Artificial Intelligence (AI) supports many of our everyday activities and decisions. However, personalized algorithmic recommendations often produce adverse experiences due to a lack of awareness, control, or transparency. While research has directed solutions on graphical user interfaces (GUIs), there are no explorations of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) to improve the experience with such systems, despite the valid existing academic arguments in favor of this exploration. Therefore, centering on transparency and control, we analyzed how 18 users of movie recommender systems perceived four different TUIs using individual co-design sessions and post-interview questionnaires. Through thematic analysis, we identified seven design considerations while designing TUIs to interact with algorithmic movie recommender systems: (1) Distinctions between TUIs and GUIs; (2) TUIs replacing predominant interfaces; (3) Preference for single-device TUIs; (4) The relevance of granular control for TUIs; (5) Apparent transparency limitations of TUIs; (6) TUIs and algorithmic social computing; and (7) Overview of specific design choices, including advantages and disadvantages of soft, hard, rounded, cubic, and humanoid interfaces. These findings inspired Recffy: the first functional TUI designed to enhance awareness and control in personalized movie recommendations. Based on this study, we propose the concept of Tangible Algorithms: TUIs dedicated to enhancing the interaction of algorithmic systems and their profiling processes or decisions in a specific context. Furthermore, we describe the relevance of tangible algorithms and design guidelines to promote them in diverse AI contexts. Finally, we invite the HCI and CSCW community to continue exploring tangible algorithms to address the interaction with algorithmic systems, including the collaborative and social computing dynamics they can promote in diverse AI contexts.

Immersive experiences – enabled by technologies such as VR, AR, 360° video and other highly immersive multimedia applications – have the potential to make interacting with various activities more inclusive for many people. This can be achieved by applying the principles of inclusive design. This panel will discuss the current challenges in designing inclusive immersive technologies, and how they should be addressed.

Recommender algorithms play an active role in many everyday activities. However, personalized recommendations often produce negative experiences due to a lack of awareness, control, or transparency. Allowing users to materialize their algorithmic imaginaries exposes how they experience, perceive, and imagine recommender algorithms. Moreover, it can unearth novel and previously unattended design opportunities for tangible interactions with algorithms. Therefore, we explored how 15 users of a famous movie recommender system materialized tangible designs to reflect and discuss their algorithmic imaginaries during co-design workshops and interviews. Using thematic analysis, we identified two forms of algorithmic imaginaries that can inspire tangible interactions with recommender algorithms: metaphoric and datafied representations. Complementary themes exposed the influence of contextual factors and diverse negative attitudes towards personalized movie recommendations. Based on these findings, we suggest design opportunities and suggestions for improving the algorithmic experience of movie recommendations and similar systems through tangible user interfaces.

Mid-air haptic (MAH) feedback, providing touch feedback through ultrasound, has been considered an attractive substitute for the absence of physical touch during gesture-based interaction. Although the impact of MAH feedback on workload has already received some attention, the impact on other qualities of the user experience, including general attractiveness and experienced pleasure have been less investigated. In this preregistered study, involving 32 participants, we observed an added value of MAH feedback, on top of visual feedback, by increasing the attractiveness and experienced pleasure during gesture-based interaction, but not by decreasing workload. The added value regarding pleasure and attractiveness disappeared however after statistically controlling for perceived novelty. This paper highlights the importance of statistically controlling for novelty when testing the user experience of new technology during first-time use.

As Mid-Air Haptic (MAH) feedback, which provides a sensation of touch without direct physical contact, is a relatively new technology, research investigating MAH feedback in home usage as well as multi-sensory integration with MAH feedback is still scarce. To address this gap, we propose a possible usage context for MAH feedback, perform an experiment by manipulating auditory and haptic feedback in various physical qualities and suggest possible combinations for positive experiences. Certain sensory combinations led to changes in the emotional responses, as well as the responses regarding utilitarian (e.g. clarity) and perceptual (sensory match) qualities. The results show an added value of MAH feedback when added to sensory compositions, and an increase in the positive experiences induced by MAH length and multimodality.

In this paper we present the ongoing work on the Speaker's Staff, a concept for a tangible user interface to support remote multidisciplinary team meetings in hospitals. We describe the design process of the Speaker's Staff and our research-through-design approach, inspired by critical design, to overcome contextual barriers. By introducing the Speaker's Staff: we don't require tight integration with hospital informatics, we maximize flexibility for physicians in this dynamic environment, and we address the lack of mobile devices during these meetings. In four scenarios, we illustrate the possibilities of the Speaker's Staff: tilting to request the floor, hiding to signal absence, striking to thump the table, and tapping to acknowledge. Also, as the hospital can be a rather restrictive environment for HCI researchers, we argue that the Speaker's Staff supports our research in this context because the object makes our research questions tangible towards physicians.

We describe a study of Monkey Tales, an educational game targeted at primary school children. Starting from the assumption that all meaning is socially constructed, we focus our attention on the way an educational game, and its balance between fun and serious aspects, is constructed in public texts (game manufacturer's communication and game reviews) and in individual use (the way players and their parents talk about the game). Through an analysis of public texts and individual use, we show how the balance between the fun and the serious in Monkey Tales is constructed in different ways.

This paper describes TUIkit, a new method for evaluating both physical and functional experiences of users with early TUI prototypes. By means of a study to evaluate interactive dice prototypes, TUIkit's appropriateness for tracing the effect of different physical attributes (e.g. shape, size, weight, material, texture) on the functional and thus overall user experience was investigated. The results show that separating physical and functional experiences first and joining these afterwards, enhanced the evaluation of TUI prototypes. By applying this approach, participants became more aware of how they physically experienced the prototypes, rather than focusing solely on the functional value of the prototypes. This awareness supports earlier studies that suggest that TUIs consist of more than just interaction, and that form and materiality has a strong impact on their user experience. Finally, we suggest some future adjustments of the TUIkit method.

Social Television constitutes a fundamental shift in how people interact and socialize around television content. Websites are starting to combine streaming services with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Media software like Boxee allows users to recommend and share favorite television programs, and friends can jointly watch television remotely as demonstrated by Motorola's Social TV. The purpose of this paper is to provide a structured overview of current developments in this emerging field. Current offerings can be categorized based on the social purpose: content selection and recommendation, communication, community building, and status update. The framework proposed in this article is useful for better understanding the current situation and for identifying future developments.

Synchronization between locations is an important factor for enabling remote shared experiences. Still, experimental data on what is the acceptable synchronization level is scarce. This paper discusses the synchronization requirements for watching online videos together - a popular set of services that recreate the shared experience of watching TV together by offering tools to communicate while watching. It studies the noticeability and annoyance of synchronization differences of the video being watched, as well as the impact on users' feelings of togetherness, both for voice chat and text chat. Results of an experiment with 36 participants show that when using voice chat, users notice synchronization differences sooner, are more annoyed and feel more together than when using text chat. However, users with high text chat activity notice synchronization differences similar to participants using voice chat.

Various social television systems and applications, enabling remote communication and interaction between viewers, are currently in development. Although usability guidelines exist for interactive television to ensure a usable system, there are no sociability guidelines for designing or evaluating the social interaction these systems enable. In this paper we present twelve sociability heuristics for evaluating social TV, based on several user studies with social TV systems.

The migration of media consumption to personal computers retains distributed social viewing, but only via nonsocial, strictly personal interfaces. This article presents an architecture, and implementation for media sharing that allows for enhanced social interactions among users. Using a mixed-device model, our work allows targeted, personalized enrichment of content. All recipients see common content, while differentiated content is delivered to individuals via their personal secondary screens. We describe the goals, architecture, and implementation of our system in this article. In order to validate our results, we also present results from two user studies involving disjoint sets of test participants.

Media consumption is an inherently social activity, serving to communicate ideas and emotions across both small- and large-scale communities. The migration of the media experience to personal computers retains social viewing, but typically only via a non-social, strictly personal interface. This paper presents an architecture and implementation for media content selection, content (re)organization, and content sharing within a user community that is heterogeneous in terms of both participants and devices. In addition, our application allows the user to enrich the content as a differentiated personalization activity targeted to his/her peer-group. We describe the goals, architecture and implementation of our system in this paper. In order to validate our results, we also present results from two user studies involving disjoint sets of test participants.

Interactive digital television (iDTV) is a social medium and must therefore be tested in a context as close to real life as possible. This explains why we saw the potential and importance for the involvement of real-life couples in iDTV usability testing. In this article, an experiment that compares single user testing and coparticipation testing with couples for the evaluation of several Flemish iDTV applications is described. The study found that, first, there was less probing needed by the facilitator to think out loud in the think aloud/coparticipation method with couples than in the think aloud/single test user method. Second, couples did not encounter difficulties working together with the iDTV applications. Further, couples did not lose time by discussing irrelevant issues during the test session. A fourth finding is that couples detected more usability hits than single test users. The quality of comments, however, was the same in both conditions. Sixty perecent of the comments consisted of intrinsic suggestions and 40% of general problem detections. Another issue was raised through findings during the test. Couples in general were enthusiastic to participate, put in little effort on their part in the test session, and evaluated the test session as easy and fun to do. On the contrary, single test users in general were not sure whether they would like to participate again in future tests, declared that the test session demanded considerable effort, and evaluated the test session less positively.