Research has been carried out on robots approaching one person [1, 3, 4]. However, further research is needed on robots approaching groups of people. In the study reported in this paper, we studied participants who were paired up for a task and assessed their perception and behaviors as they were approached by a robot from various angles. On an individual level, participants liked the frontal approaches, and they disliked being approached from the back. However, we found that the presence of a task-partner influenced participants' comfort with a robot approaching (i.e. when the robot approaches and one is standing behind the task-partner). Apart from the positioning of the individuals, the layout of the room, position of furniture and doors, also seemed to influence their experience. This pilot study was performed with a limited number of participants (N=30). However, the study offers preliminary insights into the factors that influence the choice for a robot approach direction when approaching a pair of people that are focused on a task.

How to provide users a positive experience during interaction with information (i.e., the “Information eXperience” (IX)) is still an open question. As a starting point, this work investigates how the emotion of interest can be influenced by modifying the complexity of the information presented to users. The appraisal theory of interest suggests a “sweet spot” where interest will be at its peak: information that is novel and complex yet still comprehensible. This “sweet spot” is approximated using two studies. Study One develops a computational model of textual complexity founded on psycholinguistic theory on processing difficulty. The model was trained and tested on 12,420 articles, achieving a classification performance of 90.87% on two classes of complexity. Study Two puts the model to its ultimate test: Its application to change the user's IX. Using 18 news articles the influence of complexity on interest and its appraisals is unveiled. A structural equation model shows a positive influence of complexity on interest, yet a negative influence of comprehensibility, confirming a seemingly paradoxical relationship between complexity and interest. By showing when complexity becomes interesting, this paper shows how information systems can use the model of textual complexity to construct an interesting IX.

In this study we investigate the role of remote touch as an additional communication channel in the context of storytelling. We focus on studying the effect of remote touch and the timing of touch on perceived social presence and story recall. In our experiment people listened to an emotional story. Listeners were either remotely touched by the storyteller at emotional story moments, remotely touched at random moments during the story, or not touched at all. Our results indicate that remote touch does not enhance the perceived social presence of the storyteller. However, even when the link between remote touch and the story is not explicitly clear, touch at emotional story moments can contribute to the perception of the story. Furthermore, while touches at emotional story moments can distract from the story content, touch in general can implicitly enhance the attention paid to the story content.

In this paper we outline the design process of the TaSST (Tactile Sleeve for Social Touch), a touch-sensitive vibrotactile arm sleeve. The TaSST was designed to enable two people to communicate different types of touch over a distance. The touch-sensitive surface of the sleeve consists of a grid of 4×3 sensor compartments filled with conductive wool. Each compartment controls the vibration intensity of a vibration motor, located in a grid of 4×3 motors beneath the touch-sensitive layer. An initial evaluation of the TaSST revealed that it was mainly suitable for communicating protracted (e.g. pressing), and simple (e.g. poking) touches.

We evaluated the effects of robot gaze behavior on interactions with multiple users in a museum-like setting. We posit that a robot needs to divide its attention between multiple users and may be able to use its gaze to ‘point’ at objects of interest. A 2 (person-oriented [only looking at participants] vs. object-oriented [also looking at artworks] gaze) × 2 (‘favored’ [looked at more] vs. ‘not favored’ [looked at less] by the robot) mixed factorial design (N=57) study was carried out in a museum-like lab setting where a robot talked about two artworks to groups of three participants. Results indicate that ‘favored’ participants did indeed pay more attention to the robot and the artworks. However, surprisingly they paid more attention when the robot did not look over to the object of interest compared to when it did give this gaze cue. The findings suggest that using an object-oriented gaze as a cue for people to look at an object may not carry across readily from person-to-person to human-robot communication. People had trouble interpreting the cue and were possibly distracted by the robot's movement.

How a robot approaches a person greatly determines the interaction that follows. This is particularly relevant when the person has never interacted with the robot before. In human communication, we exchange a multitude of multimodal signals to communicate our intent while we approach others. However, most robots do not have the capabilities to produce such signals and easily communicate their intent. In this paper we propose to communicate intent when a robot approaches a person through functional noise and approach speed. Both were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment (N=40) either slowly increasing at the start of the approach and slowly decreasing when the robot reached the human or maximized at the start and abruptly stopped at the end of the approach. We analyzed questionnaires and video data from the interaction and found that particularly functional noise that in-/decreased in volume was helpful to communicate the robot's intent but only in congruence with an in-/decreasing velocity.

Often, the way subject matter is included in educational games does not fully utilize or sometimes even inhibits the full learning potential of games. This paper argues that in order to optimally use the potential of games for learning, games should be endogenous. An endogenous educational game is a game where the educational content is integrated in the game play mechanics themselves, rather than bolted-on using explicit messages. This research examines the relation between explicit messages, explorative game behavior, and comprehension by developing two versions of an endogenous educational game about overfishing, one with and one without an explicit purpose. The game was tested with 13 children aged 8 to 11. The results indicate that factual knowledge and comprehension is increased with explicit messages, and in particular deep comprehension is fostered by explorative game behavior. This confirms the plea for endogenous games to teach about bombs, fish, coral reefs, and more.

This paper presents a scenario to enrich children's experiences during a museum visit by implicitly guiding them through the exhibition space via a collaboratively created, topic related questionnaire. At the end of the visit, a personalised virtual museum catalogue can be created. This allows children to access data about the subjects they were most interested in during their visit and re-use it either at home or in the classroom, e.g. to search for further information on-line.

Museums are increasingly being equipped with interactive technology. The main goal of using technology is to improve the museum-going experience of visitors. In this paper, we present the results of a study with an electronic quest through a museum aimed at children in the age of 10-12. We wanted to find out whether personalization of the quest effects enjoyment. For this purpose we involved an interactive multi-touch table in the experiment, which also offered the opportunity to add the element of collaboration. We compared a group that did the original non-personalized quest with a group that did the personalized quest. This last group interacted with the multi-touch table to personalize the quest before they started on it. No significant differences were found between the experimental groups. We did find many differences between the children of age 10-11 and those of age 11-12, on almost all measurements. On this aspect we present some methodical results about measuring enjoyment and intrinsic motivation with children of 10-12 years old.

FROG (Fun Robotic Outdoor Guide) is a project that aims to develop an outdoor robotic guide that enriches the visitor experience in touristic sites. This paper is a first step toward a guide robot and presents a case study on how to analyze the visitors' experience and examine opportunities for a future robot guide in the sites. We adopted the participatory design method for mapping the visitor experience; the end users of the tourist sites participated actively in finding and discussing their experience of visiting. Results indicated that visitors especially like the structure of the tour and the stories provided, especially interesting little known facts the guide gives. However, they do not like the rushed pace of a guided tour. When exploring the site by themselves, they enjoy the freedom, the time to make pictures and to concentrate on what interests them. Visitors do not like a lack or overload of information or problems with route finding. Not all guide-related factors that influence a visitor's experience positively can be copied one-on-one to a robot guide. And care needs to be taken to identify those aspects of guided tours and guide behaviors that will be effective for robot-guided tours. In this paper we describe the first step towards the realization of an outdoor robotic guide. We evaluate people's experiences of guided tours to inform the design of robot-guided tours. This analysis forms the basis for ongoing research into the development of effective robot behaviors.

Creativity is a relevant characteristic for people's development as it facilitates the generation of new ideas and innovation processes. Although technology has played an important role on creativity stimulation, it still needs to be explored for a better understanding and support in the context of information and communication technologies. In this paper a basic creativity assessment model is presented and an empirical study has been conducted whose aim is to get insight into whether an interactive surface as base technology for collaborative creative tasks is promising in terms of both collaboration and creativity traits. In the study two tabletop-based platforms (a digitally-augmented, and a physical-only without computer mediation) were involved to solve a problem consisting of creating Rube-Goldberg machines. From these experiments, we have observed that in terms of creativity traits, interactive surfaces seem promising as groups working in the digital platform showed significantly more performance in fluency of thinking, were more motivated, and novelty was found near to significance. Also some issues related to collaboration and interaction were analyzed. In particular, the co-operation, the retrial fine adjustment, and the dominance showed that the properties of an interactive surface tabletop suits better for facilitating the sharing of objects and participation in conditions of co-operation by co-located participants.

An endogenous educational game is a game where the educational content is integrated in the game play mechanics themselves. These games rely on a constructivist approach to learning, where the learner constructs knowledge through concrete experiences. Endogenous educational games which are specifically developed for educational purposes mostly make this purpose explicit: they make it clear in advance what is about to be learned. This research tried to find out how such an explicit purpose influences the game behavior and comprehension by developing two versions of an endogenous educational game about over fishing, one with and one without an explicit purpose. It showed that children who played the explicit version got more shallow knowledge and showed more active game behavior. The players who showed more explorative game behavior acquired more deep knowledge about the game.

This paper describes a one semester research course for undergraduates of computing programs. Students formulate a research proposal, conduct research and write a full paper. They present the results at a one-day student conference. On the one hand we offer the students a lot of structure and support; on the other hand an important feature of the course is that they are in control of their own research. A key aspect of the pedagogical approach is that the students are supervised in small teams by experienced staff. The results of evaluations show that the students are positive about the course. One of the main findings is that they feel well prepared to conduct research in the graduate program.

We study the effectiveness of stereoscopy and smooth motion as 3D cues for medical interpretation of vascular structures as obtained by 3D medical imaging techniques. We designed a user study where the user has to follow a path in a mazelike solid shaded 3D structure. The user controls rotation of the model. We measure user performance in terms of time taken and error rate. The experiment was executed with 32 (medical and non-medical) users. The results show that motion cue is more important than stereoscopy, and that stereoscopy has no added value when motion is already present, which is not consistent with previous experiments.

Abstraction is viewed as a key concept in computer science. It is not only an important concept but also one that is difficult to master. This paper focuses on the problems that novices experience when they first encounter this concept. Three assignments from introductory courses are analyzed, to understand why abstraction is difficult for novices. This analysis leads to a number of guidelines that can be used by instructors to support novices learning abstraction.

Visual search is a task that is performed in various application areas. Search can be aided by an automatic warning system, which highlights the sections that may contain targets and require the user's attention. The effect of imperfect automatic warnings on overall performance ultimately depends on the interplay between the user and the automatic warning system. While various user studies exist, the different studies differ in several experimental variables including the nature of the visualisation itself. Studies in the medical area remain relatively rare, even though there is a growing interest in medical screening systems. We describe an experiment where users had to perform a visual search on a vascular structure, traversing a particular vessel linearly in search of possible errors made in an automatic segmentation. We find that only the case in which the warning system generates only false positives improves user time and error performance. We discuss this finding in relation to the findings of other studies.

As widely recognized, there is more to relevance than topicality. By looking at the user experience of Information Retrieval (IR), this proposal takes a broader perspective on relevance. Several facets of relevance are structured according to how the user will experience an information object. In particular, the antecedents and consequences of positive affect are discussed. The consequences of positive affect are related to the goal of an IR system, whereas features to derive the antecedents of positive affect from information objects are proposed. The features are combined in a model of relevance, consisting of three factors: topicality, understandability, and affective value. Moreover, it is discussed how the model can be evaluated through methods based on user studies.

A case study on the use of an existing photo sharing application in a spinal cord lesion rehabilitation centre is presented. The study focuses on enhancing social connectedness through sharing photos between rehabilitants and their families and friends. Four rehabilitants participated in this study for 6-7 weeks. Most photos sent related to sharing things in everyday life and keeping the rehabilitant informed about regular events. The combination of interviews and content analysis reveals that only a minority of the photos lead to follow-up communication about the contents of the photos. Rehabilitants were positively surprised how spontaneous photo sharing simplified the way they could reconnect to their friends and family, without the immediate need or obligation to engage in a (phone) conversation.

In this project an interactive computer system is designed that envisions to contribute to young children's musical education. From literature, requirements for musical interaction were derived. In this paper these requirements and the design of the system are described.

In this paper we discuss an approach towards passively observing students in a driving simulator. The goal is to enhance the learning experience for students taking lessons in this simulator. To this end, a virtual driving instructor is provided with added information consisting of the gaze behavior of its student. The gaze behavior is defined by estimated head locations and orientations. The learning experience for the student is enhanced by providing added feedback to the student based on his observed behavior

Team projects are nowadays common practice in HCI education. This paper focuses on the role of clients and users in team projects in introductory HCI courses. In order to provide projects with a realistic context we invite people from industry to serve as clients for the student teams. Some of them have a professional interest in participating in our course and define a project themselves. Another way we make projects realistic is to have teams evaluate their designs with real users.We describe how we incorporate the role of clients and users in our courses and describe our experiences. One of the results of our evaluations is that most students find it very interesting and stimulating to work with a client on a 'real' project from industry.

Recommender systems help people to find information that is interesting to them. However, current recommendation techniques only address the user’s short-term and long-term interests, not their immediate interests. This paper describes a method to structure information (with or without using recommendations) taking into account the users’ immediate interests: a goal-based structuring method. Goal-based structuring is based on the fact that people experience certain gratifications from using information, which should match with their goals. An experiment using an electronic TV guide shows that structuring information using a goal-based structure makes it easier for users to find interesting information, especially if the goals are used explicitly; this is independent of whether recommendations are used or not. It also shows that goal-based structuring has more influence on how easy it is for users to find interesting information than recommendations.

We investigated the effects of varying eye gaze behavior of an embodied conversational agent on the quality of human-agent dialogues. In an experiment we compared three versions of an agent: one with gaze behavior that is typically found to occur in human-human dialogues, one with gaze that is fixed most of the time, and a third version with random gaze behavior. The versions were found to yield significant differences in efficiency of the dialogues and in user satisfaction, amongst others.

No abstract available.

Until recently it was difficult to incorporate team projects in distance education. Nowadays, however, new technology is available which allows for distance teamwork. In this paper we will describe a project-oriented course on human-computer interaction. The course is meant for computer science students in distance education. A serious restriction is caused by the fact that the students study at home, where they usually only have a slow connection to Internet at their disposal. We will focus on the way we structured the course to make distance teamwork possible. Furthermore the tools we offered the students will be discussed. Finally, in the paper we will present the first experiences gained in a pilot project with 12 computer science students.