We previously introduced a responsive joint attention system that uses multimodal information from users engaged in a spatial reasoning task with a robot and communicates joint attention via the robot's gaze behavior [25]. An initial evaluation of our system with adults showed it to improve users' perceptions of the robot's social presence. To investigate the repeatability of our prior findings across settings and populations, here we conducted two further studies employing the same gaze system with the same robot and task but in different contexts: evaluation of the system with external observers and evaluation with children. The external observer study suggests that third-person perspectives over videos of gaze manipulations can be used either as a manipulation check before committing to costly real-time experiments or to further establish previous findings. However, the replication of our original adults study with children in school did not confirm the effectiveness of our gaze manipulation, suggesting that different interaction contexts can affect the generalizability of results in human-robot interaction gaze studies.
Joint attention has been shown to be not only crucial for human-human interaction but also human-robot interaction. Joint attention can help to make cooperation more efficient, support disambiguation in instances of uncertainty and make interactions appear more natural and familiar. In this paper, we present an autonomous gaze system that uses multimodal perception capabilities to model responsive joint attention mechanisms. We investigate the effects of our system on people’s perception of a robot within a problem-solving task. Results from a user study suggest that responsive joint attention mechanisms evoke higher perceived feelings of social presence on scales that regard the direction of the robot’s perception.
A user interface should be intuitive to allow efficient and safe execution of tasks. Helicopter 14 (HKP 14) has operator consoles with an analog user interface, called Programmable Keys (PK), to control a Mission Management System (MMS). The idea of replacing the PK with touch technology has arisen. To understand operators’ working environment, this case study was conducted with inspiration from ethnography. The PK have been studied by reading system manuals and familiarizing with the MMS in Saab’s test rigs and in HKP 14. This study aims to investigate the opportunities and challenges with implementing a touch screen to replace the current PK. Interviews have been conducted with operators and one technician working with HKP 14. To highlight additional perspectives on usage of touch technology, interviews with employees at FMV and Saab were carried out. This study found both benefits and drawbacks with implementing a touch screen in the helicopter. The most common concern was that touch screens lack tactile feedback. This study exemplifies how physical support can be achieved on a touch screen and how a Graphical User Interface (GUI) can be designed with regards to this.
The dire state of Cuban internet connectivity has inspired local informal innovations. One such innovation is El Paquete, a weekly distribution of downloaded content spread through an informal network. Taking a postcolonial approach, I investigate through user experiences how this network operates in a resource-poor environment. This investigation articulates a model of El Paquete centered on social interactions, which inform the system’s function but also shape El Paquete’s design and role in society. Based on this model, a set of speculative design exercises probe possibilities to streamline El Paquete’s compilation, involve consumer preferences in its design directions, or act as a disruption tolerant network. In uncovering the technical possibilities of El Paquete, these designs illuminate how its current design serves Cuban communities by embodying realities and limitations of Cuban society. El Paquete’s embodiment of informal innovation serves as a call to designers to continuously rethink development design processes, centering communities and their knowledge and technical practices.
In this paper, we present a brief summary of the international workshop on Modeling Multiparty, Multimodal Interactions. The UM3I 2014 workshop is held in conjunction with the ICMI 2014 conference. The workshop will highlight recent developments and adopted methodologies in the analysis and modeling of multiparty and multimodal interactions, the design and implementation principles of related human-machine interfaces, as well as the identification of potential limitations and ways of overcoming them.
Biosensing technologies are increasingly available as off-the-shelf products, yet for many designers, artists and non-engineers, these technologies remain difficult to design with. Through a soma design stance, we devised a novel approach for exploring qualities in biodata. Our explorative process culminated in the design of three artefacts, coupling biosignals to tangible actuation formats. By making biodata perceivable as sound, in tangible form or directly on the skin, it became possible to link qualities of the measurements to our own somatics - our felt experience of our bodily bioprocesses - as they dynamically unfold, spurring somatically-grounded design discoveries of novel possible interactions. We show that making biodata attainable for a felt experience - or as we frame it: turning biodata into somadata - enables not only first-person encounters, but also supports collaborative design processes as the somadata can be shared and experienced dynamically, right at the moment when we explore design ideas.
This study investigates the multimodal implementation of prosodic-phonological categories, asking whether the accentual fall and the following rise in the Swedish word accents (Accent 1, Accent 2) are varied as a function of accompanying head and eyebrow gestures. Our purpose is to evaluate the hypothesis that prominence production displays a cumulative relation between acoustic and kinematic dimensions of spoken language, especially focusing on the clustering of gestures (head, eyebrows), at the same time asking if lexical-prosodic features would interfere with this cumulative relation. Our materials comprise 12 minutes of speech from Swedish television news presentations. The results reveal a significant trend for larger fo rises when a head movement accompanies the accented word, and even larger when an additional eyebrow movement is present. This trend is observed for accentual rises that encode phrase-level prominence, but not for accentual falls that are primarily related to lexical prosody. Moreover, the trend is manifested differently in different lexical-prosodic categories (Accent 1 versus Accent 2 with one versus two lexical stresses). The study provides novel support for a cumulative-cue hypothesis and the assumption that prominence production is essentially multimodal, well in line with the idea of speech and gesture as an integrated system.
Rapid digitalisation development has been stampeding widely across today’s societies, and not least in the payment industry. Though, the digitalisation in the payment industry has been very deviating, even between similar well-developed countries, and while there are positive and negative effects with both digital- and physical payment means, there is little knowledge that highlights the influencing factors and accompanied problems. This study therefore explore swhich, and how, different factors influence a country’s degree of digital payments, and creates further understanding of where the payment markets are heading in the future. It is done through a case study of four different industrialised countries, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and Switzerland which involves mapping the countries’ payment markets, as well as potential factors influencing a population’s payment habits, through a perspective of innovation theory in terms of dominant designs and technological discontinuities. Theory of network externalities and two-sided platforms are further used to explain and discuss how a two-sided market, likethe payment market, is affected by changes and other circumstances in different ways.Conclusions are then drawn from the used theories together with a comparison of the findings,and identifies certain influencers to a country’s distribution of payments, as well as provides indications of where the different payments markets are heading in the future. Data is mainly gathered through written material and credible databases, but also from semi-structured interviews.
Previsualization is a process within pre-production of filmmaking where filmmakers can visually plan specific scenes with camera works, lighting, character movements, etc. The costs of computer graphics-based effects are substantial within film production. Using previsualization, these scenes can be planned in detail to reduce the amount of work put on effects in the later production phase. We develop and assess a prototype for previsualization in virtual reality for collaborative purposes where multiple filmmakers can be present in a virtual environment to share a creative work experience, remotely. By performing a within-group study on 20 filmmakers, our findings show that the use of virtual reality for distributed, collaborative previsualization processes is useful for real-life pre-production purposes.
Tag and Seek is a location-based game which leads a traveler through Tainan City in Taiwan. The traveler's task is to find Harry's friends who are hiding at different sites in the city. Once at the site, the traveler has to scan a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag placed on a board looking like Harry's friend. When the NFC tag is scanned the lost friend is found, information about the site is presented and instructions to the next site will be available. The game lets the traveler experience culture, gain knowledge about sites in the city and meet local citizens - without the traveler having to plan the trip ahead. By implementing NFC technology as check points the interaction with the game differs from regular tourist guides and the threat of privacy which comes with location-based services is greatly lowered as the traveler is not being tracked by GPS. From our user evaluation we found that both the interface and interaction with the boards could use some improvements to increase the usability.
Live virtual constructive (LVC) flight simulations mix pilots flying actual aircraft, pilots flying in simulators, and computer-generated forces, in joint scenarios. Training resources invested in LVC scenarios must give a high return, and therefore pilots in both live aircraft and simulators need to experience training value for the extensive resources invested in both, an aspect not emphasized in current LVC research. Thus, there is a need for a function, in this article described as LVC Allocator, which assures that complex LVC training scenarios include aspects of training value for all participants, and, thus, purposefully align scenario design with training value. A series of workshops were carried out with 16 fast-jet pilots articulating the training challenges that LVC could contribute to solving, and allocating LVC entities in a training scenario design exercise. The training values for LVC included large scenarios, weapon delivery, flight safety, adversary performance, and weather dependence. These values guided the reasoning of how to allocate different entities to L, V, or C entities. Allocations were focused on adversaries as V, keeping entity types together, weather dependence, low-altitude and supersonic flying requirements, and to let L entities handle and lead complex tasks to keep the human in the loop.
This paper introduces two concepts—dialogical emergency management and strategic awareness—as means touse and understand the content of social media for the purpose of emergency communication. Dialogicalemergency management denotes that the emergency management organizations follow what people publish invarious social media on emergencies and ongoing emergency response, and then adjust their informationstrategies in a way that matches the expectations and needs for emergency information of the public. Theconcept of strategic awareness suggests that it is essential to have an understanding of the receiver (public) ofemergency information but also to have an understanding of the receivers’ idea about the emergency andemergency response. Hence, the notion of strategic awareness incorporates structured awareness of how peopleinterpret, value, and reacts on communication based on what they think about the sender’s (emergencymanagement organization’s) actual intentions and motives.
This paper presents the SWAY prototype that encourages people to explore aspects around balance and posture in a playful way. The prototype senses small movements and shifts in posture using a Kinect sensor, and translates these movements to the tilting of a platform holding a set of marbles, and to haptic feedback in the form of vibrations. The prototype provides an interactive experience focusing on building body awareness with a particular focus on balance and posture. The design inquiry provided new insights with respect to reinforcement of bodily experiences and how different modalities affect the guiding of attention.
In this demo, we will showcase a platform we are currently developing for experimenting with situated interaction using mixed reality. The user will wear a Microsoft HoloLens and be able to interact with a virtual character presenting a poster. We argue that a poster presentation scenario is a good test bed for studying phenomena such as multi-party interaction, speaker role, engagement and disengagement, information delivery, and user attention monitoring.
In the education of mechanical engineers alternative learning methods like serious games, simulations etc. have been used in past decades to better the learning outcomes. However, a main concern is still the amount of resources used on adapting and modding games as well as the challenges related to the implementation in the class room setting. Typically a positive learning experience does not only rely on the game as such, but how good the facilitator or teacher is to change game mechanics and the narratives so that players with different learning curves, past experience and cognitive abilities all stay in flow and feel immersed. Physical simulation games played in a workshop setting often have this ability, whereas this still seems to be a challenge in digitalized games. The main purpose of this article is to identify mechanics that need to be adapted differently for different user groups in order to keep them in flow, motivated and engaged in order to have a high learning experience and how we can take advantage of technologies like VR to reduce the costs and the resources.
Outdoor play is becoming an increasingly marginalised activity in the urban landscape. Even in HCI, research on interactive solutions for outdoor play has largely been limited to special areas and in particular playgrounds. But children play everywhere, and especially play close to home is central in children's play activities. In this article we draw upon knowledge about designing for children's play in interaction design as well as in landscape architecture, to study how interactive play installations can be integrated in outdoor environments of a residential area. We present a field study in which digitally enhanced play installations were installed, in dialogue with the landscape, in between the buildings of a residential area. We focus on how emerging play activities made use of the installations as well as of the surrounding landscape in expected as well as unexpected ways. Based on the observations, we discuss how residential play is special, and how this affects how to design for it.
The aim of this two-day workshop is to bring together a nascent community of researchers to share research, ideas, methods and tools that can encourage, inspire and strengthen those of us working on digital women's health. Our workshop aims to take a pro-active stance, offering participants the opportunity to critique, design and hack existing and new women's digital health experiences. Or, in other words, to get their hands dirty. Through our hack-led event we aim to face headon issues related to digital women's health, such as taboo, power and prejudice. This workshop will address current gaps in research and practice by enabling us to develop the confidence, networks and strategies that can facilitate researchers/designers/technologists to work within this space.
Positron emission tomography (PET) tracers play an important role in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, a condition that leads to progressive dementia and memory loss. A high binding affinity and specificity of the PET tracers to amyloid oligomers and fibrils are crucial for their successful application as diagnostic agents. In this sense, it is essential to design PET tracers with enhanced binding affinities, which can lead to more precise and earlier detection of Alzheimer's disease conditions. The application of in silico methodology for the design and development of efficient PET tracers may serve as an important route to improved Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. In this work, the performance of widely used computational methods is explored for predicting experimental binding affinities of styrylbenzoxazole (SB) derivatives against a common amyloid protofibril. By performing docking, molecular dynamics, and quantum chemistry calculations in sequence their combined predictive performance is explored. The present work emphasizes the merits as well as limitations of these simulation strategies in the realm of designing PET tracers for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis.
In this paper we explore the synthesis of sound effects using conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs). We commissioned Foley artist Ulf Olausson to record a dataset of knocking sound effects with different emotions and trained a cGAN on it. We analysed the resulting synthesised sound effects by comparing their temporal acoustic features to the original dataset and by performing an online listening test. Results show that the acoustic features of the synthesised sounds are similar to those of the recorded dataset. Additionally, the listening test results show that the synthesised sounds can be identified by people with experience in sound design, but the model is not far from fooling non-experts. Moreover, on average most emotions can be recognised correctly in both recorded and synthesised sounds. Given that the temporal acoustic features of the two datasets are highly similar, we hypothesise that they strongly contribute to the perception of the intended emotions in the recorded and synthesised knocking sounds.
We often take for granted that we have immediate access to our perception and experience of and through our bodies. But inward listening is a demanding activity and thus not easy to learn to perform or design for. With the Sarka mat we want to support the ability to direct attention by providing sound feedback linked to the weight distribution and motion intensity of different parts of the body, and to provide an exemplar for how such design may be conducted. The process of Sarka's creation is informed by Somaesthetic Appreciation Design. We discuss how a sonic feedback signal can influence listeners, followed by how we, in this design, worked to navigate the complex design space presented to us. We detail the design process involved, and the very particular set of limitations which this interactive sonification presented.
In public spaces, such as urban areas and public transportation, people may experience feelings of insecurity, for example, regarding lack of security and fear of possible criminal intentions from others, which can lead to physical discomfort and (feelings of) unease. Starting from these challenges, we propose a one-day workshop aimed to explore bodily experiences of security. Together with the workshop participants, we will approach this research space from a feminist perspective, engaging with feminist issues, such as participation, advocacy, pluralism, and embodiment. Through innovative body-centered methods, we will foreground and explore individual and collective sensations of security, and materialize participants' felt experiences and insights in the form of wearable prototypes. Through this workshop, we will reflect on individual and collective experiences of security through making, and elicit design implications for creating secure bodily experiences, which can be informative and inspirational for future research.
Servitization describes the trend amongst companies of supplementing tangible product offerings with services. A case in point is the cloud computing which represents a paradigm shift of servitization in the IT industry as it allows physical products to be delivered entirely remotely as a service. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) constitutes a delivery business model of cloud computing which allows customers to access a supplier's application through a cloud infrastructure and is seen as a disruptive innovation. Despite the growing market for cloud computing services, the concept is claimed not to be very understood by many businesses. When transitioning from product-oriented to service-oriented value propositions, successful companies have for instance put efforts on the education of their sales personnel. Such employees could be seen as change agents whose goal is to influence the adoption decision making processes of the organization’s clients. Furthermore, as economies have become more knowledge-intensive, Knowledge management has become more critical. Previous research has put little attention to how Knowledge management relates to the diffusion rate of innovations. This study, therefore, explores how management of change agents' knowledge can facilitate the mediation of innovations. A case study was conducted of an IT company experiencing a servitization transition towards SaaS offerings to achieve the purpose of this study. The study is delimited to the diffusion of SaaS as an innovation within the financial industry in Sweden. 12 employees within the Case Company and six clients were interviewed regarding the subjects previously mentioned. The results suggest that the mediation of SaaS is done through personal communication, presentations, and distribution of sales material. The study has found that change agents need to be clear in their mediation efforts of SaaS solutions as the understanding of what SaaS includes sometimes differs between clients and suppliers. Furthermore, customers considered SaaS solutions for systems that they view as not being directly value-adding and for those systems they prefer standardization as it allows cost-efficiency. SaaS allows multi-tenant environments and is therefore suitable for standardized offerings, as standardization corresponds well to the business logic appropriate for a codification Knowledge Management strategy. The Case Company already conducts a codification strategy. However, the finding of this study suggests that they should strengthen it since a focused KM strategy is preferable to attain more of its benefits and to increase the organizational knowledge creation capabilities. Conducting a codification strategy is something they have good capabilities of pursuing and is suggested to facilitate the change agents' mediation of innovations. Sales material at the Case Company is identified as dependent on personal performance and standardizing the material would thereby ensure an even quality. Making a variety of standardized material easily accessible would further allow the change agents to select material with appropriate messages aimed at specific types of customers, which is important since the customers are found to have different preferences
We propose a framework for design and evaluation of mixed initiative robotic systems, focusing mostly on the robot initiative in the case of a robotic shopping trolley. Throughout, we consider the implications of the movement modality in the robot initiative and the communication that follows it. We illustrate our considerations with our experience in designing and evaluating mixed-initiative human-robot communication with a mock-up robot and subsequently an actual robot platform.
This paper examines the potential of describing interactive systems in a declarative manner with concepts familiar to both developers and designers. Such declarative interaction descriptions will enable evolutionary prototyping processes. This new type of design and development processes that can emerge with declarative interaction is described along with benefits for human-centred system design. A few challenges are raised for future research in this area.
Författarna har under perioden januari till augusti 2013 genomfört en systematisk kunskapsöversikt av vetenskapligt utvärderade och rapporterade empiriska studier av tillgänglighet till elektronisk kommunikation för personer med kognitiva funktionshinder. Resultaten av denna studie presenteras på ett förenklat sätt i denna rapport.
Automated driving systems will be severely challenged under the unpredictable conditions of mixed traffic. Consequently, some form of human support remains essential in the foreseeable future. This challenge is particularly true for Shared Automated Vehicles, as these vehicles will likely not include any human driver onboard. When a Shared Automated Vehicle encounters a situation it cannot handle, a remote human operator will be needed to intervene. The remote operator can help the passengers to continue their journey by resuming vehicle operations. This thesis has investigated whether using a Head-MountedDisplay in comparison to a computer display improves Situation Knowledge for remote operators of Shared Automated Vehicles. This research adopted a user-centered design approach to develop a Head-Mounted Display and computer display prototype. In one of the first studies on a Shared Automated Vehicle remote control interface, this thesis considered implicit measurements of Situation Knowledge and did not focus on performance indicators. In a userstudy, twelve participants were given the task to determine the reason why theShared Automated Vehicle had stopped based on pre-recorded driving scenarios.Strong qualitative evidence indicates that a Head-Mounted Display canprovide remote operators with improved Situation Knowledge in comparisonto computer displays. To deepen the understanding of the performance andSituation Knowledge for remote operators of Shared Automated Vehicles undervarious conditions further research is necessary. Future studies can extendknowledge by assessing different scenarios and tasks in a live remote controlsituation, and develop and evaluate additional interface elements.
A system for real-time feedback of expressive music performance is presented.The feedback is provided by using a graphical interface where acoustic cues arepresented in an intuitive fashion. The graphical interface presents on the computerscreen a three-dimensional object with continuously changing shape, size,position, and colour. Some of the acoustic cues were associated with the shape ofthe object, others with its position. For instance, articulation was associated withshape, staccato corresponded to an angular shape and legato to a rounded shape.The emotional expression resulting from the combination of cues was mapped interms of the colour of the object (e.g., sadness/blue). To determine which colourswere most suitable for respective emotion, a test was run. Subjects rated how welleach of 8 colours corresponds to each of 12 music performances expressingdifferent emotions.
The representation of expressivity in music is still a fairlyunexplored field. Alternative ways of representing musicalinformation are necessary when providing feedback onemotion expression in music such as in real-time tools formusic education, or in the display of large music databases.One possible solution could be a graphical non-verbal representationof expressivity in music performance using coloras index of emotion. To determine which colors aremost suitable for an emotional expression, a test was run.Subjects rated how well each of 8 colors and their 3 nuancescorresponds to each of 12 music performances expressingdifferent emotions. Performances were playedby professional musicians with 3 instruments, saxophone,guitar, and piano. Results show that subjects associateddifferent hues to different emotions. Also, dark colorswere associated to music in minor tonality and light colorsto music in major tonality. Correspondence betweenspectrum energy and color hue are preliminary discussed.
In this paper we present a string-based, interactive, largescale installation for a new museum dedicated to performing arts, Scenkonstmuseet, which will be inaugurated in 2017 in Stockholm, Sweden. The installation will occupy an entire room that measures 10x5 meters. We aim to create a digital musical instrument (DMI) that facilitates intuitive musical interaction, thereby enabling visitors to quickly start creating music either alone or together. The interface should be able to serve as a pedagogical tool; visitors should be able to learn about concepts related to music and music making by interacting with the DMI. Since the lifespan of the installation will be approximately five years, one main concern is to create an experience that will encourage visitors to return to the museum for continued instrument exploration. In other words, the DMI should be designed to facilitate long-term engagement. Finally, an important aspect in the design of the installation is that the DMI should be accessible and provide a rich experience for all museum visitors, regardless of age or abilities.
Existing works on interactive sonification of movements, i.e., the translation of human movement qualities from the physical to the auditory domain, usually adopt a predetermined approach: the way in which movement features modulate the characteristics of sound is fixed. In our work we want to go one step further and demonstrate that the user role can influence the tuning of the mapping between movement cues and sound parameters. Here, we aim to verify if and how the mapping changes when the user is either the performer or the observer of a series of body movements (tracing a square or an infinite shape with the hand in the air). We asked participants to tune movement sonification while they were directly performing the sonified movement vs. while watching another person performing the movement and listening to its sonification. Results show that the tuning of the sonification chosen by participants is influenced by three variables: role of the user (performer vs observer), movement quality (the amount of Smoothness and Directness in the movement), and physical parameters of the movements (velocity and acceleration). Performers focused more on the quality of their movement, while observers focused more on the sonic rendering, making it more expressive and more connected to low-level physical features.
The work presented in this paper is a preliminary study in a larger project that aims to design the sound of the future through our understanding of the soundscapes of the present, and through methods of documentary filmmaking, sound computing and HCI. This work is part of a project that will complement and run parallel to Erik Gandini’s research project ”The Future through the Present”, which explores how a documentary narrative can create a projection into the future, and develop a cinematic documentary aesthetics that releases documentary film from the constraints of dealing with the present or the past. The point of departure is our relationship to labour at a time when Robotics, VR/AR and AI applied to Big Data outweigh and augment our physical and cognitive capabilities, with automation expected to replace humans on a large scale within most professional fields. From an existential perspective this poses the question: what will we do when we don’t have to work? And challenges us to formulate a new idea of work beyond its historical role. If the concept of work ethics changes, how would that redefine soundscapes? Will new sounds develop? Will sounds from the past resurface? In the context of this paper we try to tackle these questions by first applying the Design Fiction method. In a workshop with twenty-three participants predicted both positive and negative future scenarios, including both lo-fi and hi-fi soundscapes, and in which people will be able to control and personalize soundscapes. Results are presented, summarized and discussed.
Technological advances are creating exciting new opportunities that have the potential to move HPC well beyond traditional computational workloads. In this paper we focus on the potential for HPC to be instrumental in responding to disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, extreme flooding, earthquakes, tsunamis, winter weather conditions, and accidents. Driven by the VESTEC EU funded H2020 project, our research looks to prove HPC as a tool not only capable of simulating disasters once they have happened, but also one which is able to operate in a responsive mode, supporting disaster response teams making urgent decisions in real-time. Whilst this has the potential to revolutionise disaster response, it requires the ability to drive HPC interactively, both from the user’s perspective and also based upon the arrival of data. As such interactivity is a critical component in enabling HPC to be exploited in the role of supporting disaster response teams so that urgent decision makers can make the correct decision first time, every time.
Trots nya medier och medföljande spådomar om e-postens snara död räknar man med en årlig tillväxt i antalet brev på 6% 2012–2016. Det betyder att du om fyra år förväntas hantera ytterligare 25% mer e-brev än idag. Vi kan inte påverka hur andra använder e-post, men vi kan förändra vårt eget sätt att läsa, skriva och skicka brev vilket kan underlätta situationen avsevärt.
Olle Bälter disputerade 1998 på en avhandling om våra e-postvanor som har blivit populär i media där Olle går under namnet ”epostdoktorn”. I denna bok har han samlat forskningsresultat och formulerat rekommendationer för hur just du ska kunna hantera din e-post effektivare oavsett om du är en vanlig eller tungt belastad e-postanvändare.
To study future communication needs between pedestrians and shared automated vehicles (SAVs), an interface that communicates the intentions of SAVs to pedestrians was designed and implemented in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This enabled the exploration of behaviors and experiences of 34 pedestrians when encountering SAVs, both with and without the interface, in several street crossing situations. All pedestrians assessed the level of perceived safety and comfort directly after each encounter with the SAV. The results show that the pedestrians’ level of perceived safety and comfort is higher in encounters with the interface than in encounters without the interface. This may have a positive influence on the acceptance of SAVs, and implies that future SAVs may gain from this, or similar interface.
An Internet-based system for informing on multimodal travel planning (several modes of transportation) was introduced in Stockholm, Sweden in October 2000 in the form of a web page called trafiken.nu. The web page has a historical value of being one of the first attempts in Europe, and possibly the world, at providing an ICT-based travel planning service geared towards facilitating sustainable travel to the general public. The aim of this article is to investigate the historical development of trafiken.nu in order to draw lessons on how to better provide for a public information service with a potential for facilitating sustainable travel planning. Findings from the study of trafiken.nu suggest that the organizations behind the service have been slow in adapting to shifting media technology practices on how to provide for information which has affected the uptake of the service. Lessons from the case study provide a basis for arguing that organizations attempting to implement public information services would benefit from finding a means of harnessing collective intelligence in order to provide for a more customizable and responsive service to the general public.
This paper addresses the problem of under-representation of young people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education in general, and manufacturing education in particular, as European and global phenomenon. The main objective is to analyse characteristics and different limitations of so called conventional initiatives to attract young talents to STEM and manufacturing and to furthermore propose how ICT and game-based learning approaches can address respective challenges. The paper presents an online serious game EcoFactory aimed at raising the awareness of sustainable manufacturing targeting young children in late primary and middle school. It furthermore provides lessons learnt from the evaluation of the EcoFactory and proposes recommendations for designing game-based initiatives in order to attract young talent to STEM and manufacturing education. They are aligned to the requirements of four target groups, i.e. game designers, STEM initiative designers, decision makers and teachers. In summary, game design should be based on pedagogical scenarios and co-creation processes; should focus on particular STEM subjects without causing major changes to school curricula and content; and should create and/or involve wider community with feedback and experience sharing mechanisms.
Persuasive designs have become prevalent for smartphones, and an increasing number of users report problematic smartphone use behaviours. Persuasive designs in smartphones might be accountable for the development and reinforcement of such problematic use. This paper uses a mixed-methods approach to study the relationship between persuasive designs and problematic smartphone use: (1) questionnaires (N=183) to investigate the proportion of participants with multiple problematic smartphone use behaviours and smartphone designs and applications (apps) that they perceived affecting their attitudes and behaviours, and (2) interviews (N=10) to deepen our understanding of users’ observations and evaluations of persuasive designs. 25% of the participants self-reported having multiple problematic smartphone use behaviours, with short video, social networking, game and learning apps perceived as the most attitude- and behaviour-affecting. Interviewees identified multiple persuasive designs in most of these apps and stated that persuasive designs prolonged their screen time, reinforced phone-checking habits, and caused distractions. Overall, this study provides evidence to argue that persuasive designs contribute to problematic smartphone use, potentially making smartphones more addictive. We end our study by discussing the ethical implications of persuasive designs that became salient in our study.
xThe changes that have come about through the increased speed, ubiquity, and scale of computational systems require a reconceptualisation of how we think about and study the relationship between humans and computers. Driven by the increased production of data in interaction and the transfer of value from interaction to data, we argue that computing that fundamentally impacts human-computer relations is no longer happening only in interaction but also without and outside interaction. While recent arguments have highlighted interaction as a problematic concept for HCI — challenging what constitute users, use, the human, and the computer in interaction — we propose post-interaction computing as one means to conceptualise a fourth wave of HCI. We propose four concepts — immediacy, (un)intentionality, interaction effects, and instability — that can help us in identifying and slicing our objects of analysis in new ways that better match the challenges that HCI is now faced with.
Acquiring a second language in adulthood differs considerably from the approach taken at younger ages. Learning rates tend to decrease during adolescence, and socio-emotional characteristics, like motivation and expectations, take a different perspective for adults. In particular, acquiring communicative competence is a stronger objective for older learners, as an appropriate use of language in social contexts ensures a better community immersion and well-being. This skill is best attained through interactions with proficient speakers, but if this option is not available, social robots present a good alternative for this purpose. However, to obtain optimal results, a robot companion should adapt to the learner's proficiency level and motivation continuously to encourage speech production and increase fluency. Our work attempts to achieve this goal by developing an adaptive robot that modifies its spoken dialogue strategy, and visual feedback, to reflect a student's knowledge, proficiency and engagement levels in situated interactions for long-term learning.
The performance of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)systems has constantly increased in state-of-the-art develop-ment. However, performance tends to decrease considerably inmore challenging conditions (e.g., background noise, multiplespeaker social conversations) and with more atypical speakers(e.g., children, non-native speakers or people with speech dis-orders), which signifies that general improvements do not nec-essarily transfer to applications that rely on ASR, e.g., educa-tional software for younger students or language learners. Inthis study, we focus on the gap in performance between recog-nition results for native and non-native, read and spontaneous,Swedish utterances transcribed by different ASR services. Wecompare the recognition results using Word Error Rate and an-alyze the linguistic factors that may generate the observed tran-scription errors.
Shared mediated spaces provide viable alternatives for meetings and interactions. The development of collaborative mediated workspaces and shared negotiation spaces will have a fundamental impact on all human practices. Previous design-led research, has identified spatial design concepts, such as mediated gaze, and spatial montage, which, if unaddressed, may be said to impose friction, and thus impact negatively on the experience of mediated presence. The current paper discusses a set of conceptual tools for presence design, in relation to a prototype that is currently being developed by an interdisciplinary academic work group: The Mediated Sketching Table. The prototype combines analogue and digital interaction tools and technologies including HTML5 and WebRTC. Here, we present our initial observations when using the prototype and discuss possible ways to overcome design friction in the prototype. We acknowledge that mediated presence cannot be ensured by design or technology alone. However, by monitoring various design features, presence designers can seek to reduce the friction that otherwise inhibits mediated presence, mutual trust, knowledge-sharing, and teamwork efficiency.
Quantifying personal information is a rapidly emerging lifestyle that has now extended to tracking non-personal information as well. The Quantified Pet (QP) domain enablespet owners to gain insights in their pet’s behavior and wellbeing. This study investigates how to design a QP application using the User Centered Design Method. To gain understanding in the inner drivers that form the human-pet relationship, five dog owners are interviewed. Three inner drivers that trigger interaction are revealed: habits, love and guilt. By surveying 104 users of existing QP applications, this study examined what motivates users to use a pet activity tracker and what sustains this usage. After performing a thematic analysis on this data, it was found that Activities,interest in activity data, and Health, improving and ensuringthe dog’s health, are dominantly portraited in the results. These themes provide the foundation for the establishment of two personas, of which the Health persona is chosen to be the primary design target. Next to user requirements following from the persona design, a heuristic evaluation is performed on one QP application (FitBark) to provide an additional set of design requirements. From these requirements, a design solution is proposed and evaluated amongst ten participants by means of a task list, semi- structured interview and a questionnaire. This revealed high usability for navigation and successful implementation of most requirements. However, design flaws, in specific of data visualization, and some misunderstanding of informational components remain. Future work proposes an improved design and provides additional suggestions for implementation and examination.
The goal of this studio is to explore the qualities of unhabitual body movements to inform the design of close-to-the-body touch technologies. After engaging with unhabitual kinesthetic activities, we will use visual and textual elicitation tools to communicate emerging felt sensations. We propose the use of photography as an open-ended visual medium and a repertoire of textural metaphors as a textual tool - a vocabulary list of felt qualities that will be extended through the participants’ contribution. We will then collectively explore how these expressions of felt sensations can be translated into concrete design elements via tangible design ideation and making.
Energy auditing can be an important contribution for identification and assessment of energy conservation measures (ECMs) in buildings. Numerous tools and software have been developed, with varying degree of precision and complexity and different areas of use.
This paper evaluates PHPP as a versatile, easy-to-use energy auditing tool and gives examples of how it has been compared to a dynamic simulation tool, within the EU-project iNSPiRe. PHPP is a monthly balance energy calculation tool based on EN13790. It is intended for assisting the design of Passive Houses and energy renovation projects and as guidance in the choice of appropriate ECMs.
PHPP was compared against the transient simulation software TRNSYS for a single family house and a multi-family house. It should be mentioned that dynamic building simulations might strongly depend on the model assumptions and simplifications compared to reality, such as ideal heating or real heat emission system. Setting common boundary conditions for both PHPP and TRNSYS, the ideal heating and cooling loads and demands were compared on monthly and annual basis for seven European locations and buildings with different floor area, S/V ratio, U-values and glazed area of the external walls.
The results show that PHPP can be used to assess the heating demand of single-zone buildings and the reduction of heating demand with ECMs with good precision. The estimation of cooling demand is also acceptable if an appropriate shading factor is applied in PHPP. In general, PHPP intentionally overestimates heating and cooling loads, to be on the safe side for system sizing. Overall, the agreement with TRNSYS is better in cases with higher quality of the envelope as in cold climates and for good energy standards. As an energy auditing tool intended for pre-design it is a good, versatile and easy-to-use alternative to more complex simulation tools.
In the past few years, the ethics and transparency of AI and other digital systems have received much attention. There is a vivid discussion on explainable AI, both among practitioners and in academia, with contributions from diverse fields such as computer science, human-computer interaction, law, and philosophy. Using the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) method as a point of departure, this paper explores how VSD can be used in the context of transparency. More precisely, it is investigated (i) if the VSD Envisioning Cards facilitate transparency as a pro-ethical condition, (ii) if they can be improved to realize ethical principles through transparency, and (iii) if they can be adapted to facilitate reflection on ethical principles in large groups. The research questions are addressed through a two-fold case study, combining one case where a larger audience participated in a reduced version of VSD with another case where a smaller audience participated in a more traditional VSD workshop. It is concluded that while the Envisioning Cards are effective in promoting ethical reflection in general, the realization of ethical values through transparency is not always similarly promoted. Therefore, it is proposed that a transparency card be added to the Envisioning Card deck. It is also concluded that a lightweight version of VSD seems useful in engaging larger audiences. The paper is concluded with some suggestions for future work.