This demo presents a virtual reality (VR) experience on recycling plastics.Through the interactive, immersive virtual experience, the user can become familiar with the recycling center site and sort a selection of plastic products.The playful experience was designed to refine and evaluate the design of a planned physical recycling station.The interactive prototype served two purposes: first, to encourage recycling behavior and increase familiarity with plastic recycling practices; and second, to gather feedback on the design of the recycling site to optimize user experience and recycling efficiency.

Robots' abilities to communicate with humans are often limited, missing expressive power and non-verbal communication cues.We present a concept design and a wizard-of-Oz prototype of a wearable emoji display, which aims to provide additional communication cues to communicate the robot's intent and provide means for a more affective communication towards a human.We explore the concept of an emoji necklace with a robot dog, which has more limitations in expressing its intent compared to a humanoid robot design.The concept was evaluated in a user study with ten participants.The salient findings indicate that the robot dog's intentions were perceived as easier to interpret with the wearable emoji display, especially when displaying clear emojis matching the robot's movements.

Wearable displays can be helpful in the winter outdoors, where using a mobile phone is difficult due to gloves. In this paper, we explore the concept of integrating a graphical navigator display into a skiing glove. We created a prototype that was trialed on the slopes while snowboarding. After this, we organized a focus group with snowboarders and downhill skiers to evaluate the concept and wearable display use cases in the winter mountain context. The results emphasize use cases that focus on the awareness of group members for safety, navigation, and unobtrusive and simple design.

Mainstream communication technology today enables us to connect with loved ones across long distances. However, even with the proliferation of easy-to-use technology, there are reports on increasing loneliness and isolation amongst people. The technologies that enable these interactions are not necessarily designed to support meaningful emotional communication for users in long-distance relationships (LDRs). Furthermore, there is a lack of participatory tools that are designed with the focus of supporting end-user involvement in the design of LDR communication systems. We developed the Flexi Card Game (FCG), a card-based generative design toolkit to support designers and non-designers within participatory structures that can help develop unconventional communication systems to support LDRs. The FCG was developed using an iterative design process, involving end-users, designers, and researchers across five workshops with 56 participants. The paper makes three main contributions: (1) presents FCG—the novel card-based design toolkit itself, (2) describes the process of developing an LDR framework into a participatory toolkit, and (3) offers lessons and insights that can help researchers who are developing participatory tools in similar contexts.

We present the design and prototype of ShadowSparrow, an ambient display utilizing lights & shadows. The concept uses illustrative bird images and other relevant visuals (e.g., dishwasher and e-mail icons) cast on the surroundings for ambient information visualizations and notifications. Our work creates an alternative channel to convey non-critical information in an unobtrusive and aesthetic way.