Human-computer Interaction Research Research Articles

Lived Data: Tinkering With Bodies, Code, and Care Work

Human–computer interaction research on personal informatics in health care has focused on systems that aim to support patient empowerment and enable better health outcomes with data monitoring and tracking. Through examining the lived experience of personal data used to manage chronic illness, we show how such technology design is also the site of radical dependencies, collaborative care arrangements, and wider sociopolitical concerns tied to new forms of technical labor and shifts in medical expertise. Drawing from ethnographic research with open source, do-it-yourself collectives engaged in opening up corporate-controlled type 1 diabetes devices and data, we propose the analytical lens of lived data. Lived data emphasize data as an integral way of living, enacted through a multiplicity of things, relations, and practices, from bodies and needles, social media support groups, and legal processes to writing code, making visualizations, and hacking devices. Building on critical and feminist scholarship of human–machine relations, we articulate the work that goes into producing and living personal data, the physical and emotional costs of data tracking, and the consequences of do-it-yourself as a form of individual empowerment in health and wellness.

Gaze Interaction With Vibrotactile Feedback: Review and Design Guidelines

Vibrotactile feedback is widely used in mobile devices because it provides a discreet and private feedback channel. Gaze-based interaction, on the other hand, is useful in various applications due to its unique capability to convey the focus of interest. Gaze input is naturally available as people typically look at things they operate, but feedback from eye movements is primarily visual. Gaze interaction and the use of vibrotactile feedback have been two parallel fields of human–computer interaction research with a limited connection. Our aim was to build this connection by studying the temporal and spatial mechanisms of supporting gaze input with vibrotactile feedback. The results of a series of experiments showed that the temporal distance between a gaze event and vibrotactile feedback should be less than 250 ms to ensure that the input and output are perceived as connected. The effectiveness of vibrotactile feedback was largely independent of the spatial body location of vibrotactile actuators. In comparison to other modalities, vibrotactile feedback performed equally to auditory and visual feedback. Vibrotactile feedback can be especially beneficial when other modalities are unavailable or difficult to perceive. Based on the findings, we present design guidelines for supporting gaze interaction with vibrotactile feedback.

Gamified crowdsourcing: Conceptualization, literature review, and future agenda

Abstract Two parallel phenomena are gaining attention in human–computer interaction research: gamification and crowdsourcing. Because crowdsourcing's success depends on a mass of motivated crowdsourcees, crowdsourcing platforms have increasingly been imbued with motivational design features borrowed from games; a practice often called gamification. While the body of literature and knowledge of the phenomenon have begun to accumulate, we still lack a comprehensive and systematic understanding of conceptual foundations, knowledge of how gamification is used in crowdsourcing, and whether it is effective. We first provide a conceptual framework for gamified crowdsourcing systems in order to understand and conceptualize the key aspects of the phenomenon. The paper's main contributions are derived through a systematic literature review that investigates how gamification has been examined in different types of crowdsourcing in a variety of domains. This meticulous mapping, which focuses on all aspects in our framework, enables us to infer what kinds of gamification efforts are effective in different crowdsourcing approaches as well as to point to a number of research gaps and lay out future research directions for gamified crowdsourcing systems. Overall, the results indicate that gamification has been an effective approach for increasing crowdsourcing participation and the quality of the crowdsourced work; however, differences exist between different types of crowdsourcing: the research conducted in the context of crowdsourcing of homogenous tasks has most commonly used simple gamification implementations, such as points and leaderboards, whereas crowdsourcing implementations that seek diverse and creative contributions employ gamification with a richer set of mechanics.

The Usability Construct: A Dead End?

“Usability” is a construct conceived by the human–computer interaction (HCI) community to denote a desired quality of interactive systems and products. Despite its prominence and intensive use in HCI research, the usefulness of the usability construct to HCI theories and to our understanding of HCI has been meager. In this article I propose and discuss two reasons for this state of affairs. The first is that usability is an umbrella construct. Umbrella constructs are prevalent in scientific fields that are broad, diverse, and lack a unifying research paradigm. Accordingly, umbrella constructs, such as usability, tend to be vague and loose, characteristics that challenge our ability to accumulate and communicate knowledge and to capture real-world phenomena. The second reason involves the nature of the relations between the usability construct and its measures, a topic rarely discussed in HCI research. There appears to be a mismatch between how the HCI community has (implicitly) conceptualized these relations and how it has empirically examined them. The relations have been conceptualized according to a formative measurement model but have mostly been tested according to a reflective measurement model. The trouble is that representing the usability construct by the reflective model appears inappropriate, and representing it by the formative model involves considerable difficulties. Possible ways of addressing these issues are discussed, each with its advantages and drawbacks. I conclude that for scientific research on this subject to progress, the usability construct ought to be unbundled and replaced by well-defined constructs. The issues discussed in this article are relevant to other HCI umbrella concepts and constructs such as user experience.

Beyond Smell-O-Vision: Possibilities for Smell-Based Digital Media

Research Problem: The purpose of this research synthesis is to identify new opportunities for smell-enabled games based upon current olfactory research, and to present early game concepts that have emerged from our empirical assessments. Literature Review: We briefly summarize key projects in the history of scent technologies for film and media. Human-Computer Interaction researchers have also explored a number of uses for scent delivery in interactive digital media. Recent developments in olfactory psychology and neuroscience research suggest that a fruitful avenue for exploration is to develop learning games that expand olfactory capacity. Methodology: We have conducted two studies of computer-based perceptual and cognitive olfactory tasks. Mixture perception experiment: We designed a perceptual experiment where the task was to correctly estimate the intensity of odor components in a blend of coffee and tea. Blended odors were presented to 10 healthy adults by means of a computer-controlled olfactometer. Following each stimulation, the participant used a computer interface to estimate the intensity of components of the blend. Event-based memory experiment: We have developed a digital olfactory version of the children’s game “Memory.” The game interface consists of 32 white squares that are presented in a grid pattern on the screen and that, when participants click on them, triggers the release of one of eight possible smells from the olfactometer. Fifteen healthy adult participants were tested in 10 laboratory sessions distributed over three weeks. Results and Conclusions: Our empirical results suggest that smell training through learning games holds promise as a means of improving cognitive function. The results of our event-based memory experiment suggest that both olfactory and visual memory capacities might have benefitted from olfactory game training. The results of our mixture perception experiment indicate that binary odor mixtures might provide a suitable starting point for perceptual training, and we suggest that a smell-enabled game might include adaptive difficulty by progressively introducing more complex mixtures. We have used event-based memory and mixture perception as “olfactory targets” for game mechanic development, and present early design concepts for “Smelly Genes” and “Scenter.” Finally, we discuss future directions and challenges for this new, interdisciplinary research topic.

Exploring the effects of non-monetary reimbursement for participants in HCI research

When running experiments within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) it is common practice to ask participants to come to a specified lab location, and reimburse them monetarily for their time and travel costs. This, however, is not the only means by which to encourage participation in scientific study. Citizen science projects, which encourage the public to become involved in scientific research, have had great success in getting people to act as sensors to collect data or to volunteer their idling computer or brain power to classify large data sets across a broad range of fields including biology, cosmology and physical and environmental science. This is often done without the expectation of payment. Additionally, data collection need not be done on behalf of an external researcher; the Quantified Self (QS) movement allows people to reflect on data they have collected about themselves. This too, then, is a form of non-reimbursed data collection. Here we investigate whether citizen HCI scientists and those interested in personal data produce reliable results compared to participants in more traditional lab-based studies. Through six studies, we explore how participation rates and data quality are affected by recruiting participants without monetary reimbursement: either by providing participants with data about themselves as reward (a QS approach), or by simply requesting help with no extrinsic reward (as in citizen science projects). We show that people are indeed willing to take part in online HCI research in the absence of extrinsic monetary reward, and that the data generated by participants who take part for selfless reasons, rather than for monetary reward, can be as high quality as data gathered in the lab and in addition may be of higher quality than data generated by participants given monetary reimbursement online. This suggests that large HCI experiments could be run online in the future, without having to incur the equally large reimbursement costs alongside the possibility of running experiments in environments outside of the lab.

Exploring the effects of non-monetary reimbursement for participants in HCI research

When running experiments within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) it is common practice to ask participants to come to a specified lab location, and reimburse them monetarily for their time and travel costs. This, however, is not the only means by which to encourage participation in scientific study. Citizen science projects, which encourage the public to become involved in scientific research, have had great success in getting people to act as sensors to collect data or to volunteer their idling computer or brain power to classify large data sets across a broad range of fields including biology, cosmology and physical and environmental science. This is often done without the expectation of payment. Additionally, data collection need not be done on behalf of an external researcher; the Quantified Self (QS) movement allows people to reflect on data they have collected about themselves. This too, then, is a form of non-reimbursed data collection. Here we investigate whether citizen HCI scientists and those interested in personal data produce reliable results compared to participants in more traditional lab-based studies. Through six studies, we explore how participation rates and data quality are affected by recruiting participants without monetary reimbursement: either by providing participants with data about themselves as reward (a QS approach), or by simply requesting help with no extrinsic reward (as in citizen science projects). We show that people are indeed willing to take part in online HCI research in the absence of extrinsic monetary reward, and that the data generated by participants who take part for selfless reasons, rather than for monetary reward, can be as high quality as data gathered in the lab and in addition may be of higher quality than data generated by participants given monetary reimbursement online. This suggests that large HCI experiments could be run online in the future, without having to incur the equally large reimbursement costs alongside the possibility of running experiments in environments outside of the lab.

Architecture guideline for game-based stroke rehabilitation

PurposeStrokes are the most common cause of long-term disability of adults in developed countries. Continuous participation in rehabilitation can alleviate some of the consequences, and support recovery of stroke patients. However, physical rehabilitation requires commitment to tedious exercise routines over lengthy periods of time, which often cause patients to dropout of this form of therapy. In this context, game-based stroke rehabilitation has the potential to address two important barriers: accessibility of rehabilitation, and patient motivation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThis paper provides a review of design efforts in human-computer interaction (HCI) and gaming research to support stroke rehabilitation.FindingsBased on extensive review, this paper highlights challenges and opportunities in this area, and discusses an architecture guideline for a game-based stroke rehabilitation system.Originality/valueThis study was an original study.

Multisensory Experiences in HCI

For decades, the use of vision and audition for interaction dominated the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), despite the fact that nature has provided many more senses for perceiving and interacting with the world. Recently, HCI researchers have started trying to capitalize on touch, taste, and smell when designing interactive tasks, especially in gaming, multimedia, and art environments. Here, the authors provide a snapshot of their research into touch, taste, and smell, carried out at the Sussex Computer Human Interaction (SCHI) Lab at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK.

Designing a Successful Collaborative Wiki

Designing a collaborative platform that produces project outcomes of high quality and allows for wisdom of the crowds to come together in the achievement of a common goal can be a challenge. Literature often addresses the interplay between designing for online community needs and outcome/product quality as coexistence, where design implementations in one positively affect the other. However, Human-Computer Interaction research has shown that performance and satisfaction need not be dependent on each other. This paper performs a theoretical analysis of the literature on the topic and identifies design gaps for collaborative projects. Findings derived by this theoretical analysis challenge existing design perspectives by demonstrating that there is often a tradeoff between designing for online community needs and outcome quality for these projects. Claims were developed that lead to research questions identifying the most important elements and design considerations are provided along with potential future directions for advancing the understanding of this relationship.

Optimal Feature Selection and Deep Learning Ensembles Method for Emotion Recognition From Human Brain EEG Sensors

Recent advancements in human–computer interaction research have led to the possibility of emotional communication via brain–computer interface systems for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders or disabilities. In this paper, we efficiently recognize emotional states by analyzing the features of electroencephalography (EEG) signals, which are generated from EEG sensors that noninvasively measure the electrical activity of neurons inside the human brain, and select the optimal combination of these features for recognition. In this paper, the scalp EEG data of 21 healthy subjects (12–14 years old) were recorded using a 14-channel EEG machine while the subjects watched images with four types of emotional stimuli (happy, calm, sad, or scared). After preprocessing, the Hjorth parameters (activity, mobility, and complexity) were used to measure the signal activity of the time series data. We selected the optimal EEG features using a balanced one-way ANOVA after calculating the Hjorth parameters for different frequency ranges. Features selected by this statistical method outperformed univariate and multivariate features. The optimal features were further processed for emotion classification using support vector machine, k-nearest neighbor, linear discriminant analysis, Naive Bayes, random forest, deep learning, and four ensembles methods (bagging, boosting, stacking, and voting). The results show that the proposed method substantially improves the emotion recognition rate with respect to the commonly used spectral power band method.

Revisiting the Astonishing Growth of Human–Computer Interaction Research

The author of a 1979 Computer article reflects on the remarkable changes that human–computer interaction research has brought to the computing and information technology field.

A Comparative Study of Milestones for Featuring GUI Prototyping Tools

Prototyping is one of the core activities of User-Centered Design (UCD) processes and an integral component of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. For many years, prototyping was synonym of paper-based mockups and only more recently we can say that dedicated tools for supporting prototyping activities really reach the market. In this paper, we propose to analyze the evolution of prototyping tools for supporting the development process of interactive systems. For that, this paper presents a review of the literature. We analyze the tools proposed by academic community as a proof of concepts and/or support to research activities. Moreover, we also analyze prototyping tools that are available in the market. We report our observation in terms of features that appear over time and constitute milestones for understating the evolution of concerns related to the development and use of prototyping tools. This survey covers publications published since 1988 in some of the main HCI conferences and 118 commercial tools available on the web. The results enable a brief comparison of characteristics present in both academic and commercial tools, how they have evolved, and what are the gaps that can provide insights for future research and development.

Using Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction to Design Technology for Resilience

Research in human computer interaction (HCI) covers both technological and human behavioural concerns. As a consequence, the contributions made in HCI research tend to be aware to either engineering or the social sciences. In HCI the purpose of practical research contributions is to reveal unknown insights about human behaviour and its relationship to technology. Practical research methods normally used in HCI include formal experiments, field experiments, field studies, interviews, focus groups, surveys, usability tests, case studies, diary studies, ethnography, contextual inquiry, experience sampling, and automated data collection. In this paper, we report on our experience using the evaluation methods focus groups, surveys and interviews and how we adopted these methods to develop artefacts: either interface’s design or information and technological systems. Four projects are examples of the different methods application to gather information about user’s wants, habits, practices, concerns and preferences. The goal was to build an understanding of the attitudes and satisfaction of the people who might interact with a technological artefact or information system. Conversely, we intended to design for information systems and technological applications, to promote resilience in organisations (a set of routines that allow to recover from obstacles) and user’s experiences. Organisations can here also be viewed within a system approach, which means that the system perturbations even failures could be characterized and improved. The term resilience has been applied to everything from the real estate, to the economy, sports, events, business, psychology, and more. In this study, we highlight that resilience is also made up of a number of different skills and abilities (self-awareness, creating meaning from other experiences, self-efficacy, optimism, and building strong relationships) that are a few foundational ingredients, which people should use along with the process of enhancing an organisation’s resilience. Resilience enhances knowledge of resources available to people confronting existing problems.

A Novel Health Informatics Tool to Improve Caregiver Activation: Findings from Pediatric BMT in a Hospital-Based Setting

Background: The rapid adoption of mobile technology by the public and increased emphasis on patient engagement yields an opportune time to leverage health information technology (IT). Yet, a knowledge deficit exists on the use of health IT tools for high-risk populations. Pediatric blood and marrow transplant (BMT) is a medically complex and intense intervention. We have previously shown that BMT patients and caregivers have significant information needs. As such, caregiver activation on behalf of the patient may play an important role in fostering an effective patient-caregiver-provider partnership, which is increasingly recognized as the optimal model for health care delivery. Anxiety over outcomes, compounded by information overload may limit successful activation. Health IT tools offer the potential to overcome constraints in health care delivery limited by provider time and complex health information. We hypothesized that a tablet-based tool displaying personalized health information, including real-time data from the electronic health record, could provide a platform to promote caregiver activation. The implementation and evaluation of our health IT tool (BMT Roadmap) was based on generation of user-centered needs and in collaboration with a trans-disciplinary team, including experts in BMT, health communications, psychology/health behavior, biostatistics, health informatics, and human-computer interaction research. BMT Roadmap included the following domains: 1) laboratory results; 2) medications; 3) clinical trial enrollment; 4) health care provider directory; 5) phases of transplant; and 6) interactive discharge checklist with professionally produced videos on central line care.Methods: Caregivers of pediatric BMT patients were recruited and enrolled on this IRB-approved study. They were instructed to use BMT Roadmap freely throughout the patient's admission. Data collection included mixed methods approaches. System log-use data were recorded, including number of log-ins, domains frequented, and duration of use. Quantitative survey measurements were obtained at baseline (admission), discharge, and day 100 after BMT. These validated surveys measured activation, mood, anxiety, satisfaction, quality of life, and caregiver distress. In depth qualitative interviews were performed at baseline, weekly during admission, at discharge, and at day 100. Both inductive and deductive analysis was used to identify themes for further study.Results: Ten caregivers participated in the study: 80% female, 90% white, median age 36 years (25-54 years). Transplants were 50% autologous and 50% allogeneic. Median time of use was 104.1 minutes (6.4-256.2 minutes) over 29.5 days (21-68 days). Minutes used and days used were strongly inter-correlated (r=.90, p=0.001) and correlated with inpatient days (r=.70, p=0.05; and r=.81, p=0.01 respectively). The most time spent was in the laboratory module, followed by health care provider directory, medication, and phases of care modules (Table 1). Quantitative survey results showed that trait anxiety (STAI-T) was decreased, caregiver quality of life (CQOL) was improved, and caregiver activation (C-PAM) was increased at discharge compared with baseline (Table 2). The highest level of self-rated activation, as assessed by the C-PAM survey increased from 40% (admission) to 50% (discharge), and reached 85.7% (day 100). Total C-PAM score showed a strong trend toward increased activation from admission to day 100 (p=0.08). Caregivers with higher engagement had less trait anxiety at day 100 (r=.82, p=0.02), but engagement was unrelated to minutes of iPad use, days of iPad use, inpatient days, and caregiver quality of life. Caregivers described the iPad as easy to use and all used it for some portion of their stay (Table 3).Conclusions: Our findings indicate that health IT tools adapted to specific clinical conditions have potential to increase caregiver activation. BMT Roadmap was highly useful and easy to use. Validated survey measurements indicated that trait anxiety was decreased, caregiver quality of life was improved, and caregiver activation was increased at discharge compared with baseline. Higher activation was associated with less anxiety at day 100, but unrelated to iPad use (time), inpatient days, caregiver depression, distress or quality of life. We are now expanding BMT Roadmap into the Adult BMT population. [Display omitted] [Display omitted] [Display omitted] DisclosuresNo relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Parkinson Patients' Initial Trust in Avatars: Theory and Evidence.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects the motor system and cognitive and behavioral functions. Due to these impairments, PD patients also have problems in using the computer. However, using computers and the Internet could help these patients to overcome social isolation and enhance information search. Specifically, avatars (defined as virtual representations of humans) are increasingly used in online environments to enhance human-computer interaction by simulating face-to-face interaction. Our laboratory experiment investigated how PD patients behave in a trust game played with human and avatar counterparts, and we compared this behavior to the behavior of age, income, education and gender matched healthy controls. The results of our study show that PD patients trust avatar faces significantly more than human faces. Moreover, there was no significant difference between initial trust of PD patients and healthy controls in avatar faces, while PD patients trusted human faces significantly less than healthy controls. Our data suggests that PD patients’ interaction with avatars may constitute an effective way of communication in situations in which trust is required (e.g., a physician recommends intake of medication). We discuss the implications of these results for several areas of human-computer interaction and neurological research.

Multimodal human attention detection for reading from facial expression, eye gaze, and mouse dynamics

Affective computing has recently become an important area in human-computer interaction research. Techniques have been developed to enable computers to understand human affects or emotions, in order to predict human intention more precisely and provide better service to user to enhance user experience. In this paper, we investigate into the detection of human attention level as a useful from of human affect, which could be influential in intelligent e-learning applications. We adopt ubiquitous hardware available in most computer systems, namely, webcam and mouse. Information from multiple input modalities is fused together for effective human attention detection. We invite human subjects to carry out experiments in reading articles when being imposed upon different kinds of distraction to induce them into different levels of attention. Machine-learning techniques are applied to identify useful features to recognize human attention level by building up user-independent models. Our result indicate performance improvement with multimodal inputs from webcam and mouse over that of a single device. We believe that our work has revealed and intersting affective computing direction with potential application in e-learning.

What publications metadata tell us about the evolution of a scientific community: the case of the Brazilian human–computer interaction conference series

Human---computer interaction (HCI) is a research field which engages different disciplines, interest groups and communities, and which has emerged in different countries at different times. To understand how the HCI research community has evolved in Brazil, this paper applies data and visual analytics to its main conference series, the Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, henceforth IHC. We have explored the metadata of all 340 full papers published in the 14 editions of IHC. Our goal was to investigate the evolution of the Brazilian HCI community so we can raise the level of "self-knowledge" and thus discuss strategies that can further help develop this research community. From our analysis, we could understand more deeply the authorship profile of our community and how it has changed over time, the co-authorship networks evolution, the prominent institutions and states, the reference profile and the research topics over time. We hope that this paper will contribute to inspire other scientific communities to analyze themselves, and encourage their own discussions.

Domestic Reflections, Electric Reflections: Design Interventions Foregrounding Energy Mundanity in the Home

For many years, Human-Computer Interaction and interaction design researchers have been exploring the potential for interactive technologies to encourage sustainable living practices. This paper examines existing literature concerning domestic energy feedback, interlacing past examples of domestic interventions into the discussion. It synthesises recent design research conducted around domestic energy-use and provides a discussion into household circumstances, everyday activities, and the use and role of design. The themes presented are threefold. First, the individual is contrasted to the household collective and in turn calls for the scope and scale of design interventions to be geared towards connection between household members. The second theme questions the everyday, and proposes new avenues of thought when designing for the mundanity of everyday life. Finally, I propose that a design approach which counteracts an affirmative design approach, such as critical design, is an appropriate fit when critiquing and evaluating the mundane, everyday aspects of domestic life.

The Meaning of Interactivity—Some Proposals for Definitions and Measures

New interactive applications, artifacts, and systems are constantly being added to our environments, and there are some concerns in the human–computer interaction research community that increasing interactivity might not be just to the good. But what is it that is supposed to be increasing, and how could we determine whether it is? To approach these issues in a systematic and analytical fashion, relying less on common intuitions and more on clearly defined concepts and when possible quantifiable properties, we take a renewed look at the notion of interactivity and related concepts. The main contribution of this article is a number of definitions and terms, and the beginning of an attempt to frame the conditions of interaction and interactivity. Based on this framing, we also propose some possible approaches for how interactivity can be measured.