptics

have been proposed as a means of providing additional feedback to players through the sense of touch. However, there is very little empirical evidence supporting the benefits of haptics in exergames. To address this, we have identified and evaluated three ways in which haptic feedback can enhance exergames: by helping to balance group exercise among people of different fitness levels, by guiding players toward safe and healthy interaction, and by increasing peoples’ sense of virtual presence in exergames. We present three novel exergames incorporating haptic feedback, and report on experiments investigating their success. We find that haptics which are consistent with actions displayed on-screen increase immersion and improve enjoyment. However, we discover pitfalls when using haptics to represent phenomena that do not have a physical basis. These results allow us to present a set of design issues for haptic feedback in exergames.

This paper presents the results from a user workshop that was undertaken to investigate the relationship between the nature of current home rehabilitation tools and the motivation to exercise. We also present a method of visual feedback which we hope will be an effective tool for informing users regarding important clinical measures associated with their recovery. Older adults over the age of 60 were involved in the study. The findings from the user workshop suggest that the relatively passive nature of current rehabilitation materials is less than ideal for sustaining motivation to exercise. Furthermore, our results suggest that visual feedback and more interactive methods can play an important role in engaging users in home rehabilitation.

Acquired brain injury (ABI) is a complex disease that involves loss of brain functions related to cognitive and motor capabilities and that can produce unilateral spatial neglect (USN). The heterogeneity of the symptoms of these disorders causes a lack of consensus on suitable tools for evaluation and treatment. Recently, several studies have initiated the application of virtual reality (VR) systems as an evaluation instrument for neuropsychological disorders. Our main objective was to evaluate the validity of the VR Street Crossing Test (VRSCT) as an assessment tool. Twenty-five patients with ABI were evaluated with traditional tests and with the VRSCT. The results showed significant correlations between the conventional tests and the measures obtained with the VRSCT in non-negligent patients. Moreover, the VRSCT indicated significant differences in performance of negligent and non-negligent subjects. These pilot results indicate that ABI patients with and without USN can be assessed by the therapists using the VRSCT system as a complementary tool.

Awareness of resource consumption in the home is a key part of reducing our ecological footprint yet lack of appropriate understanding and motivation often deters residents from behaviour change. The coming deployment of smart metering technologies, the increasing practicality of embedded devices, and the widespread use of Internet and mobile tools offer new opportunities for “greener” residents. We report on the design and implementation of a holistic interactive system that supports residents in awareness of resource use and facilitates efficient control of house systems to encourage conservation in daily activities. Initial response from two high-profile deployments in unique homes indicates this approach has great potential in engaging residents in sustainable living, but presents many challenges in how technology is integrated into the home environment.

Recent studies present Virtual Reality (VR) as potentially effective technology in the Mental Health (MH) field. The objective of this paper is to evaluate two interaction techniques (traditional vs novel) using a popular and low-cost input device (WiiMote) within a theoretical framework of the Steering Law. The results show that the WiiMote responds to the requirements for the MH technologies, and that the law of Steering continues to be valid on all of three paths. This opens up a new range of possible research studies for the design and evaluation of interaction techniques in MH field.

This paper describes and reflects on the development and use of ‘acted reality’ scenarios to study variability in General Practitioners’ (GPs’) record keeping practices, particularly their use of free text and coded entries. With actors playing the part of patients and in control of certain elements of the interaction, the acted reality approach creates a bridge between the controlled but often unrealistic laboratory setting and the arguably more ‘realistic’ but often messy world observed in traditional ethnographic studies. The skills and techniques of actors were compelling, helping to develop and sustain interaction, whilst keeping the process on track and providing rich data. This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of working with actors in this specific context and argues that the acted reality approach might be applied elsewhere in HCI research, especially in contexts where there are multiple individuals involved, but where the behaviour of one user is of special interest.

We present an interactive system for physical exercise of older people and provide results of a usability study with target user group. The system motivates an elderly person to do regular physical activity based on an easy exercise in a monitored environment without a direct supervision from care-givers. Our system employs multi-modal interface including speech synthesis and speech recognition, as well as distance measurement using an ultrasound range finder. The system coaches the user through a sequence of body movements in the exercise utilizing an underlying human activity model. For evaluation of the performance of the user we present a statistical human activity model to estimate physical load of the user. The system tracks user load by monitoring heart rate and by scanning movement patterns using statistical estimators. At well-defined moments and when the scanning suggests there is a problem with the user, the user is asked to verify his ability to continue with the exercise. The system was tested on a set of elderly users to gather usability data and to estimate the acceptance of the system. While simplicity of the setup proved to work well for the users, suggestions for further extensions of the system were gathered. Usefulness of the concept was verified with a physiotherapist.

Our empirical results show that users perceive the execution difficulty of single stroke gestures consistently, and execution difficulty is highly correlated with gesture production time. We use these results to design two simple rules for estimating execution difficulty: establishing the relative ranking of difficulty among multiple gestures; and classifying a single gesture into five levels of difficulty. We confirm that the CLC model does not provide an accurate prediction of production time magnitude, and instead show that a reasonably accurate estimate can be calculated using only a few gesture execution samples from a few people. Using this estimated production time, our rules, on average, rank gesture difficulty with 90% accuracy and rate gesture difficulty with 75% accuracy. Designers can use our results to choose application gestures, and researchers can build on our analysis in other gesture domains and for modeling gesture performance.

Input devices are often evaluated in terms of their throughput, as measured by Fitts’ Law, and by their resolution. However, little effort has been made to understand the limit of resolution that is controllable or “usable” by the human using the device. What is the point of a 5000 dpi computer mouse if the human motor control system is far from being able to achieve this level of precision? This paper introduces the concept of a Device’s Human Resolution (DHR): the smallest target size that users can acquire with an ordinary amount of effort using one particular device. We report on our attempt to find the DHR through a target acquisition experiment involving very small target sizes. Three devices were tested: a gaming mouse (5700 dpi), a PHANTOM (450 dpi), and a free-space device (85 dpi). The results indicate a decrease in target acquisition performance that is not predicted by Fitts’ Law when target sizes become smaller than certain levels. In addition, the experiment shows that the actual achievable resolution varies greatly depending on the input device used, hence the need to include the “device” in the definition of DHR.

In this paper we describe a co-located interface on a tabletop device to support social competence training for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The interface has been developed on the multi-user DiamondTouch tabletop device as a 3-user application for two children and a facilitator (therapist or teacher). It takes advantage of the DiamondTouch table’s unique ability to recognize multiple touches by different users in order to constrain interactions in a variety of ways. This paper focus on the support provided by the system to enhance a facilitator’s management of interaction flow to increase its effectiveness during social competence training. We discuss the observations collected during a small field study where two therapists used the system for short sessions with 4 pairs of children. Although limited by the number of participants to date, the interactions that emerged during this study provide important insight regarding ways in which collaborative games can be used to teach social competence skills. Thus the children benefit from the motivational and engagement value of the games while the facilitator gains access to new tools to intrinsically support and shape the session.

Target selection is a fundamental aspect of interaction and is particularly challenging when targets are moving. We address this problem by introducing a novel selection technique we call Hold which temporarily pauses the content while selection is in progress to provide a static target. By studying users, we evaluate our method against two others for acquiring moving targets in one and two dimensions with variations in target size and velocity. Results demonstrate that Hold outperforms traditional approaches in 2D for small or fast-moving targets. Additionally, we investigate a new model to describe acquisition of 2D moving targets based on Fitts’ Law. We validate our novel 2D model for moving target selection empirically. This model has application in the development of acquisition techniques for moving targets in 2D encountered in domains such as hyperlinked video and video games.

Humans tend to direct their attention toward the left half of their area of vision, which is known as visual pseudo neglect. Most navigational elements are placed at the left side. However, there is neither a theoretical reasoning nor empirical evidence, why these elements should be placed left. In the present study we examined three independent variables (presentation side of elements (left, right), number of elements (one, three, five) and a visual cue prior to selection (with cue, without). Dependent variables were selection times and accuracy of task completion. 50 participants were exposed to elements consisting of single words in bubbles. After clicking on the start element in the middle of the screen a number of elements were presented randomly on the left or right. In 50% of trials the presentation side was announced in advance, by using a visual cue. It was tested, whether and to what extent there is a preference and performance (correct selection time) increase for elements placed on the left side. When the cue was presented, performance increased; without cue information, elements on the left were selected faster. The use of cues resulted in no significant differences between the left and right side. A significantly better performance was found when only one element was presented on the left. With an increasing number of elements, the performance decreased. The results of this study suggest that the presentation of elements on the left side is advantageous for the speed of information processing only in the case of single elements. When selecting between numbers of options (three, five), placing elements on the left does not affect the selection performance.

Pupillary response has been widely accepted as a physiological index of cognitive workload. It can be reliably measured with remote eye trackers in a non-intrusive way. However, pupillometric measurement might fail to assess cognitive workload due to the variation of luminance conditions. To overcome this problem, we study the characteristics of pupillary responses at different stages of cognitive process when performing arithmetic tasks, and propose a fine-grained approach for cognitive workload measurement. Experimental results show that cognitive workload could be effectively measured even under luminance changes.

The choice of the interaction menu to use is an important aspect for the usability of an application. In these years, different solutions, related to menu shape, location and interaction modalities have been proposed. This paper investigates the influence of haptic features on the usability of 3D menu. We have developed a haptic menu for a specific workbench, which integrates stereoscopic visualization and haptic interaction. Several versions of this menu have been developed with the aim of performing testing sessions with users. The results of these tests have been discussed to highlight the impact that these features have on the user’s learning capabilities.

Despite a long history of using participatory methods to enable public engagement with issues of societal importance, interactive displays have only recently been explored for this purpose. In this paper, we evaluate a tabletop game called

Futura

, which was designed to engage the public with issues of sustainability. Our design is grounded in prior research on public displays, serious games, and computer supported collaborative learning. We suggest that a role-based, persistent simulation style game implemented on a multi-touch tabletop affords unique opportunities for a walk-up-and-play style of public engagement. We report on a survey-based field study with 90 participants at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics (Canada). The study demonstrated that small groups of people can be immediately engaged, participate collaboratively, and can master basic awareness outcomes around sustainability issues. However, it is difficult to design feedback that disambiguates between individual and group actions, and shows the temporal trajectory of activity.

We present an analysis of three interactive installations in public spaces, in terms of their support of engagement as an evolving process. In particular, we focus on how engagement unfolds as a dynamic process that may be understood in terms of evolving relations between cultural, physical, content-related, and social elements of interactive environments. These elements are explored through the literature on engagement with interaction design, and it is argued that, although valuable contributions have been made towards understanding engagement with interactive environments, the ways in which engagement unfolds as a dynamic process remains relatively unexplored. We propose that we may understand engagement as a product of the four above-mentioned elements, and in our analysis we provide concrete examples of how engagement plays out in practice by analyzing the emergence, transformation and relations between these elements.

This paper presents the contextual analysis of the user requirements for a mobile navigation robot in public space. Three human-human interaction studies were conducted in order to gain a holistic understanding of the public space as interaction context for itinerary requests. All three human-human requirement studies were analyzed with respect to retrieve guidelines for human-robot interaction. This empirical work should contribute by: (1) providing recommendations for a communication structure from a communication studies perspective, (2) providing recommendations for navigation principles for human-robot interaction in public space from a socio-psychological and a HRI perspective, and (3) providing recommendations regarding (confounding) contextual variables from an HCI perspective.

Distant displays such as interactive public displays (IPD) or interactive television (ITV) require new interaction techniques as traditional input devices may be limited or missing in these contexts. Free hand interaction, as sensed with computer vision techniques, presents a promising interaction technique. This paper presents the adaptation of three menu techniques for free hand interaction: Linear menu, Marking menu and Finger-Count menu. The first study based on a Wizard-of-Oz protocol focuses on Finger-Counting postures in front of interactive television and public displays. It reveals that participants do not choose the most efficient gestures neither before nor after the experiment. Results are used to develop a Finger-Count recognizer. The second experiment shows that all techniques achieve satisfactory accuracy. It also shows that Finger-Count requires more mental demand than other techniques.

An explorative research to investigate the opportunities of using light as a communication medium to provide peripheral information is presented. An innovative ambient display, using dynamic light patterns on the walls of the meeting room to support time management during meetings has been developed. Designed according to the principles of calm technology and information decoration, the system seeks for a balance between aesthetical and informational quality. Two prototypes were created and qualitative research methods are used to evaluate the concept and the efficacy of light in conveying information. The results confirm the value of our concept by showing an appreciation of the usefulness and a good level of comprehension of the users towards the system. The project led to insightful considerations on design guidelines and recommendations for further development of ambient displays to use light to convey abstract information in a subtle, unobtrusive way.

As computer-based devices become the primary media via which users view movies and play interactive games, display technologies (e.g., LCD monitors) have focused increasingly on quality of video fidelity, with much debate surrounding the relative efficacy of different panel types of LCD monitors. A 3 (S-IPS panel vs. S-PVA panel vs. TN panel) x 2 (game vs. movie) between-subjects experiment was conducted to examine the effects of LCD panel type in facilitating regular viewing as well as enhanced interactive TV experiences. Data from the experiment showed that LCD panel and stimulus type as well as computer literacy were important factors affecting users’ viewing and interaction experiences. Limitations and implications for theory and ongoing research are discussed.

Large, public displays are increasingly popular in today’s society. For the most part, however, these displays are purely used for information or multimedia presentation, without the possibility of interaction for viewers. On the other hand, personal mobile devices are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Though there are efforts to combine large screens with mobile devices, the approaches are mostly focused on mobiles as control devices, or they are fitted to specific applications. In this paper, we present the ModControl framework, a configurable, modular communication structure that enables large screen applications to connect with personal mobile devices and request a set of configurable modules, utilizing the device as a personalized mobile interface. The main application can easily make use of the highly sophisticated interaction features provided by modern mobile phones. This facilitates new, interactive appealing visualizations that can be actively controlled with an intuitive, unified interface by single or multiple users.

Current views of sustainable development recognize the importance of accepting the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) of rural people. However, there is an increasing technological gap between Elder IK holders and the younger generation and a persistent incompatibility between IK and the values, logics and literacies embedded, and supported by ICT. Here, we present an evaluation of new technology that might bridge generations and preserve key elements of local IK in Namibia. We describe how we applied insights, generated by ethnographic, dialogical and participatory action research, in designing a structure in which users can store, organize and retrieve user-generated videos in ways that are compatible with their knowledge system. The structure embeds videos in a scenario-based 3D visualization of a rural village. It accounts for some of the ways this rural community manages information, socially, spatially and temporally and provides users with a recognizable 3D simulated environment in which to re-contextualize de-contextualized video clips. Our formative in situ evaluation of a prototype suggests the visualization is legible to community members, provokes participation in design discussions, offers opportunities for local appropriation and may facilitate knowledge sharing between IK holders and more youthful IK assimilators. Simultaneously differing interpretations of scenarios and modeled objects reveal the limitations of our modeling decisions and raises various questions regarding graphic design details and regional transferability.

We describe a qualitative user study that we conducted with 64 people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) in India recruited from private sector clinics. Our aim was to investigate information gaps, problems, and opportunities for design of relevant technology solutions to support HIV treatment. Our methodology included clinic visits, observations, discussion with doctors and counsellors, contextual interviews with PLHA, diary studies, technology tryouts, and home visits. Analysis identified user statements, observations, breakdowns, insights, and design ideas. We consolidated our findings across users with an affinity. We found that despite several efforts, PLHA have limited access to authentic information. Some know facts and procedures, but lack conceptual understanding of HIV. Challenges include low education, no access to technology, lack of socialisation, less time with doctors and counsellors, high power-distance between PLHA and doctors and counsellors, and information overload. Information solutions based on mobile phones can lead to better communication and improve treatment adherence and effectiveness if they are based on the following: repetition, visualisation, organisation, localisation, and personalisation of information, improved socialisation, and complementing current efforts in clinics.

In this paper we share our findings from a field study conducted in Panama, focusing on adoption of mobile phones in classroom settings. Our initial findings reveal that during the initial phase of use, boys adopt mobile phone usage faster and explore more functionality; while girls take more time to familiarize themselves with the phones. Girls seem to maintain a better focus on the learning activities using the mobile phones across all tasks. When the task implies an active role then boys also showed high concentration. The videos recorded by the children as part of the learning activities showed a remarkable difference in roles between girls and boys. These findings suggest that it is important to consider the different adoption and exploration strategies of girls and boys with new technologies when designing tools for mobile learning.

In this paper, we present

scenarchitectures

, a means of raising the level of design of advanced interactive systems. Scenarchitectures combine elements of scenarios and system architectures, and can be used during the user interface design process as an adjunct to other design tools such as textual scenarios and story boards. Meanwhile, scenarchitectures can be automatically transformed to system architectures, providing a link between design and implementation. Using two existing scenarchitectural notations, we investigate the role of scenarchitectures in the design process. We then show how model-transformation techniques can be used to automatically derive system architectures from scenarchitectures, and conclude with concrete examples of the application of the scenarchitectural approach to the design of a mixed-reality system.

Design patterns have proved very helpful in encapsulating the knowledge required for solving design related problems, and have found their way into the CHI domain. Many interface patterns can be formalised and expressed via UML models, which provides the opportunity to incorporate such patterns into CASE tools in order to assist user interface designers. This paper presents an implemented tool-based approach for the discovery of an appropriate set of design patterns applicable to a high-level model of the system. The tool accepts a UML model of the system and presents a set of interface design patterns that can be used to create an effective implementation. The tool is aimed at providing designers with guidance as to which successful design approaches are potentially appropriate for a new interactive system, acting as a supportive aid to the design process. The use of high-level modelling approaches allows designers to focus on the interactions and nature of their systems, rather than on the technologically-driven details.

People are accumulating large amounts of personal digital content that play a role in reminiscing practices. But as these collections become larger, and older content is less frequently accessed, much of this content is simply forgotten. In response to this we explore the notions of randomness and serendipity in the presentation of content from people’s digital collections. To do this we designed and deployed two devices - Meerkat and Tuba - that enable the serendipitous presentation of digital content from people’s personal media collections. Each device emphasises different characteristics of serendipity that with a view to understanding whether people interpret and value these in different ways while reminiscing. In order explore the use of the devices in context, we deployed in real homes. We report on findings from the study and discuss their implications for design.

Recent research has established cultural background of the users to be an important factor affecting the perception of an interface’s usability. However, the area of cultural customization of speech-based interfaces remains largely unexplored. The present study brings together research from emotion recognition, inter-cultural communication and speech-based interaction and aims at determining differences between expressiveness of participants from Greek and Dutch cultures, dealing with a speech interface customized for their culture. These two cultures differ in their tendency for Uncertainty Avoidance (UA), one of the five cultural dimensions defined by Hofstede. The results show that when encountering errors, members of the culture that ranks higher in the UA scale, i.e. Greeks, are more expressive than those that rank low, i.e. Dutch, especially when encountering errors in a low UA interface. Furthermore, members of the high UA culture prefer the high UA interface over the low UA one.

A number of design and development methods, including participatory design and agile software development, are premised on an underlying assumption of equality amongst relevant stakeholders such as designers, developers, product owners, and end users. Equality, however, is not a straightforwardly accepted feature of all cultural perspectives. In this paper, we discuss the situation of equality-centric methods in a culturally mixed setting. We present a case study of the Girl Game Workshop, a game development event intended to empower young women through game design and to promote diversity in game creation. While conducting the workshop, the organisers encountered numerous issues, which presented challenges to their assumptions of the desirability of an emphasis on equality during game design and development. In this paper, we focus on seven key themes relating to equality that emerged from an ethnography conducted during the workshop, including

location

,

cultural

and

classroom hierarchies

,

gender, “girl games”

,

stakeholders and boundaries

, and

risk

mitigation

.

We created and tested e-Rural, an approach to allow educators to dynamically adjust the target literacy level for their online learning content using a combination of three tools: PACO-T for planning, COGNITOR for editing hyper documents and Simplifica for text simplification. PACO-T and COGNITOR use the Brazilian Open Mind Common Sense knowledgebase (OMCS-Br) to provide access to commonly held understandings and beliefs on a diverse set of topics associated with a large range of Brazilian demographics, including, people with low literacy. We tested our experiment with 13 users that were creating hyperdocument-based learning content to describe important methods to milk production. We chose milk production as this is one of Brazil’s primary agricultural products and yet it has been established that there is a wide gap between the content from researchers with methods to greatly enhance the quality and economic power of milk production and the tacit knowledge and procedures of the farmers who actually produce the milk who are often at low literacy levels consistent with Brazil’s low literacy levels being around 75% of the population. Our experiments reveal that educators are able to produce milk related learning content geared towards different literacy levels using our tools with a very satisfying efficacy and efficiency levels. Thus, we believe that the use of our approach that introduces demographically sensitive common sense holds promise to bridge the gap between high literacy researchers with evidence-based approach to milk production and tacitly-based, low-literacy milk producers to better develop the milk industry in Brazil.

We describe an ongoing collaboration with the District Six Museum, in Cape Town, aimed at designing a storytelling prototype for preserving personal experience narratives. We detail the design of an interactive virtual environment (VE) which was inspired by a three month ethnography of real-life oral storytelling. The VE places the user as an audience member in a virtual group listening to two storytelling agents capable of two forms of interactivity: (1)

User Questions

: users can input (via typing) questions to the agent; and (2)

Exchange Structures

: the agent poses questions for users to answer. Preliminary results suggest an overall positive user experience, especially for exchange structures. User questions, however, appear to require improvement.

In a cooperative mixed-initiative system, timely and effective dialogue between the system and user is important to ensure that both sides work towards producing the most effective results, and this is affected by how disruptive any interruptions are as the user completes their primary task. A disruptive interaction means the user may become irritated with the system, or might take longer to deal with the interruption and provide information that the system needs to continue. Disruption is influenced both by the nature of the interaction and when it takes place in the context of the user’s progress through their main task. We describe an experiment based on a prototype cooperative video annotation system designed to explore the impact of interruptions, in the form of questions posed by the system that the user must address. Our findings demonstrate a preference towards questions presented in context with the content of the video, rather than at the natural opportunities presented by transitions in the video. This differs from previous research which concentrates on interruptions in the form of notifications.

Multitasking environments cause people to be interrupted constantly, often interfering with their ongoing tasks, activities and goals. This paper focuses on the disruption caused by interruptions and presents a disruption mediating approach for balancing the negative effects of interruptions with respect to the benefits of interruptions relevant to the user goals. Our work shows how Disruption Manager utilizing context and relationships to user goals and tasks can assess when and how to present interruptions in order to reduce their disruptiveness.

The Disruption Management Framework was created to take into consideration motivations that influence people’s interruption decision process. The framework predicts the effects from interruptions using a three-layer software architecture: a knowledge layer including information about topics related to the ongoing activity, an intermediate layer including summarized information about the user tasks and their stages, and a low level layer including implicit low granularity information, such as mouse movement, context switching and windowing activity to support fail-safe disruption management when no other contextual information is available. The manager supports implicit monitoring of ongoing behaviors and categorizing possible disruptive outcome given the user and system state. The manager monitors actions and uses common sense reasoning in its model to compare communication stream topics with topics files that are active on the desktop.

Experiments demonstrate that disruption manager significantly reduces the impact of interruptions and improve people’s performance in a multi-application desktop scenario with email and instant messaging. In a complex order taking activity, disruption manager yielded a 26% performance increase for tasks prioritized as being important and a 32.5% increase for urgent tasks. The evaluation shows that the modulated interruptions did not distract or troubled users. Further, subjects using the Disruption Manager were 5 times more likely to respond effectively to instant messages.

This paper describes a post-hoc analysis of the relationship between the socialness of an interruptive notification and the emotional tone of the words used to describe the experience through a One-Word-Response (OWR). Out of the 89 responses analyzed, 73% of participants used emotional words to describe their notification experiences. There was a significant relationship between the emotional tone of a OWR response and the socialness of an interruptive notification experience and participants were 3.2 more likely to describe social interruptive notifications with positive words than negative words.

Interaction is, intrinsically, a multi-thread process. Supported by our various senses, our ability to speak, and the structure of our body and mind we can get simultaneously involved in multiple interactions, using different resources for each of them. This paper analyses natural interactions and the impact of using parallel channels in peripheral interactions. Applying a similar approach to human-computer interaction, we present a Tangible User Interface proof of concept to analyze the advantages and weakness of parallel interaction in computer-based systems. To this end, two tangible applications -to control the profile status in social networks and to control an Intelligent Room- are compared to their usual graphical counterparts, presenting the results of a user study and analyzing the implications of its results.

This paper presents a case study on the iterative design of a system for delivering in-situ information services to users’ mobile devices using proximity-based technologies. The design advances from a questionnaire study of the users’ attitudes and needs toward such information services via several incremental prototypes evaluated in a usability lab and at a university campus to the final version subjected to longitudinal evaluation "in-the-wild" in a city center. The final prototype is a hybrid interface where the users can select from an interactive public display the information services to be downloaded to their personal mobile devices over no-cost Bluetooth connection. The results include an empirical comparison of different models for delivering such information services, and a quantitative analysis of the usage of the system by the general public over a period of 100 days. Our findings suggest that multiple environmental factors strongly affect the usage of the system. Furthermore, the usage varies distinctly between different contexts, and there is a strong correlation between location and usage patterns. Finally, we present a number of guidelines for designing and deploying this type of hybrid user interfaces.

Current interaction techniques for mobile map-based applications suffer from several usability problems. Tilt interaction provides an alternative form of interaction which combines the benefits of one handed interaction with intuitive physical gestures. Research has shown that tilt interaction suffers from a lack of controllability, high mental demand and practical concerns. In this paper, the design and evaluation of a new tilt interaction technique, called IntelliTilt, is described. IntelliTilt incorporates several intelligent techniques to address the shortcomings of tilt interaction. IntelliTilt was compared to a basic tilt interaction technique using a prototype mobile map-based application in an experiment. The results of this experiment showed that IntelliTilt was preferred by the participants and that it offered significant advantages in terms of mental demand, perceived efficiency and controllability.

Many current HCI, social networking, ubiquitous computing, and context aware designs, in order for the design to function, have access to, or collect, significant personal information about the user. This raises concerns about privacy and security, in both the research community and main-stream media. From a practical perspective, in the social world, secrecy and security form an ongoing accomplishment rather than something that is set up and left alone. We explore how design can support privacy as practical action, and investigate the notion of collective information-practice of privacy and security concerns of participants of a mobile, social software for ride sharing. This paper contributes an understanding of HCI security and privacy tensions, discovered while “designing in use” using a Reflective, Agile, Iterative Design (RAID) method.

When designing questionnaires for iPad an important design decision is whether to use popover listings or button listings for representing single-choice selections. In this paper we examined effects of each listing method on performance and subjective preferences when performing a non-linear selection task. A quantitative experiment (

N

= 39) with the two within-factors (1) listing method (popover versus button) and (2) task completion time (15s versus 7s versus 5s) was conducted. Results show subjects performing significantly better when using popovers, which they also strongly preferred. We attribute this to lower extraneous cognitive load and shorter forms, ultimately requiring less scrolling. Results also show the expected effect of task completion time on performance: the longer the allotted time, the higher the test scores.

This paper describes the development of a non-visual memory game based on the classic game ‘Simon

TM′

, where users are presented with a sequence of stimuli, which they need to replicate in the same order to progress to the next level. Information is presented using a combination of speech, non-speech audio and/or haptic cues, designed to aid blind users who are often excluded from mainstream gaming applications. Findings from an empirical study have revealed that when haptic feedback was presented in combination with other modalities, users successfully replicated more sequences, compared with presenting haptic feedback alone. We suggest that when developing a non-visual game using an unfamiliar input device, speech-based feedback is presented in conjunction with haptic cues.

A great deal of research has investigated the potential parameters of tactile feedback for virtual buttons. However, these studies do not take the possible effects of feedback latencies into account. Therefore, this research investigates the impact of tactile feedback delays on touchscreen keyboard usage. The first experiment investigated four tactile feedback delay conditions during a number entry task. The results showed that keypads with a constant delay (18 ms) and the smallest feedback delay variation were faster to use and produced less errors compared to conditions with wider delay variability. The experiment also produced an unexpected finding – users seemed to perceive buttons with longer delays as heavier, with a need for greater force when pressing. Therefore another experiment was conducted to investigate this phenomenon. Seven delay conditions were tested using a magnitude estimation method. The results indicate that using different latencies can be used to represent tactile weight in touchscreen interaction.

The primary users of home care technology often have significant sensory impairments. Multimodal interaction can make home care technology more accessible and appropriate, yet most research in the field of multimodal notifications is not aimed at the home but at office or high-pressure environments. This paper presents an experiment that compared the disruptiveness and effectiveness of visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory notifications. The results showed that disruption in the primary task was the same regardless of the notification modality. It was also found that differences in notification effectiveness were due to the inherent traits of a modality, e.g.olfactory notifications were slowest to deliver. The results of this experiment allow researchers and developers to capitalize on the different properties of multimodal techniques, with significant implications for home care technology and technology targeted at users with sensory impairments.

This study adapts existing tools (Jigsaw and a text editor) to support multiple input devices, which were then used in a co-located collaborative intelligence analysis study conducted on a large, high-resolution display. Exploring the sensemaking process and user roles in pairs of analysts, the two-hour study used a fictional data set composed of 50 short textual documents that contained a terrorist plot and subject pairs who had experience working together. The large display facilitated the paired sensemaking process, allowing teams to spatially arrange information and conduct individual work as needed. We discuss how the space and the tools affected the approach to the analysis, how the teams collaborated, and the user roles that developed. Using these findings, we suggest design guidelines for future co-located collaborative tools.

Digital tabletop surfaces afford multiple user interaction and collaboration. Hybrid tabletops that include both tangible and multi-touch elements are increasingly being deployed in public settings (e.g. Microsoft Surface, reacTable). Designers need to understand how the different characteristics of tangible and multi-touch interface elements affect collaborative activity on tabletops. In this paper, we report on a mixed methods exploratory study of a collaborative tabletop game about sustainable development. We explore the effects of tangible and multi-touch tools on collaborative activity. Forty-five participants, in trios, played the game using both versions of the tools. Our analysis includes quantitative performance measures, qualitative themes and behavioral measures. Findings suggest that both tangible and multi-touch tools enabled effective tool use and that collaborative activity was more influenced by group dynamics than tool modality. However, we observed that the physicality of the tangible tools facilitated individual ownership and announcement of tool use, which in turn supported group and tool awareness.

Social activities such as collaborative work and group negotiation can be an essential part of information seeking processes. However, they are not sufficiently supported by today’s information systems as they focus on individual users working with PCs. Reality-based UIs with their increased emphasis on social, tangible, and surface computing have the potential to tackle this problem. By blending characteristics of real-world interaction and social qualities with the advantages of virtual computer systems, they inherently change the possibilities for collaboration, but until now this phenomenon has not been explored sufficiently. Therefore, this paper presents an experimental user study that aims at clarifying the impact such reality-based UIs and its characteristics have on collaborative information seeking processes. Two different UIs have been developed for the purpose of this study. One is based on an interactive multi-touch tabletop in combination with on-screen tangibles, therefore qualifying as a reality-based UI, while the other interface uses three synchronized PCs each controlled by keyboard and mouse. A comparative user study with 75 participants in groups of three was carried out to observe fundamental information seeking tasks for co-located collaboration. The study shows essential differences of emerging group behavior, especially in terms of role perception and seeking strategies depending on the two different UIs.

This paper reports from the first systematic investigation on how to guide people to a destination using the haptic feedback of a mobile phone and its experimental evaluation. The aim was to find a navigation aid that works hands-free, reduces the users’ distraction, and can be realised with widely available handheld devices. To explore the design space we developed and tested different prototypes. Drawing on the results of these tests we present the concept of a tactile compass, which encodes the direction of a location "as the crow flies" in rhythmic patterns and its distance in the pause between two patterns. This paper also reports from the first experimental comparison of such tactile displays with visual navigation systems. The tactile compass was used to continuously display the location of a destination from the user’s perspective (e.g. ahead, close). In a field experiment including the tactile compass and an interactive map three conditions were investigated: tactile only, visual only, and combined. The results provide evidence that cueing spatial locations in vibration patterns can form an effective and efficient navigation aid. Between the conditions, no significant differences in the navigation performance were found. The tactile compass used alone could significantly reduce the amount of distractive interaction and together with the map it improved the participants’ confidence in the navigation system.

When researching interactive systems in the car, the design space can be divided into the following areas: driver, front seat passenger and rear seat. The latter has so far not been sufficiently addressed in HCI research, which results in an absence of implications for interaction designs in that space. This work presents a cultural probing study investigating the activities and the technology usage in the rear seat as social and physical space. The study was conducted with 20 families over a period of four weeks and unveiled aspects relevant for HCI research: aspects of diversion, educational motivation, togetherness, food as activity, physical space, perception of safety, and mobile computing. In relation to these areas, implications for the design and integration of interactive technology in the rear seat area are deduced. We show that cultural probing in the car is a promising and fruitful approach to get insights on passenger behavior and requirements for interactive systems. To improve the rear seat area and to show the potential of probing results to inform design, a design proposal for an interactive rear seat game called RiddleRide is introduced.

With a growing number of in-vehicle systems integrated in contemporary cars, the risk of driver distraction and lack of attention on the primary task of driving is increasing. One major research area concerns eyes-off-the-road and mind-off-the-road that are manifested in different ways for input and output techniques. In this paper, we investigate in-vehicle systems input and output techniques to compare their effects on driving behavior and attention. We compare four techniques touch and gesture (input) and visual and audio (output) in a driving simulator. Our results showed that the separation of input and output is non-trivial. Gesture input resulted in significantly fewer eye glances compared to touch input, but also resulted in poorer primary driving task performance. Further, using audio as output resulted in significantly fewer eye glances, but on the other hand also longer task completion times and inferior primary driving task performance compared to visual output.