Music education for Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners remains challenging because access to auditory cues is constrained and instruction is often shaped by hearing-centered pedagogical and communication structures. Prior work has explored haptics for music, yet offers limited situated knowledge of how haptic cues should be designed and negotiated within authentic instruction. We address this gap through a co-design method centered on reconfigurable haptic prototyping. Using modular tactors that can be rapidly repositioned and retuned, we conducted four co-design workshops with educator–learner dyads in South Korea. The workshops involved hands-on trials, bodystorming, and mock teaching enactment to explore music-to-haptic cues within realistic instructional interaction. We show that haptics can support pedagogical fit, make musical concepts tangible as formative in-the-moment support, and function as a shared reference in instruction. We contribute a co-design method, empirical insights into haptics in music instruction, and design implications for DHH music education.

Music can play an important role in the lives of some Deaf and Hardof-Hearing (DHH) individuals, facilitating emotional expression, storytelling, and social interaction despite differences in hearing ability and identity.While prior human-computer interaction (HCI) research has introduced various functional advancements to enhance their music experiences, a deeper exploration of broader user experiences and inclusive design strategies remains necessary.To address the real-life challenges DHH individuals face in everyday music activities, we conducted focus group interviews in South Korea with 39 DHH individuals and 9 music experts.Our analysis identified six dimensions of everyday music activities organized by engagement type and social level, highlighting the distinct challenges and preferences DHH individuals encounter in musical contexts.Based on these insights, we propose design implications for fostering more inclusive music experiences, extending beyond individual engagement to include community and mixed-group interactions.This work provides a comprehensive framework to inform future HCI research and guide the development of inclusive technologies that better support DHH individuals' diverse musical experiences.

The perception of pitch and engagement in melodic singing significantly contribute to the appreciation and comprehension of music. Notably, for hard-of-hearing individuals, perceiving pitch and singing play crucial roles as effective aids in auditory rehabilitation. However, the limited perception of pitch, stemming from the constraints of hearing devices, poses challenges in the learning process of recognizing and vocalizing melodies. In this study, we developed a wearable vibrotactile glove, TTS+, designed to convert musical tones into the corresponding vibrotactile patterns, complemented by an associated training application. After ten training sessions with our system, the participants exhibited notable improvements in pitch perception and the capacity to reproduce melodies through singing compared with their pre-test baseline without vibrotactile feedback. Beyond quantitative outcomes, findings from user experiences obtained through user feedback during training and post-test interviews offer valuable perspectives and constraints for our study, which may be further investigated in future studies.

Cochlear implantation is an effective tool in speech perception. However, activities such as listening to music and singing remain challenging for cochlear implant (CI) users, due to inaccurate pitch recognition. In this study, we propose a method for CI users to recognize precise pitch differences through tactile feedback. The proposed system encodes real-time audio signals to 36 musical tones (from C3 to B5), represented by tactile codes using nine vibration motors in a glove-type device. Two CI users participated in 15 h of training using our system and showed significant improvement in pitch accuracy while singing. In addition to the quantitative results, both participants expressed satisfaction in distinguishing and vocalizing musical tones, which led to increased interest in music. This study provides opportunities for CI users to engage more deeply and participate in musical education as well as achieve improved aural rehabilitation.

Battery exhaustion attack is a ldquodenial of servicerdquo attack on mobile devices, causing more battery discharge than normally necessary. The excessive discharge arises out of the limitation in battery capacity. Researches have been conducted to discover the cause of the abnormal usage of handset battery by employing power estimation techniques. It is also important, however, to automatically respond to the attack and maintain the power discharge at the normal level. In this study, we introduce a method designed to detect the defective process and to self-correct the abnormality by stopping or delaying the suspicious actions. The proposed system monitors system calls and the power usage of a local process, and delays activation of the abnormal system calls until the system calls can be run without hampering the battery life. The benefit of our proposed method lies in that it autonomously protects the expected battery lifespan during a battery exhaustion attack without shutting down operation of falsely detected programs.