As cities explore intelligent technologies to support urban living, youth perspectives remain underrepresented in design processes despite their role as future residents. This study explores how young people (aged 13–17) envision intelligent technologies that support neighbourhood communality in the emerging Nordic Superblock urban model. Through four co-design workshops, we investigated youth perspectives on shared spaces, social interaction, and community participation, applying a multi-level framework of micro-, macro-, and meta-level considerations. The findings highlight youth's expectations for intelligent technologies that organise and optimise shared space use, facilitate social interaction, and support collective decision-making, such as planning of shared spaces. The study identifies concerns regarding privacy, inclusivity, and over-reliance on AI. The study presents four initial technology concepts for advancing communality, ranging from AI-facilitated shared dining to organising events and space use. This paper contributes to ubiquitous technology design understanding by foregrounding youth perspectives to community-centric intelligent neighbourhood technologies that can support residents’ wellbeing.

Abstract This article explores the factors that make youth e-participation in political decision-making meaningful and identifies the challenges associated with it from the perspectives of government officials. Empirical data for the research are collected by conducting in-depth interviews with Finland’s government officials from nine ministries who possess experience working with young people. The results reveal that there is a lack of inclusion and understanding of existing digital tools and governmental processes. Furthermore, officials perceive feedback to young people as an essential component of meaningful participation, emphasising the importance of dialogue in this process and the necessity for innovative digital solutions to support it. The study contributes to developing the evidence base necessary for designing e-participation services that would bridge the gap between the needs of young people and the realities of the political environment.

Abstract AI-based applications are increasingly used in knowledge-intensive expert work, which has led to a discussion regarding their trustworthiness, i.e., to which degree these applications are ethical and reliable. While trust in technology is an important aspect of using and accepting novel information systems, little is known about domain experts’ trust in machine learning systems in their work. To provide a real-life, empirical perspective on the topic, this study reports findings from an interview study of accounting practitioners’ (N = 9) trust in intelligent automation in their work. The findings underline the holistic nature of trust, suggesting that contextual and social aspects, such as participatory design practices, shape domain experts’ trust in intelligent automation. For instance, the participants emphasize their contribution to product development and open communication with the system developers. In addition, the findings shed light on the characteristics of domain experts as technology users, such as the necessity of situation-specific expert knowledge when evaluating the systems’ reliability. Thus, our findings suggest that trust in intelligent automation manifests at different levels, both in human-AI interaction and interpersonal communication and collaboration. This research contributes to the existing literature on trust in technology, especially AI-powered applications, by providing insights into trust in intelligent automation in expert work.

Social robots are becoming important agents in several sectors of people's lives. They can act in different contexts, e.g., public spaces, schools, and homes. Operating, programming and interacting with these robots will be an essential skill in the future. We present a qualitative and explorative study on how family members collaboratively learn (co-learn) about social robots at their homes. Our one-month in the wild study took place at homes of eight families (N=32) in Finland. We defined a novel model for co-learning about and with a social robot at home, Robocamp. In Robocamp, Alpha Mini robot was introduced and left within the families, who were then provided with weekly robotic challenges to be conducted with the robot. The research data was collected by semi-structured interviews and online diaries. This study provides novel insights about family-based co-learning with social robots in the home context. It also offers recommendations for implementing family-based co-learning with social robots at homes.

Social robots exist in various forms but are still not spreading widely to the societal contexts they are envisioned for, such as educational settings. There appears to be a gap between research and practice: A lot of research already demonstrates promising results for using social robots in various domains, but this promise has yet to be realized in “the real world”. The aim of this paper is to form a systematic understanding of the potential and challenges of social robots in the domain of education and learning, which is an intensively researched application domain for social robots. We conducted a meta-review of recent literature reviews (published in 2018-2022), using the PRISMA method. We analyzed 12 review papers that met the defined inclusion criteria by extracting the potential benefits and challenges presented in these reviews. We identify six benefits, five challenges, and six recommendations for future research on social robots in education and learning. These findings emphasize the potential and developments needed to realize the potential of social robots in educational contexts.

Non-anthropomorphic robots can be cost-effective and efficient choice in certain context in comparison to social or humanoid robots. However, introduction of nonanthropomorphic robots can evoke uncertainty and anxiety due to novelty of technology. The goal of this paper is to explore personality design space for non-anthropomorphic wellness robots in office environment to foster acceptance among users. Through Participatory Design approach, we explored appropriate personalities for a well-being robot, which would detect employees’ sitting posture and suggest small wellness interventions. We addressed the following research questions: (i) How can personalities be designed and integrated to non-anthropomorphic wellness robots to promote users’ acceptance? (ii) How do the users perceive designed personalities of non-anthropomorphic wellness robot in the office context? We conducted one contextual inquiry (n=5) and one co-design workshop (n=15) followed by evaluation (n=5) in IT office environment with office employees. As a contribution to the paper, we present personalities and design implications for non-anthropomorphic wellness robot in the office context. Our contribution will serve as a guideline for designers to explore and expand their knowledge on designing robot personalities for non-anthropomorphic robots in the context.

In the field of human-robot interaction (HRI), assistive robots have been integrated to promote social interactions and physically active lifestyles in the wellness context of eldercare. Despite their potential benefits, the current applications of assistive robots are constrained by limited usage environments and their predefined roles. Our research aims to explore older adults’ perceptions of assistive robots and approaches for delivering motivational physical activities by integrating, Spot, a zoomorphic mobile robot, as an outdoor walking guide. We conducted a participatory design study at a Finnish nursing home, consisting of three phases: the co-design workshop, the conceptual design, and the field study. This qualitative research collected data through observations and interviews. The findings report positive attitudes and natural social interactions among older adults during the outdoor physical activities assisted by the Spot robot. Based on these findings, we present a set of design implications for wellness robots in eldercare, including robot roles and tasks, methods for introducing robot literacy, and approaches to presenting robotic solutions to older adults.

Civic technologies are aimed at supporting citizens to participate in democratic processes. Civic robots - social robots that are designed to support people in civic participation - have potential to lower the barriers of participation especially for youth who face obstacles in participating through formal channels. We conducted an exploratory study with adolescents to investigate their perceptions of possible roles for civic robots. In the study, we asked participants of a youth event ($\mathrm{n}=24$, age range 14–21) to ideate civic participation related purposes and concepts for social robots. The findings suggest that scenarios in which a robot serves as social facilitator or provides decision support for civic activities seem promising. In addition, civic robots could indirectly increase participation ability by providing emotional or social support.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions are becoming prevalent in almost all aspects of human life. However, their acceptance may be limited by a lack of transparency of how the AI works. Explainable AI (XAI) aims to provide the users of AI systems with an understanding of why decisions are made, increasing trust in the system. To date, research into XAI has focused on the use of graphical user interfaces, presenting numerical, textual or graphical explanations. However, AI is increasingly being used in systems that include physical devices, and hence the need for explainability in physical or tangible user interfaces (TUI) is also increasing. We present an initial conceptual framework for tangible explainable AI (TangXAI), which identifies the potential approaches of communicating XAI through physical artifacts, using the concepts of data physicalization and tangible interaction. The framework provides a basis into which ongoing research of tangible explainable AI can be mapped and related research gaps identified.

The integration of collaborative robots (cobots) is changing manufacturing and production processes in factories. When cobots are designed to be efficient, skillful and safe to interact with, workers can collaborate with them conveniently. As workers often work with cobots intensively, it is crucial to explore the user experience (UX) of cobots. The goal of our research is to explore how factory cobots could be used in ways that support pleasurable worker experiences. We adapted "research through design" (RtD) to conduct exploratory research on novel interactions related to affectiveness, playfulness and relatedness in human-robot collaboration (HRC) using collaborative robot arm, Panda. RtD is a method that utilizes methods and practices of design to produce new knowledge. We conducted an exploratory study with 33 participants to evaluate three HRC storyboards scenarios in two complementary remote workshops. The findings report suitability of affective and playful behavior of cobots in an industrial setting. In addition, we deduced that personality of the robot plays a crutial role in HRC.

It is important for the sustainability of society that everyone can participate in societal discussions. Although a plethora of services exists for digital participation, they have not proven to entice a broad range of youths to contribute. The aim of this research is to investigate how digital tools can offer inclusive ways for youth to take part in societal processes. We present a study of young people’s needs for a digital service enabling societal participation. Altogether 74 young people aged 16–27 with varying backgrounds participated in six workshops. Scenarios were used as stimulus materials for eliciting participants’ feedback on digital participation. The findings bring up youth’s needs for such service. Needs such as having a safe environment for discussions and making the effect of participation visible were found. Finally, the findings and resulting Virtual Council prototype are presented and discussed, and their significance in advancing inclusive digital societal participation are elaborated.

Collocated interaction has received growing interest in both academic research and the design of information and communication technological applications. An emergent research topic within this area relates to technological enhancement of social interaction. Various envisioned systems aim beyond simply enabling interaction, to actively enhance—i.e., improve the quality or extent of—social interaction between collocated people. However, there is little understanding of the optimal design solutions and roles of technology considering this goal. This literature review outlines the landscape of design explorations in this emergent research topic. We contribute an in-depth study of 92 publications that present relevant solutions or prototypes, analyzing their focus areas, design objectives, and design and evaluation approaches. To contribute with a new theoretical perspective, we identify various roles of technology relevant for enhancement, representing three abstract categories: facilitating, inviting and encouraging. This review helps researchers to describe, analyze, and position relevant prior research and identify gaps in scientific knowledge.

360° videos are increasingly used for media and entertainment, but the best practices for editing them are not yet well established. In this paper, we present a study in which we investigated the user experience of 360° music videos viewed on computer monitor and VR goggles. The research was conducted in the form of a laboratory experiment with 20 test participants. During the within-subject study, participants watched and evaluated four versions of the same 360° music video with a different cutting rate. Based on the results, an average cutting rate of 26 seconds delivered the highest-quality user experience both for computer monitor and VR goggles. The cutting rate matched with participants' mental models, and there was enough time to explore the environment without getting bored. Faster cutting rates made the users nervous, and a video consisting of a single shot was considered to be too static and boring.

With the latest advancements in Virtual Reality (VR), the possible use of VR devices in public and social contexts has increased. Since the use of VR typically requires wearing a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), the user is not able to see others - the spectators - present in the same context. This may lead to a decrease of social acceptability of VR by both the users and the spectators. We conducted a field experiment to explore what are the experiential factors of the users of VR (N=10) and spectators of VR use (N=30). We found experiential factors for the users to be adjustment of interaction, uninterruptable immersion, un-intrusive communication, freedom to switch between realities, sense of safety, physical privacy, shared experience, and sense of belonging. For the spectators, the main factors are shared experience, enticing curiosity, feeling normal, and sense of safety. We then run three sessions with user experience (UX) experts (N=9) to create a set of design recommendations for socially acceptable VR. The resulting ten recommendations provide a holistic view to designing acceptable experiences for VR in public spaces.

A variety of new kinds of consumer cameras that capture the full 360-degree surroundings in a single panorama photo or video has recently been introduced to the market. In addition to conventional viewing devices, such as smartphones and computers, the 360-degree photos and videos can also be viewed with a virtual reality headset for a more immersive experience. In this paper, we present a field study where 14 consumers used 360-degree cameras freely in their everyday lives for a period of four weeks. We describe the strategies that the participants applied to capture 360-degree content in different situations and discuss the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of using a 360-degree camera compared to conventional cameras. We identify four common practices of consumer 360-degree camera use: Panorama Capture, Experience Capture, Automatic Capture, and Document Capture. We also report on the participants' habits of viewing, sharing, editing, and managing consumer-captured 360-degree content.

New form factors and user interfaces for computer-mediated communication are emerging. The possibilities to use these systems for emotional communication are interesting, and recent years have witnessed the appearance of a versatile range of prototypes. In this paper, we present the results of a systematic literature review on research addressing the design of systems with unconventional user interfaces for emotional communication, focusing on the use case of facilitating long-distance relationships. We reviewed a body of 150 papers resulting from a systematic search, further analysis scoping the body to 47 papers, containing altogether 52 prototypes that were relevant for our focus. We then analysed the characteristics affecting the interaction mediated by these systems and their user interfaces. We present the results related to the design attributes, e.g., form factors, modalities, and message types of the systems, as well as to the evaluation approaches. As salient findings, touch input and visual output are the most common interaction modalities in these systems, and their evaluations lack in-the-wild studies, especially on long-term usage.

To design desirable digital services for public transportation, passengers' needs and expectations should be considered. This paper presents a novel bus-specific Travel Experience Toolkit to support the design of digital traveling services in the context of intra-city bus transportation. The toolkit is structured in three areas of user experience, or travel experience: user (passenger), context (bus) and system (public transportation). The initial toolkit includes three tools derived from the findings of our qualitative passenger studies conducted in Finland using interviews, co-design workshops, and the diary method. The tools are: Bus Passenger Personas, a card-based design tool Context Cards, and Passenger Journey Map. With the help of the Travel Experience Toolkit, digital services can be developed with a focus on passengers' needs, improving the bus travel experience and thus enhancing the desirability of public transportation. We evaluated the tools with software developers and present the key findings.

This article describes the iterative design and user evaluation of a prototype, which enables collaborative music discovery by creating playlists and associating and expanding them with mood pictures. The concept was evaluated in two field trials by a total of 45 individual users, with both trials containing 30 users and 15 of the users attending both of the trials. The results from the two field trials are presented under three main themes: socially augmented music discovery, user-generated content enhancing music discovery and social usage patterns emerging from the usage of such a system. Users formed ways to facilitate social interaction and music discovery through the playlist content they shared. Social usage patterns reveal the social activities users performed with the service in the trials. The findings can be used as design implications for mood-based music service designers.

Mobile social matching systems aim to bring people together in the physical world by recommending people nearby to each other. Going beyond simple similarity and proximity matching mechanisms, we explore a proposed framework of relational, social and personal context as predictors of match opportunities to map out the design space of opportunistic social matching systems. We contribute insights gained from a study combining Experience Sampling Method (ESM) with 85 students of a U.S. university and interviews with 15 of these participants. A generalized linear mixed model analysis (n=1704) showed that personal context (mood and busyness) as well as sociability of others nearby are the strongest predictors of contextual match interest. Participant interviews suggest operationalizing relational context using social network rarity and discoverable rarity, and incorporating skill level and learning/teaching needs for activity partnering. Based on these findings we propose passive context-awareness for opportunistic social matching.

Many activities that have traditionally been performed with different dedicated physical artifacts are now done with personal mobile devices. Consequently, the privacy of mobile interfaces has hampered social observability and chances for serendipitous interactions. For example, reading an electronic newspaper with a mobile device does not allow the surrounding people to be similarly aware of the reader's activity as traditional newspapers. Social displays are additional displays on mobile devices providing the surrounding people with light-weight cues about the activities of the device user. We implemented a prototype that reveals the user's current active application and presents its name on an e-ink display on the backside of a mobile device. We conducted a ten-day field trial with 13 participants using the prototype. The results show that the prototype was able to increase awareness of users' mobile activities and occasionally triggered interactions with others, without significantly violating the sense of privacy.

Mobile phones have become common tools for photography. Despite the fact that photos are social artifacts, mobile phones afford the act of photo taking only as an individual activity. Photo taking that involves more than one photographer has been envisioned to create positive outcomes and experiences. We implemented this vision with mobile camera phones, exploring how this would influence photo taking practices and experiences. We conducted a user study where altogether 22 participants (11 pairs) were using a novel mobile photography method based on asymmetrical interaction abilities, comparing that with two traditional methods. We present the collaborative practices emerged in different photography methods and report user experience findings particularly with regard to enforced collaboration in mobile photo taking. The results highlight benefits and positive experiences in collaborative photo taking. We discuss lessons learned and point out design implications that come into play when designing for mobile collocated collaboration.

As wearable devices become more popular, situations where there are multiple persons present with such devices will become commonplace. In these situations, wearable devices could support collaborative tasks and experiences between co-located persons through multi-user applications. We present an elicitation study that gathers from end users interaction methods for wearable devices for two common tasks in co-located interaction: group binding and cross-display object movement. We report a total of 154 methods collected from 30 participants. We categorize the methods based on the metaphor and modality of interaction, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each category based on qualitative and quantitative feedback given by the participants.

We present Brainwolk, a walking meeting concept that is mediated with the means of mobile technology. Brainwolk was developed to encourage physical activity in mostly sedentary knowledge work. It is meant for different work tasks, especially for creative work such as ideation and getting inspiration, reflecting on one's thoughts and discussing about work-related topics in relaxed atmosphere. Brainwolk enables knowledge workers to work while walking, thus bringing in several benefits for health and wellbeing, as well as creativity and social interaction. Here we present the Brainwolk concept and a summary of a series of the user experience studies where we have evaluated it during the years 2015--2016. The concept and findings contribute on HCI by bringing in design relevant knowledge and insights on the growing field of technology mediated, physically active ways of work, which belong to the blossoming area of persuasive wellness technologies.

Startups operate with small resources in time pressure. Thus, building minimal product versions to test and validate ideas has emerged as a way to avoid wasteful creation of complicated products which may be proven unsuccessful in the markets. Often, design of these early product versions needs to be done fast and with little advance information from end-users. In this paper we introduce the Minimum Viable User eXperience (MVUX) that aims at providing users a good enough user experience already in the early, minimal versions of the product. MVUX enables communication of the envisioned product value, gathering of meaningful feedback, and it can promote positive word of mouth. To understand what MVUX consists of, we conducted an interview study with 17 entrepreneurs from 12 small startups. The main elements of MVUX recognized are Attractiveness, Approachability, Professionalism, and Selling the Idea. We present the structured framework and elements’ contributing qualities.

Since the third wave in human–computer interaction (HCI), research on user experience (UX) has gained momentum within the HCI community. The focus has shifted from systematic usability requirements and measures towards guidance on designing for experiences. This is a big change, since design has traditionally not played a large role in HCI research. Yet, the literature addressing this shift in focus is very limited. We believe that the field of UX research can learn from a field where design and experiential aspects have always been important: design research. In this article, we discuss why design is needed in UX research and how research that includes design as a part of research can support and advance UX design practice. We do this by investigating types of design-inclusive UX research and by learning from real-life cases of UX-related design research. We report the results of an interview study with 41 researchers in three academic research units where design research meets UX research. Based on our interview findings, and building on existing literature, we describe the different roles design can play in research projects. We also report how design research results can inform designing for experience methodologically or by providing new knowledge on UX. The results are presented in a structured palette that can help UX researchers reflect and focus more on design in their research projects, thereby tackling experience design challenges in their own research.

Activities that have traditionally been performed with tangible artifacts, e.g. reading the newspaper and browsing printed photos, have increasingly moved to mobile devices. This has made it harder for the surrounding people to become aware of the activities a person is performing with the device. As a result, the possibilities for serendipitous social interactions between the user and the collocated people have diminished. We introduce social displays, additional displays on mobile devices providing social cues about the activities of device user's activities for surrounding people. We conducted five focus groups with in total 23 participants, each discussing four scenarios and co-designing the presentation of cues on the display. The results suggest that the display has potential to break the private bubble of mobile device activities, as well as to provide tickets-to-talk to enhance social interaction, especially between acquaintances. We discuss social opportunities and challenges as well as possible design directions for social displays.

Eating is not only one of the most fundamental human needs but also among the most regular activities. Acquiring food, preparing meals, and socializing around food are deeply rooted in all human cultures. In this paper we show how food can not only serve to satisfy hunger but also become a new display technology. Through food augmentation, a dinner could communicate its ingredients, convey messages, or provide instructions such as the recipe of a meal. We show how to augment a large range of food with laser. We conducted a series of focus groups to gather people's first impressions and derive a broad range of meaningful augmentation scenarios. We discuss the perceived benefits, opportunities, and concerns. Additionally, we evaluated a number of scenarios through an online survey. The most readily accepted augmentation scenarios include adding practical information, increasing awareness about the food, and augmenting food items with a natural skin.

This paper presents a scenario-based user study of mobile application concepts that would encourage interaction between people within close proximity. The scenarios demonstrate three themes of digital tickets-to-talk: informing who and what are around, augmenting self-expression, and online interaction encouraging physical interaction. Our interview study explored the opportunities and challenges of such applications in developing into further face-to-face interactions between strangers. Tickets that are related to activities that convey a solid intention that would lead to practical collaboration, such as playing sports or studying together, have the best potential to advance to meaningful face-to-face interaction. Augmenting self-expression and online interaction encouraging physical interaction were found to have potential to create curiosity but seen less credible by our 42 interview participants to motivate face-to-face interaction between strangers. We conclude by discussing the potential of each theme of ticket-to-talk based on our findings as well as related literature.

Social Devices (SDs) are mobile devices that are proactive in social settings and aim to encourage social interaction between co-located people. We conducted a study of people's reactions to SDs with an audio-based interface on a semi-functional prototype. Based on a Wizard-of-Oz simulation, two SDs proactively started talking to each other and to the participants, with an aim to involve the participants to the conversation. We present the resulted social interactions and reactions as well as the participants' opinions about speech-based proactive SDs. Overall, SDs created a collaborative social situation and triggered a broad variety of social interactions, ranging from grounding to lengthy conversations. Meanwhile, the novelty of the technology and its rather dominant social role often shifted the participants' attention from each other to the devices, thus hindering social interaction. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of audio-based interaction and the social proactivity of technology.

This paper describes a user evaluation study of automated creation of mobile video remixes in three different event contexts. The evaluation contributes to the design process of the Automatic Video Remixing System, deepening knowledge to wider usage context. The study was completed with 30 users in three different contexts: a sports event, a music concert and a doctoral dissertation. It was discovered that users are motivated to provide their material to the service when knowing they get an automatically created remix containing many capturers' content in return. Automatic video remixing was stated to ease the task of editing videos and to improve the quality of amateur videos. The study reveals requirements for pleasurable remix creation in different event contexts and details the user experience factors related to the content capturing, sharing, and viewing of captured content and the remixes. The results provide insights into media creation in small event-based groups.

Haptic feedback based on the sense of touch and movement is a promising area of human-computer interaction in the car context. Most user studies on haptic feedback in the car have been controlled experiments of specific types of haptic stimuli. For the study presented in this paper, twelve participants tried novel haptic feedback prototypes and evaluated communication scenarios in the physical car context. Our aim was to understand user experiences and usage potential of haptic feedback in the car. The qualitative results show that haptic feedback may offer support for safety and social communication, but can be hard to interpret. We propose design considerations for in-car haptics such as simplicity, subtleness and directionality.

In the future, transparent displays can be utilized as information and communication channels in our everyday environments. Home windows form an interesting, yet unexplored platform, which could be utilized in the future e.g. as a mixed reality display or a personal or family communication channel. We explored the early user perceptions of an augmented home window through two user studies. In the first study 21 participants from 12 households commented our concept ideas and created their own. In the second study (12 households, 12 participants), developed concept ideas were assessed in a diary and a user study based on probes. The probes were used as experiential probes to gather perceptions of an augmented home window concept. Based on the studies, we present four communication modes for the augmented home window. The detailed findings reveal that contextual relevance of the content is highly important in the augmented home window, and that pragmatic use cases were valued, whereas social features were less appreciated.

Psychological needs have become an important viewpoint in understanding user experience (UX), however there have been few attempts to operationalize the existing need theories for studying children's experiences. The aim of this research was to experiment with two methods, a laddering interview and a new quantitative theory-based questionnaire, in studying the fulfillment of ten basic psychological needs. A mixed-method approach consisting of these methods was tested in evaluating an interactive children's activity called Backpack Tours in an exhibition center with 18 children of 6-9 years of age. The laddering interviews made it possible to connect the designed elements of the activity to fulfillment of six psychological needs: pleasure-stimulation, relatedness, self-actualization-meaning, autonomy, physical thriving, and competence. The quantitative results showed significant variations in the children's evaluations of the fulfillment of the ten needs. The results of the evaluation are useful in understanding the strengths of various design solutions and as a basis for further development of the activity.

Devices such as mobile phones have made it possible to take part in remote audio conferences regardless of one's physical location. Mobile phones also allow for new ways to interact with other conference participants. We present a study on evaluating the user experiences of a mobile audio conferencing system that was augmented with spatial audio, haptics, and gestures. In a user study groups of participants compared the augmented audio conference based on a mobile phone and headset to a traditional audio conference. The participants' task was to use the two alternative systems in given discussion tasks. The results of the subjective questionnaires showed that the augmented audio conference was perceived as more stimulating (e.g. creative), while the traditional audio conference was perceived as more practical (e.g. straightforward). The results of the group interviews indicated that spatial audio was the most desired feature, and that it had a positive effect on participants' perception of the conversation. Based on our findings, guidelines for the future development of similar systems are presented.

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.

In the past years, people have started to use social media to interact actively about TV content. However, despite of over a decade of active research and product development, Social TV has not been adopted by large populations. This paper aims to support designing interaction for Social TV services and, more specifically, designing for the presence and togetherness between viewers. Our constructive research consisted of a series of user studies and iterative prototyping. We conducted user studies with altogether 51 participants both in laboratory and in real-life contexts. To support the presence, the final prototype includes three different modalities of communication -- voice and text-based chat, and animated gestures with avatars. The qualitative findings imply that gestures with avatars in virtual space support Social TV and the experience of presence. Finally, we present an analysis of Social TV heuristics and their validity in the context of our designs.

Mixed reality (MR) technologies and applications, including interpersonal communication, are rapidly evolving. Despite its promise, peoples' actual needs concerning the advanced uses of MR are less studied. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted two focus group user studies in which we explored people's perceptions, expectations, and ideas concerning remote interpersonal MR communication and collaboration. In the first study we examined people's perceptions of MR and the study participants collaboratively created 21 scenarios for MR communication. For the second study, the most promising of these scenarios were selected and refined to develop three different types of scenarios one with emotional content, one emphasizing entertainment and one focused on work-related situations. The scenarios were evaluated by the participants of the second study in the context of a specific MR communication system that uses near-eye displays. The results indicate that the expected advantages of MR in communication are its efficiency, richness and the increased feeling of presence over distance. However, concerns were raised about the technical reliability, usability and accessibility of advanced MR applications. Work and entertainment use contexts were preferred over emotional communication. Maintaining close emotional relationships was perceived to require real physical presence and interaction instead of being technology-mediated.

Social Devices are smart phones that interact with each other in order to proactively trigger interaction between co-located users. Social Devices promote proxemic interactions between people and can act as enablers of users' social contacts. Various modalities are used to support natural interactions between users and Social Devices. We present an explorative study of spatial gestures that could support interactions with Social Devices. Our aim was to find out what kind of gestures users would like to use for different types of actions. Ten pairs participated in a laboratory study in which they went through three scenarios of Social Devices. The participants were asked to generate gestures that they would find suitable for user actions within the scenarios. In this paper, we present the found gesture types and their fit to various user actions. Our results show that Scan, Swing, Nod and Turn the screen down are potential spatial gestures for intuitive use of Social Devices. User feedback about their preferences of using spatial gestures indicates issues of social acceptance.

Location-based services are increasingly popular, and the Earth has become covered with geotagged data. To assess a novel approach to access this information, we conducted a field trial of a mobile mixed reality application called MAA, which operates on a mobile phone. MAA displays a view through the Earth and geospatial content in the direction to which the user is pointing the device. In this paper, we report the results of the two-week long field trial of MAA. We found that the embodied usage of MAA is experienced as engaging and surprising, but may also be cumbersome in some usage situations. Virtual viewing of locations around the planet was considered pleasant. MAA was often shown to friends, and was used for watching visual materials and searching for information about cities. MAA was found to be a promising platform for many kinds of location-based content, especially for real-time events and local information.

Whereas communication technology to connect people has long been an integral part of our everyday lives, it has only recently expanded to offer applications for dogs and dog-owners. In this paper, we present two explorative studies to understand the experiences and expectations of dog owners for communication technology to support their interaction with dogs. These studies look at two different user groups, hunters and pet owners, charting the lessons learnt from the current technology and exploring the aspects that should be taken into account when designing future applications and services. Our findings reveal that usability problems are still the dominant issue with current applications. We also suggest key design implications which can be utilized in the development of future human-dog interaction systems.

What do dogs do while their owners are away? And what do the owners want to know about it? Based on the findings from our earlier research, we created a concept called Paw Tracker for pet dog owners. Paw Tracker utilizes mobile and internet technologies and combines sensor-based dog-created content with a social media approach. The concept was evaluated by potential users in focus groups and in a Wizard-of-Oz based field study. The results of the study revealed the dog owners' detailed interest in tracking their dogs' activities and following their condition in real-time, both in special situations and in everyday life. Dog owners found especially interesting the possibility to discover reasons for barking and misbehavior. Sensor and video feed based information were both considered valuable, and we argue that an ideal design should combine these both. This study and the designed concept strengthen the understanding of the emerging domain of technology mediated human-dog interaction.

Technology-mediated communication including mobile phone and video conferencing on PC enable increasing bandwidth for everyday interactions between remote people. The effectiveness and social presence with traditional video conferences have been studied rather extensively. Our research arose from the motivation of exploring how intimacy and emotional engagement between people can be supported by alternative types of image-based communication tools. We constructed a video conferencing system with near-eye displays, where the users could only see one of each others' eyes. The goal was to explore how such unusual eye-based display of the other person would make people feel during conversations. We conducted an explorative user study in a laboratory context with five pairs of users to understand their experiences with this system. The results show that this kind of mediated communication between remote partners can cause a variety of experiences, such as "interesting", "surprising", "tranquil" or "pleasantly strange". Overall, the full-screen display of the eye clears off distractions from the discussion and thus can help make the discussion more intimate and focused on the moment. We envision that a novel system like this could become a communication tool for everyday life, including mobile situations where it's possible for two people to stop for a while to focus on one another.

The goal of user experience design in industry is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product. So far, user experience studies have mostly focused on short-term evaluations and consequently on aspects relating to the initial adoption of new product designs. Nevertheless, the relationship between the user and the product evolves over long periods of time and the relevance of prolonged use for market success has been recently highlighted. In this paper, we argue for the cost-effective elicitation of longitudinal user experience data. We propose a method called the “UX Curve” which aims at assisting users in retrospectively reporting how and why their experience with a product has changed over time. The usefulness of the UX Curve method was assessed in a qualitative study with 20 mobile phone users. In particular, we investigated how users’ specific memories of their experiences with their mobile phones guide their behavior and their willingness to recommend the product to others. The results suggest that the UX Curve method enables users and researchers to determine the quality of long-term user experience and the influences that improve user experience over time or cause it to deteriorate. The method provided rich qualitative data and we found that an improving trend of perceived attractiveness of mobile phones was related to user satisfaction and willingness to recommend their phone to friends. This highlights that sustaining perceived attractiveness can be a differentiating factor in the user acceptance of personal interactive products such as mobile phones. The study suggests that the proposed method can be used as a straightforward tool for understanding the reasons why user experience improves or worsens in long-term product use and how these reasons relate to customer loyalty.

People have a natural tendency to capture and share their experiences via stories, photos and other mementos. As users are increasingly carrying the enabling devices with them, capturing life events is becoming more spontaneous. The automatic and persistent collecting of information about one's life and behavior is called lifelogging. Lifelogging relieves the user from manually capturing events but also poses many challenges from the user's perspective. We conducted a field study to explore the user experience of mobile phone activity and context logging, a technically feasible form of lifelogging. Our results indicate that users quickly stop to pay attention to the logging, but they want to be in control of logging the most private information. Although logging personal content, such as text messages, is experienced as a possible privacy threat, browsing the content and getting insight to the revealed life patterns was considered interesting and fun.

Social activity is becoming a central contributor to user experience (UX) in many modern Web services. The motivations, norms and rules of online communities have been widely researched, however, social activity and its UX in modern Web services is a less studied area. We conducted a four-week-long field study with three Web services -- Facebook, Nokia Sports Tracker and Dopplr -- which all support social activity. The aim of this study was to identify the central drivers and hindrances of social UX, user experience of online social activity. Our results show that the main drivers of social UX include self-expression, reciprocity, learning and curiosity, whereas unsuitability of content and functionality, incompleteness of user networks and lack of trust and privacy are often experienced as hindrances for social UX. Our findings also reveal the pragmatic and hedonic nature of the drivers and hindrances. The results can be used to inform design and evaluation of social UX in Web services.

Many web-based services utilize both desktop and mobile terminals in delivering content and functionality to their users. In terms of user experience (UX), the overall chain of interactions, including mobile and non-mobile settings, becomes a central design target. The aim of this study was to investigate, what are the key elements of user experience associated with these, cross-platform interactions. This paper presents the findings from a four week long field study with three web-based cross-platform services. During the study, participants used the services on both their PCs and mobile devices. Diaries and interviews were used for gathering users' experiences with the services. Based on our findings and reflection with related work, we argue that central elements of cross-platform service UX include fit for cross-contextual activities, flow of interactions and content, and perceived service coherence. We propose an initial conceptual framework of cross-platform user experience. The framework can be used to guide the design of cross-platform web services, as it draws attention to elements of user experience that are essentially influenced by the characteristics of cross-platform settings.

Context plays a critical role in the user experience (UX) of mobile products. In UX studies, context is often seen as a single entity such as mobile context or car context. More fine-grained categorization of contextual factors is needed when we want to understand how context affects user experience. The purpose of our study was to adapt existing context and experience categorizations, and try out in practice how well these are suited for analyzing the user experience of mobile products. We conducted a ten-day field study where 21 participants reported their experiences of personal mobile products by writing experience reports. The reports were analyzed by using eight context categories to identify the contextual factors. Among these factors we determined the triggering context, which has the major influence on the most meaningful user experience described in a report. Our results show that having a detailed categorization for analyzing contextual factors is valuable for understanding how context affects user experience. This becomes practical in identifying the most meaningful user experiences among the reported ones. We propose that triggering context analysis should become a part of user experience studies of mobile products.

Modern mobile phones have the capability to detect proximity of other users and offer means to communicate and share data ad hoc with the people in the proximity. TWIN is an ad hoc social networking system which offers applications for social presence, mobile multimedia sharing and ad hoc community-based communication. In this paper we present the results of a large-scale user study of TWIN. In this field study, 250 study participants used TWIN for nine weeks. Our aim was to investigate the user experience of social proximity-based ad hoc communication. We found that the users felt TWIN to be more fun and entertaining than a useful tool for achieving pre-defined goals. Furthermore, users appreciated the possibility to find and chat with both familiar and unfamiliar persons nearby. Privacy concerns did not rise as a significant issue in user experience. We argue that a system like TWIN has the potential of becoming a new social enabler in people's everyday lives.

Cloud computing is a new paradigm for how applications and services are designed, implemented and accessed through Internet. In the cloud, the user can access services and his personal data real-time from any device. There are already services available in the market using cloud computing, such as email, enterprise planning software, and social media services. Still, research on cloud is in its early phase, especially when considering the user experience of mobile cloud services. In this paper, we introduce Image Exchange, a photo sharing Internet service that was designed from the cloud computing perspective. We evaluated Image Exchange through two user studies and the results presented in this paper describe important implications for cloud computing on mobile devices. Furthermore, we found special types of social interactions that emerged within the users of Image Exchange due to its cloud computing nature. The results show that the current design of Image Exchange provides a rather positive user experience, but it could be developed further to fully utilize the benefits of cloud computing.

The haptic modality -- the sense of touch -- is utilized very limitedly in current human-computer interaction. Especially in mobile communication, the haptic modality could provide a means for richer multimodal and emotional communication between users over distance. Haptic user interface prototypes have been developed but their user experience has not been studied extensively. We conducted seven focus group sessions to study users' expectations for user experience of haptic interaction, specifically focusing on mobile communication. The paper presents the user experience factors that were regarded by potential users as salient in haptic interaction: subjective quality of the haptic stimuli, privacy, intimacy and spontaneity. Also the possibilities, restrictions and suitability of the haptic mobile communication are discussed. Most appropriate use cases for haptic communication were found to be conveying emotions and binary information. As the main conclusion, we present design guidelines for haptic mobile communication that were drawn up based on the findings.

Digital media content can contain items that are very personal and valuable for their owner. Such items can form life memories, such as media collages from happy events or recordings of the first steps of one's children. Memories can be evoked and created "anytime, anyplace", and thus mobility is a key factor in managing them. Even though related systems for sharing photographs exist, users' needs for managing personal content have not been investigated specifically from the viewpoint of life memories. This paper describes our empirical research on users' needs for sharing the digital representations of their life memories. As the main contribution, we present design guidelines for services for sharing digital life memories. Furthermore, we present a mobile service prototype which was designed based on the guidelines. Our research shows that the creation, sharing, managing and viewing of digital life memories is highly based on meaningful real-life events.

Personal media content is increasingly accessed by mobile devices and services. Small handheld devices may give access to thousands of personal media items such as photos, music and messages, but managing the vast amount of content on a small device with a limited user interface (UI) is becoming tedious. Searching content with metadata -- that is, descriptive data about the content -- facilitates locating of particular piece of content. However, in addition to rapidly increasing amount of content, the amount and extent of types of metadata attached to each content object is also growing. Thus, metadata management itself is becoming a burdensome task. We present our study on how to improve metadata management and make it motivating on mobile devices. We conducted 26 interviews and two workshops with users to study users' needs and design requirements for metadata management. As a main result, we present UI design guidelines for personal content related metadata management on mobile devices.