This study represents the first exploration of active gaming based on mid-air gestural interaction with a fogscreen, focusing on its feasibility for children with attention deficits. The aim was to evaluate the practicality and effectiveness of gestural interaction in two interaction scenarios involving translation and selection of objects projected on the fog, through the assessment of interaction performance and subjective opinions. The proposed approach was investigated in a custom-designed puzzle-based game Tangram. Eighteen novice participants, namely, children with confirmed attention deficits or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) played the game collaboratively in pairs during six sessions. Our results demonstrated that gestural interaction with the fogscreen in the Tangram game was not only enjoyable and engaging but also facilitated effective task completion, as shown by an 81% game success rate. During object translation, the participants typically needed two to three attempts to accurately relocate a puzzle piece, with 42% of translation movements adjusting the pieces’ placements. Further, in object selection, it was underlined the importance of visual feedback corresponding to the user’s hand position for effective interaction. These insights underscore the potential implications of gestural interfaces for fogscreen interaction in active gaming for children.

This study examined the potential of mid-air gestural interfaces specifically designed for children, in the context of full-body motion control for confirmation actions while interacting with large conventional displays. The study aimed to investigate gestures for confirmation actions that were feasible for children, including children with challenges in behavior control and impulse inhibition. Two scenarios were explored, namely, active full-body gesturing (i.e., jumps and jumps with hands up) and freezing (i.e., motionless posture) to identify their usability for confirmation actions. Experiment I involved 11 typically developing children playing the game to check the system’s general functionality and robustness. Experiment II involved 18 children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to evaluate a prolonged usage of the confirmation gestures in six game sessions. The results showed that the children were able to interact with the large conventional displays with consistent accuracy and responsiveness in both active gesturing and freezing scenarios. Moreover, jumps with rising hands were significantly preferred as an interaction input method. Further, there was no significant difference in ratings of the difficulty of freezing gesture, and children successfully repeated the predefined postures. The findings provided insights into the functionality and suitability of mid-air gestural interfaces for confirmation actions in interactive applications targeted to children.

Emotional reactions to basic, artificial, yet carefully controllable point-light displays (PLDs) were investigated with ratings of valence, arousal, approachability and dominance. PLDs were varied by movement location (upper and lower) and intensity (⁠| $10^{\circ }$ |⁠, | $20^{\circ }$ | and | $30^{\circ }$ | angular change) for angular upward and downward movements. Half of participants (⁠| $N =28$ |⁠) were told that PLDs were related to face while to other half nothing was hinted. Results showed that | $20^{\circ }$ | and | $30^{\circ }$ | angle lower location upward movements were rated as significantly more pleasant, relaxing and approachable than corresponding upper location downward movements. Informed participants rated | $20^{\circ }$ | and | $30^{\circ }$ | angle lower movements as significantly more controllable than corresponding upper movements. Results are important from many perspectives, like for understanding human perceptual mechanisms. When using PLDs only a small amount of information needs to be transmitted. This enables low bandwidth requirements. As PLD visualizations are simple, there is no need for high-definition displays.

The spreading of mobile devices to all areas of everyday life impacts many contexts of use, including cars. Even though driving itself has remained relatively unchanged, there are now a wide variety of new in-car tasks, which people perform with both integrated infotainment systems and their mobile devices. To gain insights into this new task context and how it could be improved, we conducted a qualitative, contextual study in which we observed real-life car journeys with eight participants. The focus was on user interaction with touchscreen mobile devices, due to their wide range of functions and services. The findings show that the car is an extension of other contexts and it contains a rich set of infotainment tasks, including use of social media. Drivers emphasized gesture interaction and the use of non-visual modalities, for replacing visual information and notifying of changes in the driving context. Based on the findings, we present design implications for future in-car infotainment systems.

Interpretations of vibrotactile stimulations were compared between two participant groups. In both groups, the task was to evaluate specifically designed tactile stimulations presented to the wrist or chest. Ascending, constant, and descending vibration frequency profiles of the stimuli represented information for three different speed regulation instructions: “accelerate your speed,” “keep your speed constant,” and “decelerate your speed,” respectively. The participants were treated differently so that one of the groups was first taught (i.e., primed) the meanings of the stimuli, whereas the other group was not taught (i.e., unprimed). The results showed that the stimuli were evaluated nearly equally in the primed and the unprimed groups. The best performing stimuli communicated the three intended meanings in the rate of 88% to 100% in the primed group and in the unprimed group in the rate of 71% to 83%. Both groups performed equally in evaluating “keep your speed constant” and “decelerate your speed” information. As the unprimed participants performed similarly to the primed participants, the results suggest that vibrotactile stimulation can be intuitively understood. The results suggest further that carefully designed vibrotactile stimulations could be functional in delivering easy-to-understand feedback on how to regulate the speed of movement, such as in physical exercise and rehabilitation applications.

The present aim was to study the preference of tactile feedback stimulations given by non-physical (i.e., solid) piezo-actuated buttons. Participants (n=16) ranked 16 different tactile feedback stimuli varied by 4 output delays and 4 vibration durations. The results showed that the mean ranks of the stimuli differed significantly from each other. The timing parameters of delay and duration interacted with each other, for example, so that preference of certain vibration duration fluctuated in response to different output delays. Using a very short time window (i.e., 10-453 ms) combining both delay and duration parameters of the feedback could result either in favorable or significantly less favorable subjective experience. The results suggest that a preferred perception of tactile feedback from non-physical buttons requires careful design and controlling of the timing parameters.

This paper introduces a multi-actuator tactile device designed for remote touch communication. While closely-spaced high-frequency vibrotactile actuators can be difficult to distinguish, our system utilized four linear DC motors for presenting spatial tactile messages through low-frequency actuation. An experiment was conducted to determine accuracy for recognizing stimuli presented on the palm of the hand. Participants were asked to identify 10 predefined stimulus patterns created from the four linear actuators positioned in either a diamond or square configuration. Results showed that positional, linear, and circular stimuli were recognized with mean response accuracies of 98.8, 96.5, and 90.2%, respectively. No statistically significant differences were found between the actuator configurations. These findings can be utilized in developing a remote communication channel that supports the transfer of spatial aspects of touch such as mapping the location of finger touch of one user to tactile sensation on the palm of another user.

The present aim was to study if thermal stimuli presented to the palm can affect emotional responses when measured with emotion related subjective rating scales and changes in skin conductance response (SCR). Two target temperatures, cold and warm, were created by either decreasing or increasing the temperature of the stimulus 4 °C in respect to the participants current hand temperature. Both cold and warm stimuli were presented by using two presentation methods, i.e., dynamic and pre-adjusted. The results showed that both the dynamic and pre-adjusted warm stimuli elevated the ratings of arousal and dominance. In addition, the pre-adjusted warm and cold stimuli elevated the SCR. The results suggest that especially pre-adjusted warm stimuli can be seen as effective in activating the autonomic nervous system and arousal and dominance dimensions of the affective rating space.

A prototype of friction-based horizontally rotating fingertip stimulator was used to investigate emotional experiences and behavioral responses to haptic stimulation. The rotation style of 12 different stimuli was varied by burst length (i.e., 20, 50, 100 ms), continuity (i.e., continuous and discontinuous), and direction (e.g., forward and backward). Using these stimuli 528 stimulus pairs were presented to 12 subjects who were to distinguish if stimuli in each pair were the same or different. Then they rated the stimuli using four scales measuring the pleasantness, arousal, approachability, and dominance qualities of the 12 stimuli. The results showed that continuous forward-backward rotating stimuli were rated as significantly more unpleasant, arousing, avoidable, and dominating than other types of stimulations (e.g., discontinuous forward rotation). The reaction times to these stimuli were significantly faster than reaction times to discontinuous forward and backward rotating stimuli. The results clearly suggest that even simple haptic stimulation can carry emotional information. The results can be utilized when making use of haptics in human-technology interaction.

Haptic stimulation in motion has been studied only little earlier. To provide guidance for designing haptic interfaces for mobile use we carried out an initial experiment using C-2 actuators. 16 participants attended in the experiment to find out whether there is a difference in perceiving low-amplitude vibrotactile stimuli when exposed to minimal and moderate physical exertion. A stationary bike was used to control the exertion. Four body locations (wrist, leg, chest and back), two stimulus durations (1000 ms and 2000 ms) and two motion conditions with the stationary bicycle (still and moderate pedaling) were applied. It was found that cycling had significant effect on both the perception accuracy and the reaction times with selected stimuli. Stimulus amplitudes used in this experiment can be used to help haptic design for mobile users.