Conference Program

This paper introduces Thaddeus—a mobile phone-tablet system for mobile interaction with information visualisations. Our work is motivated by the roles smartphones and tablets play in everyday interactive spaces as well as anticipated developments in mobile sensing technology. We also aim to meet the social challenges of a data-driven society. We designed and implemented a system that uses mutual spatial awareness as an input mode, producing new interaction patterns for mobile settings. We gathered extensive user insight from two design studies and evaluated the system in a controlled experiment. We used qualitative and quantitative measures in the final evaluation. The results show that the system does not have a significant impact on performance, but users perceive it as pleasurable and easy to use. Thaddeus offers an enhanced user experience when exploring information on the go, and provides insights for future designs of mobile multi-device systems.

In this paper we present Sparkle, an ambient light display for dynamic off-screen points of interest (POIs) embedded with a tablet computer. We report on the design process using a virtual prototype to inform design decisions for the physical prototype used in the evaluation as well as on the results of our experiment. We show that Sparkle reduces a user’s workload and increases the perceived usability. Compared to state-of-the-art on-screen display techniques for off-screen POIs Sparkle proves to be robust and competitive. We contribute to the community by demonstrating the beneficial use of ambient light displays in combination with tablet size computers. Ambient light can serve as an alternative in situations where on-screen aids are not permissible.

Existing car navigation systems require visual or auditory attention. Providing the driver with directional cues could potentially increase safety. We conducted an experiment comparing directional haptic and non-speech audio cues to visual cueing in a navigation task. Participants (N=16) drove the Lane Change Test simulator with different navigational cues. The participants were to recognize the directional cue (left or right) by responding as fast as possible using a tablet. Reaction times and errors were measured. The participants were also interviewed about the different cues and filled up the NASA-TLX questionnaire. The results showed that in comparison to visual cues all the other cues were reacted to significantly faster. Haptic only cueing resulted in the most errors, but it was evaluated as the most pleasant and the least physically demanding. The results suggest that non-visual cueing could improve safety.

An automatic technique that scrolls the window content while the user is reading the text in the window has been implemented. Scrolling is triggered by gaze moving outside the reader’s preferred reading zone. The reading patterns instigated by automatic scrolling are analyzed both quantitatively and using gaze path visualizations. Automatic scrolling is shown to result in smooth reading activity.

In the present paper we report on the design decisions and the field test results of an inclusive mobile tourist guide app, the Time Machine. The historical information is conveyed by sound and the navigation information by haptics, while the app can be controlled eyes-free by a combination of on-screen and free-form gestures. To emphasize the eyes-free use, 9 of 11 test users recruited had severe visual impairment or blindness. The field test results show that users find that the Time Machine is fun, stimulating and usable, but also provide valuable information for future designers of inclusive apps / location based services. We argue that the Time Machine provides an exemplar of how one can design inclusively in a way that benefits both users who are sighted and users who have a visual impairment.

Although both user experience and perceived usability have been extensively studied, the relationship between the two is less well understood. Prior empirical research suggests that perceived usability influences especially negative user experiences, but the effect depend on goals, contexts, and expectations. The paper contributes on this theme with description of a field study covering self-reporting of 12 subjects using a new smartphone. The findings confirm some earlier views on the relationship but also permit a richer understanding. Unlike prior work, the results show that perceived usability can play an important role in ambivalent experiential episodes. These episodes emerge from a clash between desired uses and either poor perceived usability or lack of appropriateness in the broader social context. We discuss our findings in relation to prior studies.

Many methods and tools have been proposed to assess the User Experience (UX) of interactive systems. However, while researchers have empirically studied the relevance and validity of several UX evaluation methods, few studies only have explored expert-based evaluation methods for the assessment of UX. If experts are able to assess something as complex and inherently subjective as UX, how they conduct such an evaluation and what criteria they rely on, thus remain open questions. In the present paper we report on 33 UX experts performing a UX evaluation on 4 interactive systems. We provided the experts with UX Cards, a tool based on a psychological-needs driven approach, developed to support UX Design and Evaluation. Results are encouraging and show that UX experts encountered no major issues to conduct a UX evaluation. However, significant differences exist between individual elements that experts have reported on and the overall assessment they made of the systems.

Automation permeates everyday life in the disguise of fully-automated coffee makers, dishwashers, or self-driving cars. While being convenient, such automation may have detrimental effects on the experience gained through the (semi-)automated activity. This paper argues to be more sensitive to the experiential costs of everyday automation. To this end, it provides an in-depth quantitative and qualitative comparison of a more automated and a more manual way of brewing coffee. Brewing coffee manually was more positive and more need fulfilling. This was due to the more intense experience of competence and stimulation. Automation focused people on the outcome. The process became meaningless, degraded to “waiting time.” Overall, the experience became “flat”, significantly less meaningful and enjoyable, but also less demanding. Automation turned a potentially experience-rich activity into something less satisfactory for the sake of convenience. Since we believe that technology should make everyday activities experientially richer rather than “designing them away,” we discuss the emerging challenges for an experiential design of everyday automation.

First impressions are formed very fast but they last. Consecutive approach-avoidance behavior is formed almost instantly and persists over time. The effect of the first impression of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) of desktop webpages on subsequent evaluation is well documented in the literature. Less research has focused on mobile interfaces. To cover this gap, this paper reports two studies. The first study confirmed the persistence of first impressions on mobile interfaces evaluation, although it suggested that exposure time may be longer. The second study extends previous work on automatic evaluation from desktop to mobile interfaces. The linking theme between the studies is that of visual complexity, which is a more objective, yet powerful, predictor of aesthetic evaluation. Using six automatic metrics (color depth, dominant colors, visual clutter, symmetry, figure-ground contrast and edge congestion), in study 2 we explained 40% of variation in subjective complexity scores and 36% of variation in aesthetics scores.

Writing is one of the oldest human activities, dating back as far as 3200 BCE. This paper provides an industrial case study about understanding the creative writing process using interviews and directed storytelling on aspiring and established writers and educators, performed during a one year capstone project, where teams of HCI students pair up with industrial designers and developers in order to solve a real world design problem. After 26 interviews and 55 hours of analysis, four concepts were used as dimensions to analyse creative writing applications: serendipity, haven, evolution and shuffle. Based on these ideas, we developed a series of prototypes by gradually increasing the fidelity of each successive prototype and making changes elicited from user feedback. The culmination of our process is Yarn, a new writing application. Yarn helps writers “unravel their story.” With Yarn, a writer can (i) Play with structure; (ii)
Easily move chunks of writing; (ii)
Create alternatives of sections, and (iv)
Write in a beautiful distraction-free way.

This paper discusses how user research informed a large-scale industrial research project. Insights about users had a strong strategic influence, guiding the design process and affecting the software application’s concept design. User research had an influence on design work too, but more indirectly. Actual design work on interfaces, mock-ups, and graphic design was mainly driven by subjective experiences, design skills, design know-how and design patterns. Furthermore, we experienced non-expert usability parlance to have a strong influence on interaction design work.

This case study describes a method and a practice developed at Nokia where we assessed the degree of delight in the user experience of smartphones, and advocated ways to design for more delightful experiences. The described method combines competitive analysis, qualitative assessment and numeric scoring on design. The purpose of the method was to advocate designs that users would potentially experience as more delightful than competitors. Through examples, we describe how we constructed the heuristic and the measure of delight in UX and discuss the contributions, limitations and evolution of the evaluation practice within the company.

The process of trying to understand users’ perspectives and their mental model is inherently challenging, as anyone who has been involved in conducting field studies and interviewing users can attest to. At the heart of this process is the need to create trust between the interviewer and the interviewee in order to build bonds which facilitate richer information exchange. Building apprenticeship relations is one approach which sees the interviewee as teacher and the interviewer as student/apprentice. However establishing these relations, particularity within a short time frame and within an industrial domain, can be difficult. This paper therefore addresses some of the challenges associated with building these relationships and how researchers can strengthen their connection with the users they interact with.

Presence, the participants’ feeling of “being there” in an environment, is important for usability studies, as this can affect their outcomes. We aim at extending the concept of presence from virtual to real environments in the context of usability studies. We compare two environments – a virtual field environment (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment [CAVE]) and a real laboratory environment – in a between-subjects study by means of presence. In both environments, we evaluate the usability and learnability of a mobile application. Data (n = 65) shows higher ecological validity for the real environment, but higher engagement as well as higher negative effects for the virtual environment. There is no significant difference between usability and learnability between the two environments. Presence factors are significantly related to usability in the two environments. The results suggest that – although there are differences in presence – virtual and real environments perform equally in usability studies.

Mobile projection offers an interesting technology for creating displays on any surface without a situated screen. In this paper, we investigate two concepts that use handheld projection to see to other places through a virtual window. Firstly, we present a projector phone based prototype which, when pointed to the walls of a room, reveals images and a video stream from the physical space on the other side of the wall. Secondly, a novel handheld dual-display virtual reality browser that opens a virtual window to a remote location is presented. This prototype combines two displays, a screen and a projected display. Both concepts were evaluated in user studies (n=22 and n=23). We report, for example, that mobile projector based browsing was considered more fun and inspiring than a screen and mouse format, and that the horizon level of the projected image should be kept horizontal when browsing.

Examples of mixed reality mobile applications and research combining virtual and real world data in the same view have emerged during recent years. However, currently there is little knowledge of users’ perceptions comparing the role of virtual and real world representations in mobile user interfaces (UIs). In this paper, we investigate the initial user perceptions when comparing augmented reality and augmented virtuality UIs in a mobile application. To chart this, we conducted a field study with 35 participants, where they interacted with a simulated mobile mixed reality (MMR) application with two alternative UI designs, and an online survey completed by over a hundred people. Our findings reveal perceived differences e.g. in immersion, recognition, clarity and overall pleasantness, and provide insight to user interface design and methodological challenges of research in the area of mobile mixed reality.

Persuading children to eat healthily can be challenging. Parents and guardians commonly have trouble encouraging young children to eat their vegetables, who often prefer less wholesome alternatives. Parents regularly employ a range of methods that encourage or distract children to eat food they don’t want to eat. Digital technologies, such as augmented reality and interactive animations offer new possibilities for enhancing this process. Our research is concerned with how such technology interventions can be used to change behavior in fussy children’s eating habits by altering the context of ‘playing’ with food. FoodWorks was designed to digitally augment a plate of food and provide rewards for completion of the meal. An exploratory in the wild study was conducted using it with 7 families, for children aged between 3-9. The findings were encouraging, providing new insights on social interactions and the effects digital augmentation can have on eating behavior.

Understanding the temporal aspects of user experience (UX) has received increasing attention in the HCI community. However, little empirical evidence is available on how practitioners in product development companies evaluate the usefulness or actually use long-term UX evaluation data in their work. In this study, we explore how practitioners (e.g., managers, designers and UX specialists) evaluate the usefulness of long-term UX evaluation results to their own work. Three case studies were conducted with longitudinal and retrospective methods in a company developing interactive sports products. Our findings suggest that long-term UX evaluation provides results that are perceived as interesting, relevant and useful by practitioners. Potential uses for the results were e.g., verifying practitioners’ expectations, planning future work, understanding changes in UX, the development of future products, and updating current software products. Future research should focus on how to provide long-term UX evaluation results in more efficient manner to benefit product development.

The article describes a case study conducted in collaboration with a Polish mobile provider. The goal of the study was to design a means to support business experts in aligning their requirements and user needs at an early stage of the design process of a mobile service offering. The described approach is proposed as a new way of mediating business and user requirements for complex services.

Despite the growing importance for practice, user experience is often a blurry and doubtful concept both for newcomers and for the industry. Such ambiguity stems from a emergent community of practitioners with diverse backgrounds, to whom user experience encompasses countless interpretations. This paper reports on an online survey deployed to grasp the state of user experience evaluation practice. We learned that evaluations are mainly conducted by HCIs, software engineers or designers and are perceived to strongly impact the user interface, as well as the business logic level. Additionally, informal, low cost methods are widely used and, although most methods rely on paper prototypes, a single artifact is used per evaluation and working prototypes are favored. Moreover, evaluations happen at multiple project phases and various methods are used. Finally, results shows that evaluations are constrained by evaluators’ background or occupation. This compels the community to pursue an end-to-end methodology to prevent it.

This paper examines the obstacles for and discusses possible solutions to successfully establishing a User Centred Perspective (UCP) in organisations. The analysis is made with the use of the theory Communities of Practice (CoP). The analysis is based on a cross case study based on two longitudinal action research projects. In these studies we identified four CoP considered important; users, core business managers, IT coordinators and system developers. The analysis shows in what ways the communities contribute to the difficulties for a successful establishment of UCP. One example is marginalising the IT coordinator community, and another is imperialism of the system developer community as well as the lack of boundary spanning skills. The results indicate that we need to influence all levels in organisations, with a focus on boundaries between communities, in order to successfully introduce a UCP. Boundary spanning objects need to be identified and knowledge sharing needs to be enhanced.

Although Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has thrived well in the academia, its practice, and that of its related fields such as interaction design, usability engineering, and user experience, has yet to be much appreciated by software practitioners. This does not help the future of HCI and its related fields. In order to grasp the gap between HCI in academy and practice, a study was conducted surveying and interviewing Estonian software industry representatives. The goal of the study was to depict not only HCI practices but also to understand what is it that this representatives expect from the field. The purpose of the study was to develop a master level curriculum with insights from the industry, that would facilitate the uptake of HCI and its related fields activities in the local software development industry. The results of study show that most of the participants are involved with service, system or software design and these consider that educational programmes in HCI should be predominantly technical, hands-on, market-oriented with strong input from abroad. The study also shows that the curriculum should include compulsory internships, and be either project or course-based.

In practical usability engineering feedback is only useful if it cost effectively leads to design changes. Several studies have looked into different feedback formats when passing on usability problems to software developers. Research has shown positive results both when providing developers with redesign proposals, and when actively involving software developers in the redesign process. Through facilitation and lecturing in interaction design provided by usability specialists, we wanted to further explorer potential advantages of actively involving developers in a collaborative redesign process. The leading question was: “Can software developers contribute actively to alternative redesign suggestions?” Under the guidance of usability specialists, we found that the developers were able to constructively reconsider the existing design based on a top down approach. In this paper we report a hands-on approach towards running such a redesign workshop.

In this paper we discuss the opportunities and challenges of the recently introduced Lean UX software development philosophy. The point of view is product design and development in a software agency. Lean UX philosophy is identified by three ingredients: design thinking, Lean production and Agile development. The major challenge for an agency is the organizational readiness of the client organization to adopt a new way of working. Rather than any special tool or practice, we see that the renewal of user-centered design and development is hindered by existing purchase processes and slow decision making patterns.

We report how a request for routine usability work rapidly evolved into a novel agile process for evaluation and redesign. This process is described and then analysed to identify reasons for success. This analysis supports realistic knowledge transfer between User Experience professionals by outlining how similar future processes could succeed. Realistically, professionals must work to get approaches to work. Uncritical copying of concrete details is unrealistic.

There is currently a distinct lack of design consideration associated with autonomous vehicles and their impact on human factors. Research has yet to consider fully the impact felt by the driver when he/she is no longer in control of the vehicle [12]. We propose that spatialised auditory feedback could be used to enhance driver awareness to the intended actions of autonomous vehicles. We hypothesise that this feedback will provide drivers with an enhanced sense of control. This paper presents a driving simulator study where 5 separate auditory feedback methods are compared during both autonomous and manual driving scenarios. We found that our spatialised auditory presentation method alerted drivers to the intended actions of autonomous vehicles much more than all other methods and they felt significantly more in control during scenarios containing sound vs. no sound. Finally, that overall workload in autonomous vehicle scenarios was lower compared to manual vehicle scenarios.

Current development in multimodal interfaces allows us to interact with digitally represented objects. Sadly, these representations are often poor due to technical limitations in representing some of the sensorial properties. Here we explore the possibility of overcoming these limitations by exploiting multisensory integration processes and propose a sound-based interaction technique to alter the perceived materiality of a surface being touched and to shape users’ touch behavior. The latter can be seen both as a cue of, and as a means to reinforce, the altered perception. We designed a prototype that dynamically alters the texture-related sound feedback based on touch behavior, as in natural surface touch interactions. A user study showed that the frequency of the sound feedback alters texture perception (coldness and material type) and touch behavior (velocity and pressure). We conclude by discussing lessons learnt from this work in terms of HCI applications and questions opened by this research.

This paper presents an explorative study investigating the applicability of speech-only interaction in the everyday life of elderly people. For the purpose of this study we connected an iPhone 4s including the Siri application with a Bluetooth enabled headset. By pressing the Siri activation button on the iPhone the participants were able to directly access the iPhone services via voice without using a graphical user-interface (GUI). The aim of this study was to investigate the usability, user experience and acceptance of speech-only interaction by elderly users. The results indicate a high potential of speech-only interaction for elderly users not only in indoor but also in outdoor environments. The participants showed an overall positive attitude and high acceptance of speech interaction. They particularly appreciated the simplicity of this form of interaction and indicated to use speech-only interaction in their everyday life.

Active patient participation in audiological treatment is central in improving the benefits and satisfaction that patients experience in the use of hearing aids. However, involving patients in their own treatment is challenging. Clinics often lack appropriate tools for information sharing and collaboration between patients and audiologists. In addition, patients may find it difficult to relate the treatment provided at the clinic to the hearing and hearing aid problems they experience in their daily listening environments. To help remedy these challenges we have investigated how hearing aid users and audiologists look on the idea of using shared tabletop interfaces, in combination with simulated sound environments, to support active patient participation during hearing aid adjustments. We have conducted three workshops in which hearing aid users and audiologists have co-designed low-fidelity mock-ups of tabletop interfaces. This paper reports on central design concepts and considerations that emerged through this work, and discusses the main design lessons that can be learned from this.

This paper describes the user-centered design of ALADIN, a speech recognition system targeted at people with physical disabilities, many of who also have speech impairments. ALADIN is a self-learning system, designed to allow users to use their own specific words and sentences, adapting itself to the speech characteristics of the user. The test iterations described in this paper focus on the interaction issues associated with adaptive speech technology. We investigated how users address a speech interface, observing the amount of variation in wording and sentence structure, and determining the specific requirements of speech-impaired users. We discuss how the results have informed the design of ALADIN, and how these design choices aligned with the technical implementation of the speech system.

Large amounts of data available on the web, for example reviews, tweets, and forum postings, contain user narratives on interaction with products. Finding usability issues in such user narratives offers an interesting alternative to traditional usability testing. To leverage such data for identifying usability issues, we (I) devise a methodology for building automated extraction tools for usability issues; (II) perform empirical assessment of such tools by training a number of classifiers to extract sentences describing usability issues for two digital cameras and a children’s tablet; (III) perform quantitative and qualitative comparisons between the usability issues identified by the classifiers and those identified and assessed by two traditional methods: heuristic evaluation and think aloud testing. Our results show that it is possible to build and train algorithms for extracting actionable usability issues, but raise serious concerns about the practical future prospects for supplementing traditional evaluation methods with automated extraction algorithms.

Though customer support is argued to be a useful source of usability insight, how to benefit from customer support in usability evaluation is hardly made the subject of scientific research. In this paper, we present an approach to gather usability insight from users when they call customer support. We also present a case implementation of this approach: an evaluation of a telecom operator’s customer website. We find that the proposed approach provides insight in usability problems, technical issues, and issues of strategic character. Though the majority of the website users called customer support because they were obstructed in their attempt to use available self-service support options, a substantial proportion of the users called customer support as a planned part of their task. On the basis of the study findings we present practical implications and suggest future research.

Using software for model-based usability evaluation is uncommon today, as the modelling process is considered as overhead to the actual design work. The aim of the present paper is to describe a concept, which may make model-based usability evaluation more worthwhile and feasible. The concept is based on sampling user models based on demographic characteristics; these characteristics may help to estimate the severity of usability problems found with the help of the user model. To sample representative user models, a simple Bayesian network (BN) was constructed, holding information about age and gender distributions, and attitudes towards technology. The results of the simulation suggest that a BN is an appropriate tool to store user information for modelling purposes, and thus may improve model-based usability evaluation.

This paper introduces an approach for evaluating user interfaces built on visual rhetoric and the rhetorical notion of function. A personal informatics mobile application has been selected to exemplify the application of this approach. Through the results of this example evaluation, this paper discusses the consequence of applying a rhetorical evaluation to a user interface. In this discussion, it is observed that inspecting the function performed by interface components takes into account experiences, communication, and meaning. In addition, it fosters reflection and criticism.

The research reported in this paper seeks to advance the discussion on cultural usability and its implementation among non-western users. This investigation focuses on the effect of culture on the quality of usability evaluation results among Kenyan young professionals and Kenyan farmers. Literature review and field observation studies were used to develop a theoretical framework, which in turn was used to scaffold a usability evaluation method ‘Harambee’, depicting working together during the evaluation exercise. The ‘Harambee’ and Retrospective Protocol methods were implemented and usability results compared. The quality of the farmers’ usability results consistently improved with the ‘Harambee’ method but not so with the young professionals. Despite being from the same culture-group, the effect of culture on quality of usability results seems to differ among high-end and low-end users. Consequently, when adapting UEMs, there is a need to go beyond the national cultural level and focus on the user-type too.

What are the Grand Challenges for Interactive Technology Design in support of Proactive Health? According to the outcome of a recent Dagstuhl Workshop on this question, there are 5 challenges: measures, motivation, meta-reflection, frameworks and epistemology. The consensus was that if we coordinate our research efforts around these challenges, our research can make a real, meaningful and measurable difference both now and longer term. Our goal in this panel is three-fold: 1) to present these challenges to the NordiCHI community 2) to seek the community’s active feedback on and refinement of these proposals 3) to develop with the group next meaningful steps towards success.

On future battlefields, increasingly more sensor information will become available for military commanders to support mission execution. To improve (shared) situational awareness, decision-making and communication in face of this increased amount of information, the design of command and control (C2) systems must match the mental models and information needs of commanders. We compare two C2 interface variants, based on different rationales: decision support and personalization. Decision support integrates large amounts of information into categorized overviews, while personalization provides flexibility in (sensor) data representation and comparison. Four experienced commanders carried out simulated military field operations with both interface variants. User actions, eye movements, decision-making quality, situational awareness and mental effort were assessed, as well as interface usability. From this, we identified which interface features provided added value, depending on the tactical situation. This way, the best of both worlds can be combined to improve the design of future C2 systems.

There are many task scenarios that require active engagement and analysis of video content. And many of these tasks, such as training for competitive athletics, rely on identifying, analyzing, and presenting relationships between separate videos, which is facilitated by simultaneous viewing. However, current online video interaction is designed with a focus on straightforward distribution and passive consumption of a single video only. Creating an online player that supports the playback of, and interaction with, two or more videos raises a myriad of design choices. In this paper, we contribute an exploration of the design space of multi-video interaction and present two different prototypes that can be viewed as probes into this interesting, under-served area of user experience.

Flexible human-robot industrial coproduction will be important in many small and middle-sized companies in the future. One of the major challenges in a flexible robot cell is how to transfer information between the human and the robot with help of existing and safety approved equipment. In this paper a case study will be presented where the first half focus on data transfer to the robot communicating the human’s position and movements forcing the robot to respond to the triggers. The second half focuses on how to visualize information about the settings and assembly order to the human. The outcome was successful and flexible, efficient coproduction could be achieved but also a number of new challenges were found.

During information foraging, knowledge workers iteratively seek, filter, read, and extract information. When using multiple information sources and different applications for information processing, re-examination of activities for validation of previous decisions or re-discovery of previously used information sources is challenging. In this paper, we present a novel representation of cross-application histories to support recall of past operations and re-discovery of information resources. Our graphical history consists of a cross-scale visualization combining an overview node-link diagram of used desktop resources with nested (animated) snapshot sequences, based on a recording of the visual screen output during the users’ desktop work. This representation makes key elements of the users’ tasks visually stand out, while exploiting the power of visual memory to recover subtle details of their activities. In a preliminary study, users found our graphical history helpful to recall details of an information foraging task and commented positively on the ability to expand overview nodes into snapshot and video sequences.

This paper reflects on the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) with techno-spirituality and science fiction (SF). The paper considers science fiction treatments of spirituality, religion and “the numinous” — a mysterious presence that evokes fascination, awe and sometimes dread — as stimulus for exploring techno-spiritual design through “imaginary abstracts”, a form of design fiction. It presents an imaginary abstract — a summary of a paper that has not been written about a prototype that does not exist — to explore possible user reactions to an artificial intelligence system that provides spiritual advice drawn from diverse sacred texts as relevant to the user’s question. The paper argues that SF is a valuable resource for creating design fiction and may help HCI build a vocabulary for techno-spiritual experiences.

A number of technologies have been developed to help users manage their digital legacy, however few user contributions in this space have been solicited from older adults. This is surprising given that older people may have to cope with a digital inheritance but be poorly equipped to do so. The current paper describes three phases of research that explore older adults understanding of and preferences for digital legacy. In phase I, we conducted a large-scale scoping exercise designed to elicit relevant scenarios around digital legacy. In phase II, we presented older adults with a selection of legacy prompts and provocations in order to promote a discussion of digital bequests. In phase III we used life-logging scenarios as prompts in an inter-generational workshop designed to elicit discussion between digital natives and older adults. This work contributes to our understanding of digital legacy from the perspective of older adults and emphasises the importance they place on family, personalisation and control of digital legacy support.

Being able to orient in the vicinity of the home and independently go shopping or visiting a friend can become increasingly difficult when a person suffers from memory decline. The adaption of traditional navigation apps based on satellite positioning could provide an aid, but there are several questions to investigate related to the design and function of such an app. These questions include how to assist pedestrian wayfinding on an appropriate level, how to communicate the position precision and how to receive information and interact while walking. The paper reports on a study where two prototypes supporting different navigation strategies were tested in a realistic outdoor task. The results show that both prototypes led test users to the intended goal positions, and that users have different preferences how they want to be helped in wayfinding tasks, both in how detailed instructions should be and what feedback modalities they prefer.

For a long time people have collected mementos; items kept as reminder of a person, place or event. Practices of memento creation are constantly changing; for instance through the accessibility of digital photography. Still, we most often create mementos of special occasions such as weddings or holidays. However, besides these milestones, we cherish certain experiences from our everyday life. This paper describes a cultural probe study exploring which memories of everyday life become valuable. Our findings confirm that seemingly mundane experiences can become valuable. More specifically, a memory was seen as valuable if it: was regularly repeated, had social value, continued in the present, influenced life, was exemplary of character or showed a contrast. The moment memories become valuable is difficult to recognize and often few media were created of everyday life experiences. We discuss the implications of these findings for designing systems for creating mementos of everyday life.

While smartphones are increasing in size and complex features, new form factors for simple communication devices are emerging. In this paper, we present the design process for a wrist worn communication device, which enables the user to send text messages over a paired mobile phone. The process includes concept design, user evaluation, design iteration, prototype implementation, and evaluation of alternative interaction techniques. Our particular focus is towards the use of naturally tactile interfaces in a wearable wristband form factor. We present how users perceive deformable communication device concepts and two alternative squeeze based interaction techniques.

Touch screens became truly pervasive through the success of smartphones and tablet PCs. Several approaches to further improve the interaction with touch screens have been proposed. In this paper we combine and extend two of these trends. We present a mobile 3D screen that consists of a stack of displays and is touch sensitive on both display sides. This design makes the screen independent from the user’s view angle. Using a touch-sensitive back enables back-of-device interaction to avoid the fat-finger problem. Combining back-of-device interaction with a transparent display also avoids occlusion of the user’s finger on the back through the device. Through a study we investigate how back and front touch improves interaction with 3D content and show how back-of-device interaction is improved if the user can actually see the finger on the back.

Designing the look and feel of multi-touch applications is a challenging task, especially in the early sketching phase when it is imperative to quickly generate as many ideas as possible. There are numerous techniques and tools to conceptualize the appearance of a user interface but few solutions for rapidly creating and evaluating interaction ideas. To solve this problem, we propose a concept which enables designers to quickly create simple transitions that are controlled using continuous gestures. As proof of concept we implemented Tiquid, a multi-touch tool designed for sketching interactions during the very early stages of interface development.

We introduce a model (called Filter-Fidelity-Profiles), which allows us to describe, classify and systematically compare prototypes for tangible systems. Our Filter-Fidelity-Profiles (FFP) are based on two axes. One axis (the filter) reflects the quality of elements represented by the prototype. It provides a product centric, structured view on the design space of the final system. The second axis defines the fidelity (closeness) of these elements in relationship to those of the final system. Based on our literature survey, as well as our experience in industrial projects, the creation of prototypes is often more focused on capturing the design intent of their creators and lacks a more comprehensive view, considering the evaluation of these intents. Therefore it might miss opportunities in terms of efficiency and effectiveness during the design process. The reason being, that prototypes might have the wrong focus, and therefore might even cause errors during evaluation. In order to focus more on the relevant aspects of a prototype, our model works towards a definition of fundamental building blocks, and provides a language to describe them. This is a necessary first step to make prototypes comparable. Dedicated comparisons, allow us to investigate the variations between different prototypes in subsequent steps within the same project as well as between different processes and reveal its appropriateness for answering particular design questions. The FFP therefore aims to improve the usage of prototypes in general.

Human to human touch interaction (social touch) has not been investigated thoroughly as a control apparatus for gaming purposes although it holds potential. Therefore, we have developed the concept of DubTouch which is an interactive environment comprised of double sided display and touch areas where two players can touch each other. To investigate its potential, we conducted two step research method comprised of a user study and a design workshop. As a result of the user study with 10 participants, 6 categories of social touch patterns are generated. Two of these categories, found both intuitive and exclusive to DubTouch according to our evaluations. Design Workshop, with 10 experts, concluded with two games. The properties of control schemes of these games match with the results of the user study. Moreover, our observations showed that both games have created uncommon gaming experiences by utilizing social touch and by benefiting face to face positions of players.

As design practice has become more integrated in HCI research, there are on-going discussions around the role of design in research. Design research may take different forms, among which ‘Research for Design’ and ‘Research through Design’. While, by definition, these two differ in their focus and result – the first informs the creation of a design artefact and the second aims for a contribution to knowledge – this paper presents a case study of design research in which Research for and through Design were used iteratively to gain insight into hybrid craft – an integrated physical-digital craft form. Based on our own reflections, this paper discusses what different roles these two strategies may play depending on the research topic under study; the phase in the design process; and the level of abstraction of the research activity and knowledge gained. It thus argues that using Research for and through Design together is a powerful strategy.

We present a qualitative study based on interviews with makers engaging in a variety of critical making activities. As part of our attempt to understand what critical making is and can be, we are investigating what motivates makers, that is, seeking to understand the sorts of qualities that make making sufficiently attractive or valuable to warrant their participation. Whether making for themselves or to share with others, for fun or functionality, we found that empowerment, often defined in opposition to passive consumerism, was a recurrent theme in our interviews. We discuss the seemingly cyclical motivational and reward functions of maker empowerment in guiding and encouraging making activities, and consider the impact of a refined understanding of “critical making” as it can be leveraged and supported for future HCI research and design practice.

We investigate how the interaction with tangible interactive tabletops can be seen as a material exploration of form and sound. As the theoretical foundation for our analysis we build on John Dewey’s pragmatism as well as recent efforts to appropriate pragmatism for interaction design research. As the research platform for this investigation we developed an interactive tabletop, the Radar Table, which allows users to create soundscapes by manipulating tangible objects. The Radar Table was deployed ‘in the wild’ at a major Danish music festival, and based on video recordings we examine people’s dynamic exploration of sound through the interactive tabletop. The main contribution of the paper is the development of the theoretical foundation for understanding tangible tabletops as material interfaces that can be shaped and experimented with. We build on three of the basic concepts of pragmatism: situation, inquiry, and technology, which we develop further for the study of the dynamics of material interactions with tangible tabletops as part of a research strategy of appropriating pragmatism for use in interaction design and HCI research.

The materiality of interactive artifacts concerns, on one hand, design materials and activities, while on the other hand, it is strongly related to the users experiencing the materiality. However, current approaches to investigate the material and the user perspective face several shortcomings, as they focus on either the human or the artifact. In our paper, we describe a materiality-centered data analysis approach that puts the user and the artifact equally in the center of attention. Based on Actor-Network Theory and Bruno Latour’s thoughts on monads, we provide examples stemming from interactions in an industrial fabrication plant in order to illustrate the potentials of such a “monadological” approach for accessing materiality from a user and artifact perspective. We show that this approach allows alternating between a human- and an artifact-oriented perspective that finally leads to the identification of material attributes of actors that are less obvious.

Many argue that a decade-long crisis is crippling methods research in human-centred design (HCD). A recent paper critiques the widespread methods-as-recipe approach and suggests studying methods as part of HCD work; like in cooking, nobody cooks recipes, but they are used to bridge ingredients and meals. This paper extends that metaphor to dietary regimes that govern what meals are pursued. This focus shift expands the scope of relevant issues for methods research, thus creating a demand for open-ended and detailed case studies. Here we conducted a meta-review of five longstanding case studies that highlighted a key topic deserving attention: practitioners’ method mixes should be taken seriously. Single-method use by a project, professional, or company happens rarely (in this data, never). Considering method mixes affects discussions of method validity and reliability. Even more importantly, it opens for consideration how method use in real-life HCD work differs from recipe development and validation.

Because of the immersive user experience (UX), digital games are the most popular form of entertainment today. Game designers have found Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model useful in order to optimize UX. Although the flow model is widely used in both the game design and research, it tends to narrow UX down to an optimal flow channel. Based on the analysis of self-report data of 2,436 gamers, we studied psychological dimensions of UX within all four channels of the original flow model, namely, flow, boredom, apathy, and anxiety. Our analysis suggests renaming boredom, apathy, and anxiety channels respectively as relaxation, impassiveness, and overwhelm, at least in the context of digital games. Our results also point out the relevance of a multidimensional UX evaluation in future projects, which aim at enhancing UX outside the flow channel or assessing outcomes related to digital games.

Web design galleries are extremely popular for searching inspiration in web design, but there is a lack of rich search functions. Recent works in the field have focused on style similarity browsing, where one hops from design to design based on their style similarity. In this paper, we claim for a study of the multiple dimensions of this notion of style, and of its perception by humans. We advocate for ground truth datasets based on a first experiment.

In this paper we discuss mixed-method research in HCI. We report on an empirical literature study of the NordiChi 2012 proceedings which aimed to uncover and describe common mixed-method approaches, and to identify good practices for mixed-methods research in HCI. We present our results as mixed-method research design patterns, which can be used to design, discuss and evaluate mixed-method research. Three dominant patterns are identified and fully described and three additional pattern candidates are proposed. With our pattern descriptions we aim to lay a foundation for a more thoughtful application of, and a stronger discourse about, mixed-method approaches in HCI.

This paper departs from the idea that participatory design workshops take on the form of exchanges of viewpoints, wherein none of the involved designers, participants or objects completely define the process of exchange and its outcomes. This raises the question how this multidirectional process can still be moderated. We propose that designers take on a hybrid approach to moderate these exchanges, respecting the different viewpoints involved. We will do this by discussing the design game ‘MAP-it’. The hybridity in moderating a MAP-it workshop results from balancing diversity on two defining levels: (1) the composition of the groups of participants and (2) the differences in viewpoints on the addressed topics. We refer to three case studies that describe a series of MAP-it workshops. We conclude that an imbalance between these levels affects the hybrid flow of the workshop, leading to a shift in the role of the moderator and an adaptation of the game rules and pieces.

This paper presents results from participatory design studies conducted in a children’s hospital. We conducted extensive user studies to understand the specific needs and design constrains in a foetal-heart imaging unit. We describe the lessons learnt in the design process, focusing on the peculiarities of the setting and providing insights to help with the design of future systems in similar environments. We conducted panel discussions, semi-structured interviews, shadowing and constructed two system prototypes to learn about user interactions. We provide a description of the environment, a summary of the important stakeholders and an assessment of the current infrastructure. We noted a significant discrepancy between our case hospital and reported hospital practice. Our main contributions are: (1) a thorough understanding of a unique clinical environment gained through an extensive user study; (2) a detailed account of a participatory design process conducted in the setting and (3) a set of seven design considerations (lessons learnt) for future inquiries.

As both hero and villain, robots have played prominent roles in media such as films and books. Now, robots are no longer hidden away from the public conscious in fictive worlds or real-life factories. Robots are becoming a real part of our everyday encounters in environments such as healthcare settings. In this paper, we describe a discourse analysis of 60 YouTube videos that showcase robots in healthcare activities. Our narrative weaves three discourses that construct visions of the healthcare robot: (1) the miraculous robot as the robot that enhances patient care; (2) the mundane robot as the innocuous robot that integrates into the workflow seamlessly; and (3) the preternatural robot as the robot that is miraculous but never mundane. We propose several contrary visions to this dominant narrative of healthcare robots as a framework for future fieldwork that, we argue, should investigate the institutions of robotics.

Micro-neurosurgery has been revolutionized by advances in the surgical microscope such as high magnification that have increased a surgeon’s ability to have a clear view of the surgical field. High magnification necessitates frequent interaction with the microscope during an operation, but the current interaction technique for positioning and adjusting the microscope introduces risk factors that force a surgeon to remove hands from the operating field. The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential for hands-free interaction in micro-neurosurgery. We present findings from a contextual study of how neurosurgeons interact with the microscope and the surgical team, and discuss the implications of the findings for designing hands-free, especially gaze-based interaction techniques for micro-neurosurgery.

This paper addresses the timely and internationally relevant problem of designing a national integrated personal health record. Health care reforms around the world are changing the way health-related activities are performed. The goal is to empower patients to gain control of their healthcare information and foster health care team collaboration through integrated national health information systems. To accomplish this goal it is urgent to engage users in the use of these platforms. We present the process for creating a meaningful design strategy for a citizen portal that incorporates an integrated personal health record. This portal is part of a national health data platform cross- channel experience, connecting health care providers with patients, counting over 750,000 users. We applied a user experience design process to create an effective design solution for an integrated PHR and prototype that can be extended to the development of this new type of PHR.

In this paper, we present the results of two studies on the influence of mobile devices on authentication performance and password composition. A pre-study in the lab (n = 24) showed a lower performance for password-entry on mobile devices, in particular on smartphones. The main study (n = 450) showed a trend that alphanumeric passwords are increasingly created on smartphones and tablets. Moreover, a negative effect on password security could be observed as users fall back to using passwords that are easier to enter on the respective devices. This work contributes to the understanding of mobile password-entry and its effects on security in the following ways: (a) we tested different types of commonly used passwords (b) on all relevant devices, and (c) we present analytic and empirical evidence for the differences that (d) are likely to influence overall security or reduce secure behavior with respect to password-entry on mobile devices.

In using ‘app store’-style software repositories to distribute research applications, substantial ethical challenge exists in gaining informed consent from potential participants. Standard ‘terms and conditions’ pages are commonly used, but we find they fail to communicate relevant information to users. We suggest interrupting use of an application with a visual representation of collected data, rather than merely providing a description at first launch. Data collected, but not uploaded, before this can be used to create personalised examples of what will be shared. We experiment with different ways of presenting this information and allowing opt-out mechanisms, finding that users are more concerned when presented with a visual, personalised representation, and consequently stop using the application sooner. We observe a particular difference in non-English speakers, suggesting that our proposed approach might be especially appropriate for global trials, where not all users will be able to understand researchers’ disclosures of data logging intent.

This paper argues that copyright issues are an overlooked factor in the design of digital participation platforms for audiovisual cultural heritage. Digitization of cultural heritage is an endeavor that aims to preserve and make digital culture available for an engaged online citizenship, but in practice we see that content copyrights frustrate this aim. Discussing the design process behind the EUscreen portal, and presenting a survey that guided its development, the article shows how copyrights become a driver of the design process and override goals of human-centered and participatory design, and design for collective action. Rather than design-after-design the project became a design-after-rights exercise in which the copyrights of digital cultural heritage placed tight constraints on both the content use and selection, and the platform design itself.

A novel system for measuring the user experience of any user interface by measuring the feedback directly from the brain through Electroencephalography (EEG) is described. We developed an application that records data for different emotions of the user while using any interface and visualises the data for any interval during the task, as well as presenting various statistics and insight about the data. The application also provides the points of mouse movement on any interface as different coloured dots, where the colour represents the mental load at those points. This makes it easier to identify the user experience based on emotions at exact points on the user interface. In experiments, the brain activity of participants was recorded while they performed tasks on both a well-designed and poorly designed user interface. Screen and mouse cursor position were recorded, along with the values of several facial expressions and emotions extracted from the EEG. Users were interviewed after the study to share their experiences. For each study session analysis was done by comparing EEG, screen recording and interview data. Results showed that frustration, furrow and excitement values reflect user experience.

Is the physiological response from participants different between a lab experiment and a field study? In this paper, we exhaustively compare the GSR (galvanic skin response) patterns between two different scenarios. The first one was conducted in a theatre during a performance, while the second one in a laboratory during a video watching session. Questionnaires, interviews, and video recordings helped us to interpret sensor patterns, and to map them to user engagement. When comparing the GSR responses, we found a strong positive correlation between all engaged users of the two scenarios. Interestingly, such correlation was not present between the responses of non-engaged users. These results show the homogeneity of positive responses across scenarios, when compared to the variability of negative ones. The results corroborate as well that sensor data results obtained in lab studies cannot be easily generalized to real-world situations.

Detecting interpersonal and emotional aspects of behaviour is a growing area of research within HCI. However, this work primarily processes data from individuals, rather than drawing on the dynamics of an interaction between people. Literature in social psychology and neuroscience suggests that the synchronisation of peoples’ biosignals, in particular skin conductance (EDA), can be indicative of complex interpersonal aspects such as empathy. This paper reports on an exploratory, mixed methods study to test the potential of EDA synchronisation to indicate qualities of interpersonal interaction in real-world relationships and contexts. We show that EDA synchrony can be indicate meaningful social aspects in everyday settings, linking it to the mutual emotional engagement of those interacting. This connects to earlier work on empathy in psychotherapy, and suggests new interpretations of EDA sychronisation in other social contexts. We then outline how these findings open opportunities for novel HCI and ubicomp applications, supporting training of social skills such as empathy for doctors, and more generally to explore shared experiences such as multiplayer games.

When physical products become increasingly digitally connected, the traditional design space of an industrial designer becomes a blend of physical and digital elements. As a consequence of this evolution, products become a network of tangible artifacts and intangible services. While this opens a lot of design opportunities, it becomes challenging to keep track of the user and system interactions during the ideation process. Therefore, there is a need to revise the design ideation and conceptualisation tools available to design products and systems that allow interaction with both digital and physical product elements. Starting by identifying the challenges currently faced by designers, the research presented in this paper introduces and compares two creativity support tools that focus on the generation and definition of connected products. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the comparison results in a set of requirements of what a creativity support tool for connected products concept generation should consist of in order to be useful for industrial designers.

In HCI/interaction design research much of our work is prototype-driven. We explore new concepts through the design of new interactive systems. Still, as a field of research we lack documented methods for examining the relation between design ideas and design manifestations although this ability to examine if a design (idea) is new and novel contribution to our field of research is crucial. This paper contributes to this need by proposing ‘generic design thinking’ as a first step towards a method to move from ideas and designs to classes of conceptualized designs. In short, a method for examining designs as knowledge contributions in HCI/interaction design research. We argue for this suggested method through two examples including 1) how one such method can be used to analyze and conceptualize existing designs, and 2) how one such method can be useful for working with new concepts, and the generation of new knowledge through design. We conclude with a discussion on how our initial sketch of one such method can facilitate systematic knowledge development in HCI design research.

To ensure the productivity of brainstorming, group members have to observe several rules. Nevertheless, problems such as free riding or imbalanced participation can occur. We present Groupgarden, a metaphorical group mirror providing feedback about individual as well as group performance. We conducted two user studies. We could validate the effectivity of Groupgarden in a preliminary study that compared brainstorming sessions supported by Groupgarden with sessions without additional support. Results show that the group mirror effectively supports the compliance to particular brainstorming rules and participation is more balanced compared to the baseline. In a second study, we examined the influence of the location of the feedback, wall vs. table, on group behavior. Our results indicate that the location does not influence efficiency of brainstorming, while each location has different benefits. Feedback on a wall seems less disturbing and puts less pressure on the group while a group mirror on a table facilitates communication and collaboration.

Corporate identity development process involves different kinds of practitioners who has specific approach for the topic. The use of technology which allows users to work extensively with moving image is growing. This visual identity experience machine project tries to speculate on the notion of creativity and development of the platform for the practitioners to perform the video material. The main problems are to understand and share the meaning of video material and its new combinations. Identity’s internal and external dimensions can mean both disguise or self-exposure. Nowadays these boundaries are disappearing more rapidly, creating new forms of identity gestures from the perspective of image anthropology. Culturally encoded space, soaked in history and already filled with meanings explodes and implodes as narrative spaces with a little help from new technologies. Further investigation of possible use scenarios of the practitioners is required. The machine is a useful tool for such a research.

We present Orkhēstra, an interdisciplinary project set out as a collaboration between architects, computer scientists, media façade designers and an LED manufacturer to find novel ways of seamlessly integrating architectural forms and digital media. Our research interest is based on the circumstance that architects and designers might not always be able to prototype even early instantiations of interactive media architecture in a timely way, and explore the design opportunities that these systems provide, because till today methods and tools in this domain are hardly available and they still demand very high technical expertise. To address these issues we created this installation using custom made prototyping tools that help to co-design and pre-test interactive media façade installations in conjunction with potential users in their environment.

This video – A Machine. Learning – adopts a ‘research through design’ approach to producing a design fiction prototype. By using a research through design approach that is grounded in the practical experience of creating a design fiction we contribute practical insights about the process of creating a design fiction for HCI. Reflecting on the production of the video we explore challenges and opportunities presented by the design fiction method when it is applied to near-future HCI scenarios. The video depicts the story of Manu and his new artificially intelligent portable device. In the paper we consider the video, using it as a means to contrast design fiction with other approaches to prototyping; we describe the story, content and style of the video; finally we reflect on the production of the video (writing, filming and editing processes) in order to offer practical insights to the HCI community, with regards to prototyping using design fiction and film.

One of the important characteristics of a window and gaze-contingent tool is the speed of reaction to the pointer or eye-movements and the update delay or the so-called latency of the contingent response. In our video we demonstrate a handy possibility of measuring the latency of the gaze-contingent or mouse-based software. We present a low-cost Latency Measurement System which can be useful for different studies that include eye-movement tracking tools. In conclusion we demonstrate this system for measuring the latency of gaze-contingent tool.

A large number of elderly people are living apart with their children. We want to develop a system that can reinforce the feelings of connection between the aged parents and their children by combing new digital technologies with a leather product. Through iterative design process including user study, low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes, and usability testing, we present LINK, a small digital screen attached to an existing leather wallet to receive and display pictures or videos from children. By attaching LINK, the old leather wallet will become more precious because it will capture and store a lot of beautiful family memories.

Autism creates many challenges, both for those diagnosed with the condition, as well as, for caregivers, such as parents, teachers, and medical specialists. As the numbers of people affected by autism continues to grow, the need for designs that allow autistic individuals to take full advantage of their capabilities, and for caregivers to appropriately and effectively provide assistance, has also become essential. This paper introduces a digital leather neckband intended for autistic children aged 4-10 years old, providing them with the following key benefits: a) Self-manage their sensory inflow, b) Self-control de-stressing pressure mechanics, c) Self-control monitoring of one’s body and emotions to aid outward communication. Naturally safe, yet durably protective leather is combined with sensory monitoring technology to empower children with autism.

Health is an important topic in HCI research with an increasing amount of health risks surrounding individuals and society at large. It is well known that smoking cigarettes can have serious health implications. The importance of this problem motivates investigation into the use of technology to encourage behavior change. Our study was designed to gather empirical knowledge about the role a “quitting app” can play in persuading people to quit smoking. Our purpose-built app Quitty introduces different content types from different content sources to study how they are perceived and motivate health behavior change. Findings from our field study show that tailored content and push-messages are considered the most important for persuading people to stop smoking. Based on our empirical findings, we propose six guidelines on how to design mobile applications to persuade smokers to quit.

This paper reports on an experiment investigating how the number of simultaneous users affects the usability and user experience of a shareable user interface. Participants were instructed to complete individual drawing tasks on a shareable user interface running on a multi-touch surface table. The results show an increase in performance (shorter task completion times) correlated to an increase in the number of simultaneous users. No significant increase in user errors was observed when the number of simultaneous users was increased. However, despite these quantitative improvements in usability, participants reported that the tasks were more challenging when multiple users were working together.

Gamification has been employed to make online surveys more engaging to fill. Related work has evaluated the psychological and behavioral outcome of gamified surveys, but has been unclear about design methods and best practices. This work discusses foundations, relevant design dimensions (game elements, survey areas and the design process), and critical issues concerning validity. It then proposes a structured process for survey gamification based on the MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) framework. An evaluation of the proposed process within a case study is briefly presented along with preliminary, but promising results. The gamification process is put forth in the CHI community for further discussion, evaluation, and application.

In this paper we present a computational construction kit that allows young people to create devices that measure body movement and provide feedback about it. We also present an environment in which young people are empowered to become creators and inventors of their own body movement device. A workshop where this kit was used is described in detail to show how TechSportiv – the kit and the environment – should be implemented. We present results from working with this kit and show that it is possible to create diverse personally meaningful devices which have been used to quantify movements, to indicate the quality of a movement, to assist the performance, or to translate body movement into an artistic representation. We describe the construction process of one project in detail and show how the kit acts as an object-to-think-with. We argue, that TechSportiv is a way to connect aspects of body and mind in human movement.

Exergames technologies are increasingly used to help people achieve their exercise requirements including balance training. However, little is known about seniors’ user experience of exergame technology for balance training and what factors they consider most important for using the exergames. This study aims to evaluate user experience and preferences of exergame technologies to train balance and to identify different factors that affect seniors’ intention to use exergames. Fourteen healthy senior citizens played three different stepping exergames in a laboratory setting. Seniors´ experience of the exergames and their preference to use exergames was assessed using a semi-structured interview, the system usability scale (SUS), and card ranking. The results of the study showed that in order for seniors to use exergames to train their balance, the exergames should particularly focus on challenging tasks, provide feedback on quality of movement, and provide setup support. Furthermore, healthy seniors did not consider safety to be a concern when playing exergames.

This paper describes the development and use of a design method based in physical theatre practice in the creation of Charge, a multiplayer physical game that relies on digital technology. Methods from Physical Theatre improvisation were explored in a series of workshops as the basis for developing an understanding of how to design technology supported games that encourage physical and social engagement through body movement. A central concern here is the use of technology to support positive user experience and the sense of fun that are connected with body movement and physicality within game play. The initial results suggest that physical theatre practice may usefully contribute to our design understanding of human movement and support novel methods for exploring new interaction styles.

Within cultural heritage, curators, exhibition designers and other professionals are increasingly involved in the design of exhibits that make use of interactive digital technologies to engage visitors in novel ways. While a body of work on the design and evaluation of interactive exhibitions exists in HCI and Interaction Design, little research has been conducted thus far on understanding how cultural heritage professionals engage in the design of interactive exhibitions in terms of their attitudes, process, expectations and understandings of technology. In this paper, we present the results from an interview study involving cultural heritage professionals and aimed at understanding their involvement in designing interactive exhibitions. Our findings could provide the HCI community with a better understanding of the strategies and aspirations of domain professionals regarding interactive exhibitions, and to identify new ways to engage with them – particularly as these professionals’ knowledge and understanding of interactive digital technologies becomes more advanced.

This article presents an empirical study investigating audience participation in an interactive theater performance. During the performance, audience members were enticed to act upon and contribute to the performance by sharing their opinions, emotions, values and other thoughts, by means of text messages that were integrated into the performance itself. The study aimed at understanding the main characteristics of audience participation in the interactive performance, as well as the role of communication technology as a medium enabling social participation. The results draw attention to the immediate and reflective facets of audience participation, both unfolding at two different but interrelated levels of interactions: an individual and collective one.

What does it entail to be embraced by a space that responds to your actions? What kind of relations can we create between the active body and the active space? What qualities does the responsivity have for creating certain experiences of a space? Through the Dress Room, I begin to explore the qualities of responsive spaces and embodied interaction. The Dress Room is a white cube that responds to the body’s movements over the floor. The walls move, the room collapses or expands. I rely on a dancer to open up this experience. The outcome suggests that interacting with responsive environments can help create a sense of intimacy as well as motivate our motions within the space.

New technologies provide expanded opportunities for interaction design. The growing number of possible ways to interact, in turn, creates a new responsibility for designers: Besides the product’s visual aesthetics, one has to make choices about the aesthetics of interaction. This issue recently gained interest in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. Based on a review of 19 approaches, we provide an overview of today’s state of the art. We focused on approaches that feature “qualities”, “dimensions” or “parameters” to describe interaction. Those fell into two broad categories. One group of approaches dealt with detailed spatio-temporal attributes of interaction sequences (i.e., action-reaction) on a sensomotoric level (i.e., form). The other group addressed the feelings and meanings an interaction is enveloped in rather than the interaction itself (i.e, experience). Surprisingly, only two approaches addressed both levels simultaneously, making the explicit link between form and experience. We discuss these findings and its implications for future theory building.

Recent years have seen a flurry of work on sustainable computing and sustainable HCI, but it is unclear whether this body of work adheres to a meaningful definition of sustainability. In this paper, we review four interlocking frameworks that together provide a rigorous foundation for what constitutes sustainability. Each consecutive framework both builds upon and can loosely be seen as a refinement of the previous framework. More specifically, we leverage prominent ecological thinking from outside of computer science to inform what sustainability means in the context of computing. To this end, we reevaluate some recent results from the field of sustainable HCI and offer thoughts on further research in the field.

Information work is characterized by multitasking among non-routine activities, coordinated by self-directed planning and decision making. These characteristics make tool support highly desirable, but also difficult. System design with context of use and requirement elicitation needs to capture this dynamicity of information work processes by considering the self-directedness of decisions within work processes. In this paper, we introduce the activity theory based system design method (ATSDM) for information work. The method covers context of use specification and requirement elicitation for system design. In addition to Activity Theory, it leverages concepts from Action Regulation theory, in particular structuring the relations between activities in a heterarchy, to reflect the self-directedness and dynamicity of information work in system analysis and design. We showcase the use of the ATSDM at the example of a tool addressing memory failures during multitasking. An evaluation of this tool provides first evidence that our method is suitable for the design of information work support tools.

In this paper we present a multi-themed discussion on urban computing. We call for a more transdisciplinary approach to the field, and point out that urban computing systems are always necessarily an amalgamation of three interrelated components – space, people, and technology. Because of these three elements, we argue that computer scientists cannot expect to stand alone and create systems that would respect the complex and messy sociocultural context in which these technologies operate. It is only through a deeper understanding of the existing social, cultural, and political contexts that we can hope to build deployments that respect and enhance the experience of living a technologically mediated life, and this understanding can only be achieved by including researchers from the social sciences as well as architecture and urban design. We will conclude by presenting our vision for a more transdisciplinary approach to urban computing.

User experience research has reached a good understanding of the importance of hedonic attributes and how to evoke emotions through design. Yet, there is only little knowledge on how to sustain and optimize positive emotions derived from a positive experience. This article introduces a novel approach to design for pleasure: by embracing savoring as a design principle, affective benefits of positive experiences can be prolonged and enhanced. Three corresponding design examples will illustrate this approach.

We present a design case focusing on participatory design (PD) with older people. We experimented with PD techniques to foster engagement with participants in development of a graphical user interface (GUI) for controlling a robotic system in a smart home environment. The tenet of our approach is that to engage older people in the design of future systems, it is of paramount importance to increment and reinforce knowledge using different techniques and materials, and to create an empathic and trusted relationship between participants and designers. We experimented with different techniques for achieving this, from video-based scenario evaluation to hands-on and gaming activity in which participants had to evaluate the dynamics of a context-dependent interface using an expression-rich modality of interaction. This permitted exploration of experiential elements of design, to reduce the need for the participants to engage in abstract thought and to collect insights on design solutions while having fun together. The entire procedure implied incremental PD cycles in which knowledge was shared and consolidated through a learning process based on doing and playing together. The final reflections highlight a number of recommendations that demand consideration when undertaking research and design work with older people.

Demands for older adults’ assistive and cooperative care systems are increasing, but so far most design interest has been in individuals’ tools and separated public and private services or actors. We provide an initial design case with a safety navigation system designed to help those suffering from memory problems and thus may need real time assistance. With examples of its use in older adults’ outdoor movement, this paper shows how it acts as a cooperative, human-computer interaction (HCI) system between public and private assistive actors. We thus propose to increase design and research efforts towards the integration of assistive technologies with collaborative HCI.

The paper presents a design case that draws inspiration from rap music as a way to tell stories rhythmically, with simple instruments for accompaniment. Rhythm, rhymes and flow are key features of rap music. In this study, we attempted to apply rap principles and dynamics to a very specific field of application: the treatment of dyslexia. Our hypothesis is that fast, fun, bodily music could compensate the cognitive treatment usually used in dyslexia therapy, and avoid the need for children to engage in abstract cognitive exercises that are often frustrating and result in a lack of motivation. The paper describes the incremental prototyping process carried out to design the activity and the musical instruments used to experiment with rap music in therapeutic sessions. In particular, we designed a DJ console and a beat amplifier made of reused cardboard, wearable sensors and open-source software. Rapid prototyping and rapid re-adaptation of the system’s material and technological components allowed us not only to fine-tune the tools but also to generate new knowledge about the behaviour of people with dyslexia and raise new questions for study.

To initiate new behavior is challenging, but to maintain this new behavior can be even more so. In this paper, we present Keymoment, a key holder designed to increase physical activity by raising the frequency of taking the bike instead of the car. To accomplish this, it creates friction, but in a meaningful and light way. Keymoment is an example of what we call pleasurable troublemakers – a genre of interactive things, designed to help people changing themselves. We discuss variations of the Keymoment as well as the general principles, pleasurable troublemakers are based on.

Performance evaluations of touchless gestural interaction are generally done by benchmarking pointing performance against existing interactive devices, requiring the use of user’s preferred hand. However, as there is no reason for this interaction to be limited to only one hand, evaluation should rightfully consider both hands. In this paper we evaluate the performance of touchless gestural interaction for pointer manipulation with both the preferred and non-preferred hands. This interaction is benchmarked against the mouse and the touchpad with a multidirectional task. We compared the performance between all devices, improvement in performance between 2 rounds, and the degradation of performance between hands. The results show the mouse has no performance increase between rounds but high degradation across hands, the touchpad has medium performance increase and medium degradation, and gestural interaction has the highest performance increase and the lowest degradation between hands.

Drawing from a user-centered design process and guidelines derived from the literature, we developed a paradigm based on space discretization for declaratively authoring mid-air gestures and implemented it in Hotspotizer, an end-to-end toolkit for mapping custom gestures to keyboard commands. Our implementation empowers diverse user populations – including end-users without domain expertise – to develop custom gestural interfaces within minutes, for use with arbitrary applications.

Recent HCI research has shown that the body offers an interactive surface particularly suitable to eyes-free interaction. While researchers have mainly focused on the arms and the hands, we argue that the surface of the belly is especially appropriate. The belly offers a fairly large surface that can be easily reached with the two hands in any circumstance, including walking or running. We report on a study that explored how users perform one-handed gestures on their abdomen. Users use different mental spatial orientations depending on the complexity of the gesture they have to draw (drawing a digit vs. a simple directional stroke). When provided with no visual orientation cues they often draw gestures following symmetries relative to a horizontal or vertical axis. The more complex the gesture, the less stability in orientation. Focusing on directional strokes, we found that users are able to draw almost linear gestures, despite the fact that the abdomen is not perfectly planar, and perform particularly well in cardinal directions. The paper ends up with some guidelines that may inform the design of novel interaction techniques.

Gesturing and motion control have become common as interaction methods for video games since the advent of the Nintendo Wii game console. Despite the growing number of motion-based control platforms for video games, no set of shared design heuristics for motion control across the platforms has been published. Our approach in this paper combines analysis of player experiences across platforms. We work towards a collection of design heuristics for motion-based control by studying game reviews in two motion-based control platforms, Xbox 360 Kinect and PlayStation 3 Move. In this paper we present an analysis of player problems within 256 game reviews, on which we ground a set of heuristics for motion-controlled games.

As modern information communication technologies are increasingly integrated in our public environment, challenges arise to render them locally relevant and meaningful. In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of StreetTalk, a set of situated public displays attached to house facades that were specifically designed to facilitate communication and interaction between households and their local neighborhood. We report on a participatory design process that resulted in a range of neighborhood communication concepts that reached beyond the traditional screen-based notion of public displays. Accordingly, three unique displays were deployed and critically evaluated during an eight-week in-the-wild field study, which aimed to describe the potential usefulness of making public displays more situated, such as by taking into account the individual preferences of households in terms of design and functionality, by exploring alternative means of public communication, and by facilitating content creation by lay households.

In this paper we present the findings from three exploratory studies in the wild of an interactive public display aiming to increase awareness on cardiac arrest and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). Three different locations (train station, hospital, and university restaurant) were selected in order to understand how context affects the effectiveness of the real-life campaign. For this purpose, we defined and quantified different interaction phases based on the audience funnel and the characteristics of the prototype. Our results confirm that context (location and people) have a direct effect on engagement throughout the interaction phases. A location that clearly relates to the content of a campaign or has an audience that is able and willing to interact will positively influence the outcome of a campaign. In addition, we show that following a model to quantify and compare studies is a feasible and useful approach.

This paper describes a design concept and prototype in which people who are absorbed and immersed in using their smart handheld devices in public spaces will be pixelated and greyed out as to suggest that they are “disconnected” from the offline, real world. The concept and implementation is still experimental but the initial prototype and preliminary results indicate that it is feasible and can be realized in an interesting, fun way.

This paper reports on an in-the-wild design experiment aiming to support participation and engagement in the semi-public space of a temporary art exhibition. Through interviews with 19 visitors we analyze the collaborative production of text about artworks in the exhibition in the physical space of the gallery. Our design, deployed throughout the venue for one month, makes use of people’s personal mobile phones to interact with shared digital displays in the gallery. The findings help us understand and develop the notion of local participatory IT from actual use. We discuss people’s diverging perceptions of what one is participating in and why as well as the impact of previous experiences with mobile technology. This leads us to propose three strong concepts to support understanding and design of technologies that foster local participation: Local area networking, hyperlocality, and global read/local write.

One of the trends in human-computer interaction (HCI) is that its increasing focus on social issues. Crowds are frequent social phenomena in society. Understanding the psychology behind crowd interaction and behavior not only forms a meaningful contribution to HCI, but also a significant contribution to the field of crowd management. This paper developed a set 13 crowd emotional feelings and investigated their relation with 11 action (behavioral) tendencies in both event and non-event crowd situations. The results are expected to be relevant for designing self- report software to support the interactions between crowd managers and crowd members.

This paper addresses how design activities can be supported to evoke nuanced positive emotions through a design case. The topic of nuances of positive emotions and values of differentiating positive emotions in a design process are discussed. The case follows appraisal approach, which implicates that the way people appraise an event determines the type of emotion. Design students created design interventions to specifically elicit one out of ten positive emotions in the context of an airline crew center: anticipation, confidence, energized, inspiration, joy, kindness, pride, relaxation, respect, and sympathy. Three examples are provided to show how the approach has been used to generate design concepts. Reflecting on the design process, nine lessons are outlined, all of which discusses the challenges involved in the approach and how those challenges could be overcome.

Experience design is a relatively new approach to product design. While there are several possible starting points in designing for positive experiences, we start with experience goals that state a profound source for a meaningful experience. In this paper, we investigate three design cases that used experience goals as the starting point for both incremental and radical design, and analyse them from the perspective of their potential for design space expansion. Our work addresses the recent call for design research directed toward new interpretations of what could be meaningful to people, which is seen as the source for creating new meanings for products, and thereby, possibly leading to radical innovations. Based on this idea, we think about the design space as a set of possible concepts derived from deep meanings that experience goals help to communicate. According to our initial results from the small-scale touchpoint design cases, the type of experience goals we use seem to have the potential to generate not only incremental but also radical design ideas.

We present a novel method for user-driven innovation: the User Experience Concept Exploration. The method relies on a User Experience (UX) framework which assumes that a positive UX can be created by fulfilling basic human needs. Users are actively involved in the ideation and design process to support the generation of innovative product features that address individual needs and actual contexts of use. After introducing the UX Concept Exploration and its theoretical underpinnings, the paper describes an empirical study evaluating the effectiveness of the method. The results show that the method is able to assess the most promising user-generated product features and combine them into a new concept which can enhance the positive user experience of a product.

With ubiquitous mobile computing devices spreading throughout the urban environment of everyday life, there is a growing need to better understand person-place relationships and how technology can play a role in this urban experience. To this end, we propose a mobile methodology called Walking & Talking, an observed walking tour with participants through the city, which makes it easy and motivating for them to discuss their personal relationships with a place. The paper will describe a case study where the method was successfully applied to elicit rich, contextualized and intimate data, making it a useful research tool for the fields of urban interaction design and mobile & location aware technology.

The panel discusses the recent interest in Big Data and what are opportunities and challenges for HCI. Cases will be presented and discussants will help reflecting on how cases lead to aspects contributing to a research agenda. The panel will discuss data mining and analytics, exploratory search, visualisation and interaction techniques and platforms. It will discuss to which extent HCI for big data is applicable to professional or everyday users, what are the challenges and element of a research agenda considering neighbouring fields such as Information Visualization.