The evolving landscape of distributed user interfaces requires the prototyping stage also be distributed between users, tasks, platforms, and environments. To create a cohesive distribution of the user interface elements in such ecosystems, paired sketching has emerged as a collaborative design method that leverages multiple stakeholders’ strengths, including designers, developers, and end users, working in pairs. In the context of developer experience applied to paired sketching for distributed user interfaces, we decomposed a workflow into four disciplines according to the Software and Systems Process Engineering Meta-Model (SPEM) notation. First, we defined a protocol to deploy paired sketching of distributed user interfaces, supported by UbiSketch , a collaborative software environment tailored featuring sketch recognition and whiteboarding. Second, to evaluate paired sketching for engineering interactive systems, we conducted an experiment involving five pairs of stakeholders who sketched a distributed user interface for inside-the-vehicule interaction distributed on four platforms: smartphone, tablet, pen display, and tabletop. Empirical results from questionnaires, reactivity, intention, perceived satisfaction, and free comments, suggest a preference order in which the tabletop is ranked first, followed by the tablet, smartphone, and pen display. Based on these results, we discuss the potential of paired sketching for distributed user interfaces.

We explore the chair as a referential frame for facilitating hand gesture input to control interactive systems. First, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review on the topic of interactions supported by chairs, and uncover little research on harnessing everyday chairs for input, limited to chair rotation and tilting movements. Subsequently, to understand end users’ preferences for gestures performed on the chair’s surface (i.e., on-chair gestures) and in the space around the chair (i.e., from-chair gestures), we conduct an elicitation study involving 54 participants, 3 widespread chair variations—armchair, office-chair, and stool,—and 15 referents encompassing common actions, digital content types, and navigation commands for interactive systems. Our findings reveal a preference for unimanual gestures implemented with strokes, hand poses, and touch input, with specific nuances and kinematic profiles according to the chair type. Based on our findings, we propose a range of implications for interactive systems leveraging on-chair and from-chair gestures.

We report results from a systematic literature review on the topic of reward systems for older people engaging with serious games, involving an analysis of 121 scientific articles identified from multiple bibliographic databases. Our analysis, employing various taxonomies of game type, genre and challenges, reward types and features, and interaction devices and feedback modalities, reveals preponderant attention on visual feedback, sports games, and time pressure/reaction challenges, but limited scientific research on unlocking mechanisms, achievement, item-granting rewards, haptic feedback modalities, or multi-player scenarios in serious games designed for older adults. These findings reveal reward mechanisms as a distinct type of interactive media featuring some, but ignoring many design possibilities. Based on our findings, we propose several recommendations for future research on designing reward mechanisms in serious games that adapt to users’ varying abilities, favor a diversity of input and output modalities, and expand to multi-player and multi-genre setups.

Modern in-vehicle infotainment systems connect to drivers’ personal digital devices, such as smartphones, to facilitate calls, notifications delivery, and access to online media and resources while driving. This communications process facilitates distributed user interfaces (DUIs) and allows casual in-vehicle interactions. However, such functionalities of modern vehicles still lack the extensive capabilities of state-of-the-art DUIs, which can offer a variety of interaction opportunities through features such as migration, redirection, adaptation, and granularity, among others. In this work, we explore DUIs in the specific context of smart vehicles, and introduce V2DUIs (Vehicle-to-DUIs) as a new addition to the V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) family of smart vehicle concepts.

We introduce ChairMX, on-chair input technology for novel interactive media consumption experiences through the chair. ChairMX is the end result of an elaborate four-stage research and development process involving a systematic literature review of the extent in which chairs have been used in interactive systems, involvement of potential end users to elicit their preferences for on-chair input, engineering on-chair gesture input recognition technology with wearables, and exploration of application opportunities. By leveraging a ring-like form factor wearable, ChairMX is a readily deployable technology, working for uninstrumented chairs everywhere and enabling a variety of use case scenarios involving interactive media consumption, from the living room to public environments.

We present empirical results from a gesture elicitation study conducted with eleven wheelchair users that proposed on-body, in-air, and on-wheelchair gestures to effect twenty-one referents representing common actions, types of digital content, and navigation commands for interactive systems. We report a large preference for on-body (47.6%) and in-air (40.7%) compared to on-wheelchair (11.7%) gestures, mostly represented by touch input on different parts of the body and hand poses performed in mid-air with one hand. Following an agreement analysis that revealed low consensus (≤ 5.5%) between users, although high perceived gesture ease, goodness, and social acceptability within users, we examine our participants’ gesture characteristics in relation to their self-reported motor impairments, e.g., low strength, rapid fatigue, etc. We highlight the need for personalized gesture sets, tailored to and reflective of both users’ preferences and specific motor abilities, an implication that we examine through the lenses of ability-based design.

We examine accessible interactions for wheelchair users and public displays with three studies. In a first study, we conduct a Systematic Literature Review, from which we report very few scientific papers on this topic and a preponderant focus on touch input. In a second study, we conduct a Systematic Video Review using YouTube as a data source, and unveil accessibility challenges for public displays and several input modalities alternative to direct touch. In a third study, we conduct semi-structured interviews with eleven wheelchair users to understand their experience interacting with public displays and to collect their preferences for more accessible input modalities. Based on our findings, we propose the “assisted interaction” phase to extend Vogel and Balakrishnan’s four-phase interaction model with public displays, and the “ability” dimension for cross-device interaction design to support, via users’ personal mobile devices, independent use of interactive public displays.

Despite an exciting area with many promises for innovations in wearable interactive systems, research on interaction techniques for smart rings lacks structured knowledge and readily-available resources for designers to systematically attain such innovations. In this work, we conduct a systematic literature review of ring-based gesture input, from which we extract key results and a large set of gesture commands for ring, ring-like, and ring-ready devices. We use these findings to deliver GestuRING, our web-based tool to support design of ring-based gesture input. GestuRING features a searchable gesture-to-function dictionary of 579 records with downloadable numerical data files and an associated YouTube video library. These resources are meant to assist the community in attaining further innovations in ring-based gesture input for interactive systems.

Connected vehicles collect and share data by communicating with road infrastructure, with each other, the web, IoT systems, and with their occupants’ personal devices. Part of this data is presented to drivers via a multitude of interactive devices and systems. Thus, one challenge that arises in such a complex environment is effective and safe operation of the various interactive systems, e.g., the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI). In this paper, we present a synopsis of input modalities from the literature of automotive user interfaces (AutoUIs) for media consumption inside connected vehicles.