Group mood and engagement are invisible currents that shape how people collaborate at work, emerging through everyday interactions rather than isolated individual states. While positive socio-emotional dynamics support collaboration and productivity, they remain difficult to sense and interpret unobtrusively. This work investigates whether posture-based behavioral cues sensed through everyday objects can provide insight into group mood and engagement. We present a pressure-sensing chair prototype that captures changes in weight distribution during meetings. In a study with 14 groups (N = 46), we combine postural cues with participants’ retrospective video annotation to triangulate engagement and mood. Our results show that posture activity is associated with engagement and mood arousal, while moments of shared group mood co-occur with increased postural synchrony. We further identify synchronized behavioral patterns reflecting affective convergence and contagion. These findings demonstrate how situated sensing through everyday objects can reveal socio-emotional dynamics and inform the design of collaborative systems.

Exergames promise enjoyable physical activity through gameplay, yet players often face barriers that undermine engagement, safety, and retention. To date, knowledge about which barriers are encountered by end-users of commercial exergames and which mitigation strategies are used is limited. To address this gap, we conducted an online survey with 174 participants and provide a comprehensive organization of 60 reported barriers across six categories: physical, mental, social, environmental, technological, and game design. Key barriers include space limitations, social discomfort, addictive gameplay, and injuries. Our analysis reveals that while players try to mitigate barriers through ad-hoc strategies, issues like embarrassment, addiction, and harassment remain difficult to overcome. These findings highlight the need for more adaptive game designs, including dynamic spatial adjustments, personalized pacing mechanisms, and supportive social features. This work advances the understanding of exergame barriers and their impact and offers actionable insights for designing more inclusive and resilient movement-based games.

Abstract Watching a movie or a football match is still a favorite activity when it comes to spending time with family or friends. TV interaction and movie selection is typically based on using one remote control to perform a selection on a TV user interface. Hence movie or TV channel selection is thus limited to one user who holds the remote control in their hand. Consequently, long decision-making processes, frustration, and the perception of being excluded are part of this experience. This research focuses on opportunities for tangible interfaces to support collaborative movie selection in the living room. Based on an exploratory phase with a variety of design ideas, we designed and evaluated a tangible interface called Sharemote—a concept that provides physical genre-based tokens as a key concept for decision-making to explore group interests and to narrow down possible movies to select. Based on a controlled mixed-subject lab study, we showed significant improvements in the overall user experience of jointly selecting a movie. Moreover, Sharemote was users’ preferred choice of TV interaction.

The field of Sports Human-Computer Interaction (SportsHCI) investigates interaction design to support a physically active human being. Despite growing interest and dissemination of SportsHCI literature over the past years, many publications still focus on solving specific problems in a given sport. We believe in the benefit of generating fundamental knowledge for SportsHCI more broadly to advance the field as a whole. To achieve this, we aim to identify the grand challenges in SportsHCI, which can help researchers and practitioners in developing a future research agenda. Hence, this paper presents a set of grand challenges identified in a five-day workshop with 22 experts who have previously researched, designed, and deployed SportsHCI systems. Addressing these challenges will drive transformative advancements in SportsHCI, fostering better athlete performance, athlete-coach relationships, spectator engagement, but also immersive experiences for recreational sports or exercise motivation, and ultimately, improve human well-being.

Driving a car can be difficult when it comes to distractions caused by operating the in-vehicle infotainment system (IVIS). In-car passengers often help with performing IVIS-related tasks. However, an IVIS is often not designed with a focus on task collaboration. In this article, we focus on how to design in-car systems with the goal to support collaboration between a driver and a front-seat passenger. Based on infotainment-oriented tasks, we initially explore five key collaborative control concepts by means of an IVIS which differ from each other in terms of the number of available IVIS screens (one or two), access to menus (restricted and unrestricted), and the nature of performing tasks in parallel or one after the other. Results from a simulator study with N = 16 pairs show significant effects of the concepts on social collaboration in terms of perceived social connectedness (measured with sub-dimensions connectedness, affiliation, belongingness, companionship), team performance (coordination effectiveness and team cohesion), and fairness. We found that especially a dedicated passenger IVIS screen empowers front-seat passengers, reduces power dynamics, supports fairness, and minimizes driver distraction (caused by interacting passengers). We discuss the implications of these findings and posit recommendations to design future IVIS in passenger cars with improved driver-passenger collaboration by explicitly designing for balanced power roles, situational awareness, active communication, and a balance between drivers’ privacy and trust toward the passenger. Additionally, we outline a systematic overview of future work to explore the research field of driver-passenger collaboration in more breadth and depth.

The coronavirus pandemic drastically changed the lives of people across the globe. It affected almost every aspect of our lives including work, education, entertainment and social life. Although it is beginning to feel like a nightmare that perhaps we imagined, the consequences, largely negative, but a few positive, are still echoing around the world. Many people lost their lives or their livelihoods, many people still have long COVID and there were many other negative consequences. On the more positive side, the pandemic revolutionized remote working, shifted healthcare more rapidly to remote methods and enhanced digital communications, topics very relevant to human–computer interaction (HCI). For HCI, the pandemic had a profound effect on the way we work, in terms of practice, research and education. For long weeks and months, many of us were unable to meet face-to-face with clients, users, participants and students. This meant we had to change the way we worked, conducted research and educated the future generations of HCI and UX practitioners, researchers and educators. But HCI also has considerable potential to contribute to adjusting to life during a pandemic and in a post-pandemic world. As many people have noted, the pandemic would have been much more difficult without digital technologies that allowed many of us to work or study remotely, to stay in touch with family and friends, to consult our medical practitioner, to exercise, entertain ourselves and so on. A wider range of people needed digital technologies than ever before, and new systems needed to be created or adapted very quickly. There were some surprises, such as the sudden usefulness of QR codes, security concerns about many digital platforms (who had heard of ‘Zoombombing’ before the pandemic?) and the even greater explosion of disinformation and misinformation about issues such as the causes and cures for COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines. Without good interactive systems we would not have achieved what we were able to in the long weeks and months of lockdowns, but perhaps better designed interactive systems could have helped prevent the spread of disinformation and misinformation during that time. This special issue of Interacting with Computers addresses both aspects of HCI and the pandemic: how has the pandemic changed practice, research and education in HCI; and how has HCI contributed to solutions, and how can it continue to contribute to solutions as we move through the post-pandemic world. Sixteen papers were selected from more than 40 submissions for the special issue, with authors from 16 different countries covering Asia, Australasia, Europe and both North and South America. Papers cover a broad range of topics, and as we anticipated, address both how we can do HCI research in remote contexts and how HCI can help understand and solution the issues thrown up by this unprecedented context of social isolation. Three papers explored the theme of how we can do HCI research in this remote context. Correa et al. (this issue) and Verma (this issue) explored particular studies conducted remotely and Costagliola et al. (this issue) conducted a survey of how research report in the CHI conference changed in methods due to the pandemic. Another group of papers explored how to use HCI research methods to investigate problems arising from the pandemic, and remote work and study in particular. Turner and Ordonia (this issue) investigated how social media posts can be used as an indirect measure of well-being, by comparing the content of posts before and during the pandemic, while Suhaimi et al. (this issue) investigated the relationship between social media use and people’s intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Guidi et al. (this issue) investigated another aspect of social media use during the pandemic, that of the support it offered people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and those caring for these individuals. A large group of papers explored how interactive technologies could be deployed to address the problems that arose from the pandemic and understand the issues of using them. Stenkamp et al. (this issue) conducted research on how immersive video could be used to study whether pedestrians would follow distancing measures in public spaces and Hespanhol (this issue) explored how physical, virtual and hybrid public spaces can be designed to meet distancing and other requirements. Colombo et al. (this issue) explored how digital technologies can support the rapid design of new systems to cope with emergencies such as the pandemic. Rogers et al. (this issue) proposed different ways in which videoconferencing systems could be further developed to create a better experience for remote meeting participants. Barry and Kane (this issue) investigated the problems of remote working for global teams, a problem already before the pandemic, but one which it brought into focus. Gulliksen et al. (this issue) also investigated the effects of remote work, this time in the context of high education. Qin et al. (this issue) investigated a more specific education issue, that of students multitasking during online courses. Gould et al. (this issue) tackled the ongoing problem of how to measure the effectiveness of working remotely in ways acceptable to workers. This is clearly one of many issues accelerated by the pandemic that need further research. Ryan et al. (this issue) also explored a very contentious issue that emerged during the pandemic, the use of digital COVID certificates and the fairness of their use. Finally, Dix et al. (this issue) tackled the very large problem of the difficulties of understanding complex global issues such as the pandemic or the climate crisis and how we can use digital technologies better in supporting decision-making about these issues. As the COVID-19 pandemic hopefully recedes into history, we can see that these papers raise many interesting issues for us to contemplate and research. The pandemic made us consider the ways we work, research, study and relax and how digital technologies support all these activities. It brought some issues that were building into sharp focus and raised new ones due to the particular circumstances we found ourselves in. Hopefully, another situation like this will never occur again, but let us make sure we consider the lessons of this situation so we are better prepared if it does re-occur.

With the gradual transition towards assisted and automated driving, the car will transform into a more social environment where passengers and drivers engage in Non-Driving-Related Activities (NDRA). To support collaboration among occupants in future vehicles, research suggests interactive systems controlled by several users at once. In this paper, we explore five concepts for the collaborative performance of NDRA with the use-case of music playlist creation. While prior work investigated the effect on social connectedness, we expand insights towards team performance and fairness. Results from a mixed-subject experiment (N=27) show that the concepts have major consequences on team performance and fairness. Certain concepts can promote or hinder coordination effectiveness and, in turn, impact intra-vehicular collaboration. Our observations also indicate that fairness is key to fostering social collaboration in AVs, while it does not naturally define a high team performance. Subsequently, we provide recommendations to guide future designs of collaborative NDRAs in vehicles.

One of the major benefits of virtual reality (VR) lies in its ability to create a heightened sense of presence through visual and auditory modalities. To further enhance presence, research has investigated various ways to allow for tactile perception of objects in virtual environments. Among the different dimensions of tactile perception, thermal feedback is less explored, especially in the context of games which renders many existing approaches impractical due to their interference with game controllers. In this paper, we present Ethermal - a thermal feedback solution - designed to a) convey temperature information through the player’s hands while b) still permitting the use of standard VR game controllers. An evaluation with 10 players, using the device in a custom-made virtual environment to demonstrate different use cases of thermal feedback, suggests that an increased feel of general and spatial presence and experienced realism can be achieved even with simple technological means.

With competitive gaming on the rise, players have developed an increased interest in data-driven feedback of their in-game performance. In many cases, this feedback is presented visually post-play but live companions that provide real-time analytics are gaining more and more attention. However, the design of such systems poses different requirements which have been little explored from a scholarly point of view. In this paper, we report on a study of two visualizations - a physical and digital one - providing live feedback to League of Legends players designed based on a community survey (N= 175) and expert input. We further discuss results of a qualitative evaluation with 13 players and an expert, touch upon potential benefits and drawbacks of physical and digital implementations, and present derived design considerations and challenges for such real-time data visualizations, revolving around issues of information density, contextualization, representation, and a diverse range of user needs.

With the rise of competitive online gaming and esports, players’ ability to review, reflect upon, and improve their in-game performance has become important. Post-play visualizations are key for such improvements. Despite the increased interest in visualizations of gameplay, research specifically informing the design of player-centric visualizations is currently limited. As with all visualizations, their design should, however, be guided by a thorough understanding of the goals to be achieved and which information is important and why.

Games have been part of human–computer interaction (HCI) research since the first CHI conference in 1982. At that gathering, Tom Malone, then at Xerox PARC, presented insights from the study of com...

There are a growing number of smart phone applications allowing the user to control their television, set-top box or other entertainment devices. The success of these applications is limited. Based on findings from media studies in Austria and France focusing on how people currently use their TV and iTV systems and associated devices, this article describes recommendations for the design of a smart phone application enabling users to control Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) systems including all connected entertainment devices. Recommendations include the need to allow users to control devices that are related to the IPTV experience (not only the set-top box or television set) and the focus on scenarios of usage like supporting listening to music, enjoying a movie or controlling the connected home. Based on similarities and differences found in the two samples, future smart phone applications for controlling TV will only succeed if they provide meaningful functionalities that satisfy the (varying) user needs, support personalisation and personal usage and respect the limitations of mobile phones with respect to possible parallel activities performed.

This paper presents a questionnaire-based approach to evaluate the user experience (UX) while interacting with interactive Television (iTV) systems. Current contributions in the field of UX propose generic methods applicable to various application domains, whereas our contribution is dedicated to the specific domain of interactive TV systems. Based on a classification of UX dimensions from a literature review, the first version of the questionnaire is focusing on the dimension’s aesthetics, emotion, stimulation and identification. A validation study with 106 participants was performed to assess the relations between the evaluated UX dimensions, as well as their fit to the underlying theoretical assumptions. Results showed that the UX dimensions aesthetics, emotion and stimulation are important for the domain of iTV, while identification was not confirmed. The study revealed significant correlations between the type of IPTV system used and the emotional and stimulation dimension. Additionally, a significant effect of the TV reception mode and the type of IPTV box owned on the emotion towards the system was observed. Beyond the contribution of the questionnaire that is directly applicable for any iTV system, the findings described in the paper demonstrate the need for user experience evaluation methods targeted at specific domains: the validation of the questionnaire shows that identification is not a central dimension of user experience when interacting with interactive TV.

Usability inspection methods like cognitive walkthroughs and guideline-based evaluations of robotic systems find more and more usage in the design of human-robot interaction. However, due to the fact that robots can be used in a variety of different scenarios, applying these methods to robots is rather difficult. Expert evaluation methods like heuristic evaluations thus need a methodological adaptation to be reasonably applied for human-robot interaction scenarios. We propose a methodological adaptation of remote heuristic evaluation based on video scenarios. To investigate this methodological adaptation we conducted a heuristic evaluation case study based on six different video scenarios with three different robots. Traditional heuristic evaluation data was gathered (number of found usability problems and severity rankings of the problems) and additionally a feedback questionnaire on the method itself was distributed to the participating expert evaluators. We could show that video-based remote heuristic evaluations conducted by interdisciplinary expert evaluators are a valuable approach to detect usability problems in human-robot interaction design in an early development phase.

Several variations of methodological approaches are used to study the social acceptance in human-robot interaction. Due to the introduction of robots in the home, working practice and usage typically informing the design of new forms of technology are missing. Studying social acceptance in human-robot interaction thus needs new methodological concepts. We propose a so called breaching experiment with additional ethnographic observation to close this gap. To investigate the methodological concept we have been conducting a field trial on a public place. We gathered feedback using questionnaires, in order to estimate whether this method can be beneficially to evaluate social acceptance. We could show that breaching experiments can be a useful method to investigate social acceptance in the field.

Interactive TV (iTV) will only succeed if user-centered solutions are provided. Despite an increasing focus on the home environment within the human–computer interaction field, there is still a lack of studies of the context home and empirical data on users' domestic activities (Blythe, Overbeeke, Monk, & Wright, 2004 Blythe, M. A., Overbeeke, K., Monk, A. F. and Wright, P. C. 2004. Funology. From usability to enjoyment, 277–281. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. [Google Scholar]; Mateas, Salvador, Scholtz, & Sorensen, Mateas, M., Salvador, T., Scholtz, J. and Sorensen, D. . Engineering ethnography in the home. Proceedings of the Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference (CHI'96). pp.283–284. [Google Scholar] O'Brien, Rodden, Rouncefield, & Hughes, 1999 O'Brien, J., Rodden, T., Rouncefield, M. and Hughes, J. 1999. At home with the technology: An ethnographic study of a set-top-box trial. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 6(3): 282–308. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In this article, the results of an ethnographic study conducted during the summer 2005 as part of a field trial on iTV in the country of Salzburg, Austria, are presented. The research aim was to gain a deeper understanding of selected household types and household members, their daily habits and social background, their TV viewing behavior and experiences, and expectations on iTV. Within the research, patterns of what people do, how existing technologies facilitate their daily activities, what meanings people connect with the TV, and how iTV services can support people at home could be identified. The findings of this study and the lessons learned from the usability study during the first field trial (Bernhaupt, Ploderer, & Tscheligi, 2005 Bernhaupt, R., Ploderer, B. and Tscheligi, M. . Relevance of prior experience in MHP-based ITV services. Human-computer interaction–INTERACT 2005, IFIP TC13 International Conference. Edited by: Costabile, M. F. and Paterno, F. pp.149–152. Rome, Italy: Springer. [Google Scholar]) guided the design and development of the iTV services for the second field trial in spring 2006.

MAUSE-COST294 is a community of interest with its members sharing a common goal of bringing more science to bear on usability evaluation methods. This goal is being realized through systematic collaborative efforts of a network of usability experts and learners. Scientific activities are being coordinated under the respective frameworks of four Working Groups (WGs) with each of them having specific objectives, inputs and anticipated outputs. Further, MAUSE partners' research projects on usability will be integrated into the WGs. Specifically, several partners are actively involved in researching the usability of mobile user interfaces.