Cuteness is a powerful aesthetic, and psychological research shows that cute things such as infants, baby animals, and toys capture and secure our attention, promote nurturing behaviour, and influence our preferences. Therefore, cuteness is a common design outcome in many consumer products, including robotics. However, we suggest that making cute zoomorphic robots may not be without its issues due to the complexities introduced by the analogies they make to various animals. We summarise the impact of cuteness in animals and robotics and analyse the intersection of the two domains by comparing the presence of baby schema features in different canine zoomorphic robots and dog breeds. Finally, we speculate on the benefits and drawbacks to cute zoomorphic robots, and provide suggestions for a new design approach that centres animals’ well-being. The aim of this work is to synthesise research on cuteness from different disciplines and prompt robot designers to be more conscious of cuteness and its potentially detrimental consequences in zoomorphic robots.

Zoomorphic robots are a promising substitute for live animals in situations where their involvement is impractical or impossible. One significant application is in animal welfare education, which plays a key role in shaping children’s relationships with animals and the natural world. In this work we present the evaluation of an educational intervention using a custom zoomorphic robot that communicates dog sentience and welfare needs to 10–11-year-old children (N = 104). The results show that the intervention as a whole is an effective animal welfare education intervention, as it succeeded in improving children’s belief in dog sentience, recognition of dog emotions, knowledge of dog welfare needs, and attachment to pets. While there was no significant effect of the zoomorphic robot over the same intervention delivered using a stuffed toy, children who interacted with the robot reported higher intrinsic motivation to participate in the intervention, suggesting potential future use as a proxy animal, particularly to sustain engagement in longer-term interventions.

Robotic assisted living environments are currently lacking in accessibility for individuals with sight loss. To address this need, this preliminary study designs and evaluates a bespoke robotic tour guide which provides meaningful firsttime interactions for people with sight loss in a robotic assisted living lab. We engaged 8 participants with sight loss between the ages of 20 and 80 years old, in a counterbalanced, withinsubjects study comparing their experiences of a guided tour of a robotic assisted living lab led by a Temi robot, to the same guided tour led by a trained human tour guide. Results show that the robotic tour guide for people with sight loss is perceived as warm and competent, with low discomfort in the human-robot interaction. Findings also show that the tour guided by the robot is perceived to be equally engaging and useful as the tour led by the trained human tour guide, and does not lead to an increase in workload. Key findings highlight the importance of tactile exploration, multimodal interaction, and enhanced control, and identify differing needs between users who are blind and partially sighted,

The growing interest in fair AI development is evident. The "Leave No One Behind" initiative urges us to address multiple and intersecting forms of inequality in accessing services, resources, and opportunities, emphasising the significance of fairness in AI. This is particularly relevant as an increasing number of AI tools are applied to decision-making processes, such as resource allocation and service scheme development, across various sectors such as health, energy, and housing. Therefore, exploring joint inequalities in these sectors is significant and valuable for thoroughly understanding overall inequality and unfairness. This research introduces an innovative approach to quantify cross-sectoral intersecting discrepancies among user-defined groups using latent class analysis. These discrepancies can be used to approximate inequality and provide valuable insights to fairness issues. We validate our approach using both proprietary and public datasets, including both EVENS and Census 2021 (England & Wales) datasets, to examine cross-sectoral intersecting discrepancies among different ethnic groups. We also verify the reliability of the quantified discrepancy by conducting a correlation analysis with a government public metric. Our findings reveal significant discrepancies both among minority ethnic groups and between minority ethnic groups and non-minority ethnic groups, emphasising the need for targeted interventions in policy-making processes. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the proposed approach can provide valuable insights into ensuring fairness in machine learning systems.

Social robots offer a promising solution for autonomously guiding patients through physiotherapy exercise sessions, but effective deployment requires advanced decision-making to adapt to patient needs. A key challenge is the scarcity of patient behavior data for developing robust policies. To address this, we engaged 33 expert healthcare practitioners as patient proxies, using their interactions with our robot to inform a patient behavior model capable of generating exercise performance metrics and subjective scores on perceived exertion. We trained a reinforcement learning-based policy in simulation, demonstrating that it can adapt exercise instructions to individual exertion tolerances and fluctuating performance, while also being applicable to patients at different recovery stages with varying exercise plans.

For social robots to maintain long-term engagement as exercise instructors, rapport-building is essential. Motor mimicry—imitating one’s physical actions—during social interaction has long been recognized as a powerful tool for fostering rapport, and it is widely used in rehabilitation exercises where patients mirror a physiotherapist or video demonstration. We developed a novel Brain-Robot Interface (BRI) that allows a social robot instructor to mimic a patient’s exercise movements in real-time, using mental commands derived from the patient’s intention. The system was evaluated in an exploratory study with 14 participants (3 physiotherapists and 11 hemiparetic patients recovering from stroke or other injuries). We found our system successfully demonstrated exercise mimicry in 12 sessions, however, accuracy varied. Participants had positive perceptions of the robot instructor, with high trust and acceptance levels, which were not affected by the introduction of BRI technology.

Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) are highly prevalent and, if left untreated, can lead to serious health complications. While urine testing is an effective diagnostic tool, it is often conducted late in the infection’s progression. As part of a broader project exploring technology-driven approaches to early UTI detection, we introduce an assistive robot prototype designed to facilitate daily interactions with users. This robot gathers a range of information that may serve as potential early indicators of UTIs, through a three-tiered interaction framework, increasing in intensity from light conversational topics to structured clinical questionnaires. To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach, we conduct a user study in a psueudo-home environment involving 15 individuals with a history of UTIs, spanning 55 interactive sessions. Findings reveal promising levels of engagement and acceptance and insight on our LLM-driven interaction as a feasible approach. We provide key next steps for improvement towards our long-term study in-situ, highlighting the need for a more robust conversational strategy and promoting agency through user-initiated interactions.

Motivating older adults to engage in cognitive activities has the potential to slow cognitive decline. This article presents a participatory design (PD) workshop and follow-up prototype evaluation to determine how cognitive training activities can be adapted to integrate socially assistive robots and sensory feedback (visual, auditory, and haptic, specifically). The workshop with older adults and therapists resulted in concrete designs and strategies for engagement. The second phase of this work was to implement these outcomes into a prototype that incorporated a humanoid robot and sensory feedback, with a particular focus on haptic feedback. The evaluation with eight older adults supported the potential of hand tracking with sensory feedback as an interaction mechanism to foster engagement, where the increased workload notably led to high levels of engagement. The prototype results confirmed the strategies and designs from the PD workshop were effective as a way of engaging older adults in cognitive activities. This article highlights the potential for the unique combination of socially assistive robots and sensory feedback to promote older adults’ engagement in cognitive activities.

Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) have the potential to lead to severe health implications if not detected and treated promptly. The Feather project aims to develop a system which will provide early identification of UTIs through regular interactions with an individual at home. This paper utilizes a participatory design workshop to investigate the use of Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) for this purpose, and understand 1) the appropriate robot embodiment, and 2) the relevant social interactions to identify UTI indicators. Two of the five explored embodiments were found to facilitate a suitable balance between agency and autonomy for this task, with the telepresence robot creating a preference due to a need for strong navigation capabilities. Participants further devised a series of multimodal interactions to identify a range of UTI indicators. These early investigatory design insights lay the groundwork for introducing SARs to this novel area of application, from which we plan to build upon to develop a working system.

With the aim of providing extra motivation to adhere to repetitive, individual sports training, this paper presents an autonomous robotic squash coach capable of high-level personalisation. The system was evaluated in person with 16 participants each conducting three 15-minute solo practice sessions. We compared a baseline, non-coaching robotic condition to two conditions in which the robot executed one of 12 different coaching policies, each of which was based on human coaching data. In one of the coaching conditions, the policy was selected based on categories for personalisation and in the other it was selected randomly among policies. The coaching policy conditions were found to be more enjoyable, more socially competent, and perceived as a more effective coach than the baseline.

Future Forums are multiphase user centered design workshops, with the early phases aiming to initiate discussions, that then leads to the co-design of game elements centered around aspects of code security. The same procedure was followed for each of the three Future Forums, each focusing to a slightly different theme around cyber security. By engaging code-citizens in discussions on cyber security that are rooted in their personal experiences and individual viewpoints, several themes emerged, such as the role of coder practices and ethical behavior in security while coding. Findings gave us a deep insight in the code-citizens’ ecosystem during code development – both in terms of their individual beliefs and practices, and the practicalities they have to consider. Discussions were followed by the co-design and co-creation of game elements. The game elements code-citizens co-created allowed us to observe how code elements and code practices are represented with game elements, informing future designs of security oriented serious games. This paper discusses the implications these findings have to the design of cyber security oriented serious games, and to the wider HCI community working with similar methodologies.

Abstract The Rohingya ethnic group is one of the most persecuted minorities, whose specific circumstances pose unique and interesting challenges. The digital revolution is transforming the world and is leaving refugees behind (UNHCR). In this paper, we present a multiphase user centred approach we used to explore how Rohingya refugees could access assistance by utilizing technology they already have or share; both early on and long after they arrived in a new country. The findings we present from phase 1, which was an early participatory design phase, were confirmed and endorsed by the Rohingya community, UNHCR and local charities during phase 3. These findings, suggest that concepts aiming to assist Rohingya refugees should primarily focus on: safety, social capital, upskilling, and language translation. Finally, we present the iterative user centred design, implementation, and evaluation of one of these concepts focusing on safety, before being deployed within the Rohingya community in Malaysia.

Cognitive training is effective at retaining cognitive function and delaying decline for typically ageing older adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment, and persons with dementia. Technological resources can address limiting factors that inhibit engagement and access to this treatment. We investigated how a socially assistive robot-facilitated memory task with sensory feedback was received by older adults. The impact of unimodal and multimodal administration of auditory and haptic feedback using two robot embodiments (Pepper and Nao) was evaluated in terms of user performance, usability, and workload. In contrast to sensory feedback research, auditory feedback resulted in significantly higher task accuracy. This was, however, supported by previous work from neurological literature. Auditory feedback also received significantly higher usability, and this preference was validated by qualitative feedback from participants. Regardless of robotic embodiment, this study demonstrates an advantage for auditory feedback (over haptic and multimodal) in cognitive training activities for older adults.

Zoomorphic robots are a promising tool for animal welfare education and could be used to teach children that animals have minds and emotions and thereby reduce acceptance of cruelty towards animals. This study investigated the influence of animallike affective non-verbal behavior on children’s perceptions of the attributes and mental abilities of a zoomorphic robot, as well as their acceptance of cruelty towards it. Children who interacted with a robot that displayed animallike affective non-verbal behavior ascribed a significantly higher level of mental abilities. Higher levels of perceived mental abilities were not generally correlated with lower acceptance of cruelty but higher levels of perceived social attributes were. Post-hoc analysis of reasoning given for unacceptability of cruelty found that the group of children who made moral judgments about the cruelty had rated the zoomorphic robot as significantly more animate.

Adherence to repetitive rehabilitation exercises is important in motor recovery after stroke. Similarly, repetitive solo practice exercises can improve the skill level of sports players. In both of these scenarios, regular human coaching has benefits, but in practice, the required training is often carried out alone, resulting in lowered adherence. This work presents a mixed methodology approach, novel in the context of designing for HRI, towards informing the design of a personalised robotic coach for stroke rehabilitation and squash. Using observations of human-human interactions, we first obtained action sequences of behaviours exhibited by coaches and physiotherapists. We then clustered these action sequences into behaviour graphs, with each graph representing a coaching policy usable for robotic control. Next we obtained coaches’ and physiotherapists’ reflections on the graphs’ applicability to the real world. Finally, we provide an explanation of how the policies visualised in these graphs could be used for robotic control.

Overactive Bladder (OAB) is a widespread condition, affecting 20% of the population. Even though it is a treatable condition, people often do not seek treatment. In this paper, we describe how we co-designed and evaluated with 30 stakeholders (9 medical professionals and 21 end-users) an OAB mobile health application that aims to increase adherence to self-managed treatment. Our results support previous research that visualizing progress, setting goals, receiving reminders and feedback increases use. We discovered that games could be used successfully as a distraction technique for urge suppression. Contrary to the current research direction, automatically calculated features could be a detriment to app interaction. Regarding evaluation, we found that designers may not want to rely only on questionnaires when assessing the success of a game and its emotional impact on users.

Rehabilitation has proven effective to significantly reduce fall risk in seniors; however, low adherence to home rehabilitation and a lack of feedback on performance and progress indicate that seniors might not receive the amount of therapy necessary to reduce their risk of falling. We present a tailored exergame system for the home (called Recov-R) to motivate seniors to exercise and facilitate effective recovery by promoting optimal quality of movement during exercise. Based on an 8-week field study, with 38 participants, we present results on the use of the Recov-R system, versus standard care, in the home. Our findings suggest that the use of the system can increase adherence to exercise and reduce fall risk by improving outcomes of physical function—mobility and balance. We also highlight opportunities, based on these results, for the design of effective exergame technologies for musculoskeletal rehabilitation in the home.

Although gait/balance analysis methods have proven effective for assessing falls risk (FR), they are mostly confined to the laboratory and rely on expensive specialist equipment. Recent sensor technologies have made it possible to capture FR data accurately; however, no exploration has been done on how to effectively communicate these data to seniors in both healthcare and free-living settings. We describe IDA (Insole Device for Assessment of Falls Risk), comprising a relatively inexpensive insole and prototype application that provides feedback to stakeholders. To explore what level of FR data should best be communicated to different stakeholders, we conducted workshops with 26 seniors and interviewed 7 healthcare workers in the UK. We highlight stakeholder preferences on viewing FR data to foster greater understanding of outcomes and enhance communication between stakeholders. Finally, we identify opportunities for design on enhancing understanding of gait/balance outcomes; these have potential applications in other areas of physical rehabilitation.

A great deal of research into Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) has assumed that search team members have the same level of unrestricted access to information. However, case studies and observations from different domains including government, healthcare and legal, have suggested that CIR sometimes involves people with unequal access to information. This type of scenario has been referred to as Multi-Level CIR (MLCIR). In addition to supporting collaboration, MLCIR systems must ensure that there is no unintended disclosure of sensitive information, this is an under investigated area of research. In this paper we present results of an evaluation of an interface we have designed for MLCIR scenarios. Pairs of participants used the interface under 3 different information access scenarios for a variety of search tasks. These scenarios included 1 CIR and 2 MLCIR scenarios, namely: full access (FA), document removal (DR) and term blacklisting (TR). Design interviews were conducted post evaluation to obtain qualitative feedback from participants. Evaluation results showed that our interface performed well for both DR and FA scenarios but for TR, team members with less access had a negative influence on their partner's search performance, demonstrating insights into how different MLCIR scenarios should be supported. Design interview results showed that our interface helped the participants to reformulate their queries, understand their partner's performance, reduce duplicated work and review their team's search history without disclosing sensitive information.

The majority of research in Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) has assumed that collaborating team members have uniform information access. However, practice and research has shown that there may not always be uniform information access among team members, e.g. in healthcare, government, etc. To the best of our knowledge, there has not been a controlled user evaluation to measure the impact of non-uniform information access on CIR outcomes. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a controlled user evaluation using 2 non-uniform access scenarios (document removal and term blacklisting) and 1 full and uniform access scenario. Following this, a design interview was undertaken to provide interface design suggestions. Evaluation results show that neither of the 2 non-uniform access scenarios had a significant negative impact on collaborative and individual search outcomes. Design interview results suggested that awareness of team's query history and intersecting viewed/judged documents could potentially help users share their expertise without disclosing sensitive information. Based on our results we provide important design recommendations to better support users with non-uniform information access in CIR.

The ability of images to evoke emotions in people has been well documented in previous research, as well as the differences in the emotional perception of images when viewed on different-sized screens and device types. The ability of thermal stimuli to evoke emotions in people when used for media augmentation has also been examined. However, little is known about how thermal stimuli can be used to enhance or reduce affect in images with varying emotional properties displayed in different sizes or on different devices. To the best of our knowledge, no work has been conducted to investigate whether there is any difference in the effect thermal augmentation has on images displayed in different sizes on different device types. This paper presents two user studies to address this research gap. Study 1 explored the effect thermal stimulation has on images displayed in different sizes. Images were displayed in sizes corresponding to the full screen display of a laptop, tablet and mobile phone. In study 2, we examined whether the actual presentation device (tablet and mobile) plays a role in the emotional perception of images displayed on mobile devices. Results showed that thermal augmentation was most effective in modulating emotions in small-sized pictures (427 × 240 pixels display size) and pictures displayed on a mobile phone. Thermal stimuli also reduced emotions in medium display sizes (corresponding to the full screen display of a tablet).

Research on graphical perception of time series visualisations has focused on visual representation, and not on interaction. Even for visual representation, there has been limited study of the impact on users of visual encodings and the strengths and weaknesses of Cartesian and Polar coordinate systems. In order to address this research gap, we performed a comprehensive graphical perception study that measured the effectiveness of time series visualisations with different interactions, visual encodings and coordinate systems for several tasks. Our results show that, while positional and colour visual encodings were better for most tasks, area visual encoding performed better for data comparison. Most importantly, we identified that introducing interactivity within time series visualisations considerably enhances the user experience, without any loss of efficiency or accuracy. We believe that our findings can greatly improve the development of visual analytics tools using time series visualisations in a variety of domains.

Thermal stimulation is a feedback channel that has the potential to influence the emotional response of people to media such as images. While previous work has demonstrated that thermal stimuli might have an effect on the emotional perception of images, little is understood about the exact emotional responses different thermal properties and presentation techniques can elicit towards images. This paper presents two user studies that investigate the effect thermal stimuli parameters (e.g. intensity) and timing of thermal stimuli presentation have on the emotional perception of images. We found that thermal stimulation increased valence and arousal in images with low valence and neutral to low arousal. Thermal augmentation of images also reduced valence and arousal in high valence and arousal images. We discovered that depending on when thermal augmentation is presented, it can either be used to create anticipation or enhance the inherent emotion an image is capable of evoking.

A majority of Stroke survivors have an arm impairment (up to 80%), which persists over the long term (>12 months). Physiotherapy experts believe that a rehabilitation Aide-Memoire could help these patients [25]. Hence, we designed, with the input of physiotherapists, Stroke experts and former Stroke patients, the Aide-Memoire Stroke (AIMS) App to help them remember to exercise more frequently. We evaluated its use in a controlled field evaluation on a smartphone, tablet and smartwatch. Since one of the main features of the app is to remind Stroke survivors to exercise we also investigated reminder modalities (i.e., visual, vibrate, audio, speech). One key finding is that Stroke survivors opted for a combination of modalities to remind them to conduct their exercises. Also, Stroke survivors seem to prefer smartphones compared to other mobile devices due to their ease of use, usability, familiarity and being easier to handle with one arm.

As automated vehicles currently do not provide sufficient feedback relating to the primary driving task, drivers have no assurance that an automated vehicle has understood and can cope with upcoming traffic situations [16]. To address this we conducted two user evaluations to investigate auditory displays in automated vehicles using different types of sound cues related to the primary driving sounds: acceleration, deceleration/braking, gear changing and indicating. Our first study compared earcons, speech and auditory icons with existing vehicle sounds. Our findings suggested that earcons were an effective alternative to existing vehicle sounds for presenting information related to the primary driving task. Based on these findings a second study was conducted to further investigate earcons modulated by different sonic parameters to present primary driving sounds. We discovered that earcons containing naturally mapped sonic parameters such as pitch and timbre were as effective as existing sounds in a simulated automated vehicle.

One of the main reasons why smartphone users do not adopt screen locking mechanisms is due to the inefficiency of entering a PIN/pattern each time they use their phone. To address this problem we designed a context-sensitive screen locking application which asked participants to enter a PIN/pattern only when necessary, and evaluated its impact on efficiency and satisfaction. Both groups of participants, who prior to the study either locked or did not lock their phone, adopted our application and felt that unlocking their phone only when necessary was more efficient, did not annoy them and offered a reasonable level of security. Participants responded positively to the option of choosing when a PIN/pattern is required in different contexts. Therefore, we recommend that designers of smartphone locking mechanisms should consider ceding a reasonable level of control over security settings to users to increase adoption and convenience, while keeping smartphones reasonably secure.

Modern mobile devices come with an array of sensors that support many interesting applications. However, sensors have different sampling costs (e.g., battery drain) and benefits (e.g., accuracy) under different circumstances. In this work we investigate the trade-off between the cost of using a sensor and the benefit gained from its use, with application to data-driven authentication on mobile devices. Current authentication practice, where user behaviour is first learned from the sensor data and then used to detect anomalies, typically assumes a fixed sampling rate and does not consider the battery consumption and usefulness of sensors. In this work we study how battery consumption and sensor effectiveness (e.g., for detecting attacks) vary when using different sensors and different sensor sampling rates. We use data from both controlled lab studies, as well as field trials, for our experiments. We also propose an adaptive sampling technique that adjusts the sampling rate based on an expected device vigilance level. Our results show that it is possible to reduce the battery consumption tenfold without significantly impacting the detection of attacks.

The majority of research into Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) has assumed a uniformity of information access and visibility between collaborators. However in a number of real world scenarios, information access is not uniform between all collaborators in a team e.g. security, health etc. This can be referred to as Multi-Level Collaborative Information Retrieval (MLCIR). To the best of our knowledge, there has not yet been any systematic investigation of the effect of MLCIR on search outcomes. To address this shortcoming, in this paper, we present the results of a simulated evaluation conducted over 4 different non-uniform information access scenarios and 3 different collaborative search strategies. Results indicate that there is some tolerance to removing access to the collection and that there may not always be a negative impact on performance. We also highlight how different access scenarios and search strategies impact on search outcomes.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the work practices of network security professionals and to propose a new and robust work practices model of these professionals. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed work practices model is composed by combining the findings of ten notable empirical studies performed so far this century. The proposed model was then validated by an online survey of 125 network security professionals with a wide demographic spread. Findings – The empirical data collected from the survey of network security professionals strongly validate the proposed work practices model. The results also highlight interesting trends for different groups of network security professionals, with respect to performing different security-related activities. Research limitations/implications – Further studies could investigate more closely the links and dependencies between the different activities of the proposed work practices model and tools used by network security professionals to perform these activities. Practical implications – A robust work practices model of network security professionals could hugely assist tool developers in designing usable tools for network security management. Originality/value – This paper proposes a new work practices model of network security professionals, which is built by consolidating existing empirical evidence and validated by conducting a survey of network security professionals. The findings enhance the understanding of tool developers about the day-to-day activities of network security professionals, consequently assisting developers in designing better tools for network security management.

In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of an interactive home-based rehabilitation visualisation system used by a wide variety of ages (users in our studies were aged from 47-89) to undertake rehabilitation in the home following knee replacement surgery. We present the rehabilitation visualization system and the results of a randomized controlled study in which we investigated the usability and feasibility of the system in the home. We found that our users were able to use the system successfully for their rehabilitation with improved rehabilitation outcomes after 6 weeks when compared to the current rehabilitation care. Finally we highlight the lessons learned which will benefit prospective designers of home rehabilitation technology in ensuring successful home evaluations in clinical rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of falling in older adults. However, low adherence to rehabilitation exercises in the home means that seniors often do not get the therapy that they require. We propose that the use of tailored exergames could encourage adherence to falls rehabilitation in the home, as exergames have proved successful in clinical settings. We describe the results from the first known study to investigate the long-term (12 weeks) use of exergames, designed in close collaboration with elderly users, for falls rehabilitation in the home. Our findings suggest that there is an untapped potential of exergames for home rehabilitation use, as our findings show that there was better adherence to exercise in participants who used the exergames, versus those who used standard care. Finally, we make recommendations for designers, on the design of exergames for the rehabilitation of seniors.

Many countries have an increasingly aging population. In recent years, mobile technologies have had a massive impact on social and working lives. As the size of the older user population rises, many people will want to continue professional, social and lifestyle usage of mobiles into 70s and beyond. Mobile technologies can lead to increased community involvement and personal independence. While mobile technologies can provide many opportunities, the aging process can interfere with their use. This workshop brings together researchers who are re-imagining common mobile interfaces so that they are more suited to use by older adults.

Falls are the leading cause of accidental injury-related deaths in the elderly; a fall can lead to a loss of independence, and a fear of falling. Rehabilitation programmes involving exercise have proved the most successful way to reduce the risk of falls. However, the limitations of standard care (e.g. booklets) could prevent home users from receiving the full therapeutic benefit that rehabilitation offers. Having consulted users and health experts, we developed games, and visualizations for falls rehabilitation that we believe could potentially overcome the main barriers to effective rehabilitation in the home. In this paper, we describe user studies that we carried out with older adults to evaluate the use of these visual tools versus standard care, both in the laboratory and in the home. Our main findings show that our visualizations and games were able to overcome the major limitations of standard care, and that they were usable and acceptable to the end users.

Current methods of behavioral data collection from mobile devices either require significant involvement from participants to verify the 'ground truth' of the data, or approximations that involve post-experiment comparisons to seed data. In this paper we argue that user involvement can be gracefully reduced by performing more intelligent seed comparisons. We aim to reduce the participant involvement to the 'most interesting' temporal slots, both during the experiment and in post-experiment verification. We carried out a 2 week study with 4 users, consisting of an initial opportunistic gathering of mobile sensor data. Our findings suggest that by using such a method we can significantly reduce user involvement.

Inertial motion capture systems are now used across a broad range of applications where optical motion capture systems would traditionally be used. The decreasing cost of building inertial sensors has prompted many researchers to build inertial motion capture systems for use in rehabilitation applications where they are used to track body movement. Pose calibrations are the standard method used to estimate and correct for body-sensor alignment when using inertial sensors but they have the potential to introduce a systematic error that is carried through the whole usage session. Pose calibrations are the only suitable method for inexpert users and interactive applications. Validation of the pose calibration methods is carried out using an optical motion capture system. The accuracy of the pose calibration is tested under several practical variations of the technique, we quantify the approximate errors that can be introduced by variations of the implementation and on the choice of pose used. Finally we make recommendations on how an improved pose calibration scheme should be implemented.

Studies have shown that functional strength and balance exercises can reduce the risk of falling in older people if they are done on a regular basis. However, the repetitive nature of these exercises; as well as the use of instructional booklets and videos for rehabilitation may discourage seniors to exercise in the home, thereby rendering such an intervention ineffective. Our work proposed that the use of multimodal games -- co-designed with seniors -- could be a way of making falls rehabilitation more enjoyable; thereby improving adherence to home exercise programmes. In this paper, we first explain the process by which we identified barriers to the users' effective interaction with current home rehabilitation tools. We then go on to describe how we actively involved seniors in the initial design, and improvement of useful, enjoyable games for falls rehabilitation. Our findings suggest that seniors are an integral part of the design process and should be directly involved from the concept stages of the design of tools for their rehabilitation.

We present a novel method of interaction for users to preview an audio track haptically. The preview enables users to "feel" the track they want to select, thus saving them from having to look at the screen or listen to the track before actually playing it. Our results show that users enjoyed the combination of audio and haptic feedback and that users would very much like to see this type of sensory collaboration being incorporated into their own mobile device.

Despite the importance of physical activity to health, many people do not meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity. In order to gain a greater understanding of people's activity levels and patterns in everyday life we designed a mobile activity monitoring application, which resides on mobile phones which utilizes the accelerometer and GPS (either as an externally attached component or as in internal component) data. We designed the system to be used by any member of the public and then redesigned the system given continuous feedback from three sets of local authority workers who were just about to commence a walking led scheme. We logged their activity over a week long period.

Spatial information appliances (SIA), which enable mobile users to interact with the physical environment, have recently received an increasing amount of interest from the research community. This paper presents a comparative outdoor user study on conceptual designs for 4 interaction areas considered important for SIAs: selection, search, information sniffing, and remote viewing. Implications for future research are discussed.

There are new challenges to us, as researchers, on how to design and evaluate new mobile applications because they give users access to powerful computing devices through small interfaces, which typically have limited input facilities. One way of overcoming these shortcomings is to utilize the possibilities of multimodality. We report in this paper how we designed, developed, and evaluated a multimodal mobile application through a combination of laboratory and field studies. This is the first time, as far as we know, that a multimodal application has been developed in such a way. We did this so that we would understand more about where and when users envisioned using different modes of interaction and what problems they may encounter when using an application in context.

New mobile devices can be difficult to use because they give users access to powerful computing devices through small interfaces, which typically have limited input facilities. One way of overcoming these shortcomings is to think of new interaction methods that could be utilized by the user. We report in this paper on a new interaction method for mobile devices in which the user can point his or her mobile device at a building and view a virtual representation of it. In addition, the user can view the building at different times in its past and literally see it morphing into its current state. Another interesting aspect of our prototype is that as the user moves the device the view they see on their mobile interface moves with them, thus allowing the user to experience the real and the virtual world at the same time.