Musical emotion modulation is central to mental well-being, yet existing affective haptic systems often prioritize technical feasibility over investigation of where and what optimal stimuli should be applied. This paper systematically examines the emotional effects of vibrotactile, thermotactile, and combined stimuli based on the Valence–Arousal model across the wrist, neck, and ear under two music conditions, indexed by EEG measures and subjective ratings. We found that both body site and stimulus type significantly influenced emotional responses. The ear strongly enhanced arousal, the neck produced context-dependent effects, and the wrist primarily modulated pleasantness. Vibration primarily boosted arousal, thermal cues enhanced valence, and their combination enabled a more balanced, immersive experience. Our findings provide scientific guidance for future affective wearable design in various contexts.

Pen-based interaction interfaces are widely used in precision tasks such as computer-aided design (CAD) modeling. However, frequent mode switching in traditional interfaces often leads to reduced efficiency, while the unstable layout of dynamically adaptive interfaces may cause user discomfort. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel adaptive pen-based interface, GestApt, which integrates operation recommendation and pen gesture technology to provide an efficient and intuitive interaction method. The core design of GestApt includes a gated recurrent unit (GRU)-based neural network for a predictive toolbar that dynamically forecasts the user’s next action and a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based gesture recognition module to assist with unpredicted operations. To evaluate the effectiveness of GestApt, we conducted a user study with 20 participants performing CAD modeling tasks, comparing their performance with a traditional interface. The results showed that GestApt significantly reduced task completion time while enhancing user experience. Additionally, the optimized toolbar design of GestApt notably reduced the workload on users’ non-dominant hands, helping to alleviate physical fatigue from prolonged interface use. This work demonstrates the advantages of GestApt in improving efficiency, optimizing user interaction, and reducing physical strain, offering a new solution for adaptive design in pen-based interfaces. This design approach not only promotes the development of more efficient and ergonomically friendly interfaces, but also provides a reference for the design of future intelligent CAD interfaces.

The number and layout of options within pie menus are crucial for determining the direction of radial swiping in mid-air interactions, influencing the physical demands imposed on users. This research examined six distinct option quantities, referred to as menu breadth, and investigated two layouts, designated as menu orientations. These orientations encompass landscape and portrait formats, with the former positioning a top option centred parallel to the horizontal axis, while the latter situates two top options on either side of the vertical axis. The study employed comprehensive metrics, including muscle activity, wrist movement, user performance, and subjective assessments. Our results indicated that the breadth should be controlled to no more than six to ensure high efficiency and align with users’ interactive experience, while breadth 2 should be avoided to eliminate the potential risk of wrist musculoskeletal disorders. Besides, the portrait orientation for breadth 3 and the landscape orientation for breadth 6 were recommended for their lower physiological loads and higher efficiency. Also, the landscape orientation for breadth 4 should be favoured as it outperformed portrait orientation in both wrist movement dimensions. These findings could provide scientific design principles for using pie menus in mid-air interaction within future HCI applications.

Freehand interaction is a promising method for virtual locomotion. While previous studies have proposed various freehand gestures, little is known about the optimal choice among the most frequently used gestures at different locomotion speeds. This study investigates the differences in physiological metrics, performance, and subjective assessments of three distinct gestures (IndexSlide, PalmSlide, and FistSlide) during waypoint navigation tasks at three speeds. Results indicated that PalmSlide was an optimal choice for prolonged use and effective locomotion at slower and moderate speeds during waypoint navigation tasks, as it offered significant benefits in reducing muscle strain, shortening task completion time, and enhancing the user experience. Additionally, IndexSlide showed reduced task completion time, fewer collisions, and an overall more enjoyable experience at the faster speed, suggesting that it might be the preferable choice for virtual navigation scenarios that require rapid manipulation during high-speed locomotion, such as competitive gaming settings.

Evidence shows that visual properties of on-screen objects determine their function and operation, thus influencing gesture elicitation. Therefore, this two-stage experimental study investigated how user-defined mid-air gestures elicited by on-screen visual properties affect human biomechanics, behaviour, and perception. Results showed that, psychologically, for the command Next, swiping with the visual flow provided benefits over swiping perpendicular to it; for Remove, swiping perpendicular to the visual flow offered advantages compared to swiping with it. Behaviourally, for Next, swiping left generated shorter response times than swiping up with a stimulus possessing a horizontal visual flow. Physiologically, for Next, swiping up induced higher forearm muscular load than swiping left under the vertical visual flow condition; for View, tapping twice resulted in less finger muscular load under the multiple entities condition than the one entity condition. These findings could provide a scientific basis for guiding appropriate mid-air gesture design considering on-screen visual properties.

Dynamic collaboration is a common form of human interaction in everyday life. With the increasing support of virtual reality (VR) applications for such collaborative joint actions, understanding how visualization design choices affect collaboration becomes crucial. However, the impact of two key elements - avatar visibility and perspective - remains underexplored in dynamic collaborative tasks. To address this, we conducted two user studies representing distinct collaborative contexts: a proximal task and a spatially distributed task. Within these contexts, we investigated how varying levels of avatar visibility (full-body, upper-body, and head-and-hands) and perspectives (first-person perspective, 1PP, and third-person perspective, 3PP) influenced social presence and collaborative performance, including both task completion and team coordination aspects. Our findings revealed that 3PP significantly enhanced both social presence and team coordination compared to 1PP. The impact of avatar visibility was context-dependent: in environments with low dynamic complexity, even low-visibility avatars maintained effective collaboration, while complex spatial tasks benefited from increased avatar visibility. Furthermore, our research demonstrated that 3PP mitigated the negative effects of low-visibility avatars in 1PP, lessening coordination conflicts in spatially complex scenarios. Based on these findings, we propose design recommendations for avatar visibility and perspective choices in dynamic collaborative environments. Our research advances the understanding of how these fundamental visual design elements shape VR collaboration, informing the design of future interactive environments.

As the increasing usage scenarios of tablet computers led to more non-neutral postures, optimizing the touchscreen gesture input became imminent to improve system performance and users’ well-being. Therefore, we conducted a study to investigate the influence of four tablet configurations and seven touchscreen gestures on electromyography, performance, and subjective assessment. Our results indicated that muscular loads of shoulder decreased under the Stand-Hand configuration while it increased under the Sit-Table during gesture interaction. We also found that Drag-Up and Drag-Left tended to possess higher muscular loads of shoulder while Drag-Down caused greater muscular loads of index finger. Besides, two-touch gestures spent longer duration when performing long-distance movements. Dragging in the inner direction was supposed to be more efficient than that in the outer direction. Our findings could provide a scientific basis for guiding the appropriate selection and the use of touchscreen interaction in the future HCI field.

Research on visual menus, specifically panel and pie menus, has gained widespread attention in recent times. However, limited research focuses on the mid-air interaction when comparing these two menu types. This study aimed to conduct a comprehensive comparison between panel and pie menus in the context of cursor-based mid-air interaction within a photo booth setting. The evaluation involved analyzing muscle activities, performance metrics, and user experience to quantify the differences between the two menus across three menu operations. Our results indicated that the pie menu offered notable advantages by reducing muscular loads, achieving shorter task completion times, and delivering an overall more enjoyable user experience, making it a preferable choice for mid-air interaction in photo booth settings. Conversely, the panel menu exhibited superior scores of learnability and demonstrated enhanced accuracy in the switching operation, suggesting that it might be a better choice for complex and precision-demanding tasks.

Research on gesture input modalities, including touchscreen and mid-air interactions, is getting more widespread. A few studies have compared these two input modalities according to subjective methods. However, there is no empirical research on their differences in physiological measures. The purpose of this study was to quantify the differences between touchscreen and mid-air interactions when performing swipe gestures in four orthogonal directions on a tablet combining the indices of electromyography (EMG), electrogoniometry, user performance, and subjective assessment. Our results indicated that mid-air interaction obtained significantly lower muscular loads in the upper limb, smaller wrist joint excursions, shorter task completion time, and better subjective ratings than touchscreen interaction when users with elbow support performed swipe gestures on a tablet. We also found that performing swipe gestures in the vertical direction tended to possess higher muscular loads than in the horizontal direction during touchscreen interaction. Besides, we revealed that swipe right had the largest radial/ulnar deviation, and swipe down had the largest flexion/extension excursion. Furthermore, swipe up brought the worst subjective ratings among the four gesture types. These findings could provide a scientific basis for guiding the appropriate selection and use of the two input modalities in the future HCI field.

Traditional gesture elicitation studies generally adopted the frequency ratio to select popular gestures among users. However, the chosen gestures were not always optimal and might pose a potential risk of musculoskeletal disorder under long-term use. The purpose of our research was to apply a novel assessment system combining the indices of electromyography (EMG), electrogoniometry, and subjective preference to the end-user elicitation experiment. In this study, we conducted a two-stage experiment to compare and analyze the results of the physiological and psychological measures for 33 candidate gestures of 16 given commands. Our results indicated that this assessment system could effectively determine the candidate gestures with lower physiological loads for all given commands except Maximize, and most of the selected gestures were in line with users’ mental models. Finally, we developed an optimal user-defined gesture set for the commands accommodated to human-computer interaction (HCI).

The increasing use of micro-blogging as a marketing tool has increased research attention on usage and business value of enterprise micro-blogging. Based on research on information system (IS) usage and resource-based view (RBV) theory, this study develops a model to reveal the mechanism of business value creation of enterprise micro-blogging. The model consists of metrics on micro-blogging usage, micro-blogging operational performance, marketing capability, and firm performance. Questionnaires were distributed to firms that use micro-blogging. This study collects 241 valid responses for empirical analysis. The results suggest that the use of enterprise micro-blogging improves operational performance of enterprise micro-blogging directly and indirectly by increasing marketing capability, while operational performance of enterprise micro-blogging significantly affects firm performance. This study extends the stream of research that combines IS usage and RBV theory.

EB systems development methodology is one of active researches in the field of software engineering, information systems and EB. Firstly, we introduce the existing EB systems development methodologies briefly. Then, we put forward the comparative framework to be as criteria to compare methodologies. Finally, we compare the development methodologies by the framework. The conclusion of the comparison can be used to design a new development methodology and improve existing EB systems development methodologies.