For social robots to maintain long-term engagement as exercise instructors, rapport-building is essential. Motor mimicry—imitating one’s physical actions—during social interaction has long been recognized as a powerful tool for fostering rapport, and it is widely used in rehabilitation exercises where patients mirror a physiotherapist or video demonstration. We developed a novel Brain-Robot Interface (BRI) that allows a social robot instructor to mimic a patient’s exercise movements in real-time, using mental commands derived from the patient’s intention. The system was evaluated in an exploratory study with 14 participants (3 physiotherapists and 11 hemiparetic patients recovering from stroke or other injuries). We found our system successfully demonstrated exercise mimicry in 12 sessions, however, accuracy varied. Participants had positive perceptions of the robot instructor, with high trust and acceptance levels, which were not affected by the introduction of BRI technology.

Future Forums are multiphase user centered design workshops, with the early phases aiming to initiate discussions, that then leads to the co-design of game elements centered around aspects of code security. The same procedure was followed for each of the three Future Forums, each focusing to a slightly different theme around cyber security. By engaging code-citizens in discussions on cyber security that are rooted in their personal experiences and individual viewpoints, several themes emerged, such as the role of coder practices and ethical behavior in security while coding. Findings gave us a deep insight in the code-citizens’ ecosystem during code development – both in terms of their individual beliefs and practices, and the practicalities they have to consider. Discussions were followed by the co-design and co-creation of game elements. The game elements code-citizens co-created allowed us to observe how code elements and code practices are represented with game elements, informing future designs of security oriented serious games. This paper discusses the implications these findings have to the design of cyber security oriented serious games, and to the wider HCI community working with similar methodologies.

Abstract The Rohingya ethnic group is one of the most persecuted minorities, whose specific circumstances pose unique and interesting challenges. The digital revolution is transforming the world and is leaving refugees behind (UNHCR). In this paper, we present a multiphase user centred approach we used to explore how Rohingya refugees could access assistance by utilizing technology they already have or share; both early on and long after they arrived in a new country. The findings we present from phase 1, which was an early participatory design phase, were confirmed and endorsed by the Rohingya community, UNHCR and local charities during phase 3. These findings, suggest that concepts aiming to assist Rohingya refugees should primarily focus on: safety, social capital, upskilling, and language translation. Finally, we present the iterative user centred design, implementation, and evaluation of one of these concepts focusing on safety, before being deployed within the Rohingya community in Malaysia.