Vulnerability is a subjective, embodied experience that unfolds during transitions such as relocation, where identities, routines, and social ties are unsettled. This paper examines how vulnerability manifests through bodily sensations, movements, and gestures that often escape verbal articulation. Using established embodied interaction design methods, we conducted three bodystorming workshops with fifteen international PhD students who recently relocated. Through movements and multisensory materials, participants explored and expressed their lived experiences of transition. Based on the insights, we contribute an embodied vocabulary for vulnerability consisting of: 1) Contracted Postures, 2) Restricted Reach, 3) Rhythmic Compression, 4) Micro-adjustments to regain stability, 5) Gaze Regulation and 6) Gestures of Waiting and Pause and design implications that can aid the design process. By exploring how body, grounded in its movement, sensory, and felt qualities, can surface vulnerability through embodied methods, this paper contributes a lens for design that attunes technologies to sensitive transitional experiences.

Users of online health communities have difficulty finding others with similar health experiences. They are often asked to use keywords when searching for their peers, but it is not uncommon for them not to know the right terms. This becomes particularly complex when unsure what or whom they are looking for. Moreover, the richness of patient perspectives is lost in the volume of discussion threads. In this paper, we investigate how to design to facilitate locating peers and learning self-care ideas from them. We created a prototype mimicking a mobile application for an online health community. The application recommended other community members to connect with and suggested self-care ideas based on what they had tried. Following a user-centered qualitative evaluation, we explore what ten people with cardiovascular disease and three clinicians thought of the prototype. Our findings reveal the preponderance of the lifestyle profile in locating peers. In light of this, we argue that, as individuals seek to lead as normal a life as possible, the most helpful suggestions in their quest may come from peers most similar to them in terms of habits and activity level. We translate the research findings into recommendations to inform future design. • Our findings reveal the preponderance of the lifestyle profile in locating peers. • Seeking normalcy, individuals may favor suggestions from peers with similar lifestyles. • Peer recommendations, enabling user control and potentially reducing search efforts, were favored. • Design should attend to the everyday self-care strategies community members can contribute.

Existing work on social robotic persuasion (SRP) has provided ample knowledge that can benefit the design of social robotics. However, as recent research points out, this knowledge is not presented in a format that effectively supports design practice. Research on translational science provides a theoretical foundation for connecting research to design practice, but the process of knowledge appropriation remains under-explored. In this paper, we present the development and evaluation of the SRPD (social robot persuasive design) cards and the corresponding Roundtable and Spotlight generative methods. Our results show that the SRPD cards can benefit the ideation phase in social robotic design and that our generative methods can optimize participants’ experience in a brainstorming activity.

Social robotic (SR) applications are expected to advance in the near future, which is indicated by the level of autonomy of SR, and is supported by the maturing of key technologies. However, technical, research-practice communication, and ethical challenges remain in the design of such advanced SR applications. In this paper, we start with our research cases through which we encountered and explored the challenges facing the design practice of advanced SR applications. Then we present an overview of recent design research endeavors in the HRI field and our research cases to demonstrate design research’s characteristics, focus, and approaches. Finally, we discuss how the eliciting, speculative, and communicative approaches of design research can support user investigations with the hindrances of technical limitations, communicate between basic & applied research and design practice, and engage in ethical explorations of advanced SR applications.

Recent studies have shown that adding sonification to stroke rehabilitation training is effective. It helps patients achieve better training results by positively affecting motor control, the somatosensory system, and patient engagement. This paper explores the concept of audio-based games in stroke rehabilitation, hypothesizing that the removal of a visual dimension might increase patient focus on the body part being trained. In an expert study with nine therapists we evaluated Serenity, an audio-based rehabilitation game, as a design probe to explore the potential of audio-based games in rehabilitation training. Results show promise for further exploring the concept of audio-based gaming in stroke rehabilitation.

This paper presents a qualitative study that uses video prototypes and interviews to explore older adults’ acceptance, needs, and design requirements towards a social robotic application for physical rehabilitation. Our study identified the benefits of applying social robots (SR) in physical rehabilitation. Further, we discovered participants’ preference for an anthropomorphic social robot design. The data revealed a desire for social interaction could increase motivation for older adults to engage in an active lifestyle and social robot acceptance. However, participants showed low motivation for technology adoption and negatively anthropomorphize the social robot, which lowers acceptance for their application. This work complements the current user-centered explorations with SR in rehabilitation, and provides considerations for SR design for rehabilitative applications.

End-user development (EUD) is a research area that rapidly developed after the European Network of Excellence (EUD-Net) established in 2003. It aims at proposing approaches to empower end users to ...

Wearables combine practical and conceptual challenges related to electronics, clothing and interaction design. Research through design in this area is commonly done iteratively through prototypes of increasing levels of fidelity, often relying on manual fabrication. However, manual fabrication presents challenges when comparing prototypes due to their varying levels of realization and the inaccuracy of reproductions. We discuss how using digital machine embroidery, combined with chemical embroidery technique, supports fabricating consistent high-fidelity prototypes for soft wearables in the form of research products. Our approach involves creating the textile substrate together with integrating and embedding electronic components through a unified process whilst keeping high control over alterations between prototypes. We illustrate this approach through the design process of the Smart Sock, a sensorized sock for rehabilitation. We detail the challenges behind our process and reflect on the opportunities emerging from using digital machine and chemical embroidery techniques combined to craft research products.

This paper presents a structured survey of 119 publications from the proceedings of the International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC) from 2013 to 2017. This survey on research methods and purposes is based upon a classification schema used by many others in HCI research. An extra dimension was added to the classification of research methods pertaining to the Research Domains, in order to provide a more insightful overview of the field. An analysis of the research methods and purposes, and domains of ISWC is presented. Additionally, the citation impact of ISWC publications is evaluated and compared over these dimensions. Current tendencies of the research presented at ISWC are identified with focus on the contextual setting of the research. Opportunities for future research at ISWC are identified.

Clinical researchers in rehabilitation technology have often called for exercise customization to address patient specific needs. Where such customization transcends simple parameter setting, the need for End-User Development (EUD) arises. EUD in this field can potentially tap on the expertise of highly skilled workers, but presents serious challenges regarding acceptance by end users and the feasibility of embedding EUD in their professional practice. This paper describes the deployment and adoption process of TagTrainer, a physical rehabilitation technology that supports EUD. TagTrainer was deployed in four rehabilitation clinics and was used by 24 rehabilitation therapists. We analyze how they engaged in EUD activities and we discuss decisions that we took in the design and deployment of TagTrainer. Based on these case studies, we present guidelines for the deployment of EUD systems.

Premature infants are subject to numerous interventions ranging from a simple diaper change to surgery while residing in neonatal intensive care units. These neonates often suffer from pain, distress, and discomfort during the first weeks of their lives. Although pharmacological pain treatment often is available, it cannot always be applied to relieve a neonate from pain or discomfort. This paper describes a nonpharmacological solution, called Mimo, which provides comfort through mediation of a parent's physiological features to the distressed neonate via an intelligent pillow system embedded with sensing and actuating functions. We present the design, the implementation, and the evaluation of the prototype. Clinical tests at Máxima Medical Center in the Netherlands show that among the nine of ten infants who showed discomfort following diaper change, a shorter recovery time to baseline skin conductance analgesimeter values could be measured when the maternal heartbeat vibration in the Mimo was switched ON and in seven of these ten a shorter crying time was measured.

As tangible and embodied systems are making the transition from the labs to everyday life, there is a growth in the applications related research and design work in this field. We argue that the potential of these technologies can be even further leveraged by enabling domain experts such as teachers, therapists and home owners to act as end-user developers in order to modify and create content for their tangible interactive systems. However, there are important issues that need to be addressed if we want to enable these end users to act as developers. In this paper we identify five key challenges for meta-designers in enabling end-users to develop for tangible and embodied interaction.

We propose a novel concept for navigation for bicyclists based on 3D-audio. The concept has been implemented in a prototype and evaluated in a small user test. The results indicate a hopeful future for audio-based navigation for bicyclists.