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Giulia Satmary
In this work we introduce peripheral awareness as a neurological state for real-time human-computer integration, where the human is assisted by a computer to interact with the world. Changes to the field of view in peripheral awareness have been linked with quality of human performance. This instinctive narrowing of vision that occurs as a threat is perceived has implications in activities that benefit from the user having a wide field of view, such as cycling to navigate the environment. We present "Ena", a novel EEG-eBike system that draws from the user's neural activity to determine when the user is in a state of peripheral awareness to regulate engine support. A study with 20 participants revealed various themes and tactics suggesting that peripheral awareness as a neurological state is viable to align human-machine integration with internal bodily processes. Ena suggests that our work facilitates a safe and enjoyable human-computer integration experience.
Venous Materials is a novel concept and approach of an interactive material utilizing fluidic channels. We present a design method for fluidic mechanisms that respond to deformation by mechanical inputs from the user, such as pressure and bending. We designed a set of primitive venous structures that act as embedded analog fluidic sensors, displaying flow and color change. In this paper, we consider the fluid as the medium to drive tangible information triggered by deformation, and at the same time, to function as a responsive display of that information. To provide users with a simple way to create and validate designs of fluidic structures, we built a software platform and design tool UI. This design tool allows users to quickly design the geometry, and simulate the flow with intended mechanical force dynamically. We present a range of applications that demonstrate how Venous Materials can be utilized to augment interactivity of everyday physical objects.
As education researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders recognize the importance of computing, many coding kits (toys and apps) have emerged to help young children learn to code at home. However, how parents perceive and support their children's use of the kits at home are less understood. In this study, we performed semi-structured interviews with eighteen parents who obtained coding kits for their young children for home use. The results show parents expected their kids to have fun and meaningful interactions with the kits. In supporting the play, parents took on various roles, mostly acting as spectator, scaffolder, and teacher. While parents perceived benefits of coding kits like a changed perspective on coding, they also reported concerns, such as their limited programming knowledge to provide help. Finally, we reflect on design and research implications to develop coding kits that consider parents' perspectives and important roles in supporting young children's exploration with computational thinking.
Interview chatbots engage users in a text-based conversation to draw out their views and opinions. It is, however, challenging to build effective interview chatbots that can handle user free-text responses to open-ended questions and deliver engaging user experience. As the first step, we are investigating the feasibility and effectiveness of using publicly available, practical AI technologies to build effective interview chatbots. To demonstrate feasibility, we built a prototype scoped to enable interview chatbots with a subset of active listening skills-the abilities to comprehend a user's input and respond properly. To evaluate the effectiveness of our prototype, we compared the performance of interview chatbots with or without active listening skills on four common interview topics in a live evaluation with 206 users. Our work presents practical design implications for building effective interview chatbots, hybrid chatbot platforms, and empathetic chatbots beyond interview tasks.
Input techniques have been drawing abiding attention along with the continual miniaturization of personal computers. In this paper, we present BlyncSync, a novel multi-modal gesture set that leverages the synchronicity of touch and blink events to augment the input vocabulary of smartwatches with a rapid gesture, while at the same time, offers a solution to the false activation problem of blink-based input. BlyncSync contributes the concept of a mutual delimiter, where two modalities are used to jointly delimit the intention of each other's input. A study shows that BlyncSync is 33% faster than using a baseline input delimiter (physical smartwatch button), with only 150ms in overhead cost compared to traditional touch events. Furthermore, our data indicates that the gesture can be tuned to elicit a true positive rate of 97% and a false positive rate of 1.68%.
People with dementia face major challenges in maintaining active social interaction. Designing digital tools for social sharing within families and care facilities has been well explored by HCI research, but comparatively less work has considered community settings. Situated in a community-based program for storytelling and socializing, our field observations and semi-structured interviews with people living with early-middle stage dementia, family caregivers, and program facilitators illustrate both positive and challenging aspects of social activities. We contribute a nuanced understanding of participants' social lives and identify four factors that aid in achieving positive outcomes: effective agencies for social interaction, normalized and friendly environments, collaboration and teamwork, and mediating social cues and communication. Finally, we examine our findings through the lens of past HCI work and offer insights for designing new social technologies to diversify the range of social spaces in community settings, through expanding peer collaboration, leveraging physical and virtual spaces, creating open-ended experiences, and developing flexible platforms.
When sketching, we must choose between paper (expressive ease, ruler and eraser) and computational assistance (parametric support, a digital record). PHysically Assisted SKetching provides both, with a pen that displays force constraints with which the sketcher interacts as they draw on paper. Phasking provides passive, "bound" constraints (like a ruler); or actively "brings" the sketcher along a commanded path (e.g., a curve), which they can violate for creative variation. The sketcher modulates constraint strength (control sharing) by bearing down on the pen-tip. Phasking requires untethered, graded force-feedback, achieved by modifying a ballpoint drive that generates force through rolling surface contact. To understand phasking's viability, we implemented its interaction concepts, related them to sketching tasks and measured device performance. We assessed the experience of 10 sketchers, who could understand, use and delight in phasking, and who valued its control-sharing and digital twinning for productivity, creative control and learning to draw.
Peer-to-peer energy-trading platforms (P2P) have the potential to transform the current energy system. However, research is presently scarce on how people would like to participate in, and what would they expect to gain from, such platforms. We address this gap by exploring these questions in the context of the UK energy market. Using a qualitative interview study, we examine how 45 people with an interest in renewable energy understand P2P. We find that the prospective users value the collective benefits of P2P, and understand participation as a mechanism to support social, ecological and economic benefits for communities and larger groups. Drawing on the findings from the interview analysis, we explore broad design characteristics that a prospective P2P energy trading platform should provide to meet the expectations and concerns voiced by our study participants.
3D printing technology can be used to rapidly prototype the look and feel of 3D objects. However, the objects produced are passive. There has been increasing interest in making these objects interactive, yet they often require assembling components or complex calibration. In this paper, we contribute AirTouch, a technique that enables designers to fabricate touch-sensitive objects with minimal assembly and calibration using pneumatic sensing. AirTouch-enabled objects are 3D printed as a single structure using a consumer-level 3D printer. AirTouch uses pre-trained machine learning models to identify interactions with fabricated objects, meaning that there is no calibration required once the object has completed printing. We evaluate our technique using fabricated objects with various geometries and touch sensitive locations, obtaining accuracies of at least 90% with 12 interactive locations.
This paper brings together three distinct case studies to explore how social isolation and notions of liminality shape ontological security within communities on "the edge" of society. Each case study exemplifies the differing nature of liminality in everyday contexts and the extent to which increased digitalisation perturbs it in multiple ways. Taking an ethnographic approach, the research engaged with seafarers onboard container ships in European waters, communities in Greenland and welfare claimants in the North East of England. It posits that technological innovation must attend to the routinisation of everyday life through which people establish ontological security if such innovation is to be supportive. The paper thus moves beyond existing HCI scholarship by foregrounding the contextual and relational aspects of social isolation rather than the technological. It does so by advocating a ground-up design process that considers ontological security in relation to notions of liminality among communities on the edge.
Providing users with rich sensations is beneficial to enhance their immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) environments. Wetness is one such imperative sensation that affects users' sense of comfort and helps users adjust grip force when interacting with objects. Researchers have recently begun to explore ways to create wetness illusions, primarily on a user's face or body skin. In this work, we extended this line of research by creating wetness illusion on users' fingertips. We first conducted a user study to understand the effect of thermal and tactile feedback on users' perceived wetness sensation. Informed by the findings, we designed and evaluated a prototype---Mouill---that provides various levels of wetness illusions on fingertips for both hard and soft items when users squeeze, lift, or scratch it. Study results indicated that users were able to feel wetness with different levels of temperature changes and they were able to distinguish three levels of wetness for simulated VR objects. We further presented applications that simulated an ice cube, an iced cola bottle, and a wet sponge, etc, to demonstrate its use in VR.
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