Search

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, users are increasingly inclined to use conversational agents (CAs) as personal assistants. Communication speed has received much attention as a key medium for content, emotion and attitude expression in interpersonal communication. This study investigates the effect of the rate of speech on users' subjective evaluation of using a CA, as well as users' rate of speech preferences and their scenario difference. We used a 3 (CAs' speed: slow, medium, and fast) × 2 (participants' gender: male and female) mixed design with three types of users' rate of speech and collected data on subjective evaluations, forced choice, and interviews from 25 participants. The results of this study showed that with increasing user rate of speech, users preferred the feedback speed of CAs to increase. Also, the majority of users preferred CAs to respond using medium speed. Gender differences were also found in feedback speed preference. The results of this study can be used to propose a new paradigm in the field of mobile interaction by introducing the theory of communication adaptation to the problem of feedback speed adjustment in conversational agents and exploring the role of speed in mobile interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile phones are central to modern communication, yet for individuals with tremors, the precision required for touch-based interfaces is a significant hurdle. In pursuit of social equality and to empower those with tremors to interact more effectively with mobile technology, this study introduces an optical see-through Augmented Reality (AR) system equipped with a stabilized filter. This system is specially designed to assist individuals with tremors by stabilizing and translating shaky movements into precise virtual commands, allowing users with hand tremor to perform interactions with mobile more effectively and accurately. The first experiment assessed the stabilized filter’s effectiveness using a one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), comparing task completion times with and without the filter. The results showed a statistically significant improvement in operation times with the filter. Subjective evaluations from participants further corroborated these findings, with users reporting a notably better interaction experience when the filter was applied. Feedback highlighted the filter’s stabilization capabilities and its facilitation of smoother interactions, leading to increased user satisfaction and comfort. The second phase of our research involved a comparative analysis, investigating the interactions of individuals with and without simulated tremors using two distinct interfaces within various environments. The experiment was structured around a matrix of conditions comprising two system types (Mobile and AR), two interface designs (Traditional and our Redesigned Interface), and two user states (Non-simulated and Tremor-simulated). Performance metrics focused on task completion times and user feedback via questionnaires revealed that the AR environment was deemed more conducive to operation by those with simulated tremors, due to improved accessibility and interaction quality. In conclusion, this research confirms that the AR system with the stabilized filter represents a meaningful advancement in assistive technologies for tremor patients. The positive response from the tremor community signals the AR system’s promise in fostering greater technological inclusivity and independence for individuals with motor impairment.

Mobile health interventions are widely used to facilitate individuals' management of their health behavior. A notable issue is that health interventions with obvious persuasive intent may cause negligence and reactance. In this study, we propose a subtle but powerful way to bolster self-regulation in maintaining healthy behavior by leveraging embodied interaction design. Our study shows that bodily actions in interacting with digital devices can trigger thoughts about prior associated experiences and, thus, be strategically designed to affect individuals' judgments, decisions, and behavior. Specifically, in three experiments, we find that firmly pressing a touchscreen during mobile interaction (as compared with gently tapping a touchscreen) can activate users' approach motivation and, thus, induce their preference for a healthy over a tasty beverage, lead to more challenging exercise goals and more exercise, and reduce personal hygiene lapses after receiving hygiene education. Hence, designers of digital health products may consider designing interaction with pressing gestures to facilitate users' self-regulation and attainment of health-related goals. Policymakers can also encourage the adoption of relevant app designs to improve citizens' health wellbeing. Many mobile applications use push notifications and reminders to explicitly educate, remind, and motivate users to perform healthy behaviors. However, users do not always act according to these explicit digital interventions. Our study investigates whether users' self-regulation can be implicitly facilitated with a proper mobile interaction design. Specifically, we investigate the impacts of two touch modes that are supported by force-based interaction technology, that is, pressing and tapping. Drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, which suggests that people automatically infer meanings from their bodily actions, we conjecture that pressing, compared with tapping, enhances self-regulation because the action of pressing on the touchscreen embodies resolute approach motivation toward goals. We test our hypotheses in three experiments. The first experiment investigates beverage choices on a mobile app; the second experiment examines goal setting on a fitness app; and the third experiment focuses on personal hygiene learning on a mobile education app. The results from the three experiments show that pressing actions can improve users' self-regulation in selecting a healthier but less tasty beverage (Study 1), setting higher exercise goals and performing more physical exercise (Study 2), and reducing lapses in maintaining personal hygiene (Study 3). In addition, such effects were more salient among users with a higher level of health knowledge and a promotion-focused health orientation. This study contributes to healthcare IT research by showing that mobile interaction can be leveraged to nudge users toward enhanced self-regulation. History: Alok Gupta, Senior Editor; David (Jingjun) Xu, Associate Editor. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72202172 and 72032006], the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Grant HKU 17502921], the University Research Committee of the University of Hong Kong [Grant 201905159007], and the Ministry of Education of Singapore [Grants 2018-T1-002-097 and MOE2017-T2-1-127]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1155. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, most mobile devices provide two-dimensional inputs, such as taps and slides. Although pressure input, which only operates along the z axis as a single dimensional input, has long been investigated, it is separated from the x-y plane. Combining touchscreen sliding gesture with force input to enlarge the operation space is still under explored. Besides, compared with tablets, mobile devices require input with bare fingers, of which users have a poorer control than using a stylus, and have a special usage scenario, walking. How these factors influence the user performance are waiting to be answered. To fill the gap, we conducted an empirical study to explore users' ability to control pressure on mobile devices. Participants were asked to perform pressure-based linear targeting in two postures (sitting and walking), with two types of visual feedback conditions (full and partial visual), and three confirmation methods (Dwell, Quick Release and Stroke). The results show that the number of pressure levels significantly affects error rate, movement time and number of crossings of selections. The pressure space can be divided into six levels with full visual feedback, while three levels with partial visual feedback, despite sitting or walking. The results indicate that Dwell is the most appropriate confirmation method. Based on our results, we also present a widget and discuss several applications for its potential use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile device use is omnipresent in everyday life spawning design to account for the increased complexity and diversity of "Situationally Induced Impairments and Disabilities (SIID)". Although SIIDs frequently impact interactions, little research has attempted to provide generalizable guidance supporting users when these events occur. Situational impairment events may produce challenges similar to those faced by users with Health Induced Impairments and Disabilities. This study conducted an exhaustive literature review from Assistive Technology and Accessibility research and parallel domains, and found that existing guidance on designing for "impairments" can inform designing for "temporary" impairments created by the mobile interaction context. Guidance identified was validated by a panel of mobile interaction experts with a novel adaptation of the consensus-seeking approach known as the Delphi method. This research presents preliminary guidelines to support mobile interface designers and researchers to better recognize and effectively account for the new complexity present during mobile interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interaction design patterns have evolved as a resource that facilitates documentation and the reuse of proven solutions. They provide a structured and understandable mechanism for what to do in the design. Mobile devices have characteristics, configurations, and restrictions that make the construction of their interfaces full of particularities to this environment, and problems that are often common to designers and developers. This study presented a systematic mapping of the state-of-the-art regarding interaction design patterns for mobile devices. A total of 23 studies that include articles and books met the selection criteria in this mapping, examining relevant scientific databases and books that were cited in relevant articles. As a main result, 336 patterns were compiled, with 261 of these problems and solutions being dissimilar from each other. The paper describes patterns in 18 categories covering different interaction aspects. Pattern structural elements with mentions in more than five papers included: Name, Solution, Problem, Context, Examples, Related Patterns, Forces, Consequences and Figure. Four studies reported empirical evaluation of the patterns with a limited number of users. The paper contributed with a categorization of existing patterns and the challenges for uniformization of structure and empirical evidence with user evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operational devices used in the traditional robot teleoperation methods restrict the space for interaction. Furthermore, operational and feedback devices are often separated. Thus, the operator has to switch his attention between the operation area and the feedback area during the interaction, which is unnatural and inefficient. In this article, we propose a new gesture- and speech-guided teleoperation method, which unifies operation, visual feedback, and force feedback areas, to achieve a more immersive and natural interaction environment. First, a mobile interaction method combining mobile operation platform and augmented reality (AR) technology is proposed to enlarge the operational space of operators. Second, the gesture tracking method with AR allows the operators to directly interact with virtual objects using bare hands for natural interaction. Third, speech interaction is introduced to improve the precision of fine teleoperations and the naturalness of interactions. Fourth, we introduce unrestricted force feedback based on electromagnetic force technology to provide operators with force feedbacks without limiting their actions. Besides, a virtual guiding force based on the artificial potential field is presented to help the operators to complete high-precision tasks more efficiently. This approach allows the operators to focus on the task without switching attention and the experimental results show that the proposed method provides an efficient and natural interaction for robot teleoperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mobility and movement has recently gained importance within interactionist studies of social action, not much is known about the consequentiality of being on the move for the particular unfolding of interactional episodes. Utilising two publicly accessible video clips of ‘road rage’ situations, we describe and analyse the centrality of hand-work in the escalation and decline of an emotionally charged interaction between members of traffic. Avoiding an a priori cognitivist stance, we show in detail how the work of hands can be constitutive of anger itself, and that it can lead to open conflict on the boundary of physical violence.

Mobile Focus + Context (mF+C) involves using a handheld device as a focus screen for content on an immersive display or mobile projector. In this work we examine how using a focus device can mitigate poor context image quality due to environmental factors. In an exploratory study we compare three techniques for linking focus and context: lens-focus (Lens), where the device works as a mobile lens held parallel to and in front of the context, center-focus (Centered), where the user holds the device in the center of the projection and pans both context and focus by swiping, and marker-focus (Marker), where the focus region is highlighted on the context, and the user pans the focus by swiping. Participants performed searching, tracing, and detail acquisition tasks with maps and electronics diagrams under a range of simulated projection conditions. All techniques were able to mitigate poor projection quality and performed comparably in time and precision, but the effectiveness of each technique was impacted by task type. There was lower variation in time between participants using Lens for tracing tasks versus the other techniques, but wider variation for searching tasks. Tasks completed using sub-optimal projections involved more time spent looking at the context image than tasks with clear projections, however this difference is less pronounced for the Lens technique. We propose a hybrid Lens-Marker approach for mobile Focus+Context applications in dynamic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interaction design patterns have evolved as a resource that facilitates documentation and the reuse of proven solutions. They provide a structured and understandable mechanism for what to do in the design. Mobile devices have characteristics, configurations, and restrictions that make the construction of their interfaces full of particularities to this environment, and problems that are often common to designers and developers. This study presented a systematic mapping of the state-of-the-art regarding interaction design patterns for mobile devices. A total of 23 studies that include articles and books met the selection criteria in this mapping, examining relevant scientific databases and books that were cited in relevant articles. As a main result, 336 patterns were compiled, with 261 of these problems and solutions being dissimilar from each other. The paper describes patterns in 18 categories covering different interaction aspects. Pattern structural elements with mentions in more than five papers included: Name, Solution, Problem, Context, Examples, Related Patterns, Forces, Consequences and Figure. Four studies reported empirical evaluation of the patterns with a limited number of users. The paper contributed with a categorization of existing patterns and the challenges for uniformization of structure and empirical evidence with user evaluation.

Copyright of TE & ET: Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnología en Educación y Educación en Tecnología is the property of School of Computer Science, La Pata University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A special strain of situational impairment, termed "Severely Constraining Situational Impairments" (SCSI), was explored from a novel qualitative perspective. When a severely impairing event presents, the multitude and complexity of ambient agents are often overwhelming, leading to the inability to devise a solution. To classify and help design for them, interviews and participatory design-based workshops were conducted, revealing that (1) participants attempt to complete mobile transactions, even if it might place them in considerable danger, and (2) significant differences exist in the modalities and steps used to address the onset of a severely impairing event versus those of a non-severe situational impairment. Design solutions generated from the workshops indicated that users want technology to take a larger role in helping manage the added cognitive load inherent in severely impairing events. The revealed implications for design indicate that to maximize the user experience in the mobile device transaction space, designers must account for the presence of these SCSI and the unique design specifications that they require. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human subject studies with mobile users are widely used to understand, and model, human aspects such as behaviours and preferences, in the lab and in the wild. These studies usually employ mixed methods, collecting data by active participation and passive sensing using interactive, mobile, wearable, and ubiquitous devices. Researchers rely on a software platform to design and execute their studies, but existing solutions require a steep learning curve, allow little control, and offer limited guarantees. Our research lab built the mQoL Lab platform using open source technologies, and evolved it to a durable and reliable software ecosystem in over ten mobile subject studies along eight years across three countries. In this paper, we share the acquired experience via tangible artifacts such as requirements, architecture, design, step-by-step support, configuration scripts, and recommendations for researchers to construct a software platform supporting mobile subject studies. The paper is especially relevant for researchers embracing short-term to longitudinal, observational or intervention-based studies, leveraging mixed methods, including multiple devices, and tens to hundreds of simultaneous participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the range of handheld, mobile and desktop devices expands and worldwide demand for collaborative application tools increases, there is a growing need for higher speed impromptu cross-device application sharing to keep up with workplace requirements for on-site or remote collaborations. To address this, we have developed CamCutter, a cross-device interaction technique enabling a user to quickly select and share an application running on another screen using the camera of a handheld device. This technique can accurately identify the targeted application on a display using our adapted computer vision algorithm, system architecture and software implementation, allowing impromptu real-time and synchronized application sharing between devices. For desktop and meeting room set-ups, we performed a technical evaluation, measuring accuracy and speed of migration. For a single-user reading task and a collaborative composition task, we carried out a user study comparing our technique with commercial screen sharing applications. The results of this study showed both higher performance and preference for our system. Finally, we discuss CamCutter's limitations and present insights for future vision-based cross-device application sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the impacts of different notification modalities used in low and high ambient sound environments for mobile phone interaction. Three different notification modalities—Shaking Visual, Shaking Visual + Vibration, and Vibration—were designed and experimentally tested by asking users to conduct a maze task. A total of 72 participants were invited to take part in the experiment through the convenience sampling method. The generated results indicated that (1) the notification modality affects participants’ task completion time, (2) the error rate pertinent to the number of notifications is positively related to the participants’ task completion time, and (3) the ambient sound level and notification modalities impact the overall experience of the participants. The main contributions of this study are twofold. First, it verifies that the multi-dimensional feature of a Shaking Visual + Vibration synesthesia notification design is implementable. Second, this study demonstrated that the synesthesia notification could be feasible for mobile notification, and it was more perceptible by the users.

Traditional methods of public consultation offer only limited interactivity with urban planning materials, leading to a restricted engagement of citizens. Public displays and immersive virtual environments have the potential to address this issue, enhance citizen engagement and improve the public consultation process, overall. In this paper, we investigate how people would interact with a large display showing urban planning content. We conducted an elicitation study with a large immersive display, where we asked participants (N = 28) to produce gestures to vote and comment on urban planning material. Our results suggest that the phone interaction modality may be more suitable than the hand interaction modality for voting and commenting on large interactive displays. Our findings may inform the design of interactions for large immersive displays, in particular, those showing urban planning content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract As location-based digital cultural heritage applications are beginning to be applied outside 'traditional' cultural heritage sites, there is an increased need to consider their use amongst people who may be interested in the cultural heritage of a site, but have that interest as a tangential, opportunistic, aspect of their visit. We outline why this is important, and present issues in evaluating it. We then introduce Explore: a mobile, location-based, digital cultural heritage application for the Finnish recreational island of Seurasaari. By considering how the common visitor trajectory of a museum visit can be mapped onto a visit to the island, we were able to evaluate Explore with participants who were not primarily there to access cultural heritage. Evaluation with 45 participants over 5 days identified how the low immersion techniques used allowed participants to fit accessing cultural heritage around their visit, how participants managed group tension between those more and those less interested in Explore, as well as issues around considering the use of cultural heritage applications as a tangential purpose of a visit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]