Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) faces challenges to survival and growth from globalization and economic pressures. Research has explored how Generative AI (GenAI) can capture, represent, and convey cultural meaning to help address these challenges. This paper bridges current GenAI ICH strategies and explores the forms of creativity that emerge when artisans use their embodied craft skills to create with GenAI fine-tuned on their own ICH. Collaborating in-situ with Huayao embroiderers in rural China produced eight novel hand-embroidered pieces from our custom GenAI workflows trained on Huayao ICH. Embroiderers noted that GenAI tools could enhance creativity and had the potential to support innovation within tradition, yet human creativity and manual refinement remained necessary to ensure cultural authenticity. We suggest that our combination of rapid iterative GenAI and in-situ slow making by hand created a space in which discourses on the meaning and value of ICH could be explored.

Reflection and metacognition are central to the creative user experience. However, most HCI research on reflection focuses on clear, task-oriented goals such as to reflect on personal data or pedagogical outcomes. This contrasts with the open-ended and challenging to articulate goals of creative user experiences. For the first time, this workshop brings together interdisciplinary researchers, designers, educators, and artists across HCI, Cognitive Science, Design, AI, Learning Sciences, and Digital Art to examine reflection in creative interaction. The workshop will discuss themes, drawn from earlier discussions with HCI researchers and artists, on: how best to capture reflection in creative contexts, how to leverage the arts to support reflection for ethical change, and how to design creative AI that enhances – not hinders – critical thinking. By bringing interdisciplinary perspectives on reflection into discussion, the workshop will develop a guiding taxonomy for reflection in creative interaction to inform future creative practice and tool development.

Musicians are using neural audio models to synthesize new sounds, but the sound space accessible through such models is often constrained to essentially interpolated approximations of existing training data, limiting the true sonic novelty musicians can elicit from generative models. To address this problem, we present Latent Novelification (LN), a machine learning method which learns to transform vectors in any generative model’s latent space into new, contrasting vectors according to an objective function which we define. The LN objective enforces that these contrasting vectors explicitly diverge from existing training data while remaining semantically meaningful to the generative model, facilitating generative novelty beyond simple interpolation. LN supports divergent creativity by helping musicians generate new and novel sounds, integrating into any neural audio model interface to controllably and interactively expand accessible sound space. This work contributes a new algorithmic method—implemented in open-source software—which musicians working with neural audio synthesis can use to synthesize new sounds to incorporate into their art.

The fourth workshop on Explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts) continues to bring together and expand a community of researchers and creative practitioners in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, AI, eXplainable AI (XAI), and Digital Arts to explore the role of XAI for the Arts. XAI is a key concern of Responsible and Human-Centred AI, emphasising HCI techniques that make opaque AI models more understandable to people. XAIxArts offers a distinctive lens to examine explainability through creative and artistic domains. The previous workshops explored the landscape and the speculative futures of AI in creative processes. To respond to emerging challenges and contribute to creative and societal transformation more broadly, this workshop focuses on the operationalisation of XAI in the Arts. Specifically, we will: i) critically reflect on emerging practices that encourage diversity and inclusivity in XAI; ii) collectively ideate a library of missing projects to encourage future collaborations and speculations; iii) scope the development of a resource hub for open XAIxArts projects to archive tangible XAI interventions and facilitate future community building with the wider discourse on Human-Centred AI.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), particularly text-to-image (T2I) generation tools, presents new possibilities for preserving and innovating traditional cultural patterns. However, AI-generated images often lack cultural context, which risks cultural bias and the loss of cultural significance. This study explores the use of GAI in generating culturally meaningful patterns, focusing on Chinese intangible cultural heritage Huayao cross-stitch as a case study. By applying Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) fine-tuning to optimize T2I tools and using in-situ interviews and focus groups, we collected feedback from 18 Huayao artisans. The results show that while fine-tuned models improved stylistic accuracy, the cultural meaning of the patterns remained insufficient. This research highlights AI's limited role in cultural innovation and emphasizes the necessity for dynamically maintaining cultural authenticity through the daily practices of cultural holders. It also reflects on how AI might have a long-term impact on the creative position of artisan communities.

The third workshop on Explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts) continues to bring together and expand a community of researchers and creative practitioners in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, AI, explainable AI (XAI), and Digital Arts to explore the role of XAI for the Arts.XAI is a key concern of Responsible and Human-Centred AI, emphasising the use of HCI techniques to explore how to make complicated and opaque AI models more understandable to people.The previous workshops moved from mapping the landscape of XAI for the Arts to co-developing an XAIxArts manifesto.To continue driving discourse on XAIxArts, the anticipated outcomes of this workshop are: i) fresh insights into the evolving challenges of AI bias, lack of transparency and barriers to inclusivity through discussion of current and emerging XAIxArts practices; ii) co-developed speculative futures which expand XAIxArts discourse beyond post-hoc rationalisations of AI decisions into the imaginative possibilities of AI as an interlocutor in the creative process; iii) plans for a co-developed proposal of an edited book on XAIxArts; and iv) community expansion and engagement in wider discourses on Responsible and Human-Centred AI.

This technical demonstration responds to the growing importance of virtual identity.It introduces an artist-friendly, no-code prototype designed specifically to transparently integrate speculative AI processes into artistic co-design methods focused on virtual identity exploration.Artists and designers often struggle to effectively integrate AI into their creative practice because packaged commercial AI tools rarely accommodate their unique visual language and generally obscure creative control through black-box interfaces.These tools typically lack transparency for advanced users and are inconvenient when managing diverse creative inputs, especially in participatory co-design contexts involving multiple contributors.Addressing these challenges, this demonstration showcases a prototype developed using ComfyUI, a visual, node-based interface for building generative AI workflows without coding, combined with custom-trained LoRA models to ensure visual consistency and personal artistic expression in participant-driven avatar generation.Grounded in literature emphasising AI's potential to foster imaginative engagement through transparency and creative flexibility, this transparent AI tool supports co-design activities, encouraging a wider community of creative practitioners to confidently experiment with speculative AI-driven co-design.

Haptic feedback plays a significant role in expressing emotions, however, there is a lack of research on haptics compared with visual and audio channels.In this paper we investigate AI and machine learning methodologies for generating affective vibrotactile feedback.Two generative AI (GenAI) approaches to vibration generation were examined using a custom dataset of vibrationemotion pairings: a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) approach and a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) approach.A quantitative user study involving 15 people validated the GenAIs' capabilities to generate vibrations conveying a range of levels of emotion valence or arousal.Subjective interviews were conducted afterwards which provided valuable insights for multimodal interaction design and future research topics of affective haptics.

Systems to interactively generate audio from human movement are used by artists including dancers to support their performances and practice. However, current real-time movement-to-sound systems require specialized hardware or expertise, or map only very simple movement-to-audio relationships. We present a new technique and system implementation for interactive sonification of human movement through unsupervised machine learning. Our system maps between latent spaces, linking a pose estimator to a neural audio generator to enable sonification of human bodies. This may lower barriers to entry for artists to generate sound from their embodied movement through complex mappings. Our system requires no specialized hardware or niche AI expertise, minimal data to learn a user's custom movements, and trains extremely fast. It represents a new method for mapping custom data to a latent space through unsupervised learning, and advances state-of-the-art interactive movement sonification through its increased accessibility and ease of use relative to its complexity.

Construction workers have difficulty identifying potential risks in harsh environments because traditional visual and acoustical alerts are inefficient. This study investigated a new communication method with a wearable tactile-based system to improve worker’s hazard perception. Three experiments are reported in relation to this system. The first experiment exploited VR as an experimental tool to compare auditory and vibrotactile warning signals as well as their combination in a simulated construction working environment. Findings demonstrated that the vibrotactile cues induced faster response times and higher affective ratings than auditory alarms, and their combination provided the shortest reaction time. The second experiment compared 7 different vibrotactile patterns varying in intensity, duration, and interval, to identify configurations that led to a higher degree of awareness. The third experiment validated the effectiveness of three selected tactons for delivering information on 3 hazard levels, finding that subjects could identify three-parameter signals with relatively low error. Our findings provide guidelines for designing tactile warning signals, which could help improve hazard recognition and risk perception, especially in construction sites.

Spreadsheets are a widespread functional programming paradigm that offer liveness and directness of interaction. However, spreadsheets are notoriously error-prone and difficult to debug. To overcome this limitation and improve the expressive power of spreadsheets, we propose an extension to the spreadsheet paradigm in the form of sheet-defined lambdas – user-defined functions that abstract computations on the sheet. This concept was developed and deployed in our web-based spreadsheet application named Lattice. We evaluate this approach through a user study which compared the user experience of programming in a spreadsheet with and without lambdas, as well as the difference in performance between learner (N = 12) and experienced (N = 12) programmers. The study measured participant task performance (task time, success rate and number of errors) and the quality of their user experience of using Lattice (video recordings of use, interviews and questionnaire responses). Our findings indicate that programming with lambdas is not only more efficient than writing formulas in a conventional way, but also provides a rewarding hedonic experience. However, we found that learners perceived the concept of functional abstractions with lambdas as difficult to comprehend; while experienced programmers noted potential utilitarian advantages that aid in managing the complexity of a spreadsheet program. The results obtained in this work contribute to a better understanding of human-spreadsheet interaction and can inform the future design of user-friendly computational systems.

This second workshop on explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts) brings together a community of researchers and creative practitioners in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, AI, explainable AI (XAI), and Digital Arts to explore the role of XAI for the Arts. XAI is a core concern of Human-Centred AI and relies heavily on HCI techniques to explore how to make complex and difficult to understand AI models more understandable to people. Our first workshop explored the landscape of XAIxArts and identified emergent themes. To move the discourse on XAIxArts forward and to contribute to Human-Centred AI more broadly this workshop will: i) bring researchers together to expand the XAIxArts community; ii) collect and critically reflect on current and emerging XAIxArts practice; iii) co-develop a manifesto for XAIxArts; iv) co-develop a proposal for an edited book on XAIxArts; v) engage with the wider discourse on Human-Centred AI.

Deep learning generative AI models trained on huge datasets are capable of producing complex and high quality music. However, there are few studies of how AI Generated Content (AIGC) is actually used or appropriated in creative practice. We present two first-person accounts by musician-researchers of explorations of an interactive generative AI system trained on Irish Folk music. The AI is intentionally used by musicians from incongruous genres of Punk and Glitch to explore questions of how the model is appropriated into creative practice and how it changes creative practice when used outside of its intended genre. Reflections on the first-person accounts highlight issues of control, ambiguity, trust, and filtering AIGC. The accounts also highlight the role of AI as an audience and critic and how the musicians’ practice changed in response to the AIGC. We suggest that our incongruous approach may help to foreground the creative work and frictions in human-AI creative practice.

Reflection is fundamental to creative practice. However, the plurality of ways in which people reflect when using AI Generated Content (AIGC) is underexplored. This paper takes AI-based music composition as a case study to explore how artist-researcher composers reflected when integrating AIGC into their music composition process. The AI tools explored range from Markov Chains for music generation to Variational Auto-Encoders for modifying timbre. We used a novel method where our composers would pause and reflect back on screenshots of their composing after every hour, using this documentation to write first-person accounts showcasing their subjective viewpoints on their experience. We triangulate the first-person accounts with interviews and questionnaire measures to contribute descriptions on how the composers reflected. For example, we found that many composers reflect on future directions in which to take their music whilst curating AIGC. Our findings contribute to supporting future explorations on reflection in creative HCI contexts.

Entanglement theories are well established in HCI discourse. These involve a commitment to view human experience in encounters with technology as relational and contingent, and research apparatuses as co-producers rather than passive observers of phenomena. In this paper, we argue that sound is the sensory modality best suited to the investigation of entanglements. Materialist theories of sound and listening guide both the design of a novel interactive sound installation and the methodological approach of a participant study exploring the experience of listening. We present a diffractive analysis whereby micro-phenomenological interview data is read with sonic theories, generating accounts that might otherwise remain mute: the temporal fluctuation and physical feeling of proximity in listener entanglements with sound, somatic intention setting, and plural interpretations of interactivity. Finally, we offer a series of provocations for HCI to embrace qualities of the sonic and consider epistemological positions grounded in other sense modalities.

Research on the potential benefits of technology for autistic children is an emergent field in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), especially within the Child-Computer Interaction Community. At the same time, there are concerns about what these interventions and technologies are for and who benefits. We present a research and design approach for Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) for minimally verbal to nonverbal autistic children following a neurodiversity narrative through three field studies developed and evaluated with three groups of children within a semi-structured scholastic environment between 2018 and 2021 in the UK. We discuss our insights for research and TUI designs in the context of social play for nonverbal autistic children and critically reflect on the methods and approaches we used. We do this to disrupt the normalisation agenda that subtly permeates the field of HCI and to direct designers’ attention toward supporting autistic ways of being in the world.

Research on Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) design highlights that materiality plays an important role in DMI design and musical interaction. However, DMI design research often focuses on technology-oriented factors, with less exploration of the meaning of materials in design practice. In this paper, we explore how DMI designers understand deformable sensor materials and how they use these as a resource for creative aesthetic design. Eleven DMI designers were invited to use a selection of deformable sensor materials to create prototype DMIs with them in a design activity. Three design approaches emerged, determined by how designers perceived and explored sensor materials. We discuss the potential of the methodology for exploring strongly entangled elements, such as material, gesture, and sound, in DMI design. The results contribute to the design practice for DMI designers and to further exploration of material-based design research in Human-Computer Interaction.

A common musical composition practice is to develop musical pieces using variations of musical themes. In this study, we present an interactive tool which can generate variations of musical themes in real-time using a variational autoencoder model. Our tool is controllable using semantically meaningful musical attributes via latent space regularisation technique to increase the explainability of the model. The tool is integrated into an industry standard digital audio workstation - Ableton Live - using the Max4Live device framework and can run locally on an average personal CPU rather than requiring a costly GPU cluster. In this way we demonstrate how cutting-edge AI research can be integrated into the exiting workflows of professional and practising musicians for use in the real-world beyond the research lab.

This first workshop on explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts) brings together a community of researchers and creative practitioners in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design, AI, explainable AI (XAI), and Digital Arts to explore the role of XAI for the Arts. XAI is a core concern of Human-Centred AI and relies heavily on HCI techniques to explore how complex and difficult to understand AI models such as deep learning techniques can be made more understandable to people. However, XAI research has primarily focused on work-oriented and task-oriented explanations of AI and there has been little research on XAI for creative domains such as the Arts. This workshop will: i) build an XAIxArts research community; ii) map out the current and future possible landscapes of XAIxArts; iii) critically reflect on the potential of XAI for the Arts, forming the basis for an edited book on XAIxArts and an international network of researchers.

Reflection is underexplored in Creativity Support Tool (CST) research, partly due to its ambiguous nature. We suggest that researchers could benefit from a measure of a CST’s capacity to support reflection. To this end, we detail the first stages of development of the Reflection in Creative Experience Questionnaire (RiCE) – a lightweight questionnaire for differentiating between creative user experiences which exhibit more or less moments of reflection. We develop RiCE through i) an expert review of questionnaire items (n=10) and ii) an exploratory factor analysis (n=300) of the reviewed items. We also present a user study testing RiCE (n=58) across two time points (one week apart) with novel interfaces designed for creative writing and music making. Although we do not confirm validity, we identify four factors for RiCE which we suggest are interpretable in a conceptually meaningful way. Our formative studies contribute towards supporting future explorations on reflection with CSTs.

Textile and fashion designers are increasingly interested in integrating interactive technologies into their practice. However, traditional design education typically lacks support for them to develop technical digital and electronics skills alongside their expertise in materials. Reflecting on outputs from an e-textile design workshop and 8-week design projects with four textile design students using an e-textile toolkit, and follow-up data collection with the students one year after the projects, we argue that starting technical explorations with raw materials results in a better understanding and more flexible use of technical knowledge. We also argue that this newly acquired knowledge is then more fully integrated with their pre-existing material knowledge as it is applied to physical interface design. The results contribute to the development of tools and approaches in supporting designers with material expertise to learn tangible interaction design skills.

Research on the design of Digital Musical Instruments (DMIs) has highlighted the importance of musical gestures and embodied interaction in DMI design. However, this research often focuses on technical and sonic factors of design, with less attention on how materials influence the design process and DMI design idea generation. Thus, this paper explores materiality in DMIs design through a material probe approach with deformable materials. This paper reports on a study with fifteen DMI designers investigating the evoked meaning of material properties in a musical context beyond their digital interactivity. Results suggest that material properties inspired participants’ design thinking, and there was a strong connection between tactility and imagined sound production. We also reported the patterns of gestural interaction of deformable materials in DMIs. We reflect on these results to report lessons learned that could inform interactive systems’ material design within and beyond the musical domain.

Identifying points of engagement from a person’s interaction with computers could be used to assess their experience and to adapt user interfaces in real-time. However, it is difficult to identify points of engagement unobtrusively; HCI studies typically use retrospective protocols or rely on cumbersome sensors for real-time analysis. We present a case study on how children compose digital music at home in which we remotely identify points of engagement from patterns of interaction with a musical interface. A mixed-methods approach is contributed in which video recordings of children’s interactions whilst composing are labelled for engagement and linked to i) interaction logs from the interface to identify indicators of engagement in interaction, and ii) interview data gathered using a remote video-cued recall technique to understand the experiential qualities of engaging interactions directly from users. We conclude by speculating on how the suggested indicators of engagement inform the design of adaptive music systems.

The rapid development of rural societies mixed with the infrastructural transformation of emerging economies bring both challenges and opportunities to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design as illustrated through the emergence of the field of HCI for Development (HCI4D). A key challenge for HCI4D is how local knowledge, expertise, and culture can be constructively combined with global trends in digital innovation and socioeconomic development. Co-design and participatory design practices in HCI offer opportunities to engage diverse communities in design activities which embrace both transition and tradition in constructive ways. We present our co-design framework, Qi2He, which supports designers and local communities engaging in co-design activities. Qi2He is inspired by traditional Chinese epistemology and contributes (i) methods to support cross-cultural co-design engagement, and (ii) post-hoc critique of co-design participation. We illustrate the use of Qi2He through three case studies of HCI design over four years in rural China where local culture and traditions are in a state of flux from waves of migration to cities whilst also being an integral part of the broader national and global transformation. The first case study examines how local rural knowledge can be shared and acquired to create a design system for ethnic brocade production. The second case study explores how the creation of an interactive drama can be used as a driver for rural community engagement. The third case study focusses on the iterative design of cross-cultural interactive product innovation. We conclude by reflecting on lessons we learnt when structuring and restructuring our co-design process and offer suggestions for how our Qi2He framework could be used by others and in different cultural settings.

A key aspect of Virtual Reality (VR) applications is the ability to move in the environment, which relies on the illusion of self-motion to create a good user experience. Self-motion has traditionally been studied in psychophysical studies in which a range of wording has been adopted to describe self-motion. However, it is not clear from current research whether the words used in self-motion studies match study participants’ own intuitions about the experience of self-motion. We argue that the terminology used in self-motion studies should be drawn from a participant perspective to improve validity. We undertook an online study involving VR self-motion and card-sorting with 50 participants to examine current self-motion terminology. We found that participants were not familiar with the concept of self-motion and that the virtual scene itself might suggest different terminology. We suggest how studies on motion perception in VR should be designed to better reflect participants’ vernacular.

Extended Reality (XR) technology - such as virtual and augmented reality - is now widely used in Human Computer Interaction (HCI), social science and psychology experimentation. However, these experiments are predominantly deployed in-lab with a co-present researcher. Remote experiments, without co-present researchers, have not flourished, despite the success of remote approaches for non-XR investigations. This paper summarises findings from a 30-item survey of 46 XR researchers to understand perceived limitations and benefits of remote XR experimentation. Our thematic analysis identifies concerns common with non-XR remote research, such as participant recruitment, as well as XR-specific issues, including safety and hardware variability. We identify potential positive affordances of XR technology, including leveraging data collection functionalities builtin to HMDs (e.g. hand, gaze tracking) and the portability and reproducibility of an experimental setting. We suggest that XR technology could be conceptualised as an interactive technology and a capable data-collection device suited for remote experimentation.

Motion capture technology is widely used in movement-related Human-Computer Interaction, especially in digital arts such as digital dance performance. This paper presents a knit stretch sensor-based dance leotard design to evaluate the locations where the sensors best capture the movement on the body. Two studies are undertaken: (1) interviews to determine user requirements of a dance movement sensing system; (2) evaluation of sensor placement on the body. Ten interviewees including dancers, choreographers, and technologists describe their requirements and expectations for a body movement sensing system. The centre of the body (the torso) is determined to be the area of primary interest for dancers and choreographers to sense movement, and technologists find the robustness of textile sensors the most challenging for textile sensing system design. A dance leotard toile is then designed with sensor groupings on the torso along the direction of major muscles, based on the interviewees’ preferred movements to be captured. Each group of the sensors are evaluated by comparing their signal output and a Vicon motion capture system. The evaluation shows sensors which are constantly under tension perform better. For example, sensors on the upper back have a higher success rate than the sensors on the lower back. The dance leotard design was found to capture the movements of standing lean back and standing waist twists the best.

ABSTRACT This research explores how tangible interactive technology might offer opportunities for socialization and sensory regulation. We present a study carried out in an educational setting during leisure activities with a small group of children with autism who like music. We introduce Όλοι (pronounced Olly), a sonic textile Tangible User Interface (TUI) designed around the observations of five minimally verbal children with autism aged between 5-10 years. The TUI was tested for an average of 24 minutes once per week, over a period of five weeks in a specialized school based in North-East London, UK. We propose a methodological approach that embraces diversity and promotes designs that support repetitive movements and self-regulation to provide the children with a favorable environment and tools to socialize with peers. The findings show positive outcomes with regards to spontaneous social interactions between peers particularly when children interacted with or around Olly. These were observed in the form of eye-contact, turn-taking, sharing (of the space, the object and experience), and more complex social play dynamics like associative and cooperative play. We illustrate how the TUI was a positive stimulus of social behaviors and discuss design implications for novel technologies that aim to foster shared experiences between children with autism.

One of the most fundamental features of living organisms is their growth, a biological phenomenon that can be considered as a type of slow, tangible output responding to an environmental stimulus or an input. Given the relative slowness of growth, once it becomes part of game mechanics, the feature can lead to slow interactivity and slow gameplay in biotic games – a relatively new type of bio-digital game that enables playful human-microbe interactions. Currently, there is a lack of annotations on existing biotic game design guidelines, that 1) recognise biological slowness as a potentially beneficial feature in game design, and 2) provide specific advice on how organism's slow response time can be effectively incorporated in biotic games. To start addressing these limitations, we report on an initial set of design lessons learnt from our research on slow biotic games. Through these lessons, we have formulated and outlined a set of practical recommendations for prospective designers of slow biotic games.

Playtime is an important activity for child development as it stimulates as well as predicts cognitive, motor, emotional and social skills. Children with autism may find it difficult to socialize, particularly initiating and maintaining human interactions. Consecutively, it is thought that playing with peers is often a challenge that many children avoid by simply playing in solitary mode. We present the design of Mazi, an e-textile sonic tangible user interface (TUI) designed with the aim of promoting basic social skills; stimulating spontaneous, independent and collaborative play; and providing sensory regulation opportunities. Mazi was tested in a Special Education Needs (SEN) School based in NorthEast London, with a group of five minimally verbal children with autism aged between 6 to 9. The results show great potentials for TUI implementation in educational settings as a way of promoting social skills through carefully designed playful and recreational activities.

This paper presents an observational study of collaborative spatial music composition. We uncover the practical methods two experienced music producers use to coordinate their understanding of multi-modal and spatial representations of music as part of their workflow. We show embodied spatial referencing as a significant feature of the music producers' interactions. Our analysis suggests that gesture is used to understand, communicate and form action through a process of shaping sounds in space. This metaphor highlights how aesthetic assessments are collaboratively produced and developed through coordinated spatial activity. Our implications establish sensitivity to embodied action in the development of collaborative workspaces for creative, spatial-media production of music.

Shared Virtual Environments (SVEs) have been extensively researched for education, entertainment, work, and training, yet there has been limited research on the creative aspects of collaboration in SVEs. This raises questions about how to design virtual working spaces to support collaborative creativity in SVEs. In this paper, we outline an SVE named LeMo, which allows two people to create music collaboratively. Then we present a study of LeMo, in which 42 users composed music together using three different virtual working space configurations. Results indicate that (i) two types of territory and working configurations emerged during collaborative composing (ii) when made available to them, personal working spaces were extensively used, and were considered to be essential to successful collaborative music making and (iii) a publicly visible personal working space was preferable to a publicly invisible one. Based on these findings, three corresponding design implications for Shared Virtual Environments focusing on supporting collaborative creativity are given.

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co-designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity.

This paper investigates how haptic and auditory stimulation can be playfully implemented as an accessible and stimulating form of interaction for children. We present the design of Mazi, a sonic Tangible User Interface (TUI) designed to encourage spontaneous and collaborative play between children with high support needs autism. We report on a five week study of Mazi with five children aged between 6 and 9 years old at a Special Education Needs (SEN) school in London, UK. We found that collaborative play emerged from the interaction with the system especially in regards to socialization and engagement. Our study contributes to exploring the potential of user-centered TUI development as a channel to facilitate social interaction while providing sensory regulation for children with SENs.

Creative engagement with novel musical interfaces can be rewarding for non-musicians. However, designing novel musical interfaces for non-musicians can be challenging because they lack conceptual and technical musical skills. In this paper we explore the effects of task motivation (experiential goal vs utilitarian goal) and user interface mode (whether the content is editable, and whether content can be replayed), on non-musicians’ creative engagement with novel musical interfaces. We show through an empirical study of twenty-four participants that an experiential exploratory goal encourages users’ creative engagement compared to a utilitarian creative goal. We found that being able to replay records is less important when participants have an experiential exploratory goal than when they have a utilitarian creative goal. Results also indicate that allowing people to replay their musical ideas increased some aspects of their creative engagement which was further increased when they were able to edit their creations. We also found that creative engagement increased when the interface supported users in planning ahead. A descriptive model of non-musician’s creative engagement with musical interfaces is proposed including three modes of musicking. An optimal trajectory of creative engagement through these modes is suggested and a description of inferred motivations, output, status and activities during creative processes is discussed. Design implications are proposed for supporting novices’ creative engagement taking into consideration their motivation and skills, and supporting insight and real-time activity.

Graphical displays are a typical means for conveying awareness information in groupware systems to help users track joint activities, but are not ideal when vision is constrained. Understanding how people maintain awareness through non-visual means is crucial for designing effective alternatives for supporting awareness in such situations. We present a lab study simulating an extreme scenario where 32 pairs of participants use an audio-only tool to edit shared audio menus. Our aim is to characterise collaboration in this audio-only space in order to identify whether and how, by itself, audio can mediate collaboration. Our findings show that the means for audio delivery and choice of working styles in this space influence types and patterns of awareness information exchange. We thus highlight the need to accommodate different working styles when designing audio support for awareness, and extend previous research by identifying types of awareness information to convey in response to group work dynamics.

Co-creation across cultures is a fertile area for the study of design and human computer interaction. Many studies have examined what can be learnt from cultures across the world and how cultures respond to interactive technology, and yet open questions remain on how to engage people in co-creation across cultures. In this article, we reflect on a study of cross-cultural co-creation with the Kam ethnic minority group of China. We report on the kinds of collaboration and value that emerged through the co-creation of an interactive drama, and how a traditional Chinese literature composition method was used to structure the design process. We present a notation for describing cross-cultural co-creation and reflect on the careful balance that we found needed to be struck between the depth of co-creation, immersion in local culture, cultural exchange and interactivity. We report on the use of our approach to elicit serendipitous design opportunities in-situ and how our non-utilitarian approach allowed us to explore different meanings of ‘interactivity’ across cultures.

This paper reports on a study which sets out to examine the process of creative engagement of individual non-musicians when interacting with interactive musical systems (IMSs), and to identify features of IMSs that may support non-musician's creative engagement in music making. In order to creatively engage novices, we aimed to design IMSs which would combine the intuitive interaction of `sound toys' with the rich and complex music possibilities offered by IMSs to support individual learning and creative processes. Two IMSs were designed and built and an empirical user study was conducted of them. The study used a multi-layered methodology, which combined interviews and recordings of user interactions. Analysis of participants' behaviour with the IMSs led to the identification of interaction patterns, which were used to identify a three-step framework ('learn', 'exploration','creation') of creative engagement with the musical interfaces, and to inform the development of implications for design for supporting creative engagement with IMSs. Key implications for design identified in this study are to support novices to: learn the sound; play live; catalyze insights; and scaffold composition. The basic study methodology of this paper also offers a contribution to methods for evaluating designs by combining recording user interactions with interviews.

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) applications have become widely available. An increase in popular interest raises questions about the use of the new medium for communication. While there is a wide variety of literature regarding scene transitions in films, novels and computer games, transitions in VR are not yet widely understood. As a medium that requires a high level of immersion [2], transitions are a desirable tool. This poster delineates an experiment studying the impact of transitions on user experience of presence in VR.

There is growing interest in the application of crossmodal perception to interface design.However, most research has focused on task performance measures and often ignored user experience and engagement.We present an examination of crossmodal congruence in terms of performance and engagement in the context of a memory task of audio, visual, and audio-visual stimuli.Participants in a first study showed improved performance when using a visual congruent mapping that was cancelled by the addition of audio to the baseline conditions, and a subjective preference for the audio-visual stimulus that was not reflected in the objective data.Based on these findings, we designed an audio-visual memory game to examine the effects of crossmodal congruence on user experience and engagement.Results showed higher engagement levels with congruent displays with some reported preference for potential challenge and enjoyment that an incongruent display may support, particularly for increased task complexity.

This paper examines factors that influence how long audience members actively engage with an interactive installation in public settings. The study draws on data from three field studies of an interactive multi-person installation, encompassing questionnaires,video recordings and user-system interaction data. The studies were conducted with unsolicited exhibition audiences during public exhibitions in the UK, China and Spain. In all three studies it was found that the time participants spent interacting with the installation was largely determined by social and contextual factors rather than by how they rated their playing experience. Common triggers identified for leaving were an 'obligation to leave' to accommodate other, potentially waiting audience members, and 'leaving by necessity' in order to follow companions who were moving on.

Nature Bot is a two-part, interactive art installation that uses technology to facilitate a remote exploration of nature through a remote controlled robot with video link, whilst simultaneously reflecting the exploration through a kinetic reactive sculpture within a local built environment. Attention Restoration Theory (ART) was used to design the system so that it harnesses the beneficial properties of "wild nature." The project presents a unique approach to using technology to mediate a sense of immersive connection to nature, providing the user with agency within an external natural environment. The results of a qualitative user experience study suggest the installation fulfilled the elements of ART necessary for an environment conducive of mental restoration and feelings of wellbeing, and that it reflected a sense of nature within the built environment.

Affective computing research has tended to focus on the recognition of emotional states in individuals, with the intention of enhancing human-computer interaction. In this paper we advocate the need for a shift of attention towards emotional communication between people. To contextualise our views we discuss the ways in which rapid technological advances have impacted society and human psychology over the last decade. By outlining our doctoral research topic, we then highlight how affective computing based research could help us understand and enhance co-present human-human interactions. We are especially interested in studying situations where the interaction is directed towards collaborative creativity, as there is little existing work in this area and we see great potential for real-world applications to stem from our research.

We present moosikMasheens, a novel system for musical expression by young people who have physical impairments or complex needs, playing music in a mixed ability group context. moosikMasheens consists of three electro-mechanical musical instruments that can be controlled via simple tablet computer-based interfaces. An adapted glockenspiel, guitar and a set of electro-mechanical drumsticks have the potential to provide feedback through many perceptual channels including sonic, visual, vibro-tactile and kinsaethetic. Through the use of both a priori theory and an extended participatory requirements analysis, the system has been designed for use by both teachers/workshop leaders and students, as this has previously been found to be the most common form of group musical interaction. The technical implementation of the system is outlined with an initial evaluation.

This paper reports on the design and audience evaluation of a collaborative interactive music system titled Polymetros. Designed for broad audiences, Polymetros aims to enable users without musical skills to experience collaborative music-making. First, we describe our design approach with reference to related research. A particular interest was to investigate how to provide novices with individual musical control within a collaborative context. We then present an audience evaluation that was conducted during an exhibition at a major art museum in the UK attended by large numbers of the general public across the age range. The results lead us to evaluate our design approach and reflect on implications for facilitating collaborative music-making for broad audiences. Furthermore, the findings provide interesting indications how the context of a public exhibition setting affects the audience interaction with such an interactive multi-player experience.

There is an increasing desire to remain connected when physically distant and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is one means of satisfying this desire. In particular, there is a growing trend for individuals to use commercially available technology to connect with friends and family in social and leisure settings. Drawing on this trend, performative arts and existing telecommunications research, we identify the social practice of sharing a meal together as ripe for reinterpretation within CMC. We explore the opportunities to design a technology platform that supports remote guests in experiencing togetherness and playfulness within the practices of a traditional dinner party. Through both visual and aural channels as well as remote agency, the dinner guests were able to share a holistic telematic dining experience comparable to a traditional co-presence dinner. Based on the findings, we propose that one must consider the social structure and cultural background of users to inform the design of a technological intervention.

Mutual engagement occurs when people creatively spark together and enter a state of group flow. We present a characterisation of mutually engaging interaction, discuss design features which contribute to mutually engaging interactions, and identify a set of measures for identifying mutual engagement in collaboration. A collaborative music editor's interface features are systematically manipulated in an empirical study of their effect on mutual engagement. The results of the study show that providing shared annotation mechanisms and awareness of identity of others significantly increases mutually engaging interaction.

We perceive just a tiny proportion of the phenomena that surround us everyday. Sensory Threads is a technologically mediated collective sensing expedition which allows people to explore imperceptible phenomena in the world around them. We present a description of the technical system and reflect on our design decisions. Key questions we are concerned with centre around how to represent imperceptible phenomena in real time both inside a building, and outside, and how to engender a sense of collective engagement. We also consider the value created through the multi-disciplinary work involved in constructing such an experience.

Although research on non-visual access to visually represented information is steadily growing, very little work has investigated how such forms of representation could be constructed through non-visual means. We discuss in this paper our approach for providing audio access to relational diagrams using multiple perspective hierarchies, and describe the design of two interaction strategies for constructing and manipulating such diagrams through this approach. A comparative study that we conducted with sighted users showed that a non-guided strategy allowed for significantly faster interaction times, and that both strategies supported similar levels of diagram comprehension. Overall, the reported study revealed that using multiple perspective hierarchies to structure the information encoded in a relational diagram enabled users construct and manipulate such information through an audio-only interface, and that combining aspects from the guided and the non-guided strategies could support greater usability.

Group creativity is a fundamental form of human activity. In this paper we explore what constitutes mutually engaging interaction between people _ interaction in which creative sparks fly and we lose ourselves in the joint action. In this paper we present the results of an experiment to compare the effect representation of identity in a user interface, and task instruction, has on mutual engagement between remote participants. Surprisingly the results indicate that providing no cues to identity increased mutual engagement between participants. We also discuss the appropriateness of quantitative, qualitative, and self-report data for identifying points of mutual engagement.

Music has lost its role as a central part of many people's everyday action. This paper reports on the design and impact of a novel environment for remote group music improvisation with the view to understanding how we could design more engaging, social, and serendipitous musical environments. The design reported here focuses on the representation of looping music, support for remote collaboration, and support for idea formulation. Observations of use suggest that the environment developed does encourage some group music, and we identify clear areas for future design consideration.

This paper reports on a study of clinicians who care for diabetic patients, and on the design of an application to support their work. The clinicians' long-term activity is rooted in a series of private sessions with the patient. Clinicians exchange information but the timeliness, specificity and other salient features of the communication are often unsatisfactory. Problems consequently arise such as the omission or duplication of tests. We describe a conceptual framework to account for the effectiveness of knowledge-sharing in groups such as these, and use it to motivate an application aimed at improving the clinicians' levels of communication and coordination.