Physical augmentation technologies can extend human abilities beyond biological limitations, creating "superpower" experiences. However, as these technologies integrate with the human body, they can also introduce unfortunate negative effects due to the body’s constraints. Inspired by biology, especially the fly-catching mechanism of the flytrap plant, we designed "Flytrap Hand", a provocative artifact that grants users the superpower of accelerated grasping through a distance sensor and electrical muscle stimulation, while resulting in uncertainty. A mixed-method study (N = 12) revealed that participants appreciated the fortunate superpower effects, but also highlighted the unfortunate effects of discomfort, skepticism toward bodily automation, and ethical concerns. Building on these findings, we propose a design framework for designing more thoughtful superpower experiences that account for potential negative effects. Ultimately, with our work, we aim to help designers consider not only superpowers’ positive but also negative effects early on as they may be difficult to rectify in hindsight.

Designing superpowers in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), often inspired by science fiction, has garnered increased attention. However, it is important to ask whether such superpower designs might have inherent negative side effects, especially considering that technological advances allow going beyond short demos to integrate these superpowers into everyday life. To understand the positive and negative side effects of superpower design, we created "EmoPals"and studied it in everyday life. EmoPals is a novel system inspired by telepathy, where one user's emotions are detected through a brain-computer interface and replicated on the other user's face through electrical muscle stimulation, therefore one user's happiness makes the other smile and vice versa. A 5-day field study with 12 participants suggests that EmoPals can strengthen emotional connections and facilitate empathy, however, it also highlights the negative side effects of amplifying negative emotions and social discomfort. We propose five design recommendations for designing superpowers that account for negative side effects. Ultimately, we aim to deepen our understanding of superpower design for everyday life.

Interactive technology has a complicated relationship with recreation in nature. Many people have praised, and many have lamented the impact of interactive technology on recreation in nature. Because nature recreation has important wellness benefits and interactive technology is likely to remain a part of nature recreation, there is a need to design interactive technology for nature recreation. Unfortunately, little generalized knowledge exists on how to design such technology. We create new intermediate design knowledge for interactive technology in nature recreation by drawing from others’ work, our prior work, and specifically Borgmann and Verbeek’s philosophies of technology. Our contribution is a framework based on a decomposition of engagement into nine facets related to engagement with place, time, and community. Four examples demonstrate the descriptive and generative power of the framework. This framework may enable the creation of interactive systems that complement rather than compete with nature recreation and may better preserve the wellness benefits of nature recreation.

Technology-facilitated “superpowers” are a popular topic in human-computer interaction, providing people with the experience of having superhero-like fantastic abilities. However, science fiction literature tells us that superpowers can also be unfortunate. We designed Wi-Fi Twinge, a system that uses electrical muscle stimulation to extend human perception to sense unseen Wi-Fi signals, giving people an allergy-like twinge reaction to Wi-Fi: a superpower that can be seen as unfortunate while also having potential benefits. Through an in-the-wild study, interviews with 12 participants revealed that although the superpower from Wi-Fi Twinge induced negative feelings and impacted certain day-to-day activities, it improved awareness of self and the surrounding environment. We used these results to offer design tactics for creating future superpower systems that consider potential unfortunate side effects. Ultimately, we aim to advance our understanding of technology-facilitated superpowers.

Navigation is a primary interaction in virtual reality. Previous research has explored different forms of artificial locomotion techniques for navigation, including hand gestures and body motions. However, few studies have investigated force-based foot gestures as a locomotion technique. We present three force-based foot gestures (Foot Fly, Foot Step and Foot Teleportation) for navigation in a virtual environment, relying on surface electromyography sensors readings from leg muscles. A pilot study comparing our techniques with controller-based techniques indicates that force-based foot gestures can provide a fun and engaging alternative. Of all six input techniques evaluated, Foot Fly was often most preferred despite requiring more exertion than the Controller Fly technique.