Captions rarely convey emotional nuances in speech, leaving Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (dhh) viewers without access to tonal and affective information. We present a two-part mixed-methods study on how haptic feedback can communicate vocal emotion without adding visual load. In Part 1, we replicated an arousal-driven captioning approach using speech-emotion-recognition to modulate typographic weight and vibration intensity. Participants showed divergent mental models and often mapped “more vibration” to loudness rather than emotional arousal, underscoring the construct’s conceptual fuzziness. In Part 2, we evaluated five acoustic-to-haptic mappings that bypass affective inference and translate pitch, rhythm, and waveform cues into vibration patterns. No single pattern dominated, but participants associated options such as pulse or sawtooth with high-arousal emotions, and pitch-normalized signals with calmer states. We derive design guidelines emphasizing contrastive, acoustically grounded mappings and user control for integrating emotional haptics into short-form, captioned media.

Processing speech in noisy environments is a core challenge for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and few studies investigated evidence-based interventions. Disrupted visual attention and audiovisual integration are key contributors to these difficulties. Virtual reality (VR) games offer potential to support attention and audiovisual integration training, yet few are designed for this purpose. Current approaches using VR games emphasize either clinical fidelity or entertainment, creating an imbalance between neural engagement and sustained motivation. We developed a VR game through a co-design approach, informed by neural mechanisms and clinical expertise, and embedding child-centered interaction to sustain engagement. The game includes variations in interaction modes and difficulty levels, iteratively refined with neurodevelopmental specialists and children. We conducted an exploratory study with 11 participants, including neurotypical and ADHD children. Findings highlight task performance and insights from the target user group, while also suggesting implications for balancing clinical potential with user engagement.

Affective and prosodic captions convey not only what a speaker says, but also how they say it-louder words may appear thicker, quieter ones thinner; angry in red, calm in blue.These captions can improve access, satisfaction, and engagement for d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (dhh) users.While prior work has explored their design space, it has focused largely on dhh participants in North America, limiting generalizability beyond English and Latin-based scripts.To uncover the role of culture and language, we ran an exploratory study with 49 dhh participants from North America and South Korea using CuCap, a tool that allowed them to personalize which speech features were displayed, and how.While emotion visualization was a universally favored choice, confirming prior findings, prosody preferences varied across cultures, reflecting linguistic and hearing factors.These findings point to the need for flexible captioning systems that account for cultural, linguistic, and individual differences.

Typography remains an underexplored aspect of accessibility despite its significant impact on readability and inclusive design.While the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) address factors like color contrast, spacing, and scalability, it offers limited guidance on typographic variables such as font style, size, and letterforms.Through this study, we investigated the state of typographic accessibility.We summarized 24 actionable guidelines from 10 academic and industry sources, evaluating how these guidelines are supported across seven widely used font libraries.Our findings reveal that font libraries lack accessibility support, showing a significant gap between knowledge and implementation.As one of the few studies to systematically assess text accessibility resources and tool support, we provide early guidance on integrating accessibility feedback into design workflows.We call for broader industry recognition and future efforts to reform standardized text accessibility guidelines and integrate their evaluation in design tools.

Figure 1: Multimodal afective captions, combining visual cues and vibrations felt via a wrist-worn device, enrich the viewing experience for d/Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing individuals by portraying speaker emotions, improving engagement.

Recent research has begun adopting Large Language Model (LLM) agents to enhance Virtual Reality (VR) interactions, creating immersive chatbot experiences. However, while current studies focus on generating dialogue from user speech inputs, their abilities to generate richer experiences based on the perception of LLM agents’ VR environments and interaction cues remain unexplored. Hence, in this work, we propose an approach that enables LLM agents to perceive virtual environments and generate environment-aware interactions and conversations for an embodied human-AI interaction experience in VR environments. Here, we define a schema for describing VR environments and their interactions through text prompts. We evaluate the performance of our method through five role-play scenarios created using our approach in a study with 14 participants. The findings discuss the opportunities and challenges of our proposed approach for developing environment-aware LLM agents that facilitate spatial interactions and conversations within VR role-play scenarios.

Virtual Reality (VR) systems use immersive spatial audio to convey critical information, but these audio cues are often inaccessible to Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) individuals. To address this, we developed SoundHapticVR, a head-based haptic system that converts audio signals into haptic feedback using multi-channel acoustic haptic actuators. We evaluated SoundHapticVR through three studies: determining the maximum tactile frequency threshold on different head regions for DHH users, identifying the ideal number and arrangement of transducers for sound localization, and assessing participants’ ability to differentiate sound sources with haptic patterns. Findings indicate that tactile perception thresholds vary across head regions, necessitating consistent frequency equalization. Adding a front transducer significantly improved sound localization, and participants could correlate distinct haptic patterns with specific objects. Overall, this system has the potential to make VR applications more accessible to DHH users.

Affective captions employ visual typographic modulations to convey a speaker’s emotions, improving speech accessibility for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (dhh) individuals. However, the most effective visual modulations for expressing emotions remain uncertain. Bridging this gap, we ran three studies with 39 dhh participants, exploring the design space of affective captions, which include parameters like text color, boldness, size, and so on. Study 1 assessed preferences for nine of these styles, each conveying either valence or arousal separately. Study 2 combined Study 1’s top-performing styles and measured preferences for captions depicting both valence and arousal simultaneously. Participants outlined readability, minimal distraction, intuitiveness, and emotional clarity as key factors behind their choices. In Study 3, these factors and an emotion-recognition task were used to compare how Study 2’s winning styles performed versus a non-styled baseline. Based on our findings, we present the two best-performing styles as design recommendations for applications employing affective captions.

Two-factor Authentication (also known as 2FA or two-step verification) is an authentication method that provides an extra layer of protection to ensure online account security. 2FA methods are used along with other primary authentication methods like PINs and Passwords to verify that the person trying to access any digital account is the person they are claiming to be. However, 2FA methods can be inaccessible for blind and low vision (BLV) users due to the requirement of multiple steps, apps, and/or devices for authentication. In addition, it can be a security risk as screen readers may read out the verification codes to bystanders. To address this, we present Haptic2FA, a haptic-based authentication method to improve 2FA accessibility for BLV users. Here, as a part of the 2FA process, the users are sent a 'haptic pattern' (similar to a one-time passcode in traditional 2FA methods) that they are required to enter or select for verification. Through a usability study with 10 BLV participants, we evaluated haptic patterns and input methods for the haptic patterns in the Haptic2FA method. Through the findings, we discuss the accessibility and usability of the Haptic2FA method.

Speech is expressive in ways that caption text does not capture, with emotion or emphasis information not conveyed. We interviewed eight Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (dhh) individuals to understand if and how captions’ inexpressiveness impacts them in online meetings with hearing peers. Automatically captioned speech, we found, lacks affective depth, lending it a hard-to-parse ambiguity and general dullness. Interviewees regularly feel excluded, which some understand is an inherent quality of these types of meetings rather than a consequence of current caption text design. Next, we developed three novel captioning models that depicted, beyond words, features from prosody, emotions, and a mix of both. In an empirical study, 16 dhh participants compared these models with conventional captions. The emotion-based model outperformed traditional captions in depicting emotions and emphasis, with only a moderate loss in legibility, suggesting its potential as a more inclusive design for captions.

Captions make the audio content of videos accessible and understandable for deaf or hard-of-hearing people (DHH). However, in real-time captioning scenarios, captions alone can be challenging for DHH users to identify the active speaker in a real time in multiple-speaker scenarios. To enhance the accessibility of real-time captioning, we propose Haptic-Captioning which provides real-time vibration feedback on the wrist by directly translating the sound of content into vibrations. We conducted three experiments to examine: (1) the haptic perception (Preliminary Study), (2) the feasibility of the haptic modality along with real-time and non-real-time visual captioning methods (Study 1), and (3) the user experience of using the Haptic-Captioning system in different media contexts (Study 2). Our results highlight that the Haptic-Captioning complements visual captions by improving caption readability, maintaining media engagement, enhancing understanding of emotions, and assisting speaker indication in real-time captioning scenarios. Furthermore, we discuss design implications for the future development of Haptic-Captioning.

As many as three million school age children between the ages of 5 and 14 years, live with severe to profound hearing loss in Nigeria. Many of these Deaf or Hard of Hearing (DHH) children developed their hearing loss later in life, non-congenitally, hence their parents are hearing. While their teachers in the Deaf schools they attend can often communicate effectively with them in "dialects" of American Sign Language (ASL), the unofficial sign lingua franca in Nigeria, communication at home with other family members is challenging and sometimes non-existent. This results in adverse social consequences including stigmatization, for the students. With the recent successes of AI in natural language understanding, the goal of automated sign language understanding is becoming more realistic using neural deep learning technologies. To this effect, the proposed project aims at co-designing and developing an ongoing AI-driven two-way sign language interpretation tool that can be deployed in homes, to improve language accessibility and communication between the DHH students and other family members. This ensures inclusive and equitable social interactions and can promote lifelong learning opportunities for them outside of the school environment.

This work-in-progress explores factors that impact the attitudes towards existing modes of teletherapy and a preliminary exploration of attitudes toward virtual reality teletherapy (VRT) adoption for teletherapy on college campuses. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with 3 students and 2 campus counselors. Thus far, 3 primary themes (physical, social, and clinical factors), 8 secondary sub-themes, and 9 tertiary sub-themes are identified in influencing participants’ attitudes of counseling modalities including their initial attitudes toward adopting VR for remote counseling services. These insights suggest that VRT may be more openly adopted for improved access to campus counseling services and for specific clinical use cases where students can translate learned skills to the real world. Concerns of VRT include students using VR to support antithetical behavior and establishing trust between users in a VR environment.

Sounds provide vital information such as spatial and interaction cues in virtual reality (VR) applications to convey more immersive experiences to VR users. However, it may be a challenge for deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) VR users to access the information given by sounds, which could limit their VR experience. To address this limitation, we present “SoundVizVR”, which explores visualizing sound characteristics and sound types for several types of sounds in VR experience. SoundVizVR uses Sound-Characteristic Indicators to visualize loudness, duration, and location of sound sources in VR and Sound-Type Indicators to present more information about the type of the sound. First, we examined three types of Sound-Characteristic Indicators (On-Object Indicators, Full Mini-Maps and Partial Mini-Maps) and their combinations in a study with 11 DHH participants. We identified that the combination of Full Mini-Map technique and On-Object Indicator was the most preferred visualization and performed best at locating sound sources in VR. Next, we explored presenting more information about the sounds using text and icons as Sound-Type Indicators. A second study with 14 DHH participants found that all Sound-Type Indicator combinations were successful at locating sound sources.

Many daily tasks rely on accurately identifying and distinguishing between different colours. However, these tasks can be frustrating and potentially dangerous for people with Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD). Despite prior work exploring how pattern overlays on top of colours can support people with CVD, the solutions were often unintuitive or required significant training to become proficient. We address this problem by creating two new colour patterns (ColourIconizer, ColourMix). We evaluated these patterns against a previously published colour pattern (ColourMeters) using an online evaluation with three new colour identification tasks (Selection Task, Transition Task, Sorting Task). ColourMeters helped with the Transition Task, but struggled with the Selection and Sorting Tasks. Conversely, ColourIconizer helped with the Selection and Sorting Tasks but struggled to help on the Transition Task. ColourMix provided general assistance on all tasks. Our combined results help inform and improve the design of future colour patterns.

A Personal Identification Number (PIN) is a widely adopted authentication method used by smartphones, ATMs, etc. PINs offer strong security and can be reset when compromised (unlike biometric authentication). However, PINs can be inaccessible for blind or low vision (BLV) users due to screen readers voicing PINs to bystanders or potential shoulder surfing attack risks---bystanders could watch the PIN being entered without the user noticing. To address this, we present OneButtonPIN, an interface to improve PIN entry accessibility and security for BLV users. Here, a single on-screen button, when pressed and held, triggers a haptic vibration sequence. A digit is entered by counting the vibrations and releasing the button. We explored introducing random timings to the vibration sequence to increase security. A week-long evaluation with 9 BLV participants and a security study with 10 sighted participants acting as shoulder surfers demonstrated OneButtonPIN's usability and resilience against eavesdropping.

Deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals heavily rely on their visual senses to be aware about their environment, giving them heightened visual cognition and improved attention management strategies. Thus, the eyes have shown to play a significant role in these visual communication practices and, therefore, many various researches have adopted methodologies, specifically eye-tracking, to understand the gaze patterns and analyze the behavior of DHH individuals. In this paper, we provide a literature review from 55 papers and data analysis from eye-tracking studies concerning hearing impairment, attention management strategies, and their mode of communication such as Visual and Textual based communication. Through this survey, we summarize the findings and provide future research directions.

We present ThermoQuest, a self-contained wearable head-mounted display system for enhancing Virtual Reality experiences with temperature feedback. It’s constructed with commodity hardware elements, featuring 6 Peltier elements on the rim of the headset touching the users face. We explain the design and implementation of an affordable wearable thermal VR prototype build with commodity hardware. In a user study with 15 participants, we show evidence for a significant difference in reported presence in VR between thermal VR and control conditions (p > 0.017) in a counterbalanced experimental setup. We end with a discussion and use cases of the presented VR prototype and similar systems.

American Sign Language (ASL) classes are typically held face-to-face to increase interactivity and enhance the learning experience. However, the recent COVID-19 pandemic brought about many changes to course delivery methods, primarily resulting in a move to an online format, which had to occur in a short timeframe. The online format has presented students and teachers with many opportunities and challenges. In this experience report, we reflect on the student and teacher perspectives of learning ASL in an online setting. We use our experience to introduce new online ASL class guidelines, videoconferencing improvements, and suggest where future research is needed.

We present the Skin-Stroke Display, a system mounted on the lens inside the head-mounted display, which exerts subtle yet recognizable tactile feedback on the eye-ring using a motorized air jet. To inform our design of noticeable air-jet haptic feedback, we conducted a user study to identify absolute detection thresholds. Our results show that the tactile sensation had different sensitivity around the eyes, and we determined a standard intensity (8 mbar) to prevent turbulent airflow blowing into the eyes. In the second study, we asked participants to adjust the intensity around the eye for equal sensation based on standard intensity. Next, we investigated the recognition of point and stroke stimuli with or without inducing cognitive load on eight directions on the eye-ring. Our longStroke stimulus can achieve an accuracy of 82.6% without cognitive load and 80.6% with cognitive load simulated by the Stroop test. Finally, we demonstrate example applications using the skin-stroke display as the off-screen indicator, tactile I/O progress display, and tactile display.

Smartwatches enable the wrist to be used as an ideal location to provide always-available haptic notifications as they are constantly worn with direct contact with the skin. With the wrist straps, the haptic feedback can be extended to the full space around the wrist to provide more spatial and enriched feedback. With ThermalBracelet, we investigate thermal feedback as a haptic feedback modality around the wrist. We present three studies that lead to the development of a smartwatch-integratable thermal bracelet that stimulates six locations around the wrist. Our initial evaluation reports on the selection of the thermal module configurations. Secondly, with the selected six-module configuration, we explore its usability in a real-world scenarios such as walking and reading. Thirdly, we investigate its capability of providing spatio temporal feedback while engaged in distracting tasks. Finally we present application scenarios that demonstrates its usability.

This study demonstrates that by opening and closing the human pinna, we can change the direction of sound perceived by humans. Each ear was independently transformed into a 100% open, 50% open, and 100% closed state, and all 9 combinations of these ear transformations were tested to evaluate the perceived direction of the sound output from 7 speakers placed 180 degrees around the subject. We demonstrate that by deforming the pinna, we could change the perception of the direction of sound, or make it illusory. We also found that except for 1 out of 7 speakers (or directions of sound), closing 100% of the ear on the side of the speaker where the sound is coming from and 50% of the ear on the other side of the speaker tends produce the most alteration to the perceived direction of sound.

Rendering haptic feedback in virtual reality is a common approach to enhancing the immersion of virtual reality content. However, current editing tools allow developers to access the haptic feedback only through physical contact with the actuators, making it difficult to fast iterate haptic interaction designs. This paper introduces SeeingHaptics, an authoring tool which visualizes haptic properties in 3D scenes. The active area of certain feedback is simulated with mesh shapes, while the 2D icons allow for indicating the type of haptic sensation. Our evaluation showed that SeeingHaptics helps developers rapidly create haptic feedbacks after a short training session.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce using scalable autostereoscopic displays that allow users to interact with floating images publicly, such as for digital signage. By tiling multiple display modules, it is possible to project larger autostereoscopic images in the air than by displaying it using a single display module. By projecting autostereoscopic images, it is possible for the user to understand the contents in better detail compared to a standard 2D public displays. Furthermore, by projecting floating images, it is possible to reduce the spatial divergence between the user's body and the autostereoscopic images, so that the user can interact intuitively with autostereoscopic images. Moreover, since this system has scalability, it is possible to expand the screen size just by adding more display modules. This expandability makes the system easy to move and arrange in public spaces. In this paper, we propose an autostereoscopic display module which can enlarge the screen size in the horizontal direction as the first step to realizing our concept.

We present a concept of AURA, an urban personal projection to initiate the communication. In this work, we focus on how to break the ice with strangers through technology in urban public space. The Aura, as an enliven spiritual pet, floats around user's feet. We introduce a simple interaction scenario, attracting a person who comes within personal distance of the user who carries the AURA. To break the ice between strangers, a projected butterfly as the Aura is moved toward a person who comes within 2m of the user, and then back and forth to attract that person. We believe that externalized interactive representation of the user in the form of a spiritual pet can ease and facilitate the communication, serve as a conversation starter, and make the interactions between people more fun.

This paper presents FacePush, a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) integrated with a pulley system to generate normal forces on a user's face in virtual reality (VR). The mechanism of FacePush is obtained by shifting torques provided by two motors that press upon a user's face via utilization of a pulley system. FacePush can generate normal forces of varying strengths and apply those to the surface of the face. To inform our design of FacePush for noticeable and discernible normal forces in VR applications, we conducted two studies to iden- tify the absolute detection threshold and the discrimination threshold for users' perception. After further consideration in regard to user comfort, we determined that two levels of force, 2.7 kPa and 3.375 kPa, are ideal for the development of the FacePush experience via implementation with three applications which demonstrate use of discrete and continuous normal force for the actions of boxing, diving, and 360 guidance in virtual reality. In addition, with regards to a virtual boxing application, we conducted a user study evaluating the user experience in terms of enjoyment and realism and collected the user's feedback.

Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) provide a promising opportunity for providing haptic feedback on the head for an enhanced immersive experience. In ThermoVR, we integrated five thermal feedback modules on the HMD to provide thermal feedback directly onto the user's face. We conducted evaluations with 15 participants using two approaches: Firstly, we provided simultaneously actuated thermal stimulations (hot and cold) as directional cues and evaluated the accuracy of recognition; secondly, we evaluated the overall immersive thermal experience that the users experience when provided with thermal feedback on the face. Results indicated that the recognition accuracy for cold stimuli were of approx. 89.5% accuracy while the accuracy for hot stimuli were 68.6%. Also, participants reported that they felt a higher level of immersion on the face when all modules were simultaneously stimulated (hot and cold). The presented applications demonstrate the ThermoVR's directional cueing and immersive experience.

This paper presents our preliminary exploration of providing dynamic thermal haptic feedback on the face. We have designed a thermal feedback prototype that integrates Peltier modules directly with a head mounted display which is able to provide thermal output directly on users' faces. We explored the possibility of providing dynamic thermal feedback which could present information and enhance user experience through designing four initial dynamic thermal patterns of our prototype. We also conducted a preliminary user experiment and analysis of the design of different patterns ("dynamic information") to evaluate the design on three aspects, the accuracy of recognition of dynamic stimuli, smoothness of the movement and comfort level. Our results indicate that the accuracy of recognition of dynamic stimuli was approximately 71.84%.

We developed HapticAid, which is a wearable haptic augmentation system. This system enhances the skin vibrations that occur during touch and provide them as haptic feedback on the wrist. We revised HapticAid to be wearable and mobile by using a mobile platform and installed a digital signal processing to control haptic feedback for haptic experiences. This paper describes the implementation of our system, design of digital signal processing the method of wearing our system for haptic experiences.

ForceClicks is a novel touch button input technique for consecutive clicking which incorporates touch force sensors. From force data of a single continuous touch over time, ForceClicks detects peaks and generates discrete clicks. Compared to typical button interaction, this is effective in a sense that consecutive clicks do not require finger positional movements. Additionally, stable force over a certain time threshold can trigger an alternate state, long press, and can be mapped to other actions. The usability of ForceClicks has been evaluated in terms of a) scattering level and b) efficiency. Results suggest higher stability than typical touch, especially when the task requires visual engagement on remote content. The relatively scatter-free characteristic of ForceClicks allows it to be applied on rapid clicking while gaming, and reduce of visual dedication allows easier control of external devices, and two applications, a shooting game and a number picker, are presented for demonstration.

In this paper we present zSense, which provides greater input expressivity for spatially limited devices such as smart wearables through a shallow depth gesture recognition system using non-focused infrared sensors. To achieve this, we introduce a novel Non-linear Spatial Sampling (NSS) technique that significantly cuts down the number of required infrared sensors and emitters. These can be arranged in many different configurations; for example, number of sensor emitter units can be as minimal as one sensor and two emitters. We implemented different configurations of zSense on smart wearables such as smartwatches, smartglasses and smart rings. These configurations naturally fit into the flat or curved surfaces of such devices, providing a wide scope of zSense enabled application scenarios. Our evaluations reported over 94.8% gesture recognition accuracy across all configurations.

In this paper, we present a synergy of technology and traditional craft made possible with AmbiKraf Byobu. AmbiKraf is a non-emissive, color-changing fabric technology that allows subtle animations on fabrics. Byobu is a traditional Japanese room-divider screen, usually painted by artisans and crafts people. We first discuss the organic qualities of AmbiKraf technology that particularly lend itself to traditional art and craft practice. These qualities include the animation of ambient, non-intrusive and calming motifs using non-emissive display characteristics. We then discuss in detail how AmbiKraf technology is implemented and paired with the art form of Byobu. Interaction with the system is also briefly touched upon, as well as discussion regarding the cultural implications and mutual benefit of combining technology with traditional craft. Through the use of AmbiKraf technology embodied by the Byobu, we hope to provide a convincing example that sensitively combines traditional textile crafts with new technology in order to help redefine the meaning and role of traditional textiles.

In this paper we outline a genealogy of Mixed Reality Lab (MXR) projects, their influencing factors both from the Asian region and also within the lab, the employment of "Blue-Sky Innovation" by the lab for ideation, collaboration and project generation, as well as discuss some major points of inspiration for MXR from various sources.

With this paper we present AmbiKraf, a none missive fast color changing fabric display. Our main motivation is to investigate the possibility of an actual fabric technology that can change the color in the form of a display. The core novelty of this paper addresses in presenting a base line technology that enables such a ubiquitous fabric display that lets the user interact with the actual fabric itself. Here, we use thermo chromic inks and Peltier semiconductor elements to achieve a rapid color changing display. The implemented controller is able to control the temperature with a high accuracy and thereby accurately control the color of the thermo chromic ink display. In addition the controller has fast heating/cooling ability which presents the ability for a relatively high speed display on the fabric. The calming nature of this animated fabric display is presented through few prototypes that ubiquitously combine the technology with daily fabrics. The paper describes the complete implementation of the system and presents a detailed analysis of the technical results.

The pervasiveness of computing has extended into domestic realms, including the dining room. Beyond simply a place to consume food, the dining room is a social hub where family members meet and share experiences. Yet busy lifestyles can make it difficult to spend social time with your family. To provide a new solution for family bonding, this paper presents the CoDine system, a dining table embedded with interactive subsystems that augment and transport the experience of communal family dining to create a sense of coexistence among remote family members. CoDine connects people in different locations through shared dining activities: gesture-based screen interaction, mutual food serving, ambient pictures on an animated tablecloth, and the transportation of edible messages. Rather than focusing on functionality or efficiency, CoDine aims to provide people with an engaging interactive dining experience through enriched multi-sensory communication.

Although animals and pets are so important for families and society, in modern urban lifestyles, we can only spend little time with our animal friends. Interactive media should be aimed to enhance not only human-to-human communication but also human-to-animal communication. Thus, we promote a new type of interspecies media interaction which allows human users to interact and play with their small pet friends (in this case, hamsters) remotely via the Internet through a mixed-reality-based game system “Metazoa Ludens.” We used a two-pronged approach to scientifically examine the system. First, and most importantly, the body condition score study was conducted to evaluate the positive effects to the hamsters. Second, the method of Duncan was used to assess the strength of preference of the hamsters toward Metazoa Ludens. Lastly, the effectiveness of this remote interaction with respect to the human users as an interactive gaming system with their pets/friends (hamster) was examined based on Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory. Results of both studies inform of positive remote interaction between human users and their pet friends using our research system. This research is not only just aimed at providing specific experimental results on the implemented research system but is also aimed as a wider lesson for human-to-animal interactive media. Therefore, as an addition, we present a detailed framework suited in general for human-to-animal interaction systems inferred from the lessons learned.

Huggy Pajama is a novel wearable system aimed at promoting physical interaction in remote communication between parent and child. This system enables parents and children to hug one another through a novel hugging interface device and a wearable, hug reproducing pajama connected through the Internet. The hugging device is a small, mobile doll with an embedded pressure sensing circuit that is able to accurately sense varying levels of the range of human force produced from natural touch. This device sends hug signals to a haptic jacket that simulates the feeling of being hugged to the wearer. It features air pressure actuation to reproduce hug.

Huggy Pajama is a novel wearable system aimed at promoting physical interaction in remote communication between parent and child. This system enables parents and children to hug one another through a novel hugging interface device and a wearable, hug reproducing pajama connected through the Internet. The hugging device is a small, mobile doll with an embedded pressure sensing circuit that is able to accurately sense varying levels of the range of human force produced from natural touch. This device sends hug signals to a haptic jacket that simulates the feeling of being hugged to the wearer. It features air pockets actuating to reproduce hug, heating elements to produce warmth that accompanies hug, and color changing pattern and accessory to indicate distance of separation and communicate expressions. In this paper, we present the system design of Huggy Pajama.