With the advent of social virtual reality (VR), understanding how avatar personalization impacts users' social behaviour and physiological responses in VR is increasingly important. Deceptive behaviour is particularly relevant, as users can often hide their identity behind generic avatars, which can facilitate deception. We investigated whether avatar personalization and motor control impacted physiological reactions in a Detection-of-Deception task. Twenty participants performed the task with different levels of avatar personalization and motor control over the avatar. While personalization did not impact skin conductance responses, it led to a significant decrease in heart rate, which is an established physiological response associated with deceptive behaviour. This effect was exclusive to personalized avatars and not observed in generic avatars. Personalization and motor control led to increased embodiment, body ownership, agency and presence ratings. Overall, personalized avatars can preserve users’ physiological reactions to key social events, and thus enhance the realism of VR simulations.

Interactive technologies require the user to frequently generate purposeful movements, where actions are guided towards targets. While delays between the movement onset and the corresponding update within the virtual space have been shown to impair target acquisition, the relative contribution of the individual latency parameters remains unclear. This article investigates how changes in latency, the moment-by-moment variability in the latency (jitter amplitude) and the rate of variability (jitter frequency), affect the speed and accuracy of target acquisition at different mean latencies. Experiment 1 explored changes in the mean latency and jitter amplitude. As the mean latency increased, we observed substantial impairments in completion time and accuracy, with increased variability in performance. There was also an interaction between the mean latency and jitter amplitude: although large jitter amplitudes caused a small completion time impairment, this effect decreased as the mean latency increased. Experiment 2 isolated the effect of the jitter by investigating changes in the jitter amplitude and jitter frequency at a fixed mean latency. Here, we observed completion time impairments from 67 ms amplitude and accuracy impairments from 134 ms amplitude. Like Experiment 1, the effect of the amplitude was small. Notably, we found no evidence that changes in the jitter frequency significantly influenced performance. Overall, increases in the mean latency contributed most to the impairment, disrupting acquisition speed and accuracy as it increased. Large jitter amplitudes also disrupted speed and accuracy, but this was a comparatively small effect that was mediated by the mean latency.

The use of digital banking has increased over the last decade, with children's banking services and apps now being offered by both digital and traditional banks. However, no academic research has explored how the design of digital banking has influenced family financial behaviour or evaluated how these online family banking services are meeting the needs of their customers. To address this research gap, an exploratory study has been designed to develop an understanding of children's online financial behaviour. The study will conduct at least 30 semi-structured interviews with adolescents (between the ages of 13-17), as well as parents and guardians, to gain insight into their experiences and challenges when using digital banking services. Furthermore, this study is the first step in understanding how families use online banking services and identifying potential limitations in their current designs.

Computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs) are critical to maintaining business continuity in the face of cyber-attacks. Yet there has been little research conducted in the last decade to understand the root causes of the challenges they face to sustain their effectiveness. Moreover, they operate in complex sociotechnical multiteam systems, making it challenging to understand the causes of problems and how to bring about improvements. This paper proposes the use of a Systemic Design approach to develop a more in-depth understanding of the complex sociotechnical system(s) of cyber security incident response, in order to find intervention points that can be leveraged in one area to transition the whole system into a better state. We present the first steps of a case study that uses Gigamap workshops and in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholders to frame the system and understand its effectiveness.

Embodied personalized avatars are a promising new tool to investigate moral decision-making by transposing the user into the "middle of the action" in moral dilemmas. Here, we tested whether avatar personalization and motor control could impact moral decision-making, physiological reactions and reaction times, as well as embodiment, presence and avatar perception. Seventeen participants, who had their personalized avatars created in a previous study, took part in a range of incongruent (i.e., harmful action led to better overall outcomes) and congruent (i.e., harmful action led to trivial outcomes) moral dilemmas as the drivers of a semi-autonomous car. They embodied four different avatars (counterbalanced - personalized motor control, personalized no motor control, generic motor control, generic no motor control). Overall, participants took a utilitarian approach by performing harmful actions only to maximize outcomes. We found increased physiological arousal (SCRs and heart rate) for personalized avatars compared to generic avatars, and increased SCRs in motor control conditions compared to no motor control. Participants had slower reaction times when they had motor control over their avatars, possibly hinting at more elaborate decision-making processes. Presence was also higher in motor control compared to no motor control conditions. Embodiment ratings were higher for personalized avatars, and generally, personalization and motor control were perceptually positive features. These findings highlight the utility of personalized avatars and open up a range of future research possibilities that could benefit from the affordances of this technology and simulate, more closely than ever, real-life action.

Embodying virtual twins – photorealistic and personalized avatars – will soon be easily achievable in consumer-grade VR. For the first time, we explored how photorealism and personalization impact self-identification, as well as embodiment, avatar perception and presence. Twenty participants were individually scanned and, in a two-hour session, embodied four avatars (high photorealism personalized, low photorealism personalized, high photorealism generic, low photorealism generic). Questionnaire responses revealed stronger mid-immersion body ownership for the high photorealism personalized avatars compared to all other avatar types, and stronger embodiment for high photorealism compared to low photorealism avatars and for personalized compared to generic avatars. In a self-other face distinction task, participants took significantly longer to pause the face morphing videos of high photorealism personalized avatars, suggesting a stronger self-identification bias with these avatars. Photorealism and personalization were perceptually positive features; how employing these avatars in VR applications impacts users over time requires longitudinal investigation.

Virtual Reality nonfiction (VRNF) is an emerging form of immersive media experience created for consumption using panoramic "Virtual Reality" headsets. VRNF promises nonfiction content producers the potential to create new ways for audiences to experience "the real"; allowing viewers to transition from passive spectators to active participants. Our current project is exploring VRNF through a series of ethnographic and experimental studies. In order to document the content available, we embarked on an analysis of VR documentaries produced to date. In this paper, we present an analysis of a representative sample of 150 VRNF titles released between 2012-2018. We identify and quantify 64 characteristics of the medium over this period, discuss how producers are exploiting the affordances of VR, and shed light on new audience roles. Our findings provide insight into the current state of the art in VRNF and provide a digital resource for other researchers in this area.

This study examined whether the high level of immersion provided by HMDs encourages participants to synchronise their attention during viewing. 39 participants watched the 360° documentary “Clouds Over Sidra” using either a HMD or via a flat screen tablet display. We found that the HMD group showed significantly greater overall ISC did the tablet group and that this effect was strongest during transition between scenes.

Virtual reality (VR) has proved to be an efficient alternative to traditional neuropsychological assessment. As VR has become more affordable, it is ready to break out of the laboratory and enter homes and clinical practices. We present preliminary findings from a study designed to evaluate self-reported usability of a VR test for neuropsychological assessment of attention and executive function.

Research suggests that the rate at which humans spontaneously blink their eyes over time is strongly related to their underlying cognitive state. The ability to present the real time blinking behaviour of a human teleoperator via a robot proxy therefore potentially offers observers a low bandwidth - yet salient - cue as to the cognitive state of the teleoperator.

Anthropometrics show that the lengths of many human body segments follow a common proportional relationship. To know the length of one body segment – such as a thumb – potentially provides a predictive route to other physical characteristics, such as overall standing height. In this study, we examined whether it is feasible that the length of a person׳s thumb could be revealed from the way in which they complete swipe gestures on a touchscreen-based smartphone. From a corpus of approx. 19,000 swipe gestures captured from 178 volunteers, we found that people with longer thumbs complete swipe gestures with shorter completion times, higher speeds and with higher accelerations than people with shorter thumbs. These differences were also observed to exist between our male and female volunteers, along with additional differences in the amount of touch pressure applied to the screen. Results are discussed in terms of linking behavioural and physical biometrics.

A 3 x 2 between subjects design examined the effect of shaking hands prior to engaging in a single issue distributive negotiation, where one negotiator performed their role tele-presently through a `Nao' humanoid robot. An additional third condition of handshaking with feedback examined the effect of augmenting the tele-present handshake with haptic and tactile feedback for the non tele-present and tele-present negotiators respectively.

The way we develop, use and visualize identity is rapidly evolving as research moves towards the capability to accurately link our digital and physical identities. With teenagers at the forefront of this hyperconnected world, this paper uses a systematic approach to contribute an indepth understanding of teenagers' attitudes, values and concerns on privacy and identity information when considering both online and offline spaces. Using participatory design methods, we present three interactive workshops examining participant's perception of how their own online identities translated to the physical world, and the values and social considerations they hold around new or nearfuture identification techniques. We discuss how our deeper understanding of this age group's attitudes, values and concerns can be applied to designing socially acceptable identification technology and effective education on privacy and identity management among teens.

Over the course of the next 10 years, the Internet of Things (IoT) is set to have a transformational effect on the everyday technologies which surround us. Access to the data produced by these devices opens an interesting space to practice discovery based learning. This paper outlines a participatory design approach taken to develop an IoTbased ecosystem which was deployed in 8 schools across England. In particular, we describe how we designed and developed the system and reflect on some of the early experiences of students and teachers. We found that schools were willing to adopt the IoT technology within certain bounds and we outline best practices uncovered when introducing technologies to schools.

Participate was a 3-year collaboration between industry and academia to explore how mobile, Web and broadcast technologies could combine to deliver environmental campaigns. In a series of pilot projects, schools used mobile sensors to enhance science learning; visitors to an ecological attraction employed mobile phones to access and generate locative media; and the public played a mobile phone game that challenged their environmental behaviours. Key elements of these were carried forward into an integrated trial in which participants were assigned a series of environmental missions as part of an overarching narrative that was delivered across mobile, broadcast and Web platforms. These experiences use a three-layered structure for campaigns that draw on experts, local groups and the general public, who engage through a combination of playful characterisation and social networking.

We describe a novel methodology that examines perceptions of urban space, and present a study using this methodology that explores people’s perceptions of their neighbourhood. Previous studies of spatial cues have involved a variety of tasks such as pointing and sketching to externalise participants’ internal spatial maps. Our methodology extends these approaches by introducing mobile technologies alongside traditional materials and tasks. Participants use mobile phones to carry out self-guided neighbourhood tours. We collected rich qualitative data from 15 participants during two workshops and a self-directed neighbourhood tour. Our study highlights the use of public and private landmarks, differences in spatial maps of rural versus urban dwellers, and individual variance in orientation strategies. These themes suggest guidelines for the design of technologies with personalised spatial profiles.

Mobile devices are increasingly providing novel ways for users to engage with the spaces around them. However, there are few systematic studies of enhancing spatial ability with mobile devices, and applications such as turn-by-turn navigation systems have even been associated with a decline in spatial skills. In this paper we present a study based on the 1971 Shepard-Metzler mental rotation test but performed on a mobile-phone handset and a tablet PC. Our study extends the original experiment with the incorporation of touch and tilt interaction techniques, in order to determine if these affect the use and acquisition of spatial skills. Results suggest that the task is performed faster, and with no significant difference in accuracy, when participants rely on mental abilities rather than interaction techniques to perform 3D rotations. We also find significant differences between tablet and phone handset platforms under interactive conditions. We conclude that applications on mobile devices could be designed to enhance rather than erode spatial skills, by supporting the use of imagination to align real and virtual content.

In this paper, we describe a new methodology for the design and evaluation of pervasive systems. We have recruited a cohort of 30 participants who are engaging with an interdisciplinary pervasive computing project Cityware over 3 years. The cohort has been selected in order to represent a broad mix of ages and technological abilities so as to increase the ecological validity of evaluation of systems and applications developed in Cityware. We discuss some of the techniques and methods that we have been able to employ as a result of maintaining this group of participants and illustrate how their data feeds into Cityware studies and applications. While the costs of recruiting and maintaining a cohort such as this are relatively high, the benefits in terms of the depth, richness and validity of results produced in this way are considered to be significant. We discuss this in terms of the potential for new designs, the type of data one can collect and engagement within the city.

Remote gesture systems have been shown to provide a significant enhancement to performance in collaborative physical tasks, an effect ascribed to the ability of remote gestures to help ground deictic references. The argument that this effect works by replacing complex referential descriptions with simple pointing behaviours has been drawn into question by recent research. In this paper we significantly unpack the effects of remote gesturing on collaborative language, arguing for a more complex role for remote gestures in interaction. We demonstrate how remote gestures influence the structure of collaborative discourse, and how their use can also influence the temporal nature of the grounding process. Through generating a deeper understanding of these effects of remote gesturing on collaborative language we derive implications for the development and deployment of these technologies.

It is well-established finding that people find maps easier to use when they are aligned so that "up" on the map corresponds to the user's forward direction. With map-based applications on handheld mobile devices, this forward/up correspondence can be maintained in several ways: the device can be physically rotated within the user's hands or the user can manually operate buttons to digitally rotate the map; alternatively, the map can be rotated automatically using data from an electronic compass. This paper examines all three options. In a field experiment, each method is compared against a baseline north-up condition. The study provides strong evidence that physical rotation is the most effective with applications that present the user with a wider map. The paper concludes with some suggestions for design improvements.

The design of remote gesturing technologies is an area of growing interest. Current technologies have taken differing approaches to the representation of remote gesture. It is not clear which approach has the most benefit to task performance. This study therefore compared performance in a collaborative physical (assembly) task using remote gesture systems constructed with combinations of three different gesture formats (unmediated hands only, hands and sketch and digital sketch only) and two different gesture output locations (direct projection into a worker's task space or on an external monitor). Results indicated that gesturing with an unmediated representation of the hands leads to faster performance with no loss of accuracy. Comparison of gesture output locations did not find a significant difference between projecting gestures and presenting them on external monitors. These results are discussed in relation to theories of conversational grounding and the design of technologies from a 'mixed ecologies' perspective.

Integration of e-Science and Grid technologies into curriculum teaching is currently an ambitious aim for teachers and school infrastructures to organise. However, it can expose classroom learners and teachers to a wider community of specialists and interested others, enriching the classroom experience beyond the knowledge of the local teacher. This paper reflects on two practical e-Science projects that utilised mobile hand-held technologies to bring the concepts of collaborative e-Science and the Grid to young scientists. Students engaged in hands-on exploration of their surroundings, and were able to communicate with pollution specialists and with a remote classroom of children who had used similar sensors. Communication and data sharing activities in these sessions exposed a requirement for a suite of tools and technologies not currently accessible to schools. From qualitative analysis of data across these two projects, we present a collection of supporting tools to help achieve this aim and future research direction.

Our purpose here is threefold: to consider what might be meant by eScience in the context of school science education, to briefly review some relevant theories of learning, and to present some of the practical issues and constraints of working in schools, from our own research experience. We conclude by underlining the position that ICT is still taught as a separate "subject" in most schools, rather than being fully integrated into the curriculum. Even though both teachers and students may be fully conversant users of technology outside the confines of the classroom, the apparent lack of fit between technology and aspects of the school setting and organisation remains problematic.

Ubiquitous and mobile technologies provide opportunities for designing novel learning experiences that move out of the classroom. Information can be presented and interacted with in a variety of ways while exploring a physical environment. A key issue this raises is when, where, what and how much? Our research is concerned with the design, delivery and interaction of digital information when learning about ecology outdoors. We present a framework of the different forms of digital augmentation and the different processes by which they can be accessed. Using the framework, we designed an outdoors learning experience, aimed at encouraging students to carry out contextualized scientific enquiry and to reflect on their interactions. Pairs of 11-12 year olds explored a woodland and were presented at certain times with different forms of digital augmentation. Our study showed that this kind of exploration promoted interpretation and reflection at a number of levels of abstraction.

Tangibles, in the form of physical artefacts that are electronically augmented and enhanced to trigger various digital events to happen, have the potential for providing innovative ways for children to play and learn, through novel forms of interacting and discovering. They offer, in addition, the scope for bringing playfulness back into learning. To this end, we designed an adventure game, where pairs of children have to discover as much as they can about a virtual imaginary creature called the Snark, through collaboratively interacting with a suite of tangibles. Underlying the design of the tangibles is a variety of transforms, which the children have to understand and reflect upon in order to make the Snark come alive and show itself in a variety of morphological and synaesthesic forms. The paper also reports on the findings of a study of the Snark game and discusses what it means to be engrossed in playful learning.

We describe the design of tangible interfaces to the KidPad collaborative drawing tool. Our aims are to support the re-enactment of stories to audiences, and integration within real classroom environments. A six-month iterative design process, working with children and teachers in school, has produced the “magic carpet”, an interface that uses pressure mats and video-tracked and barcoded physical props to navigate a story in KidPad. Reflecting on this process, we propose four guidelines for the design of tangible interfaces for the classroom. (1) Use physical size and shysical props to encourage collaboration. (2) Be aware of how different interfaces emphasize different actions. (3) Be aware that superficial changes to the design can produce very different physical interactions. (4) Focus on open low-tech technologies rather than (over) polished products.

We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves.