Voice messages, by nature, prevent users from gauging the emotional tone without fully diving into the audio content. This hinders the shared emotional experience at the pre-retrieval stage. Research scarcely explored “Emotional Teasers”—pre-retrieval cues offering a glimpse into an awaiting message’s emotional tone without disclosing its content. We introduce EmoWear, a smartwatch voice messaging system enabling users to apply 30 animation teasers on message bubbles to reflect emotions. EmoWear eases senders’ choice by prioritizing emotions based on semantic and acoustic processing. EmoWear was evaluated in comparison with a mirroring system using color-coded message bubbles as emotional cues (N=24). Results showed EmoWear significantly enhanced emotional communication experience in both receiving and sending messages. The animated teasers were considered intuitive and valued for diverse expressions. Desirable interaction qualities and practical implications are distilled for future design. We thereby contribute both a novel system and empirical knowledge concerning emotional teasers for voice messaging.

Three state virtual keyboards which differentiate contact events between released, touched, and pressed states have the potential to improve overall typing experience and reduce the gap between virtual keyboards and physical keyboards. Incorporating force sensitivity, three-state virtual keyboards can utilize a force threshold to better classify a contact event. However, our limited knowledge of how force plays a role during typing on virtual keyboards limits further progress. Through a series of studies we observe that using a uniform threshold is not an optimal approach. Furthermore, the force being applied while typing varies significantly across the keys and among participants. As such, we propose three different approaches to further improve the uniform threshold. We show that a carefully selected non-uniform threshold function could be sufficient in delineating typing events on a three-state keyboard. Finally, we conclude our work with lessons learned, suggestion for future improvements, and comparisons with current methods available.

Nanomaterials possess superior mechanical, electrical, and optical properties suitable for device applications in different fields such as nanoelectronics, photonics, and sensors. Characterizing the multiphysical properties of single nanomaterials and nanostructures provides experimental guidelines for synthesis and device applications of functional nanomaterials. Nanomanipulation techniques under scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have enabled the testing of mechanical and electrical properties of various nanomaterials. However, the introduction of micro-photoluminescence ($\mu $-PL) measurement into an SEM setup for in-situ single nanomaterial characterization is still experimentally challenging; in particular, the seamless integration of the mechanical, electrical, and$\mu $-PL testing techniques inside an SEM for multi-field-coupled characterization of single nanostructures is still unexplored. In this work, we report the first SEM-based nanomanipulation system for multiphysical characterization of single nanomaterials. A custom-made, optical-microfiber-based$\mu $-PL setup is integrated onto a nanomanipulation system with four nanomanipulators inside an SEM. The system is also equipped with a conductive nanoprobe and a conductive atomic force microscopy (AFM) probe for electrical nanoprobing and electroluminescence (EL) measurement of single nanomaterials with contact force feedback. Using the system, field-coupled characterization (i.e., optomechanical, optoelectronic, electromechanical, and mechano-optoelectronic testing) of single InGaN/GaN nanowires (NWs) are conducted; and, for the first time, the effect of mechanical compression applied to individual InGaN/GaN NWs on its optoelectronic property is revealed. Note to Practitioners—With the rapid advances of nanophotonics and nanoelectronics, the optical and optoelectronic characterization of semiconductive nanomaterials becomes widely used for guiding the material synthesis and improving the nanodevice performance. However, few studies on optical-relevant characterization were carried out in SEM, mainly due to the limited space of an SEM chamber, making it challenging to integrate optical components for effective optical excitation and luminescence measurement. To address this issue, space-saving optical microfibers were integrated into the SEM chamber for in-situ optoelectronic characterization of semiconductor NWs, along with the seamless integration of mechanical and electrical nanoprobing tools for electromechanical characterization. The developed nanomanipulation system will greatly facilitate the multiphysical testing of semiconductor nanomaterials, and thus expedite their synthesis optimization processes and broaden their optoelectronic device applications.

Emoticons are indispensable in online communications. With users’ growing needs for more customized and expressive emoticons, recent messaging applications begin to support (limited) multi-modal emoticons:, enhancing emoticons with animations or vibrotactile feedback. However, little empirical knowledge has been accumulated concerning how people create, share and experience multi-modal emoticons in everyday communication, and how to better support them through design. To tackle this, we developed VibEmoji, a user-authoring multi-modal emoticon interface for mobile messaging. Extending existing designs, VibEmoji grants users greater flexibility to combine various emoticons, vibrations, and animations on-the-fly, and offers non-aggressive recommendations based on these components’ emotional relevance. Using VibEmoji as a probe, we conducted a four-week field study with 20 participants, to gain new understandings from in-the-wild usage and experience, and extract implications for design. We thereby contribute to both a novel system and various insights for supporting users’ creation and communication of multi-modal emoticons.

A 3D measurement system consisting of a 3D scanner and an industrial robot (eye-in-hand) is commonly used to scan large object under test (OUT) from multiple fieldof-views (FOVs) for complete measurement. A data stitching process is required to align multiple FOVs into a single coordinate system. Marker-free stitching assisted by robot’s accurate positioning becomes increasingly attractive since it bypasses the cumbersome traditional fiducial marker-based method. Most existing methods directly use initial Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) parameters and hand-eye calibration to calculate the transformations between multiple FOVs. Since accuracy of DH parameters deteriorates over time, such methods suffer from high stitching errors (e.g., 0.2 mm) in long-term routine industrial use. This paper reports a new robot-scanner calibration approach to realize such measurement with low data stitching errors. During long-term continuous measurement, the robot periodically moves towards a 2D standard calibration board to optimize kinematic model’s parameters to maintain a low stitching error. This capability is enabled by several techniques including virtual arm-based robot-scanner kinematic model, trajectory-based robot-world transformation calculation, nonlinear optimization. Experimental results demonstrated a low data stitching error (< 0.1 mm) similar to the cumbersome marker-based method and a lower system downtime (< 60 seconds vs. 10-15 minutes by traditional DH and hand-eye calibration).

Functional nanomaterials possess exceptional multi-physical (e.g., mechanical, electrical and optical) properties compared with their bulk counterparts. To facilitate both synthesis and device applications of these nanomaterials, it is highly desired to characterize their multi-physical properties with high accuracy and efficiency. The nanomanipulation techniques under scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has enabled the testing of mechanical and electrical properties of various nanomaterials. However, the seamless integration of mechanical, electrical, and optical testing techniques into an SEM for triple-field-coupled characterization of single nanostructures is still unexplored. In this work, we report the first SEM-based nanomanipulation system for high-resolution mechano-optoelectronic testing of single semiconductor InGaN/GaN nanowires (NWs). A custom-made optical measurement setup was integrated onto a four-probe nanomanipulator inside an SEM, with two optical microfibers actuated by the nanomanipulator for NW excitation and emission measurement. A conductive tungsten nanoprobe and a conductive atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilever probe were integrated onto the nanomanipulator for electrical nanoprobing of single NWs for electroluminescence (EL) measurement. The AFM probe also served as a force sensor for quantifying the contact force applied to the NW during nanoprobing. Using this unique system, we examined, for the first time, the effect of mechanical compression applied to an InGaN/GaN NW on its optoelectronic properties.