Search

Augmented reality (AR) presents a variety of possibilities for industrial maintenance. However, the development of real-world AR solutions has been limited due to the technological capabilities and uncertainty with respect to safety at deployment. We introduce the approach of using AR simulation in virtual reality (VR) coupled with gaze tracking to enable resource-efficient AR development. We tested in-field AR guidance and safety awareness features in an iterative development-evaluation process with experts from the elevator maintenance industry. We further conducted a survey, utilizing actual gaze data from the evaluation to elicit comments from industry experts on the usefulness of AR simulation and gaze tracking. Our results show the potential of AR within VR approach combined with gaze tracking. With this framework, AR solutions can be iteratively and safely tested without actual implementation, while gaze data provide advanced objective means to evaluate the designed AR content, documentation usage, and safety awareness.

This article introduces user experience research that has been carried out by evaluating a video-illustrated science fiction prototype with process control workers. Essentially, the prototype 'A remote operator's day in a future control center in 2025' was aimed at discovering opportunities for new interaction methods and ambient intelligence for the factories of the future. The theoretical objective was to carry out experience design research, which was based on explicit ambient user experience goals in the nominated industrial work context. This article describes the complete creative prototyping process, starting from the initial user research that included evaluations of current work practices, technological trend studies and co-design workshops, and concluding with user research that assessed the final design outcome, the science fiction prototype. The main contribution of the article is on the ambient user experience goals, the creation process of the video-illustrated science fiction prototype, and on the reflection of how the experience-driven prototype was evaluated in two research setups: as video sequences embedded in a Web survey, and as interviews carried out with expert process control workers. For the science fiction prototyping process, the contribution demonstrates how the method may employ video-illustration as a means for future-oriented user experience research, and how complementary user-centered methods may be used to validate the results.

We present our exploratory work on globally inclusive online collaboration for schoolchildren in India and Finland, using CityCompass, an online virtual navigational application for conversational language learning. User studies with Indian children, who collaborated with a Finnish researcher, showed several barriers towards communication and collaboration, including issues from limited access to computers and gaming to socio-cultural effects of a large power distance and face-saving. By adding a dramatized scenario, the Bollywood Method, these barriers were reduced. Next, we replicated the study with Finnish children, who collaborated with an Indian researcher. Here, previous computer and gaming experience reduced the motivation towards communication. In this paper, we present studies conducted in Finland, compare it with the Indian ones, and discuss opportunities for inclusive collaboration between Indian and Finnish children. Overall, our findings indicate that online collaboration is affected by differences in computer skills, video gaming experience, and socio-cultural communication norms.

Viewing 360° videos on a head-mounted display (HMD) can be an immersive experience. However, viewers must often be guided, as the freedom to rotate the view may make them miss things. We explore a unique, automatic approach to this problem with dynamic guidance methods called social indicators. They use the viewers’ gaze data to recognize popular areas in 360° videos, which are then visualized to subsequent viewers. We developed and evaluated two different social indicators in a 30-participant user study. Although the indicators show great potential in subtly guiding users and improving the experience, finding the balance between guidance and self-exploration is vital. Also, users had varying interest towards indicators that represented a larger audience but reported a clear desire to use the indicators with their friends. We also present guidelines for providing dynamic guidance for 360° videos.

Part 8: Demonstrations and Installations; International audience; CityCompass VR is a collaborative virtual language learning environment that utilizes interactive omnidirectional video (iODV) content. In the application, two remotely located users navigate through cityscapes in order to reach a common goal. One of the users takes the role of a tourist who needs to find a local attraction, and the other one acts as their guide. The users communicate in a foreign language with each other via headsets. The application is used with HMD device and uses a dwell-time, head-position based interaction.

Experiences in airports may shape future travel plans and contribute to tourism destination development. However, a chaotic environment and time-consuming procedural routines in airports may result in negative associations towards the host country and its culture. Despite the existence of assistive airport applications, little attention is given to facilitating travelers' engagement with cultural exploration. This paper introduces a concept of interactive personalized storytelling that provides both a cultural learning adventure and connection to local retailing. Our application generates an imaginative Finnish storyline unique to every user to guide them through local shops in the airport. A field evaluation was conducted with 15 travelers of different nationalities. Travelers perceived the interactive storytelling experience as an interesting and unique way to spend waiting time at the airport while increasing cultural exposure. Moreover, we found this method to be effective in persuading travelers to explore local products at the airport. Further, our results give insight to designing storytelling applications for large public places.

Omnidirectional videos (ODVs) -- or 360° videos -- are often viewed using a head-mounted display (HMD), allowing users to look around the scene naturally by turning their head. These videos may be populated with visual markers, hotspots, that can contain additional information of points of interest or provide additional functionality. However, optimal ways for interacting and presenting these hotspots remain unclear. We conducted a 16-participant user study where participants interacted with hotspots with different properties while exploring ODVs. We tested 1) two hotspot activation types, dwell time and fade-in, 2) small and large hotspot icon sizes, and 3) centered and left-edge alignments for the appearing content. We found that a combination of fade-in activation, centered alignment, and large icons generally performs the best, but also that user preferences are diverse. Based on our results, we provide recommendations for optimizing the designs for systems utilizing hotspot interactions with HMDs.

In this paper, we build a case for incorporating socio-technical aspirations of different stakeholders, e.g. parents, care-givers, and therapists, to motivate technology acceptance and adoption for children with autism. We base this on findings from two studies at a special school in New Delhi. First, with six children with autism, their parents and therapists we explored whether fitness bands motivate children with autism in India to increase their physical activity. Second, with five parents and specialists at the same school, we conducted interviews to understand their expectations from and current usage of technology. Previous work defines a culture-based framework for assistive technology design with three dimensions: lifestyle, socio-technical infrastructure, and monetary and informational resources. To this framework we propose a fourth dimension of socio-technical aspirations. We discuss the implications of the proposed fourth dimension to the existing framework.

Our research focuses on facilitating access to cross-cultural collaborative applications for schoolchildren. In this paper, we present two user studies with students from an underprivileged region in Delhi. In the first study, we found that Indian students were hesitant when using the application as compared with Finnish students in a similar study, for example. We purport these challenges were social - related to face-saving and power-distance - and technical - related to lack of access to and experience with computers. In the second study, we presented a dramatized scenario before the task to address the socio-technical challenges. Our findings suggest that adding a dramatized scenario facilitated meaningful collaboration by (a) overcoming the lack of previous computer and gaming experience and (b) reducing social and cultural barriers towards communication. We believe these findings extend to cross-cultural collaboration between students with varying computer experience.

Interactive omnidirectional video (iODV) is a media format that allows the user to explore and interact with a 360-degree view of the recorded scenery. Recently, novel collaborative applications for presenting iODV content have emerged. Often their goal is to offer as immersive as possible experience to the users. Previous studies suggest that gender affects the §of immersion in virtual environments and other media, but there has been only little research on immersion in iODVs, and nothing in the context of collaborative interaction. In this research, we studied gender effect with participants (N=30, 15 pairs) performing a collaborative wayfinding task. Subjective data gathered with a customized immersion questionnaire showed statistically significant differences between male and female participants in Spatial Immersion and Involvement subscales. There were no statistical differences in Interaction, Realness, Physical and Auditory subscales. Several possibly affecting factors were observed during the task completion. Our results also indicate that performing interactive, collaborative tasks in iODV applications helps building a shared understanding between the users.

The core idea of experience-driven design is to define the intended experience before functionality and technology. This is a radical idea for companies that have built their competences around specific technologies. Although many technology companies are willing to shift their focus towards experience-driven design, reports on real-life cases about the utilization of this design approach are rare. As part of an industry-led research program, we introduced experience-driven design to metal industry companies with experience goals as the key technique. Four design cases in three companies showed that the goals are useful in keeping the focus on user experience, but several challenges are still left for future research to tackle. This exploratory research lays ground for future research by providing initial criteria for assessing experience design tools. The results shed light on utilizing experience goals in industrial design projects and help practitioners in planning and managing the product design process with user experience in mind. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Public display deployments are often subjected to various surprising and unwanted effects. These effects are frequently due to external factors properties and phenomena that are unrelated to the deployment. Therefore, we conducted a literature review within the public display domain to investigate the causes behind the reported issues. This work presents a taxonomy of external factors affecting deployments, consisting of six categories: weather, events, surroundings, space, inhabitants, and vandalism. Apart from a few positive examples, we predominantly found negative effects arising from these factors. We then identified four ways of addressing the effects: ignoring, adapting, solving, and embracing. Of these, ignoring and adapting are substantially more frequent responses than solving and embracing emphasizing the need for researchers to adapt. We present real-world examples and insights on how researchers and practitioners can address the effects to better manage their deployments.

Interactive omnidirectional videos (iODV) can offer informative, entertaining, and immersive experiences, especially when combined with novel platforms such as head-mounted displays. However, omnidirectional videos, and interaction with them, present many unique challenges. In the absence of existing guidelines that accommodate for these challenges, we present dos and don’ts for designing and producing interactive omnidirectional videos. We base these guidelines on numerous interactive systems that we have produced in the recent years. Our work offers useful guidance for those working with omnidirectional videos, especially when designing interactivity and navigation within such systems.

This paper introduces a video-illustrated science fiction prototype "Remote operator's day in a future control center in 2025" aimed at discovering opportunities for new interaction methods and smart automation for the future factories of Industry 4.0. The theoretical objective was to carry out experience design research in an industrial work context based on explicit user experience (UX) goals. This paper firstly describes how the nominated UX goals were implemented in a video-illustrated science fiction prototype and, secondly, how the prototype was evaluated in two research setups: as video sequences embedded in a Web survey, and as interviews carried out with process control workers. The main contribution is to demonstrate how the science fiction prototyping method can employ video-illustration as a means for future-oriented UX research, and how complementary user-centered methods may be used for validating UX goals by means of a science fiction prototype.

Gesture-based interaction provides a multitude of benefits to individuals with disabilities, for example, enhancing social, motor and cognitive skills. However, applications that encourage self-efficacy by promoting a life-skill through simulations of real world scenarios are largely missing. We explore the benefits of using a gesture-based application for individuals with developmental disabilities. The context is a special school in New Delhi, Nai Disha, where we designed and developed an application, Kirana, that integrates arithmetic and social interaction to teach purchasing of items from a local grocery store. In our study, 18 participants with developmental disabilities, previously unable to visit a grocery store, used Kirana for three weeks. Our results indicate that gesture-based applications can teach a life skill and enable self-efficacy for individuals with developmental disabilities by breaking down complex tasks that require social, mathematical and decision-making skills.

CityCompass promotes collaborative conversational language learning by means of way-findings tasks situated in panoramic views of a city. Two remotely located participants have to navigate these 360 city panoramas as a tourist or a guide, to arrive at a preassigned destination. The application supports three modes of interaction and immersion: traditional mouse and keyboard interaction, embodied interaction using the Microsoft Kinect sensor and a virtual reality supporting 360 degree video panoramas on a mobile phone placed inside virtual reality googles (Samsung Gear VR). CityCompass was demoed at the Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) 2016 conference and it won the best demo award. We believe that at IDC is extremely well suited for CityCompass as it was designed for and is used by children in schools.

Although process control rooms are advanced digital environments with a multitude of desktop and large displays, there still exists a gap between the interaction technologies being employed in pervasive displays used in other settings and those used in control rooms. Previous research on large displays is extensively geared towards investigating social interaction in non-serious environments. The potential of employing multimodal interactive displays to support work and collaboration in process control rooms is underexplored. This paper explores modern control rooms as interactive collaborative environments and presents a multimodal prototype that promotes the users' freedom and flexibility of work through gestural and spoken interaction. The design of the prototype was informed by three feedback sessions and two user studies with various stakeholders. Our findings indicate multimodal interaction in process control rooms should (a) support the feeling of control and safety during the interaction, (b) enable efficient access to information provided by system from a distance, and (c) provide freedom and flexibility of use anywhere in the control room.

There exists mounting evidence in favor of computer supported autism interventions at the individual level. However, the potential benefits of using computer supported collaboration to encourage social interactions between individuals with autism and typically developed individuals are underexplored, particularly in developing regions. We present an exploratory study of a collaborative gesture-based application, Balloons. The application encourages joint attention, which is defined as the shared attention between two individuals towards the same object. Using mixed methods, we evaluated Balloons for three weeks in New Delhi with ten medium-low functioning autistic children. Our findings suggest that employing CSC interventions for children with autism in India provide (a) observable improvements in social interaction with typically developed peers, (b) the opportunity to customize and individualize intervention to cater to a large spectrum of children and (c) the potential opportunity of reducing fears of certain objects.