Temperature has strong potential to mediate emotion in a range of contexts; augmenting sensory experience and/or supporting emotion regulation. Hence, there is growing interest in leveraging thermal cues for affective technologies. At present, however, the design space for thermal technologies for emotion regulation remains underexplored and largely undefined. We construct a design space for thermal affective emotion regulation technologies, clarifying the rich, expressive nature of thermal cues as a design material. We develop this through a Research through Design (RtD) approach, grounded in an 18-month autoethnographic inquiry based on the first author’s emotion regulation practice. We contribute a structured design space for thermal affective interaction, linking experience and design implementation with designerly know-how. By discussing the creation of this design space we provide insights into the generative process of developing intermediate-level knowledge from autoethnographic study and design practice.

This pictorial review illustrates an array of visual strategies employed in 271 pictorials published in DIS, C&C, and TEI conferences between 2014 and 2023. Based on a thematic analysis the pictorial review presents the visual strategies under seven analytical themes: 1) composition, 2) typography, 3) colour, 4) drawing attention, 5) visual style, 6) active engagement, and 7) visual related work. The review focuses on strategies for communicating research visually, rather than the content and contribution of the reviewed pictorials. The review outlines both basic graphical principles, as well as novel use of visual elements. The pictorial is the first attempt at a visual analysis of the pictorial format, offering authors of future pictorials, both an overview of the development of the format, as well as inspiration for new ways to complement text with visual content. Lastly, the challenges and future potentials which emerged from the review are discussed.

Anxiety among university students has increased in recent years due to stressful factors of studies coupled with tightened individual performance requirements stemming both inside and outside the student. While prior anxiety treatment wearables have focused on aiding self-management through an automated tangible therapeutic response to the biometrics reading, this pictorial presents the design, development, and evaluation of the SuspenderMender, shared management enabling pair of wearables (i.e., a T-shirt and suspenders). Inspired by prior research suggestions on the power of physical contact and social support in anxiety management, the SuspenderMender allows transferring a touch through wearables. A Wizard of Oz pair evaluation with ten university students suggests that the concept idea is relevant and the simulated physical touch felt comforting, almost like a real hug. However, participants raised issues with the inequality of the interaction between the two wearables. Based on our findings, we suggest design considerations for future wearables for the shared management of anxiety.

Smart wearable solutions for social distancing have appeared during the Covid-19 pandemic with various types of outputs often directed only to the wearer or if directed to others, the visual output is usually displayed on the front side of the wearers body. This paper presents instead a design, implementation, and in-the-wild Wizard of Oz evaluation of a backpack with shape-changing accessory which output is directed to others approaching the wearer from behind. Qualitative findings from six participants suggest that there is potential in shape-changing accessory for keeping social distance in public context, however, the social acceptability issues caused by noisy motors and inclusiveness of the design limit the willingness to wear it. Even though the study was inspired by the Covid-19, other non-pandemic use cases for personal space respecting wearables are discussed also for users with special needs.

In this pictorial, we offer an overview of the design and step-by-step guidance on crafting a leather self-tracking device for pollen allergies. We designed the device to support patients’ daily lives allowing them to track symptoms and their severity and medicine intake while on the go, multiple times per day. The self-tracker sends the data to an accompanying smartphone application to support patients in understanding their illness, be used in doctors’ consultation, and collect data for allergy research. We chose natural leather as a material for this domestic medical device due to its associations with everyday artifacts, so it would be easier to integrate it into allergy patients’ everyday lives.

Realistic 3D virtual environments, such as existing city models, have the potential to be used in pervasive games as a passageway between physical and virtual. Smooth attention displacement and transitions between these two realities are largely unexplored in the context of pervasive gameplay. We conducted two field trials using a pervasive live action role playing game to study the effect moving between the virtual and the physical has on co-presence and memorability. Although differences in co-presence during gameplay were small, they highlight the subtleties in the social structuring of pervasive gameplay. Spatial similarity between the physical and virtual environments made the 3D virtual environments more memorable. We identify two important issues to consider in embedding virtual environments into pervasive games: structuring of social interactions and the spatial realism of the VEs.

Living labs are environments for acquiring user feedback on new products and services. Virtual environments can complement living labs by providing dynamic immersive setup for depicting change. This paper describes implementation of Virtual and Augmented Reality clients as an extension to a user involvement tool for an existing living lab. We conducted a user experience study with 14 participants to compare the clients. According to our study, the virtual reality client was experienced as innovative, easy to use, entertaining and fun. Whereas the augmented reality client was perceived playful and empowering.

Most systems that we use in everyday life are shared—because multiple people can interact or because an interaction by one person can affect other people. However, everyday Internet of Things systems are often designed for individual use. Prior research on collaboration technologies (Computer Supported Collaborative Work) has shown that to coordinate system sharing people require awareness of the social context, which interfaces can support by making salient information visible. Although literature exists on how to design for awareness, this can be fragmented and difficult to relate to other application domains. To introduce a broader audience of interaction designers to awareness, we aim to make the available design knowledge more generalizable and operational. With this aim, we construct the Designing for Awareness in Shared Systems framework that gives a structured and comprehensive overview of design considerations for awareness. The framework can stimulate reflection and inform decision-making when designing interactions with shared systems.

We present an immersive VR interface for a public library where a mirror-world like virtual copy of the physical library is blended with imaginary virtual fantasy layers into a hybrid space for library content. The design of the system was guided by multi-stakeholder Participatory Design process involving library staff, library customers and researchers. The findings of the qualitative user evaluation of the prototype suggest that this kind of a VR interface is an exciting extension to a physical library, indicating the unlimited possibilities offered by the VR's ability to send the user into imaginary places.

In this paper we explore immersive street-level integration of social media content into collaborative virtual 3D city environments on two levels: i) public, where the virtual environment is populated with relevant social media content (e.g. Twitter and Facebook feeds of shops, non-governmetal organizations, the City organization); and ii) personal, where the virtual user, through his/her avatar, is able to access his/her personal social media feeds while immersed in the virtual city. We conducted a qualitative anticipated user experience study with 14 participants in four focus groups, who were asked to create designs of how they imagined social networking services could be integrated into virtual city environments. Further, participants were asked to comment on two visual concepts created by researchers. Results show that people appreciate the concept of having virtual cities populated with up-to-date content from social media services, but linking their own social media accounts is a more complex issue.

We describe an interactive digital art application deployed at a university campus with the goal of investigating participants' initial experiences of bridging two realities through 3D artwork in a hybrid reality space. The underlying purpose of the installation is to bring liveliness and increased social interaction to both the virtual and the physical world. We used the HTC Vive and a 3D painting program (Google Tilt Brush) for the creation of the artwork. After creation, the artworks were transferred to an immersive virtual mirror world, in our case a version of our university campus, using an export tool. Results from an initial user study with 32 participants suggest that people found our system attractive, and there was only slight difference in how much they enjoyed seeing their work in the Tilt Brush view versus the virtual campus gallery view.

In this paper, we explore design preferences and possibilities for smart handbags from the user perspective. We present designs and findings derived through a co-design process, which consisted of two studies; first with individual drawing based brainstorming (n=20), and second with two co-design workshops (n=10), where participants assessed different designs and features, and created low-fi prototypes of smart handbag concepts. Participants proposed large shape and style variations for smart handbags, according to the intended contexts, use cases, and lifestyle. In this respect the desire for modifiability, e.g. adapting in size and shape, was highlighted. The handbag's durability, weatherproofness and use of high quality materials were also raised.

This paper describes an interactive 3D user interface which allows different real-time services to cooperate in order to complete a user task on a mobile tablet sized device. The UI is based on objectifying data and describing it in an ontological language and combing this with behavioral scripts. The 3D UI is used to visualize the different data and services, while providing a means for object selection and manipulation. Two use cases, a cinema and music service, have been implemented in a prototype, which demonstrates how a general 3D user interface can be used to provide added value to users. The prototype is also meant to advance the thinking of what 3D UIs can accomplish, for virtual environments and mobile augmented reality, by showing practical use cases in action.

Location sharing applications are becoming increasingly popular in social media and for use on mobile devices, yet little research has focused on their user interface design. In this paper we describe our method of charting and creating comparable designs, and present a survey-based study of 106 social media users on their preferences regarding location indicators. Our paper contributes in proposing a methodology for visual element evaluation purposes, and reveals results, e.g., that users preferred simple indicators such as points or pins for their own location, and friend location indicators to include the corresponding name.