A child’s bedroom holds the potential to be a meaningful space that scaffolds both practical and emotional needs. While home IoT technologies offer unique opportunities to enhance the room’s meaning, studies show children tend to associate them with practical rather than emotional use-cases. We present programmable IoT prototypes designed to overcome this tendency by applying two design principles: (1) Encourage self-appropriation and meaning-making using an open-ended design, simple coding blocks, and abstract outputs; (2) Encourage emotional use-cases using an explicit affordance. In a qualitative study, children used the prototypes in their bedrooms, appropriating them by coding personal use-cases that were both practical and emotional. We conclude that if designed appropriately, children can leverage IoT prototypes to enhance the meaning of their bedroom.

Deliberate regulation of diaphragmatic breathing can contribute to well-being. We present a targeted-heat wearable designed to direct attention inward during breathing practice. In a mixed-methods study, breathing was guided with a pulsing-heat or a screen-based app. We included physiological measures of heart-rate, HRV, and breathing pace; self-report questionnaires on interoception and mindfulness; and qualitative interviews. Results show both groups adhered well to the breathing guidance, yet heat-condition participants reached lower heart-rate and reduced sympathetic activation, physiological markers associated with stress reduction. They also reported higher interoceptive awareness, specifically self-regulation and body-listening abilities, alongside significantly higher state mindfulness. Qualitative findings revealed that targeted-heat fostered a stronger connection with bodily sensations and emotions, while visual feedback was often experienced as pulling attention outward. Our work suggests that breathing with the heat wearable increases the known positive outcomes of diaphragmatic breathing, helping people connect more deeply with their bodies by directing attention inward.

Robots come in various forms and have different characteristics that may shape the interaction with them. In human-human interactions, height is a characteristic that shapes human dynamics, with taller people typically perceived as more persuasive. In this work, we aspired to evaluate if the same impact replicates in a human-robot interaction and specifically with a highly non-humanoid robotic object. The robot was designed with modules that could be easily added or removed, allowing us to change its height without altering other design features. To test the impact of the robot’s height, we evaluated participants’ compliance with its request to volunteer to perform a tedious task. In the experiment, participants performed a cognitive task on a computer, which was framed as the main experiment. When done, they were informed that the experiment was completed. While waiting to receive their credits, the robotic object, designed as a mobile robotic service table, entered the room, carrying a tablet that invited participants to complete a 300-question questionnaire voluntarily. We compared participants’ compliance in two conditions: A Short robot composed of two modules and 95cm in height and a Tall robot consisting of three modules and 132cm in height. Our findings revealed higher compliance with the Short robot’s request, demonstrating an opposite pattern to human dynamics. We conclude that while height has a substantial social impact on human-robot interactions, it follows a unique pattern of influence. Our findings suggest that designers cannot simply adopt and implement elements from human social dynamics to robots without testing them first.

A main challenge in incorporating autonomous vehicles into urban environments concerns communication with pedestrians crossing in front of them. We introduce a robotic object for facilitating natural crossing interactions by leveraging pedestrians’ existing crossing habits. The robot was designed to fit on the vehicle’s dashboard and simulate head gestures to indicate if it is safe to cross. We evaluated the perception of the robot as mediating the AV’s communication and the comprehension of its gestures, in an in-person experiment. Participants were asked to cross the road in front of a vehicle that was presented as having autonomous driving capabilities. The robot was placed on the vehicle’s dashboard in a location where pedestrians habitually look. The results indicated that when asked to cross, participants immediately looked toward the driver’s seat and easily noticed the robot. They consistently categorized the robot’s gestures into ”cross” or ”do-not-cross” categories and reported a strong sense of safety. Our findings suggest that robotic objects are a promising technology for mediating natural pedestrian-AV communication.

One of the challenges faced by healthy older adults is experiencing feelings of not "being-seen". Companion robots, commonly designed with zoomorphic or humanoid appearance show success among clinical older adults, but healthy older adults find them degrading. We present the design and implementation of a novel non-humanoid robot. The robot's primary function is a cognitive word game. Social interaction is conveyed as a secondary function, using non-verbal gestures, inspired by dancers' movement. In a lab study, 39 healthy older adults interacted with the prototype in 3 conditions: Companion-Function; Game-Function; and No-Function. Results show the non-verbal gestures were associated with feelings of "being-seen", and willingness to accept the robot into their home was influenced by its function, with game significantly higher than companion. We conclude that robot designers should further explore the potential of non-humanoid robots as a new class of companion robots, with a primary function that is not companionship.

The biological prototyping revolution is in motion, and new tools are needed to empower HCI researchers, designers, makers, and bio-enthusiasts to experiment with live organisms. We present OpenLH, a liquid handling system that empowers users to conduct accurate and repetitive experiments with live biology in a sterile, open, and affordable way. OpenLH integrates a commercially available robotic arm with custom 3D printed parts, a modified pipette, and a visual block-based programming interface. The system is as accurate as commercial liquid handlers, capable of repetitive tasks in micro-scale accuracy, easy to operate, and supports multi-materials including biomaterials, microorganisms and cell cultures. We describe the system's technical implementation and two custom interfaces. We demonstrate the system's impact for the HCI community with two use cases that include experimentation with live biology in non-traditional fields: visual design using pigment-expressing E.coli, and beer brewing experiment using serial dilution in home context.

Parent-child interaction during a collaborative activity can empower children if parents are able to envision their child's mental state and regulate their behavior. However, this ability is a great challenge for many parents. We designed a simple tangible 'Awareness Object' (AO) intended to raise parents' awareness of the roles they can play and help them shift their focus to the interaction with their child. We present results from 12 parent-child interactions with the AO. Our qualitative analysis reveals that the AO raised parents' awareness of their roles during the activity and led to various types of reflection by both parents and children. In addition, the AO increased children's involvement in evaluating their parent's role, which some parents found intriguing while others found inappropriate. We conclude that a simple tangible interface can enhance parent-child interaction. However, this interaction is sensitive and should be approached with caution.

Outdoor play has been proven to be beneficial for children's development. HCI research on Heads-Up Games suggests that the well-known decline in outdoor play can be addressed by adding technology to such activities. However, outdoor play benefits such as social interaction, creative thinking, and physical activity may be compromised when digital features are added. We present the design & implementation of a novel digitally-enhanced outdoor-play prototype. Our evaluation with 48 children revealed that a non-digital version of the novel outdoor play object afforded social play and game invention. Evaluation of the digitally-enhanced version showed reduced collaborative social interaction and reduced creative thinking when compared with baseline. However, we showed that specific sensing and feedback features better supported outdoor play benefits. For example non-accumulated feedback was shown to increase collaborative play and creative thinking in comparison to accumulated feedback. We provide evidence-based recommendations for designers of outdoor play technologies.

Opening encounters are an integral element of everyday social interaction, and are essential for forming and maintaining social relationships between people. We present an abstract non-humanoid robotic object called the Greeting Machine, designed to communicate positive and negative social cues in the context of opening encounters. The design includes a small ball rolling on a larger dome, with a custom gear and lever mechanism that supports a variety of subtle movements. Gestures were designed with movement experts, and were evaluated using a physical first-person qualitative study. Our findings reveal that an abstract robot designed with no specific metaphor can effectively take part in opening encounters. Furthermore, a minimal brief movement, designed as an Approach or Avoid gesture, may be enough to evoke positive and negative experiences. The ability to create opening encounters with low Degree of Freedom abstract robots is promising, both due to the low complexity, low cost, and design flexibility of such devices, and due to the possible generalization of the Approach and Avoid gestures for a variety of morphologies.

We present the initial design process of Scratch Nodes, a sensor-based prototype designed to augment children's social-physical outdoor play. Scratch Nodes has two main components: a hardware device and a tablet-based coding environment. The prototype was designed for 8-12 year old children with the goal of encouraging physical play, social interaction, and "changing the rules" through coding. We extend prior work in the Heads-up Games (HUG) domain by adding a real-time coding environment that directly controls the hardware device, empowering children to change the game's rules in real-time. We argue that the combination of physical play, social interaction, and coding strikes the right balance between the societal need to increase outdoor play & enhance computational thinking skills on one hand and children's need to play, measure, and define their own rules on the other. We present our initial design and implementation process as well as our insights from a preliminary evaluation with six children who tested the prototype.