People use technology to stay in touch with their family and friends. To design novel technologies that bring us closer, the theoretical concept of image schemas is a perfect fit. Image schemas are abstract representations of embodied experiences which can be used to design intuitive, inclusive and innovative technologies. However, their application in design processes requires additional effort and time, while existing design tools often lack a theoretical foundation for social closeness. To address this gap, we sourced domain specific image schemas and conducted iterative user-centred research through design, to create an easy-to-use image schema design tool which facilitates the creation of closeness technologies. In this pictorial, we document our process and provide a design tool that connects theory with actionable design strategies, providing designers with clear guidance and a practical tool for metaphorical integration. The tool can be found at https://osf.io/twndg/.

Intuitive use is a notoriously vague concept. Several research groups have been developing a wealth of definitions and ways of measuring intuitive use that show only few commonalities. Here we review previous approaches combined with newer theoretical developments in psychology. From this review we propose that high effectiveness, low cognitive effort and a strong metacognitive feeling of fluency are the defining characteristics of intuitive use whereas many other measures are typical correlates of these defining characteristics. Distinguishing between defining characteristics and typical correlates allows researchers and practitioners to refer to a common measurement definition of intuitive use while maintaining their flexibility to adapt measures according to their needs.

Local civic participation is essential to democracy. Yet, citizens need to be informed about local matters to get involved. Becoming and staying informed about developments in one’s neighbourhood is difficult as local knowledge is scattered among online and offline sources, hard to find and understand. Using participatory Contextual Design we curated a novel form of participation with the interactive artifact "hubbel", which combines the digital and the analogue through a hybrid letterbox to crowd-source local knowledge. During our two-month in-the-wild evaluation, the hubbel was heavily used (260 postcards, 2067 visits). It stimulated democratic discourse and (offline) political participation by rendering tacit local issues visible. We propose ways to improve the hubbel’s design so that citizens can more easily share their expertise with others and to avoid harmful consequences like pseudo-participation. Finally, the hubbel demonstrates why analogue components are indispensable for civic participation tools. Supplements and open-source code: OSF-Link.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the development of alternative formats for religious rituals, such as Protestant online worship services. However, current design approaches focus on problem-solving, and the resulting online solutions merely imitate the offline status quo. To overcome these limitations, we suggest adopting a provotype approach that allows for a more holistic, open-ended dialogue with those affected. We iteratively developed a first provotype in response to tensions found in observation-based field research, aiming to test whether and how it can trigger productive impulses for exploring future technology-mediated worship services based on existing experiences and perspectives. The resulting God-I-Box exaggerates individuality and allows congregants to act almost like liturgists. An analysis of congregants’ and pastors’ (online) first encounters with the God-I-Box revealed three reaction modes: spontaneous emotions, reflective coping, and exploratory imagination. We conclude with reflections and recommendations for provocative research and design in this context and beyond.

This paper presents an inspirational concept for companion technology design, uncontrollability, and a corresponding artefact, the Blessing Companion. Both originated from a research through design project exploring companion technologies for blessing rituals. We established an exchange with Protestant theologians, explored believers’ experiences of blessings, co-speculated on potential technologies, and refined the resulting ideas through ideation, prototyping, and testing. Inspired by believers’ descriptions of blessing experiences as not plannable, predictable, controllable, or enforceable, we adopted the concept of uncontrollability, explored how it might be implemented in companion technologies, and designed the Blessing Companion. The Blessing Companion embodies uncontrollability through its ambiguous appearance and (partly) uncontrollable behaviour. It thus stands in contrast to the prevailing on-demand and user-driven interaction paradigms. We discuss how uncontrollability can be reflected in content, form, and interaction, highlight respective possibilities for companion technologies, and reflect on the Blessing Companion as an example of designing for religious rituals.

Technology use in acute care has so far been studied with a predominant focus on safety and efficiency rather than the experience of acute care staff. In the present paper, we report a qualitative study including 130 hours of participant observation on acute care teams and retrospective interviews with nine anesthesiologists on their experiences with technology. Our approach is theoretically guided by four modern HCI perspectives, namely psychological need satisfaction, activity theory, embodied interaction, and media equation theory. We analyzed the interview and observation data using a reflexive thematic analysis and identified four themes. Technology as necessary (evil) describes the pervasiveness of technology and how acute care teams depend on technology. While technology as second patient covers the additional load for anesthesiologists on a functional and emotional level, technology as problem solver and safety net highlights relieving aspects of technology use. Technology as artificial limb focuses on so-called transparent tools that extend the body and capabilities of users. We then discuss the identified themes concerning the previously presented theories. Based on our findings and theoretical perspectives, we report general insights for research and design in acute care, such as the benefits of mixed methods or the importance of the gut feelings of experts. Finally, we propose possible directions for future work, such as developing a UX questionnaire adapted to the context of safety-critical domains, such as acute care.

Applying image schema theory to the design of user interfaces has been shown to lead to more intuitive, inclusive, and innovative interaction. We propose that this success can be transferred to the design of data physicalisations (dataphys). But currently designers didn't use image schemas purposefully because the documentation of image schemas is too bulky to apply in practice. Here we propose an image schema toolkit as a more concise instrument to support dataphys design processes. In this work we report on a research-through-design approach aimed at finding appropriate instantiations of image schemas to include in the toolkit. In an iterative process including analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, we created image schema icons, tokens, and interactive objects. Through the design and evaluation of these artefacts we generated knowledge about image schemas, how to instantiate them in visual and physical ways and how to organize them in a toolkit.

Air traffic control (ATC) is a safety-critical work domain that has a history of applying tangible elements in its workstations. In the past, development was mostly technology-driven, which resulted in usability challenges like handling multiple input and output devices. In this work, we followed a user-centred design approach with air traffic controllers (ATCOs). Starting from the users’ need for haptic feedback, we developed a novel tangible interaction concept for ATC. We iterated a set of tangibles – Fin, Whale, Coin, and Flatterer – based on formative evaluations with 24 ATCOs. From our qualitative results we extracted dimensions relevant to ATCOs‘ user experience including familiarity, efficiency and engagement. Our results can provide guidance and inspiration for the design of future ATC interfaces.

Visual representations are perhaps the most important mode of human-computer and computer-mediated human-human interaction today. Nevertheless, we suggest, there is a lack of appropriate processes for their design. It seems, designers as much as researchers sometimes assume that visual representations are universally and intuitively comprehensible although evidence suggests otherwise, resulting in suboptimal designs. This article addresses the problem by proposing a human-centered design process for universal and intuitive pictograms. This process is grounded in semiotics, theories of intuitive interaction, and visual perception. Furthermore, it has been validated through empirical research and in practice. The article describes the process, it explains each step, and it provides examples. The result is detailed instructions that other designers, researchers, and businesses can adopt in their projects for designing more suitable visual representations.

Abstract Life transitions, such as the transition from childhood to adulthood, are often accompanied by meaning-making actions such as rituals. Rituals increasingly involve the use of interactive technology. While previous research has focused on specific contexts or technologies, a bird’s eye view of the many appropriation styles during life transitions is missing. To identify the range of technology’s appropriations, we analysed stories from 84 participants and compared these across different life transitions and technologies. We identified three roles interactive technology can play during life transitions: the role of (i) a facilitator easing the accomplishment of tasks within life transitions, (ii) an enabler creating opportunities for new transition rituals and (iii) a social actor that itself is the trigger or the content of transition rituals. We propose the three roles as a classification scheme to structure existing and future research and reflect on the design challenges and evaluation approaches.

Online privacy policies should enable users to make informed decisions. Current text policies, however, lack usability: users often miss crucial information and consent to them without reading. Visual representation formats may increase comprehension, but are rarely used in practice. In an iterative design process we gathered qualitative feedback on typical policy contents and on existing and newly designed representation formats. We developed design guidelines and a Visual Interactive Privacy Policy based on the Privacy Policy Nutrition Label enriched with control options and further interactive elements. In an empirical evaluation, both visual representations received higher ratings of attractiveness, stimulation, novelty and transparency compared to a standard policy long text. Interactivity improved time spent with the policy. There were no effects on conversion rate, perceived control or perceived trust, efficiency and perspicuity. More research is needed, especially with regard to the cost-benefit ratio of visual privacy policies.

Rituals are ubiquitous but not commonplace, help people to make sense of their life, and cultivate personal or social meaning. Although secularization and digitalization impact the occurrence of formal rituals, the need for marking life's transitions remains unchanged. New rituals emerge, such as marking relationship status by hanging love locks on bridges. Tangible technologies hold great potential for augmenting, changing, or enhancing ritual practices which often involve enactments and symbolic props. In this paper, we analyze individual stories of hanging love locks and derive six pointers for designing technology-mediated relationship transition rituals. We applied the pointers in the design of El Corazón, a tangible artifact for relationship transition rituals. The results of an evaluation with 20 sweethearts show that relationship rituals can be designed deliberately, that tangibles can shape ritual experiences and that technology-mediated rituals can provide people with new means of coping with relationship uncertainty.

Pursuing the goal of a healthy diet may be challenging, especially when self-control resources are low. Yet many persuasive user interfaces fostering healthy choices are designed for situations with ample self-control, e.g. showing nutritional information to support reflective decision making. In this paper we propose that under low self-control, persuasive user interfaces need to rely on simple heuristic decision making to be successful. We report an experiment that tested this assumption in a 2 (low vs. high self-control) x 2 (calorie vs. heuristic information) design. The results reveal a significant interaction effect. Participants with low self-control resources chose the healthy snack more often when snacks were labelled with heuristic information than when they were labelled with calorie information. Both strategies were about equally successful for participants with high self-control. Exploiting situations of low self-control with heuristic information is a new and promising approach to designing persuasive technology for healthy eating.

Reminiscence in dementia care often does not make use of interactive technology. In this work we present a study conducted in two dementia care facilities aimed at developing prototypes for reminiscence. We conducted contextual inquiries over a week to learn how 80 people with varying stages of dementia reminisce throughout the day. We present resulting needs and three tangible prototypes designed to facilitate reminiscence. These prototypes - the pyramid, the set of drawers and the jukebox - were tested in three exploratory field studies. We elaborate on the features of the prototypes that facilitated communication and reminiscence and share insights from failures that need to be considered when designing tangibles in the dementia context. To visualize both positive and negative aspects we introduce a model of successful interaction in the dementia context.

Virtual Reality can impose cognitive demands on users and influence their task performance. These cognitive demands, however, have been difficult to measure precisely without inducing breaks of presence. Based on findings in psychological science on how motion trajectories reflect underlying cognitive processes, we investigated entropy (i.e. the degree of movement irregularity) as an unobtrusive measure of mental workload. Entropy values were obtained from a time-series history of controller movement data. Mental workload is considered high over a given time interval, when the measured entropy is high as well. By manipulating the difficulty of a simple rhythm game we could show that the results are comparable to the results of the NASA-TLX questionnaire, which is currently used as the gold standard in VR for measuring mental workload. Thus, our results pave the way for further investigating the entropy of controller movements as a precise measurement of mental workload in VR.

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) allow users to sense and manipulate digital information through physical objects. Although haptic properties are emphasized, TUIs are presented in and perceived through multiple modalities. Especially visual properties like color shape the users expectations about the relation between tangibles and the abstract data they represent and control. Viewing TUIs as multisensory percepts, we present an empirical study that quantifies benefits of an explicit design for color for intuitive interaction. In a cross-cultural experiment, 75 participants (Germans and Japanese) matched tangible objects of different colors, sizes, weights or temperatures with abstract words. The results indicate that multimodal representations increase the efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction, but only if colors and haptic properties evoke congruent associations. Incongruently designed tangibles led to a 17% increase in response speed, -28% lower accuracy and -61% lower preference ratings compared to congruently designed tangibles.

There is a widely-held belief in the TEI and games communities that using tangible props enhances the player performance and gaming experience. Building on prior research in gaming, we studied people playing a video game using a gestural interface without props, with an incomplete or a complete tangible prop. The interaction with the tangibles was judged to be more natural, led to higher flow experience and was preferred, but there were no differences regarding performance, enjoyment, autonomy, presence and mental effort. There was a tendency that especially the incomplete tangible prop was judged as less intuitive and people felt less competent in gameplay. In contrast to prior research, the results show that tangible interaction is not always more beneficial than gestural interaction and that, especially for incomplete tangibles, any beneficial effects may be domain-dependent.

We propose a new multimodal input technique for Non-critical Spontaneous Situations (NCSSs) in autonomous driving scenarios such as selecting a parking lot or picking up a hitchhiker. Speech and deictic (pointing) gestures were combined to instruct the car about desired interventions which include spatial references to the current environment (e.g., ''stop over [pointing] there'' or ''take [pointing] this parking lot''). In this way, advantages from both modalities were exploited: Speech allows for selecting from many maneuvres and functions in the car (e.g., stop, park), whereas deictic gestures provide a natural and intuitive way of indicating spatial discourse referents used in these interventions (e.g., near this tree, that parking lot). The speech and pointing gesture input was compared to speech and touch-based input in a user study with 38 participants. The touch-based input was selected as a baseline due to its widespread use in in-car touch screens. The evaluation showed that speech and pointing gestures are perceived more natural, intuitive and less cognitively demanding compared to speech and touch and are thus recommended as NCSSs intervention technique for autonomous driving.

Some animations in mobile user interfaces aim at supporting user orientation by facilitating users to build a mental model of the UI's structure. Possible drawbacks are that animations are time-consuming and that complex and distracting animations may increase users' mental workload. These effects of orientation animations are investigated in an empirical study. Participants either used an animated or a non-animated version of a mobile movie recommender app. The results imply that animations can support users in building more accurate mental models of the app's structure and enhance gesture-based interaction. No additional costs in terms of time or mental workload were incurred when using the animations. Thus, lightweight orientation animations can have large potential benefits at little cost.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory is able to predict how physical object properties can trigger associated abstract content. Based on prior research on texture metaphors, we hypothesised that even incidental sensations of texture can influence the subjective evaluation of user experience and the interpretation of an ambiguous social situation. In three studies users interacted with smooth and rough versions of cases of mobile devices (Study 1), trackpads (Study 2) and tangibles for interactive gameplay (Study 3). Despite convincing evidence collected in earlier studies, the results confirmed none of the hypotheses in any of the three studies. Possible reasons and their relevance for the use of metaphors in HCI and tangible interfaces are discussed and conclusions for further applications of rough/smooth metaphors are drawn.

Prior work on zoomorphic desktop companions has shown that these can fulfill a wide range of functionality and convey emotional value. When mimicking familiar animals or pets, however, users may develop unrealistic expectations about the available functionality and behavior of the companion. To amend this limitation, we propose insect-inspired concepts as a way to utilize our intuitive understanding of insects without raising unrealistic expectations of the companions. We built 11 tangible insect prototypes with varying forms and levels of abstraction and illustrated their potential behavior in video vignettes. The prototypes and vignettes were shown to 22 participants to elicit desired functionalities of insect-inspired companions, possible ways of conveying these and the meaning insect companions could have for the user. The results open up a realistic design space for the appearance and behavior of insect-inspired robots as desktop companions.

Cognitive linguistics, a recent discipline in the cognitive sciences, is firmly rooted in the idea that linguistic and cognitive abilities cannot be separated. This discipline is of interest to human–computer interaction (HCI) specialists concerned with finding out about users’ mental models and representing these in user interfaces. Central to cognitive linguistics are the theories of conceptual metaphor and image schemas. These theories have been influential in two areas of HCI: generating population stereotypes of physical-to-abstract mappings and inspiring user interface designs. The article reviews the theory and research into the application of image schemas and image-schematic metaphors in HCI. Special emphasis is put on strategies of image-schema sourcing. The theory and the available evidence suggest that the application of image schemas can contribute to user interfaces that are innovative, inclusive, and intuitive to use. The claim for inclusiveness currently has the weakest empirical support and needs to be substantiated by further research.

Due to an increasing level of automation whilst driving, users will gain additional spare time while travelling in the future. This allows passengers to indulge in non-driving activities, e.g. staying socially connected with their friends or entertaining themselves via mobile devices, which would otherwise be considered too distracting. To facilitate this, we designed an in-car infotainment system to replace the multiple mobile devices currently necessary to satisfy those needs. Our design approach employed a combination of Contextual Design methods and the Image Schema Theory for the first time ever in the automotive domain, which promises to be intuitive-to-use, and have innovative and inclusive interfaces. A first-time comparison with market leading products indicated higher efficiency, innovation scores and preferential scores while showing equal results for effectiveness, inclusivity and intuitive use. Furthermore we provide a set of conceptual metaphors which can inform future design and research efforts in the automotive domain.

Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Existing technologies promise to provide support for autonomous way finding; however, the accuracy of low-budget approaches is low and can lead to frustration amongst users. The presented ongoing work is based on suggestions in the literature that contextual information such as sudden changes in the surface structure or landmarks could supplement distance estimations to improve the user experience during navigation tasks. Following a user-centered design approach, a real-time interactive prototype with localization was implemented and evaluated. First results from a pilot study confirmed the hypothesis that user experience is improved by contextual information and showed that contextual information are accepted and appreciated by users.

For interaction designers who need systematic and universal guidelines on how to express abstract meaning via the physical and spatial means of tangible user interfaces, image-schematic metaphors have been shown to be a promising approach. Rooted in the embodied status of human cognition, image-schematic metaphors generate many candidates for population stereotypes of physical-to-abstract mappings. In an empirical study complementing earlier research 80 participants matched tangible objects with abstract keywords derived from 30 image-schematic metaphors of the image schemas UP-DOWN, FRONT-BACK, NEAR-FAR, HARD-SOFT, STRONG-WEAK and STRAIGHT-CROOKED. On average, 77% of the participants' responses were consistent with the metaphors, and 19 metaphors received agreement rates of at least 80% suggesting these to be valid population stereotypes. As agreement rates vary dependent on context and image schema instantiation, conclusions for further studies are drawn.

Studies in tangible interaction have investigated how physical object attributes can stand for abstract content (e.g. IMPORTANT IS HEAVY). A less expensive and more practical alternative to dynamically change, for example, the size, weight or temperature of tangibles, could be using color-to-abstract mappings. Grounded in embodied cognition theory, a number of color-for-haptic substitutions are derived (e.g. DARK COLORS ARE HEAVY). These substitutions are then tested for their effectiveness with 15 conceptual metaphors (e.g. IMPORTANT IS DARK COLOR). In four conditions (haptic, color, haptic-color congruence, haptic-color incongruence) 48 participants matched objects of different colors, sizes, weights or temperatures with abstract words. The results indicate that color can replace haptic attributes in metaphoric mappings and that designers need to explicitly design for color, because metaphor-incongruent colors can hamper the effectiveness of metaphorical mappings. The results also indicate that an embodied experiential view can circumvent arguing about specific colors with high-level symbolic meanings.

Force image schemas (FIS) are cognitive representations of our naïve understanding of physical force dynamic events in the world. Designers have been struggling to apply FIS in their design processes, because their deliberate use has been made difficult by applying too abstract notations. In this paper we try to advance FIS as a possible theoretical framework for tangible design and present new pictorial and tangible notations of FIS that aim to be more directly applicable. The new notations were tested by asking non-experts to (1) match pictorial and tangible FIS representations to force image schema names and (2) to develop design ideas based on these pictorial or tangible representations. While the group working with the pictorial notations was more correct in assigning FIS names to FIS representations, design ideas tended to be more tangible and interactive in the group working with the tangible FIS notations.

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A main issue of people with dementia and older people in general is the feeling of being dependent on others and being lonely at the same time. Based on a preventive approach of supporting these people in their independent living and social interaction, two design concepts for mobile technology for this support have been developed and are introduced in this paper: The Shared diary helps carrying out every day tasks by sharing daily task-lists. Meet me is collaborative tool for managing meetings.

The QUESI (Questionnaire for the subjective consequences of intuitive use), a specific measure of the satisfaction of users interacting with a product, is presented. In addition, first benchmark values for mobile devices and applications are provided.

Designers in inclusive design are challenged to create interactive products that cater for a wide range of prior experiences and cognitive abilities of their users. But suitable design guidance for this task is rare. This paper proposes the theory of primary metaphor and explores its validity as a source of design guidance. Primary metaphor theory describes how basic mental representations of physical sensorimotor experiences are extended to understand abstract domains. As primary metaphors are subconscious mental representations that are highly automated, they should be robustly available to people with differing levels of cognitive ability. Their proposed universality should make them accessible to people with differing levels of prior experience with technology. These predictions were tested for 12 primary metaphors that predict relations between spatial gestures and abstract interactive content. In an empirical study, 65 participants from two age groups (young and old) were asked to produce two-dimensional touch and three-dimensional free-form gestures in response to given abstract keywords and spatial dimensions of movements. The results show that across age groups in 92% of all cases users choose gestures that confirmed the predictions of the theory. Although the two age groups differed in their cognitive abilities and prior experience with technology, overall they did not differ in the amount of metaphor-congruent gestures they made. As predicted, only small or zero correlations of metaphor-congruent gestures with prior experience or cognitive ability could be found. The results provide a promising step toward inclusive design guidelines for gesture interaction with abstract content on mobile multitouch devices.

The major promise of multimodal user interfaces for older users is that they have the choice to select the input modality (or combination of modalities) that best fits their needs and capabilities. Two studies investigated if multimodal interfaces with touch, speech, and motion control fulfil the expectation of being superior to the interaction with single modalities in a mobile device regarding efficiency, robustness, and user satisfaction. The results of both studies show a superiority of multimodality over the single modalities speech and motioncontrol and a slight advantage over touch, which was the modality most frequently used even in the multimodal condition in which any modality or a modality combination could be chosen. Differences between old and young users were only shown for motion control which turned out to be less suitable for older people. The major promise of multimodality for inclusive design thus does not seem warranted so far. However, other applications and contexts of use need to be investigated.

Population stereotypes describe ways in which people, often unconsciously, expect user interface elements to function. Thus they can provide powerful rules for designing intuitive interaction. The literature, however, documents only a few population stereotypes and most of them do not tap the full potential of tangible interaction. Here, we try to alleviate this situation by providing a theory and a method to obtain candidate population stereotypes with a special emphasis on physical-to-abstract mappings. Twenty-nine stereotype candidates were derived from the theory and their validity was empirically tested. The results indicate that more than half of them can be recommended as design guidelines right away; the remainder needs further investigation regarding the contexts under which they can be applied.

Tangible interaction research has opened up new ways to interact with computers and extended our imagination of what is possible with digital systems. However, research on tangible user interfaces (TUI) seems to have lost sight of the everyday situation of the majority of people who still work with standard computer systems. This paper investigates a design process for applying TUI in a GUI dominated domain while preserving the functionality of the traditional systems. We exemplify a user centered design process using (1) image schemas as a meta-language for analysis and design and (2) a systematic function allocation of digital and physical user interface elements. We demonstrate this process in the context of the redesign of an invoice verification and posting system of a German beverage company.

One of the goals of tangible interaction is to build more intuitive interfaces. This paper gives a definition of intuitivity and presents a continuum of knowledge serving as a classification for intuitive interaction. Against the background of the continuum recent taxonomies for tangible interaction are reviewed. A new approach for classifying tangible interaction will be presented: image schemas and their metaphorical extensions. Motivated by linguistic studies of meaning this taxonomy is able to overcome some limitations of previous approaches. The taxonomy is illustrated with examples of using image schemas and their metaphorical extensions in potential TUI applications. A more complex example, the Tangible Memories Box, shows how our taxonomy and earlier approaches may complement each other.