Automated vehicles (AVs) reached technological maturity and will soon arrive on streets as traffic participants.Human traffic participants such as drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists will be increasingly confronted with the presence of AVs within their environment, not necessarily knowing or understanding what to expect and how to interact with them.Although AVs are designed to act safely, effective interaction in mixed traffic scenarios will depend on successful communication, interaction, or even negotiation beyond static rules and regulations.Prosocial behavior, such as yielding one's right of way, will be needed to resolve unclear traffic situations or foster traffic flow.However, what are the characteristics of such prosocial behavior, and how to measure this not only for automated vehicles

Despite the wide adoption of wearables, electronics incorporated into jewellery remain a niche. Interactive jewellery offers a compelling design space, encompassing values of traditional jewellery and its socio-cultural roles. However, creating interactive artefacts that bear symbolic and social meaning remains challenging. We investigate how these roles can be leveraged and re-interpreted using modern technology. Utilising traditional jewellery’s socio-cultural roles as a framework, we look at interactive jewellery in participatory workshops with N = 16 design practitioners. Informed by our results, we created a prototype interactive necklace, focusing on Identity role and conducted four case studies to probe the wearer and bystander perceptions on interactive jewellery in different social contexts. Based on our findings, we contribute four directions for interactive jewellery designers.

Smart homes are evolving into complex ecosystems, but their inner workings often remain opaque to users, limiting their ability to troubleshoot and customise the technology. The distributed and hidden components make it challenging for users to understand how these systems work. To design interfaces that enable intuitive troubleshooting for non-experts, we first need a clear understanding of how they form mental models and instinctively diagnose issues. We conducted three iterative vignette studies with realistic smart home scenarios to explore how users perceive interconnectivity in smart home ecosystems and how system complexity impacts their troubleshooting approaches. We identified common smart home topologies envisioned by users and categorised their diagnostic strategies. Our findings show that while users view their smart homes as hierarchical, their mental models are often incomplete, and current interfaces favour functional models, hiding the connections in the system. We provide seven actionable takeaways for designing interfaces that improve user understanding and troubleshooting capabilities.

Current smart home technologies rely on touchscreens and voice assistants for interaction. These interfaces lack tactile engagement and fail to support users’ daily routines and preferences, leading to poor user experiences (UX). Designing tangible user interfaces (TUIs) that align with user preferences can improve the status quo. This paper explores the potential of TUIs using everyday objects for smart home control. Four prototypes — a vase, pillow, coaster, and flower — were evaluated for UX and metaphor alignment through a within-subjects study with 25 participants. Using meCUE questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, we examined how physical and contextual attributes influence UX. Our findings indicate that everyday objects are effective TUI and produce positive UX, provided careful consideration is given to their physical and contextual attributes. This research expands our understanding of TUIs’ role in bridging the digital-physical divide and offers practical guidelines for embedding intuitive smart home controls into everyday objects.

Smart home appliances are becoming more popular, yet their user interfaces (UI) often lack integration into living spaces and daily practices. To facilitate more natural interactions, reduce clutter and promote better integration in our living spaces, we propose embedding controls into everyday objects. This paper outlines our approach in three steps: identifying suitable household objects through ethnographic research, gathering interaction ideas via user gesture elicitation, and evaluating the intuitiveness of conceptual interfaces through a Wizard-of-Oz study. Our findings suggest that an object's primary function has less influence on its potential as a smart home controller. Instead, its location, physical characteristics, and intuitive affordances play a more significant role in shaping its potential. Designers should, therefore, focus on making these affordances easily discoverable by concurrently considering the object's physical properties, function, and interaction context.

Small-size autonomous vehicles have reached a level of technological maturity that enables their use as efficient means for goods delivery. Yet, current designs of both ground and aerial vehicles fail to address potential information needs of bystanders: What is this robot doing? Can it harm me? Does it need help? Through a series of six co-design workshops ( \(N = 22\) ), we iteratively explore two types of autonomous healthcare delivery vehicles, namely aerial and ground robots, with a focus on bystanders’ perspectives and interaction needs between bystanders and AVs. The resulting design propositions were then synthesized into functional scale-model prototypes of a healthcare delivery robot and drone. We validate our co-design findings by conducting two laboratory Wizard-of-Oz experiments ( \(N = 24\) ). Our results demonstrate how familiar colors and iconography support goal sharing and bystanders in recognizing the delivery vehicle’s purpose and intentions. Mapping interaction needs of bystanders, we find contextual effects on bystander attitudes and the effectiveness of communication modalities. This work contributes to the design of future, socially acceptable small-size delivery vehicles fit for human spaces.

Gesture interactions have become ubiquitous, and with increasingly reliable sensing technology we can anticipate their use in everyday environments such as smart homes. Gestures must meet users’ needs and constraints in diverse scenarios to gain widespread acceptance. Although mid-air gestures have been proposed in various user contexts, it is still unclear to what extent users want to integrate them into different scenarios in their smart homes, along with the motivations driving this desire. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether users will remain consistent in their suggestions when transitioning to alternative scenarios within a smart home. This study contributes methodologically by adapting a bottom-up frame-based design process. We offer insights into preferred devices and commands in different smart home scenarios. Using our results, we can assist in designing gestures in the smart home that are consistent with individual needs across devices and scenarios, while maximizing the reuse and transferability of gestural knowledge.

Mid-air gesture-based systems are becoming ubiquitous. Many mid-air gestures control different kinds of interactive devices, applications, and systems. They are, however, still targeted at specific devices in specific domains and are not necessarily consistent across domain boundaries. A comprehensive evaluation of the transferability of gesture vocabulary between domains is also lacking. Consequently, interaction designers cannot decide which gestures to use for which domain. In this systematic literature review, we contribute to the future research agenda in this area, based on an analysis of 172 papers. As part of our analysis, we clustered gestures according to the dimensions of an existing taxonomy to identify their common characteristics in different domains, and we investigated the extent to which existing mid-air gesture sets are consistent across different domains. We derived a consensus gesture set containing 22 gestures based on agreement rates calculation and considered their transferability across different domains.

This paper analyses Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature reviews to provide a clear conceptual basis for authors, reviewers, and readers. HCI is multidisciplinary and various types of literature reviews exist, from systematic to critical reviews in the style of essays. Yet, there is insufficient consensus of what to expect of literature reviews in HCI. Thus, a shared understanding of literature reviews and clear terminology is needed to plan, evaluate, and use literature reviews, and to further improve review methodology. We analysed 189 literature reviews published at all SIGCHI conferences and ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) up until August 2022. We report on the main dimensions of variation: (i) contribution types and topics; and (ii) structure and methodologies applied. We identify gaps and trends to inform future meta work in HCI and provide a starting point on how to move towards a more comprehensive terminology system of literature reviews in HCI.

Over the last decade, smart home technology (SHT) has become an integral part of modern households. As a result, smart home ecosystems blend with daily social life, appropriated and integrated into personalised domestic environments. The lived experience of inhabiting smart home ecosystems, however, is not yet understood, resulting in a mismatch between ecosystem design and inhabitants’ needs. Drawing on contextual inquiry methods, we conducted an explorative interview study (N=20) with SHT users in their homes. Our thematic analysis reveals how users shape their smart home ecosystems (SHEs), considering social relationships at home, perceived ownership of SHTs, and expected key benefits. Notably, our analysis shows that household members consciously choose ‘their’ level of SHT interconnectedness, reflecting social, spatial and functional affinities between systems. Following our findings, we formulate five implications for designing future SHTs. Our work contributes insights on the dynamics and appropriation of smart home ecosystems by their inhabitants.

While the neck-worn garments are an integral part of fashion around the world, few interactive systems utilize them as form factors. As neck is located beyond the natural field of view, it offers wide opportunities for subtle haptic interaction. While tactile acuity of the neck is well studied in clinical research, these results are difficult to apply for interactive systems. In this paper, we present HaptiCollar - a research prototype for studying tactile acuity of the neck. We conducted two experimental studies comparing different numbers of actuators on the neck, in two contextual scenarios simulating stationary and mobile use. We found that pattern actuations are recognised more effectively than single-point vibrations, independently of use scenario. Our analysis shows that introducing a primary cognitive task and motion does not impair recognition accuracy, while highly increasing the cognitive load. Our work contributes empirical insights for designing haptic interaction for future neck-worn interfaces.

Conducting gesture elicitation studies (GES) in personal spaces such as smart homes is crucial to achieving high ecological validity of elicited gestures. However, supervising such studies is considered intrusive and negatively affects the results' quality. The alternative is to conduct unsupervised GES under similar conditions, but more side-by-side comparisons documenting the similarities and differences between both approaches are necessary. Consequently, we need more data describing the preferred approach and whether the differences or similarities in the results are so significant to cause concern. This research distributed a DIY observation kit, which 30 participants assembled and used to propose gestures for controlling elements in a smart living room using a pillow's surface, with and without supervision. Our results show that gestures from supervised and unsupervised studies differ in quantity and max-consensus but not in gesture Agreement Scores. Our results also show that participants preferred conducting unsupervised studies but proposed fewer gesture sets in this condition.

A rapid shift towards online education witnessed in recent years, re-shaped the necessary skill set of a modern teacher. Delivery of classes in remote and hybrid format became an integral part of education. However, providing feedback on lecturing technique at scale still remains a challenge. We present the design and implementation of Speecoach – an online tool for lecturers that analyses the audio recordings of lectures and provides feedback concerning their style of speech delivery. Our system analyses the pitch, speech rate and volume dynamics of a recording and compares it against the reference model based on a data set of professional-grade talks. Our tool facilitates teachers’ self-development by providing contextualised feedback on the parameters of their speech and comparing it to different forms of public addresses. Our work contributes a prototype tool facilitating public speaking and envisions future developments and studies in life-long learning of education professionals.

For an improved user experience in smart homes, there is a need to enhance the current interaction methods by embedding control interfaces in everyday household objects. Embedded interfaces will allow smart home inhabitants to control their surroundings using more familiar interaction concepts and techniques than those imposed by appliance manufacturers and vendors. However, to achieve this state, technology designers need to understand the behaviours and attitudes of end users when they interact with different elements of a smart home using everyday objects as control media. We present a set of exploratory investigations focused on understanding the behaviours and attitudes of end-users as they control elements of a fictional smart home. Accordingly, we investigate how two highly different locations and form factors -- a table surface and a couch pillow -- impact user expectations about gestures used to control various smart home features. To this end, we conducted explorative elicitation with 14 participants. Our results highlight that an object's physicality significantly impacts the types of gestures users perceive as intuitive and that deforming an interface has the potential to bring playfulness to interaction. Following our observations, we formulated four design implications for conceiving interaction modalities with deformable interfaces for domestic environments.

Simple and low bandwidth communication on computers has been found to promote intimacy between couples. In this work, we further explore this minimal communication in the form of wearables. This pictorial presents an in-the-wild concept study of low bandwidth ambient wearable displays as a communication channel between couples. The goal is to understand the contexts in which the technology might be used and provide benefit. Our findings show that simple communications through a wearable device could provide an additional channel for communication. The wearable form factors also creates the feeling of being always connected. We highlight the importance and influence of form factors, contexts, and activities towards user experience. We discuss the opportunities this study opens for the future design of wearable ambient displays.

We present the design and prototype of the Linn Dress, a transforming dress that allows its wearer to dynamically reveal and conceal areas of skin, as they feel comfortable and appropriate for different contexts. Electrochromic displays are employed as the elements enabling the garment's dynamic transparency. The Linn Dress is designed for office workers with a lively lifestyle, who shift directly from the work environment to social evening events. The dress presents professional working attire, and when transformed to reveal exciting open cuts and patterns, a cocktail dress.

In recent years, design and form factors of wearables have converged towards traditional jewellery, such as rings, necklaces and bracelets. Even though the aesthetics of smart jewellery have been gradually improved, many current commercial pieces are still mainly functionality and technology-driven. In this paper, we take steps to better understand the design and wearing aspects of smart jewellery. We investigate how jewellery wearers associate functionalities with body locations in a design exploration session with industrial design students using the terms "private" and "public" as keys. Results suggest that with privacy in mind, smart jewellery designs move towards the wearer's hands and fingers and selected data sources originating from the wearer's body were preferred, while designs for "public" information presentation tended to be moved to higher locations on the body, i.e. head, neck and chest, and to be fed from external data sources.

Time is a complex concept that takes children years to learn. Yet, many of their activities are bounded by time constraints. We aim to support children in learning time with intuitive interaction with a prototype presenting time periods unobtrusively. We present Timelight, an ambient light display designed to help children better understand the duration of time periods. We derive requirements from interviews and a focus groups with teachers, parents and HCI experts. We establish an interaction design and develop a prototype for a field exploration study. We explore the functionality of and interaction with Timelight in families, kindergarten groups and school classes in a two-week field study. Our results show that ambient light is well suited to keep children updated on the duration of time in various contexts of their daily life. Our participants use Timelight on a vast range of occasions and identify additional roles for the display.

In the recent years, several automotive manufacturers started to integrate ambient light displays into cars to increase drivers' comfort. Expanding their possible application areas, we propose a display that continuously informs the driver of the vehicle's as well as the environment's state. We studied this display in a lane change maneuver, in which a driver has to decide if he or she can change lane in front of a faster closing car or brake to keep a safe distance to a slower car in front. We present results of an experiment for light patterns that are based on results of a design workshop and definitions for lane change decision aid systems (LCDAS) of ISO 17387. Though we used ISO's definitions for the timings, our participants felt that status updates on the display came too late. In addition, the abrupt warnings, implemented in one of the tested patterns, led to worse performance of the participants. On the other hand, we observed that participants liked a continuous encoding of the time-to-collision (TTC) and observed a decrease in missed opportunities to overtake. Therefore, we argue that the defined limits for the warning levels are not well suited to support drivers during decision making in our scenario. Our contribution lies in a novel way of supporting drivers during lane change using an ambient in-vehicle light display. We showed that a continuous light pattern might help drivers in decision making, while more research has to be done to validate this.

Recent interest in the development of ambient light systems has initialized a new research area, where the number of ambient light systems is expected to increase in the next years. To support the development of future ambient light systems, we need clear, explicit, and structured design guidelines. In this paper we present an evaluation of light patterns in a controlled laboratory study with two complementary parts. In the first part, our aim was to reveal and analyze light patterns that encode different types of everyday information. In the second part, we verified the results from the first part by asking another group of participants about their understanding of information encoded with light. Together, our results allowed us to establish light patterns and guidelines for building new ambient light systems and applications in the future.

Modelling traffic or human-machine systems in different domains such as aeronautic, maritime and automotive is a challenging but well generalizable task. Within the modelling process, one is usually facing the complexity of the system dynamics and emergent effects like cooperation or competition on the one hand. But on the other hand in all domains, the system designer is dealing with a similar basis: Distributed multi-agent systems. This basis allows bringing orderliness and additional benefit into the system design process by means of a semi-formal and domain independent system description language. In this contribution, we propose such a description language for modelling of dynamic distributed cooperative systems (DCoS-XML). We will discuss the theoretical language structures towards a graphical tool for the language usage as well as an exemplary DCoS-XML application towards description of a design pattern for information displays in maritime domain.

In this paper we report on a participatory design study with young girls. Our goal was to create a mobile phone app to display the spatial proximity of friends in an abstract and privacy-aware manner. A group of 16 girls worked along the user-centred design process to create initial paper-based designs of an app that respects one's friends privacy while displaying their proximity to allow for spontaneous meetings or re-grouping after separation. Our participants created very promising results which we intend to implement and evaluate further against a broader audience.