Adherence to physical activity is critical for healthy ageing, yet older adults often struggle to maintain consistent routines. We introduce Group Activity Metrics (GAMs), a design construct comprising group visualisations shared within familiar, small social groups, and examine how they facilitate social interaction and support walking adherence among Indian older adults. Guided by Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and informed by interviews and focus groups with 22 participants, we designed GAMs and deployed them in two walking cohorts. We evaluated them through social prototyping, an approach that captures early-stage social responses to design ideas. Our findings show that GAMs sparked curiosity and enabled social interaction, suggesting potential to support walking adherence. This work contributes empirical insights into the role of small-group social interaction in walking adherence, introduces GAMs as a theory-informed design construct, and positions social prototyping as a methodological approach for evaluating socially driven technologies in HCI.

Abstract Computerized tactile guidance systems can potentially help in human visual perception tasks such as identifying a desired object in a collection of similar objects. We designed a wrist-wearable tactile guidance system called GuidingBand that provides vibrational cues to help the user pick visual targets out of an array. We conducted three studies to systematically investigate the interplay of machine-led tactile guidance and human visual perception. The studies involve presenting visual targets to users on a screen and giving them visual search tasks. In Study 1, we identified the error rate of our guidance system. We presented participants (N=20) with arrays of identical, square targets to pick from, progressively reduced the target sizes and evaluated error rates for each size. Notably, we observed a 4% error rate at a target size of 10 mm. In Study 2, we compared the error rate of the guidance system with and without the help of human visual perception in a visual search task. We constructed a task that involved showing users an array of distractor rectangles (set sizes 2 to 10) varying only in length and asked them to identify the correct target that was previously shown to them. Participants (N=13) had fewer errors when they tried to identify targets with tactile guidance alone, followed by guidance and perception combined and perception alone. In Study 3, we had the same task as Study 2 but the distractor set sizes were larger (varying from 4 to 28), we had more participants (N=30) and measured errors and task time. While perception alone was the fastest, it was also the most error prone. The combined mode was faster and less error prone than guidance only mode, as expected, indicating that human–computer collaboration yielded the best performance.

Writing with next-phrase suggestions powered by large language models is becoming more pervasive by the day. However, research to understand writers’ interaction and decision-making processes while engaging with such systems is still emerging. We conducted a qualitative study to shed light on writers’ cognitive processes while writing with next-phrase suggestion systems. To do so, we recruited 14 amateur writers to write two movie reviews each, one without suggestions and one with suggestions. Additionally, we also positively and negatively biased the suggestion system to get a diverse range of instances where writers’ opinions and the bias in the language model align or misalign to varying degrees. We found that writers interact with next-phrase suggestions in various complex ways: Writers abstracted and extracted multiple parts of the suggestions and incorporated them within their writing, even when they disagreed with the suggestion as a whole; along with evaluating the suggestions on various criteria. The suggestion system also had various effects on the writing process, such as altering the writer’s usual writing plans, leading to higher levels of distraction etc. Based on our qualitative analysis using the cognitive process model of writing by Hayes [35] as a lens, we propose a theoretical model of ’writer-suggestion interaction’ for writing with GPT-2 (and causal language models in general) for a movie review writing task, followed by directions for future research and design.

This paper explores the use of conversational speech question and answer systems in the challenging context of public spaces in slums. A major part of this work is a comparison of the source and speed of the given responses; that is, either machine-powered and instant or human-powered and delayed. We examine these dimensions via a two-stage, multi-sited deployment. We report on a pilot deployment that helped refine the system, and a second deployment involving the installation of nine of each type of system within a large Mumbai slum for a 40-day period, resulting in over 12,000 queries. We present the findings from a detailed analysis and comparison of the two question-answer corpora; discuss how these insights might help improve machine-powered smart speakers; and, highlight the potential benefits of multi-sited public speech installations within slum environments.

Mathematics is a challenging subject for middle school students due to the introduction of concepts that are abstract and unrelatable in a real-world context. Emerging Augmented Reality (AR) technologies afford to visualize those abstract concepts integrated with the physical environment. Hence, we developed an AR app, MathReality, to teach the mathematics concept of exponents in more concrete ways and help them move from concrete to more abstract understanding of the concept. Preliminary results suggest the app was useful to the users and helped them learn the concept easily. The paper concludes with the next steps for the project, in terms of its design, implementation, and evaluation.

“Designed in California” is a brand statement used by high-tech manufacturers to denote provenance and cachet of digital innovation and modernity. In this paper, we explore philosophically alternate design perspectives to those this statement embodies, reporting and reflecting on a long-term multi-sited project that seeks to diversify future-making by engaging communities of “emergent” users in “developing” regions. We argue that digital technologies are typically created with a design lens firmly focused on “first world” populations, assuming a base set of cultural norms, resource availabilities, and technological experience levels that do not strongly align with those of emergent users. We discuss and argue for inclusive technology design methods, present our approach, and detail indicative results and case studies as an example of the potential of these perspectives in uncovering radical innovations. Distilling findings and lessons learned, we present a methodology—itinerative design—that pivots between emergent user communities across multiple regions, driving digital innovation through the periphery of mainstream design’s current remit.

Many users value the ability to have quick and frequent sight of their mobiles when in public settings. However, in doing so, they expose themselves to potential risks, ranging from being targets of robbery to the more subtle social losses through being seen to be rude or inattentive to those around them. In nature, some animals can blend into their environments to avoid being eaten or to reduce their impact on the ecosystem around them. Taking inspiration from these evolved systems we investigate the notion of chameleon approaches for mobile interaction design. Our probes were motivated, inspired and refined through extended interactions with people drawn from contexts with differing ranges of security and privacy concerns. Through deployments on users' own devices, our prototypes show the value of the concept. The encouraging results motivate further research in materials and form factors that can provide more effective automatic plain-sight hiding.

This paper presents the results of a within-subject longitudinal evaluation on Inscript keyboard, which is the national standard layout for Indian scripts. We studied the practical upper bound speed and accuracy as well as the effect of practice. Through longitudinal transcription task of 400 repeated attempts, we observed typing speeds for highly experienced users consistently peak close to 120 cpm i.e. 2.5 times that of fastest speeds reported in literature. Our analysis compared the lower bound times for Tap, Tap+LongPress and Shift+Tap, the three text input mechanisms in this keyboard. Among the two alternative methods, our findings established Tap+LongPress method to be faster than Shift+Tap method and almost equally accurate. Also, we derived a model which explains the influence of corrected errors and number of practice attempts on the typing speed.

Mainstream mobile interactions are focused around individual devices, with any collaboration happening via `the cloud'. We carried out design workshops with emergent users, revealing opportunities for novel collocated collaborative interactions. In this paper we present Better Together - a framework for disaggregating services, splitting interaction elements over separate mobiles. This distribution supports both sharing of resources (such as screen real-estate, or mobile data); and, scaffolding of inclusive interaction in mixed groups (e.g., in terms of literacy or prior technology exposure). We developed two prototypes to explore the concept, trialling the first---collocated group-based shopping list making---with emergent users in South Africa and India. We deployed the second probe, which splits YouTube into its constituent parts across separate mobiles, in a longitudinal study with users in Kenya, South Africa and India. We describe the concept and design process, and report on the design's suitability for emergent users based on our results.

Mobile and ubiquitous computing researchers have long envisioned future worlds for users in developed regions. Steered by such visions, they have innovated devices and services exploring the value of alternative propositions with and for individuals, groups and communities. Meanwhile, such radical and long-term explorations are uncommon for what have been termed emergent users; users, that is, for whom advanced technologies are just within grasp. Rather, a driving assumption is that today’s high-end mobile technologies will “trickle down” to these user groups in due course. In this paper, we open the debate about what mobile technologies might be like if emergent users were directly involved in creating their visions for the future 5–10 years from now. To do this, we report on a set of envisioning workshops in India, South Africa and Kenya that provide a roadmap for valued, effective devices and services for these regions in the next decade.

As part of an ongoing standardization effort, we were asked to evaluate Marathi text input mechanisms on smartphones. We undertook a between-subject longitudinal evaluation of four existing keyboards with 153 novice users who participated for 31 sessions each, spread over 3--4 weeks. In this paper, we present the empirical results of the performance of these keyboards and discuss them with respect to their designs. We found that keyboards with logical layouts performed marginally better than keyboards with partially frequency-based layouts. Results also showed that users performed poorly on keyboards that have word prediction features in comparison with keyboards that don't have prediction features while typing Marathi. We speculate that this difference in performance is related to a "cognitive toll" that the users pay to use word prediction. We identify several directions for future research.

We developed an interactive voice response (IVR) system called TAMA (Treatment Advice by Mobile Alerts) that provides treatment support to people living with HIV / AIDS (PLHA) in developing countries, who are on antiret-roviral therapy (ART). We deployed TAMA with 54 PLHA in 5 HIV clinics in India for a period of 12 weeks. During the study, we gathered feedback about TAMA's design and usage. Additionally, we conducted detailed qualitative interviews and analysed usage logs. We found that TAMA was usable and viable in the real life settings of PLHA and it had many desirable effects on their treatment adherence. We developed insights that inform the design of TAMA and some of these can be generalised to design of other long-term, frequent-use IVR applications for users in developing countries in the healthcare domain and beyond.

Lack of an easy and efficient text input mechanism in Indic scripts has been a barrier to large-scale adoption of ICTs in India. We present findings from a usability evaluation of three keyboard designs for Indic scripts for touch screen phones. The design of one of the keyboards is based on the frequency of characters, while the designs of the other two are based on the logical structure of the script. We evaluated the keyboards with participants with low-level of education through a first-time usability test and a longitudinal usability test. One of the logically structured keyboards started out with significantly higher success rate, typing speed, and lesser errors than the other two. The longitudinal test involving text input of 500 words did not conclusively prove that either design was better. Our study establishes benchmarks for text input speeds, errors and ratings for the initial learning phase for text input in Marathi among less educated users.

In developing countries, language and literacy are barriers that prevent many people from using simple applications like a phonebook on mobile phones. The traditional, alphabetical organization is not good enough for low-literate users who either do not know or have forgotten the alphabetical order of any script. We propose Rangoli, a phonebook that explores several ideas. It organizes contacts in nine colour 'pages'. On each page nine icons are displayed in that colour. A contact is associated with a colour and an icon. Any contact can be accessed by pressing only two buttons on the number-pad. The spatial location of each contact does not change even as the phonebook fills up. The limitation of 81 contacts is not a major problem for these users for now. Rangoli was first conceived during a class project and was improved through iterations of user study, design and evaluation.

This paper presents a method and results of an ethnographic study aimed at building an understanding of Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) adoption in Mumbai, India. The study combined field observations and semi-structured interviews (N=43) of early ATM adopters, bank customers who do not use ATMs, and people who used the ATM for the first time as part of our research. Data were analysed to identify specific cultural traits that may affect the adoption of ATMs in urban India. Results demonstrated the unique role of the cultural context in affecting users' expectations and behavioural possibilities, thus determining people's response to the machine. This led to the conclusion that an understanding of cultural biases and metaphors can facilitate technology diffusion and acceptance informing design localisation and supporting the development of strategies to motivate and train users.