Understanding the relationship between movement variability and body image is essential in disciplines where motor control and body perception are closely linked, such as dance. The present study with 24 ballet dancers presents a computational approach for detecting moments of loss of control in elbow movement fluidity. This serves as an objective proxy for body image and body awareness, as subtle disruptions in movement, especially in joints that are not the primary focus of technical training, can reflect increased self-monitoring or discomfort, factors commonly associated with negative body image in dancers. Through movement analysis during two common rehearsal contexts (i.e., marking choreography and full execution with music) we examined how movement variability differs based on task demands. Our findings show that loss of control moments are more frequent during marking, underscoring the influence of rehearsal context on both motor performance and body-related self-perception. Furthermore, we demonstrate that movement instability in the elbow joint can be associated with self-reported measures of body image and awareness, reinforcing the connection between motor variability and psychological well-being. By identifying the elbow as a sensitive and reliable indicator of instability during ballet practice, our approach offers a lightweight alternative to full-body kinematic analysis, supporting practical applications beyond laboratory settings. From a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp) perspective, this work contributes design insights for systems that integrate body image and movement behavior metrics. These findings open new possibilities for interactive technologies aimed at enhancing body image and improving movement precision in dancers and other movement practitioners. • A computational approach to detect moments of loss of control in elbow movement fluidity, offering an objective proxy for assessing body image factors during ballet practice. • Loss of control differs between marking and choreography execution with music. • The isolation of the elbow joint can reliably capture motor variability and psychological influences during ballet practice, providing an efficient alternative to full-body assessments. • Key insights into how moments of loss of control in movement relate to body image disturbances.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often experience difficulties with tactile sensory processing, which can hinder their participation in daily activities and therapeutic interventions. To address this challenge, we introduce Twinkle Trace, a haptic interface designed to support engagement in classroom-based sensory activities. The system combines a crayon-like stylus, a tablet application to simulate crayon rubbing on textured surfaces using customizable vibration patterns inspired by familiar fruit textures: smooth (apple), rough (melon), bumpy (corn), sharp (pineapple) and adhesive (banana). Twinkle Trace includes a variety of interactive activities, such as free drawing, shape coloring, tactile scene coloring, tracing, and bubble popping, commonly used to promote sensory and fine motor control. We conducted a four-week classroom deployment study with six children with ASD using a comparison within-subjects against traditional crayon rubbing on textured surfaces. Therapist-rated engagement scores showed consistent directional trends favoring Twinkle Trace sessions over traditional activities, particularly in satisfaction, completion, and transitioning. Therapists progressively integrated the tool into daily routines, adapting it to weekly themes and individual needs. These findings suggest that embedding vibrotactile feedback within structured classroom exercises is associated with increased engagement and therapist appropriation in real-world special education contexts. Twinkle Trace provides a classroom-ready haptic system that integrates digital texture generation with therapeutic interaction design.

Replicating real-world textures using haptic technology poses significant challenges, particularly in accurately capturing complex tactile qualities such as smoothness, roughness, and sharpness through vibration-based information. This research investigates how vibration parameters, intensity, duration, and off-time, can be manipulated to simulate textures inspired by fruit skins, including smooth-apple, rough-melon, bumpy-corn, sharp-pineapple, and adhesive-banana. Using a user-centered design methodology, we developed five vibrotactile patterns and implemented them within the Cactus Mobile Haptic Interface. The patterns were delivered via two interaction devices, a thimble and a stylus pen, designed to enable touch-based activities and tactile experiences. An empirical study with 36 participants evaluated those devices within three tasks: Tolerance to 10-second exposures, change perception, and the ability to associate patterns with real-world textures. Results showed that most patterns were accurately classified (76% with the thimble and 78% the stylus), although the adhesive texture proved more difficult to identify. Rough and sharp textures received slightly lower comfort ratings. While there were notable confusions between similar patterns, such as the sharp–bumpy pair, the type of interaction device did not significantly affect classification accuracy. These findings highlight the potential of low-cost haptic interfaces to mimic sensations from natural, realistic textures and emphasize the importance of refining vibration design for improved perceptual clarity. This work contributes to the development of accessible, portable, and customizable haptic systems designed for sensory interaction in therapeutic, educational, and interactive environments. Future research will focus on refining ambiguous patterns and exploring sensory integration to expand the system’s usability in tactile therapy.

In ballet, synchronizing movement with music is essential for both technical precision and expressive performance. However, younger dancers often struggle with abstract concepts such as timing due to the lack of continuous, personalized feedback in traditional instruction. This paper introduces KneeEcho Box, an interactive sonification interface for ballet training that uses real-time computer vision to track knee movements during the plié and translates them into MIDI-based xylophone tones, reminiscent of a music box. KneeEcho Box was evaluated in a between-subjects study with 22 young ballet dancers. Results show that sonification enhanced movement precision, spatiotemporal awareness, and user engagement, particularly among younger participants. These findings suggest that integrating interactive auditory feedback into ballet practice can enrich traditional instruction and open new avenues for research at the intersection of human–computer interaction and the performing arts.

People with dementia (PwD) often exhibit behavioral, physiological, and social symptoms that affect their relationships and reduce their quality of life. Socially assistive robots (SARs) have proven effective in reducing some of these symptoms. However, the design of SARs for dementia care remains a challenging task. In this article, we present a human-centered design framework to assist researchers, designers, and roboticist from the conceptualization of engaging prototypes of SARs until the assessment of their efficacy at producing dementia-relevant health outcomes. The framework incorporates several key principles of a Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HCAI) approach. It incorporates the needs and perspectives of the different stakeholders into the design and evaluation of the interactions. It fosters accessibility and inclusion through personalization and encourages human–robot collaboration by facilitating natural and engaging interactions that build trust and rapport. We illustrate the use of the framework with the design of an SAR to support a Cognitive Stimulation Therapy. From this case study, we derive a set of design insights for the development of SARs behaviors and interactions for dementia care.

Abstract Stress is a reaction of the body to external challenges, whether physical or psychological. In sports, there are stress factors that affect the athlete's performance, especially in team sports that involve short, high-intensity exercise cycles followed by short recovery periods, such as American football. The lack of stress regulation mechanisms can be detrimental to the individual and collective performance of athletes. Biofeedback systems have shown promising clinical results in regulating stress for sports competitions. However, there is a lack of scientific evidence to support their efficacy, and technologies, such as virtual reality videogames, have not been extensively explored. In this article, we present the development and pilot testing of Virtual Autonomic Nervous System (VANS), a virtual reality videogame using biofeedback that supports stress management training in athletes. VANS uses an optical heart rate sensor and aims at keeping the heart rate below a given threshold to control features within the game. We evaluated the usability and user experience of VANS through a 1-week deployment study with 10 American footballers. Our results show that VANS outperformed a commercial videogame used for biofeedback training and considerably reduced stress in our participants. Therefore, VANS could provide stress management training for future matches and competitions. Finally, we reflect on aspects of our design and discuss future directions of our work.

During face-to-face conversations, adults with autism frequently use atypical rhythms and sounds in their speech (prosody), which can result in misunderstandings and miscommunication. SayWAT is a Wearable Assistive Technology that provides feedback to wearers about their prosody during face-to-face conversations. In this paper, we describe the design process that led to five design guidelines that governed the development of SayWAT and present results from two studies involving our prototype solution. Our results indicate that wearable assistive technologies can automatically detect atypical prosody and deliver feedback in real time without disrupting the wearer or the conversation partner. Additionally, we provide suggestions for wearable assistive technologies for social support.

Eye contact is crucial to shared encounters in public spaces. However, most urban technologies that aim to foster social interaction' attention towards the device rather than to those with whom the encounter is shared. We present the design and evaluation of the Jokebox, a lightweight technology that requires two passers-by to coordinate actions to hear a joke. In three in the wild studies at different locations we found that our design supported micro-level coordination in a consistent manner: by encouraging people to make eye contact and by using audible jokes, users engaged in interactions that often led to further conversation and laughter. We describe how opportunities for macro-level coordination were key to the success of the installation, but varied by context. Finally, we present design implications for considering both the micro and macro levels of social coordination.

Early instruction plays a crucial role in allowing toddlers to develop social, cognitive, and sensory-motor skills. Free play is important in any early development program, but designing activities for free play is challenging. In this paper, we investigate the use of an interactive surface, BendableSound, a fabric-based interactive surface that enables young children to play piano sounds when touching the fabric, and its potential value in early education classrooms. We conducted a 9-week exploratory study in which 22 toddlers and 5 teachers used BendableSound during free play activities inside their classroom. Our qualitative results indicate that BendableSound was successfully adopted and integrated in toddler classrooms and could positively impact cognitive, social, and physical development. These results offer implications for the design of deformable surfaces and for their integration in activities to support the early development of toddlers.

Child obesity and being overweight is a health problem of increasing occurrence. Sedentary lifestyles and lack of exercise affect young children’s motor skills development, hence their quality of life. This study presents the design and evaluation of Hunting Relics, a collaborative exergame to promote collective exertion in young children. The system runs on an interactive floor and was designed using an iterative user-centered methodology in combination with the Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation to generate Behavior (COM-B) model. To evaluate the impact of our design choices, two deployment studies were conducted. Results show that Hunting Relics augments existing exercise routines, keeps young children engaged for the long term, and persuades them to discover new collaborative practices to support exercising. A discussion follows about how the COM-B model is a useful framework to design exergames for young children and the impact of Hunting Relics from an educational, technical, and clinical perspective.

Children with autism found free play difficult. Free play is important for children with autism to help them develop social, communication, and expression skills. Interactive surfaces (IS) offer a casual and natural collaborative and engaging experience adequate to promote free play for children with autism. In this poster, we present the design and development of BendableSound, a fabric-based IS that allows children play music when tapping and touching on digital elements appearing on top of the fabric. To design BendableSound, we followed a user-centered design process involving interviewing, observation, and design sessions with caregivers. We close discussing directions for future work.

Motor coordination problems are common in different developmental disorders including autism and dyspraxia. Gross and fine motor coordination skills are critical to the appropriate motor coordination development that is relevant to support individuals' independence. Exergames are a good tool to help children practice motor skills as they find them engaging. In this work, we present how FroggyBobby an exergame designed for practicing gross motor coordination skills, can be extended to combine gross and fine motor exercises for supporting children with motor problems to practice self-care activities that require motor coordination.

Situated displays can support behavior management for children with behavioral challenges. However, existing tools are often static, rarely engaging, and tend to focus only on individual behavior. In this work, we designed and deployed a situated display to support teamwork and cooperation in children with behavioral challenges. We evaluated this tool in two classrooms of a public school specializing in behavioral interventions with 28 children over four weeks. The results of this work demonstrate that situated displays focused on collective behavioral performance can support reflection on individual performance, improve behavior for students with behavioral challenges, as well as encourage teamwork and cooperative behavior in classrooms. These results also indicate a variety of issues to be considered when designing situated displays for these environments, including considerations for the representation of ambiguity and failure as well as the relationship between novelty and engagement.

Multimodal and natural user interfaces offer an innovative approach to sensory integration therapies. We designed and developed SensoryPaint, a multimodal system that allows users to paint on a large display using physical objects, body-based interactions, and interactive audio. We evaluated the impact of SensoryPaint through two user studies: a lab-based study of 15 children with neurodevelopmental disorders in which they used the system for up to one hour, and a deployment study with four children with autism, during which the system was integrated into existing daily sensory therapy sessions. Our results demonstrate that a multimodal large display, using whole body interactions combined with tangible interactions and interactive audio feedback, balances children's attention between their own bodies and sensory stimuli, augments existing therapies, and promotes socialization. These results offer implications for the design of other ubicomp systems for children with neurodevelopmental disorders and for their integration into therapeutic interventions.

Mother caregivers of children with cancer are often unaware of how the tasks of caregiving interfere in their social relationships and lifestyle. This article explores how persuasive mobile technologies may promote the self-reflection and introspection of communication practices, emotions, and lifestyle. The article describes the design of EmotionMingle, a mobile system running in a situated display showing an ambient visualization using the metaphor of a tree to represent the status of an individual’s social network that, used in tandem with downloaded Facebook photographs, may help caregivers avoid social isolation. EmotionMingle also informs caregivers of how their emotions correlate with their communication practices and lifestyle. The results of a qualitative evaluation of the EmotionMingle prototype reveal that mother caregivers perceived it as useful and its visualizations as appropriate. The findings from this study reveal emergent practices of using mobile persuasive applications for self-reflection to discover wellness trends, possibly inducing behavior change.

MOSOCO is a mobile assistive application that uses augmented reality and the visual supports of a validated curriculum, the Social Compass, to help children with autism practice social skills in real-life situations. In this paper, we present the results of a seven-week deployment study of MOSOCO in a public school in Southern California with both students with autism and neurotypical students. The results of our study demonstrate that MOSOCO facilitates practicing and learning social skills, increases both quantity and quality of social interactions, reduces social and behavioral missteps, and enables the integration of children with autism in social groups of neurotypical children. The findings from this study reveal emergent practices of the uses of mobile assistive technologies in real-life situations.

As SNS become ubiquitous, users are exploiting SNS content to enrich in-person gatherings. In this paper we present the results of a 26-weeks deployment study of an interactive display involving a lightweight Facebook client, and a movement-based social exergame, to explore how this technology impact in-person interactions with one extended family. Our results indicate that the use of the display is semi-public, and catalyzed opportunistic gatherings. We close discussing how the social implications of our results contribute to the use of public social displays, and its social implications for encouraging people to be socially engaged.

vSked is an interactive and collaborative assistive technology for students with autism, combining visual schedules, choice boards, and a token-based reward system into an integrated classroom system. In this paper, we present the results of a study of three deployments of vSked over the course of a year in two autism classrooms. The results of our study demonstrate that vSked can promote student independence, reduce the quantity of educator-initiated prompts, encourage consistency and predictability, reduce the time required to transition from one activity to another. The findings from this study reveal practices surrounding the use of assistive technologies in classrooms and highlight important considerations for both the design and the evaluation of assistive technologies in the future, especially those destined for classroom use.

Upon leaving the hospital, parents of high-risk infants experience a variety of challenges in providing care at home. In this work, we present results from a qualitative study to understand the role of social interaction and information-sharing surrounding high-risk infants among both home caregivers and health professionals. These results demonstrate challenges in communication and social support for caregivers of these infants. Based on these results, we present design guidelines for collaborative communication technologies for this population and a prototype system design that demonstrates how these design guidelines might be met in a mobile application. Finally, we discuss how collaborative technologies can serve to improve communication with professionals as well as provide much-needed social support.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder often require therapeutic interventions to support engagement in effective social interactions. In this paper, we present the results of a study conducted in three public schools that use an educational and behavioral intervention for the instruction of social skills in changing situational contexts. The results of this study led to the concept of interaction immediacy to help children maintain appropriate spatial boundaries, reply to conversation initiators, disengage appropriately at the end of an interaction, and identify potential communication partners. We describe design principles for Ubicomp technologies to support interaction immediacy and present an example design. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, we present an understanding of social skills in mobile and dynamic contexts. Second, we introduce the concept of interaction immediacy and show its effectiveness as a guiding principle for the design of Ubicomp applications.

The difficulties associated with the evaluation of ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) technologies increase in application domains such as hospitals, where human life can be at risk, privacy of personal records is paramount, and labor is costly and highly distributed across space and time. For the last 6 years numerous Ubicomp technologies in support of hospital work have been created and pilot-tested. In this article, the lessons learned from these evaluations are discussed, using two criteria to classify them. The first criterion is ecological validity, namely, the extent to which the evaluation is conducted under realistic conditions. Alternatives range from controlled experiments to in situ evaluations. The article argues in particular for the advantages of intermediate approaches, which is referred to as in silico and in replica. The second criterion relates to the degree of integration of the technology with the environment, which is referred to as its pervasiveness. The evaluation grid that comes out of this exercise highlights the importance of ecological validity in evaluating ambient computing technology that supports the activities conducted in complex health care settings such as hospitals. This provides a framework for evaluating Ubihealth, which can be used to select appropriate techniques as a function of the technological and environmental complexity as well as to devise novel evaluation techniques.

Collaborative applications enhanced with pervasive technology are gradually being introduced in hospitals to support the intense collaboration and coordination experienced by hospital workers. However, an environment filled with many different systems introduces an extra burden for hospital workers in selecting those services that are adequate to the task at hand. Activity-Based Computing has emerged as a new interaction and design paradigm to reorganize the way humans interact with computers by emphasizing the activity being executed rather than the technologies required to perform such activity. This is done by allowing users to handle activities as a basic computational unit instead of documents and applications. The problem of this paradigm is that humans must explicitly define computational activities and they often have trouble labeling and delimiting tasks. To cope with this, we propose to take this vision one step further by binding the physical, computing and user's context into the activity being executed by a user towards the design of activity-aware applications. Based on a workplace study conducted in a hospital, we propose an agent-based architecture and a set of design principles to let human activities be mirrored in computational activities associating resources and adapting the computational infrastructure based on the activity being executed. To exemplify the architecture and the principles proposed, we implemented an activity-aware map that personalizes the information shown to hospital workers, enforces availability, and sends collaboration and coordination warnings to the users.