Thermal imaging plays a vital role in search and rescue, yet little is known about how color palette selection affects human recognition performance. While AI-based detection dominates current research, manual identification remains crucial in unpredictable or ethically sensitive conditions. This study evaluates three commonly used thermal palettes, White Hot, Ironbow, and Rainbow, using a recently available dataset of challenging aerial images. In an online user study with 75 participants, task time, hit accuracy, and not found responses were measured. Results show that White Hot enabled faster and more accurate performance, while Rainbow significantly hindered detection. These findings offer practical guidance for designing thermal interfaces and highlight the importance of perceptual optimization in augmented vision systems.

Virtual reality (VR) in museum exhibitions often centers on the person using a head-mounted display (HMD), overlooking the experience of co-located visitors. We conducted a user study with 25 participants, using a prototype museum exhibit featuring VR content, one HMD, a tangible controller, and a public display. Our findings identified four user roles: HMD User, Guide, Observer, and Avoidant Participant, shaped by the design, usability, and social context. Guides emerged to assist others, partly compensating for the usability and lack of embedded instructions. Observer and Avoidant roles revealed missed opportunities for interaction. Our findings highlight the value of designing for asymmetric participation to support varied and inclusive engagement in group settings with VR in museum settings, and we present design implications to better support this.

The traditional values of jewellery—such as remembrance, self-expression, or symbolic meaning—are often overlooked in smart jewellery research. To examine how technological integration might influence these values, we conducted an online survey with 81 participants. Our findings suggest that many participants were reluctant to embed technology into their empowering jewellery pieces, with some describing it as “contaminating” them. At the same time, participants expressed interest in extending jewellery with features such as health monitoring and other functional utilities. We contribute initial insights into how technology may reshape the perceived meaning and value of jewellery, offering implications for the design of future smart jewellery.

The memory orb is a cylindrical input device for virtual reality, inspired by a science-fiction artifact. This paper extends previous work by presenting a use case, interactions, and a user study directly grounded in a movie scene, guiding the design of hovering, selecting, translating, rotating, and scaling 3D objects. Results show performance comparable to traditional virtual reality controllers and positive user reception, supporting further exploration of this novel, fiction-inspired interface.

We investigate the integration of embodied agents within the automotive environment to enhance driver guidance. We explore the concept through two user studies. Through a gesture elicitation study using motion capture technology, we first identified a set of whole-body gestures suitable for in-car driver assistance. We then recreated the selected gestures by acting them out and recording them as animations. The selected gestures were then evaluated and mapped to different driving-related scenarios in the second study conducted in a simulated in-car condition. The most promising gestures for an embodied in-car driving assistant were pointing towards a certain direction, showing warning signs by crossing the arms either on the chest or arms on top of the head, and performing waving gestures to alert or to grasp the driver’s attention. By charting the potential signaling gestures, we aim to advance the development of more intuitive in-car guidance systems, ultimately promoting road safety.

This study investigates the effects of dynamic and static visual manipulations, specifically darkening vignettes, on user experience and task performance in extended reality (XR) environments. By using heart rate (HR) as physiological feedback, the study explores how dynamic visual adaptations based on HR impact immersion, task focus, and user comfort. A user study (n = 16) found that while dynamic vignettes could increase immersion and encourage a more focused approach, they also induced discomfort, anxiety, and reduced task performance for some participants. The results reveal that although users may adapt to these visual effects over time, the variability in emotional and physical reactions suggests that such dynamic visual adaptations based on physiological signals should be carefully calibrated to balance enhanced immersion with user comfort. This research contributes to the understanding of adaptive XR environments and the role of physiological feedback in shaping user experience.

This demo presents a virtual reality (VR) experience on recycling plastics.Through the interactive, immersive virtual experience, the user can become familiar with the recycling center site and sort a selection of plastic products.The playful experience was designed to refine and evaluate the design of a planned physical recycling station.The interactive prototype served two purposes: first, to encourage recycling behavior and increase familiarity with plastic recycling practices; and second, to gather feedback on the design of the recycling site to optimize user experience and recycling efficiency.

Figure 1: The Aware Eye provotype located on the user's back turns its gaze towards approaching people.

Figure 1: An inaccessible graveyard (left), virtually modelled (center), and visited using a custom interface designed for a museum setting (right).

Robots' abilities to communicate with humans are often limited, missing expressive power and non-verbal communication cues.We present a concept design and a wizard-of-Oz prototype of a wearable emoji display, which aims to provide additional communication cues to communicate the robot's intent and provide means for a more affective communication towards a human.We explore the concept of an emoji necklace with a robot dog, which has more limitations in expressing its intent compared to a humanoid robot design.The concept was evaluated in a user study with ten participants.The salient findings indicate that the robot dog's intentions were perceived as easier to interpret with the wearable emoji display, especially when displaying clear emojis matching the robot's movements.

The emoji keyboard for collecting feedback in-the-wild

The increasing integration of human-robot interaction (HRI) into social settings demands the development of human-centered AI technologies that prioritize intuitive, ethical, and empathetic interactions. As robots become more prevalent in everyday life—ranging from assistive devices in healthcare to educational tools in classrooms and customer service agents in retail—it is essential to ensure they can communicate and collaborate with humans in ways that are not only effective but also socially appropriate and meaningful. This workshop aims to explore cutting-edge advancements and interdisciplinary approaches to building AI-driven systems that facilitate effective, meaningful, and socially appropriate interactions between robots and humans across various environments such as healthcare, education, and customer service. We will primarily focus on several key themes, such as human-centered contextual AI, AI-driven intelligent robotics, ethical and responsible AI, and real-world applications. This workshop invites contributions from researchers, practitioners, and developers who are working on AI systems that empower robots to operate effectively in human-centered environments. By addressing challenges such as interpreting human emotions, understanding social cues, and adhering to ethical standards, and by sharing advancements in human-centered AI, we aim to shape the future of HRI. Our goal is to ensure that robots enrich human social experiences, fostering interactions that are not only efficient but also enhance the quality of life. By uniting efforts from various disciplines, we aspire to create robots that seamlessly integrate into society, ultimately contributing to a more harmonious coexistence between humans and robotic systems.

Emojis are increasingly used in tools to evaluate user opinions, typically through happy-to-sad rating scales. We extended this concept by developing an emoji-based User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), a well-established UX evaluation tool. Our design process involved selecting emojis corresponding to UEQ adjectives and creating bipolar emoji scales. The final tool covered 11 scales but could not represent the novelty subscale due to limitations of the emoji language. A comparative user study showed statistically similar results for 7 out of 11 scales between the emoji-based and word-based UEQs. Although the word-based version was preferred, our findings suggest that emoji-based scales can be a viable alternative for UX evaluation. Our work provides new insights into the potential and limitations of using emojis in UX research. Supplementary materials include a ready-to-use UEQ-Emoji form and an analysis tool.

Wearable displays can be helpful in the winter outdoors, where using a mobile phone is difficult due to gloves. In this paper, we explore the concept of integrating a graphical navigator display into a skiing glove. We created a prototype that was trialed on the slopes while snowboarding. After this, we organized a focus group with snowboarders and downhill skiers to evaluate the concept and wearable display use cases in the winter mountain context. The results emphasize use cases that focus on the awareness of group members for safety, navigation, and unobtrusive and simple design.

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.

We investigate the user experience of taking a remote museum tour with 360 video technologies. We compare the experience of viewing a 360 video feed on a laptop screen vs. a 360 virtual reality (VR) video experienced through a head-mounted display (HMD). Our salient findings from a user study (n = 10) highlight that HMD VR provides a better immersion and sense of control for users. However, the HMD VR user experience suffers from the lack of personal contact, such as eye contact with the guide, discontinuities in the visual presentation, and missing multimodal contextual cues. The research contributes to the design of remote tourism services.

Abstract This paper addresses graveyards as a context for designing interactive technology, especially pervasive displays and the presentation of information related to graves and the dead. We present our research containing three user studies: a focus group–based study on perceptions of different display technologies in the cemetery context, evaluation of a gravestone display prototype, and a user study with a graveyard navigator prototype. Whereas, HCI research surrounding death has so far largely focused on an individual’s digital remains, our focus is on the physical graveyard setting. We contribute to understanding the potential impacts and opportunities of interactive technology in this design context. Our salient findings highlight the cultural sensitivity and importance of dignity related to the context, unobtrusiveness of the technology, and concerns for privacy and social acceptability. Concepts taking into account these design aspects were of interest for those researching family histories, and visitors seeking improved navigation for the graveyard.

We present the design and prototype of a memory orb, a cylindrical device inspired from an artifact depicted in the science fiction movie Blade Runner 2049. The memory orb is a handheld input device, which allows users to control and manipulate three-dimensional, virtual content by combining pushing, pulling and rotating motor actions, facilitating muscle memory and eyes-free interaction. Our prototype integrates a large number of electronic components while maintaining a small form factor to allow ease of control and simple handling. The described implementation of this prototype aims to showcase the application potential of this cylindrical device in mixed, or virtual reality systems.

One mechanism for the spread of the COVID-19 virus is through contaminated surfaces, e.g. tables in cafes, trains or public libraries. This mechanism may be prevented by cleaning the table surface between each use. In practice, this can be optimized by directing arriving users to clean tables and highlighting to staff which surfaces require cleaning. One approach to achieve this is through making the table surface itself smart and indicate its clean or dirty status. In the CleanLeaf table we demonstrate two approaches to integrating indication in a table surface, LEDs under a thin wood veneer and electrochromic displays. Rather than explicit light emitting display based signage, the design demonstrates calm computing with the display forming an integral part of the surface design.

This paper explores a novel concept of textile-based shadow displays that incorporates shape memory alloys (SMA) on fabrics to cast dynamic shadows as an ambient information display. To explore this, we implemented a lamp prototype, capable of presenting a set of dynamic shadows. These shadows exemplified iconic vs. abstract shadow figures, as well as demonstrating changes in shadow sharpness, size and/or position on the lamp’s shade. We conducted a user study (n =8) to investigate the perception toward our concept. Our findings report that the concept does not only provide the potential for a variety of use cases, dynamic alterations of the shadows feel like a decorative addition to the living spaces, as well as creating relaxing channels of information display.

In this paper, we explore people’s perceptions and usage of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it had changed compared to the pre-pandemic times. As salient findings, we report increased activity in social media, which followed both from the increased opportunity to spend time in social media, the need to be socially connected, and the motivation to follow pandemic related updates. The perceived emerging content visible in social media postings were face masks, home and outdoors activities, remote events, and different challenges. Social media also made people aware of the divided opinions related to the pandemic, and could lead to more careful self-censoring of own postings. Our study is based on interviews of 29 and online survey of 172 people.

Mainstream communication technology today enables us to connect with loved ones across long distances. However, even with the proliferation of easy-to-use technology, there are reports on increasing loneliness and isolation amongst people. The technologies that enable these interactions are not necessarily designed to support meaningful emotional communication for users in long-distance relationships (LDRs). Furthermore, there is a lack of participatory tools that are designed with the focus of supporting end-user involvement in the design of LDR communication systems. We developed the Flexi Card Game (FCG), a card-based generative design toolkit to support designers and non-designers within participatory structures that can help develop unconventional communication systems to support LDRs. The FCG was developed using an iterative design process, involving end-users, designers, and researchers across five workshops with 56 participants. The paper makes three main contributions: (1) presents FCG—the novel card-based design toolkit itself, (2) describes the process of developing an LDR framework into a participatory toolkit, and (3) offers lessons and insights that can help researchers who are developing participatory tools in similar contexts.

Workplace stress is a growing problem, which is often not identified by sufferers and those around them until it becomes chronic. Moreover, admitting to feel stressed is a highly private and therefore sensitive topic, particularly at work. Informed by the findings from six in-depth interviews, we designed the manually self-adjusted wearable BuSiNec: a Busyness Signifying Necklace. 18 participants wore it at their workplace and reported on their experiences and their usage behavior through a diary and in a focus group interview. Our findings indicate that BuSiNec supports self-reflection on stress and further stimulates valuable discussions among co-users which in turn increased mutual consideration. Participants were conscious of their their displayed busyness status towards others and used the display to encourage or discourage discussions and interruptions, or as a warning of upcoming hurry. From these findings, we derive recommendations for the integration of affective state information in wearable displays.

Medical images taken with mobile phones by patients, i.e. medical selfies, allow screening, monitoring and diagnosis of skin lesions. While mobile teledermatology can provide good diagnostic accuracy for skin tumours, there is little research about emotional and physical aspects when taking medical selfies of body parts. We conducted a survey with 100 participants and a qualitative study with twelve participants, in which they took images of eight body parts including intimate areas. Participants had difficulties taking medical selfies of their shoulder blades and buttocks. For the genitals, they prefer to visit a doctor rather than sending images. Taking the images triggered privacy concerns, memories of past experiences with body parts and raised awareness of the bodily medical state. We present recommendations for the design of mobile apps to address the usability and emotional impacts of taking medical selfies.

The design of graphical augmented reality (AR) markers requires compromise between the aesthetic appearance and tracking reliability. To investigate the topic, we created a virtual reality (VR) pipeline to evaluate marker performance, and validated it against real-world performance for a set of graphical AR markers. We report that, with the well known Vuforia framework and typical smartphone hardware, well designed 20 × 20 cm markers can be tracked at distances of up to 68 cm. We note that the number of feature points is particularly important to a marker’s angular performance.

We explore the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) as co-design tools for service design. Four expert service designers, working in industry, tried out and discussed different VR and AR based tools: Head mounted display (HMD) based VR and AR, and projected environments. The findings emphasize that HMD techniques are not favored, as they isolate the wearer from the co-design situation and hinder the observation of emotions and expressions. Projection of the design context was positively commented, as supporting collaboration in co-design sessions.

We present the design and prototype of the DecoLive Jacket, a dynamic clothing that allows its wearer to switch between opened and closed states of flower patterns as subtle indication of availability for social interactions. The Jacket embodies two electrochromic (EC) displays and NFC-based wireless energy harvesting components, enabling battery-free operation. The wearer controls the garment’s patterning by placing a smartphone in one of the two pockets of the jacket, activating either the open or closed flower visualization, and expressing a subtle message about their willingness to interact with others. Our implementation demonstrates the potential for battery-free EC displays on aesthetic wearables to enable dynamic control of the non-verbal messages communicated by clothing.

In this demo paper, we present the Flexi Card Game – a card-based generative design toolkit to support designers and non-designers with different backgrounds in participatory structures in the development of unconventional communication systems, with a particular focus on supporting couples in long-distance relationships.

We present the design and prototype of ShadowSparrow, an ambient display utilizing lights & shadows. The concept uses illustrative bird images and other relevant visuals (e.g., dishwasher and e-mail icons) cast on the surroundings for ambient information visualizations and notifications. Our work creates an alternative channel to convey non-critical information in an unobtrusive and aesthetic way.

Simple and low bandwidth communication on computers has been found to promote intimacy between couples. In this work, we further explore this minimal communication in the form of wearables. This pictorial presents an in-the-wild concept study of low bandwidth ambient wearable displays as a communication channel between couples. The goal is to understand the contexts in which the technology might be used and provide benefit. Our findings show that simple communications through a wearable device could provide an additional channel for communication. The wearable form factors also creates the feeling of being always connected. We highlight the importance and influence of form factors, contexts, and activities towards user experience. We discuss the opportunities this study opens for the future design of wearable ambient displays.

In this paper, we investigate the use of mobile technology in an underexplored context, the bed that couples share. Despite large amounts of research on the impact of pre-bedtime technology use on our sleep and mental state, scant research in the HCI field focuses on the physical bed as a negotiated site of technology use by couples. This paper explores (a) the meaning of the bed accessed by mobile technology and (b) the strategies of both individual and shared technology use in bed, in the context of couple's relationships. We investigate the effects of mobile technology to couples' bed-sharing practices through in-depth interviews (n = 12) and an online survey (n = 117). We report on creative and negotiated bodily practices of mobile technology use by couples in bed, and the perceived effects on couples' verbal and physical interaction and the intimacy of the bed.

We present the design and prototype of the Linn Dress, a transforming dress that allows its wearer to dynamically reveal and conceal areas of skin, as they feel comfortable and appropriate for different contexts. Electrochromic displays are employed as the elements enabling the garment's dynamic transparency. The Linn Dress is designed for office workers with a lively lifestyle, who shift directly from the work environment to social evening events. The dress presents professional working attire, and when transformed to reveal exciting open cuts and patterns, a cocktail dress.

Focusing on pedestrian safety in the era of automated vehicles, we investigate the interaction between pedestrians and automated cars. In particular, we investigate the influence of external car displays (ECDs) on pedestrians' crossing behavior, and the time needed to make a crossing decision. We present a study in a high-immersion VR environment comparing three alternative car-situated visualizations: a smiling grille, a traffic light style indicator, and a gesturing robotic driver. Crossing at non-designated crossing points on a straight road and at a junction, where vehicles turn towards the pedestrian, are explored. We report that ECDs significantly reduce pedestrians' decision time, and argue that ECDs support comfort, trust and acceptance in automated vehicles. We believe ECDs might become a valuable addition for future vehicles.

The amount of status and notification information available to people is increasing beyond the capacity of the current primary delivery channel of smartphones. Ambient displays, e.g. embedded in the home or work environment present an alternative channel, suited to less critical information. We created an ambient display by manipulating the natural shadows cast by a house plant to carry information. To explore user perceptions of the shadow display we evaluated it in a focus group (n = 6). Whilst participants saw some potential in the approach, there were concerns about identifying the meaning of the display and the psychological effects of distorting reality. The work highlights the potential for designers to explore the use of functional shadows to carry non-critical information.

Virtual reality offers a potential solution to enable visiting inaccessible cultural heritage sites. We present the design, prototyping and evaluation (n = 6) of a virtual visit to a historic graveyard. The Salla World War II graveyard is located in an inaccessible border zone between Finland and Russia. Our virtual graveyard, accessed through a head mounted display, aimed to create an as accurate as possible simulation of the Salla graveyard, including its atmosphere. Users are enabled to navigate the virtual graveyard and place a candle on a grave. Although the simulation was considered immersive, participants wished for more authenticity and details, e.g. being able to light the virtual candle. The work opens discussion on the need for dignity in the design of virtual experiences for sensitive cultural heritage sites.

In recent years, design and form factors of wearables have converged towards traditional jewellery, such as rings, necklaces and bracelets. Even though the aesthetics of smart jewellery have been gradually improved, many current commercial pieces are still mainly functionality and technology-driven. In this paper, we take steps to better understand the design and wearing aspects of smart jewellery. We investigate how jewellery wearers associate functionalities with body locations in a design exploration session with industrial design students using the terms "private" and "public" as keys. Results suggest that with privacy in mind, smart jewellery designs move towards the wearer's hands and fingers and selected data sources originating from the wearer's body were preferred, while designs for "public" information presentation tended to be moved to higher locations on the body, i.e. head, neck and chest, and to be fed from external data sources.

This paper explores the design space of wearable technology from the customisation point of view. We identify emerging customisation practices and customisable attributes from previous work in research and in a dataset of 129 commercial wearable devices. We distinguish between attributes on functional customisation, interaction techniques, location on the body, and appearance. While people have a variety of conventional clothing and accessories options to fulfil their personal preferences and lifestyle, this is a lot less for wearable devices. The commercial wearables still cluster around few use cases, especially fitness, and wrist-worn form factors.

We explore collaborative media as a tool for empowering people towards sustainability and seeking solutions against climate change. As a case study, we investigate the Youth4Climate collaborative media site, where people can post an idea for tackling climate change, and comment and vote on others' ideas. By analysing the body of 266 ideas and 1406 comments posted on the collaborative media platform, we identify eight functions on how collaborative media supports community powered ecological sustainability transformations. Our work contributes in understanding and structuring collaborative media in citizen activism.

We describe our work on developing a mobile game that utilizes local history and cultural heritage in its storyline and content. The game is depicted in the town of Kemijärvi, Northern Finland, in the 1920's, and its aim is to encourage visitors and locals to get to know the town's history. The game was designed with input from history experts on the topic, and it introduces local history in the form of a narrated story, where the user has to visit the town's historical places and characters. We present the design process, the game concept and a user evaluation. As the lessons learnt and findings from our design process, we highlight the challenge of finding the balance between historical accuracy and engaging game narrative, and the importance of selecting the target user group and involving them when refining the concept and user interface design.

We investigate an unconventional user interface (UI) material, water, and how applying it to a finger-touch based input affects the user experience (UX). We compare the use of touchscreen, mechanical and liquid covered sliders, and three different approaches of how water is applied to the surface of the slider. The salient findings of our user study (n=25) show that liquid changes the perception of the slider control making it more hedonic and experiental. When interacting with water, users prefer larger and more free-form gestures, and factors such as depth and temperature of the liquid affect the experience. Our work provides information for interaction designers focusing on user experience, unconventional materials for interactive systems, aesthetics, and calm UIs.

We present the design and prototype of the Idle Stripes shirt, which is an aesthetic, clothing-integrated display, reflecting the wearer's physical activity in an ambient manner. The design is targeted to be smart business-wear for an office worker, which creates awareness of immobility periods during typical sitting-intensive office work. Long periods of such sitting are known to be health risks. The Idle Stripes shirt promotes healthy working, encouraging the wearer to break up their office desk work with walking breaks. The design prototype is constructed of a fabric with integrated optical fibers, which are illuminated based on the sitting time detected by an app running on the wearer's mobile phone.

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.

This tutorial addresses the application of service design methods for Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The tutorial will cover methodological and practical aspects of service design, focusing on three key tools -- stakeholder maps, consumer journey and business model canvas. The service design methods are tried out with interactive exercises, where participants in groups apply the methods to a design case. Service design is an emerging field, which applies a holistic design approach to understand and design for human experience. With an increasing number of digital services, both in commercial and public frontiers, it is important to develop services that are easy to use, and where the consumer's journey through the service pathways is fluent and consistent.

In this paper, we consider graveyards as a design context, and present a prototype graveyard-navigator mobile application. The app enables search and navigation to particular graves and provides information on family connections between the buried. We evaluate the application, and chart general perceptions of technology use in graveyards through in situ interviews in a graveyard (n=12). Our findings reveal that navigating in a graveyard with the mobile application was found both useful and acceptable, whereas visualizing family trees was perceived with mixed feelings, due to privacy concerns. The perceptions of technology use in the graveyard emphasized the importance of unobtrusiveness and respect for the peace and privacy of other visitors, as well as for the context.

We present Connected Candles, a peripheral aesthetic display for creating awareness and connecting people in long distance relationships (LDRs). The system consists of a pair of candle stands, which each include two candles, one being a real candle and the other electronic. The candle stands are placed at different locations, and are connected over the Internet such that lighting the real candle illuminates the electronic candle at the distant location. We present the concept's design, prototype, and its evaluation in a focus group based user study. Our findings illustrate the potential for using candles as a peripheral user interface to mediate emotional communication between couples in long-distance relationships.

We present our prototype application of head mounted display (HMD) based augmented reality (AR) for use in in factory contexts. The prototype was evaluated in a focus group based user study held at an industrial production line. The prototype was implemented using a Microsoft HoloLens, and supported placing different AR notifications, such as machinery fault or maintenance messages, in the environment. The prototype was used as a stimulus in the focus group consisting of factory workers (n = 6) for exploring the potential use of HMD AR in the industrial production line context. As the main findings, we identified two themes where factory workers saw HMD AR as a potential technology: in task instruction, and in confirming correct functionality. The technology was seen as having potential for collaborative tasks, especially for receiving instructions. Hands-free usage and ability to interact whilst wearing gloves were highly appreciated.

We present a work in progress, enabling an audience to influence a painter, through electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to co-create visual art works. Two sets of EMS pads are positioned on the painter's arm such that stimulation pulses, triggered on a collocated tablet interface by audience members, cause deviation in the ongoing brushstroke. LEDs co-located with the EMS pads provide additional visual feedback to the audience of stimulation delivery. In an initial trial, rather than focusing on co-creation, the audience amused themselves by mischievously diverting the painter from his work.

We present BreathScreen, a concept where clouds created by breathing are used as a projection surface for a picoprojector, creating an ephemeral user interface. In cold weather conditions the clouds are created naturally by warm breath condensing, but in other conditions an electric vaporizer may be used. We present an initial evaluation of the concept in a user study (n = 8), utilising a vaporizer-based BreathScreen prototype. The concept was positively received by study participants as a natural, hands-free interface and considered magical and aesthetically beautiful. Additionally, we provide guidance on the quantity of content that may be displayed on a BreathScreen, which is limited both by the length of a human breath and the contrast of the system.

The widespread popularity of Pokémon GO presents the first opportunity to observe the geographic effects of location-based gaming at scale. This paper reports the results of a mixed methods study of the geography of Pokémon GO that includes a five-country field survey of 375 Pokémon GO players and a large scale geostatistical analysis of game elements. Focusing on the key geographic themes of places and movement, we find that the design of Pokémon GO reinforces existing geographically-linked biases (e.g. the game advantages urban areas and neighborhoods with smaller minority populations), that Pokémon GO may have instigated a relatively rare large-scale shift in global human mobility patterns, and that Pokémon GO has geographically-linked safety risks, but not those typically emphasized by the media. Our results point to geographic design implications for future systems in this space such as a means through which the geographic biases present in Pokémon GO may be counteracted.

We present a concept, prototype and in-the-wild evaluation of a mobile augmented reality (AR) application in which physical items from nature are used as AR markers. By blending the physical and digital, AR technology has the potential to create an enhanced learning experience compared to paper-based solutions and conventional mobile applications. Our prototype, an application running on a tablet computer, uses natural markers such as leaves and pinecones in a game-like nature quiz. The system was evaluated using interviews with and observations of 6- to 12-year-old children (n=11) who played the game as well as focus group discussions with play club counsellors (n=4) and primary school teachers (n=7). Our salient findings suggest that the concept has sound potential in its mixture of physical activity and educational elements in an outdoor context. In particular, teachers found the use of natural objects to be an appealing approach and a factor contributing to the learning experience.

Being in nature is typically regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. When in nature, people often seek to be mobile through physical activity such as hiking. But also, nature provides an opportunity for meditative, mindful or inspiring experiences remote from urban everyday life. Mobile Technologies such as sports tracking technologies, electronic tourist guides, mobile phone integrated cameras and omnipresent social media access, have potential to both enhance and disrupt a user's interaction with and experience of nature. This MobileHCI workshop follows on from the first successful NatureCHI workshop by focusing on the challenges associated with the design of mobile technologies that support unobtrusive interaction in nature.

In this note, we study interaction with a finger worn ring, focusing on interaction enabled by the ring form factor. We report on 2 user studies, the first (n=13) investigating preferences for different interactions, whilst the second (n=7) explores usage contexts and applications. Twelve different ways of interacting with a ring were evaluated, including e.g. changing the placement of the ring on the fingers and moving the ring along or around a finger. Based the study results, the practical usability and concerns with each of the ring interactions is discussed. Whereas the concept was generally well received, the main concerns related to false positives, losing the ring e.g. when changing finger, and limitations from the rigid size of the form factor.

Flying drones have the potential to act as navigation guides for pedestrians, providing more direct guidance than the use of handheld devices. Rather than equipping a drone with a display or indicators, we explore the potential for the drone's movements to communicate the route to the walker. For example, should the drone maintain a constant distance a few meters in front of the pedestrian, or should it position itself further along the navigation route, acting as a beacon to walk towards? We created a set of flying drone gestures and evaluated them in an online survey (n = 100) and an in-the-wild user test (n = 10) where participants were guided on a walking route by a flying drone. As a result, we propose an initial set of drone gestures for pedestrian navigation and provide further design recommendations.

The future vision of commonplace, everyday wear of augmented reality glasses, brings potential to the fashion world, where physical and virtual aspects can be blended to create an overall aesthetic. An enabler for this is the integration of computer-readable visual markers as part of clothing design. We introduce a design space for the use of visual markers on garments, with aspects of visual style, tag size, content, content type, customizability, attachment technique, and reader application. Two prototypes of clothing-integrated visual marker solutions, viewed with a mobile augmented reality (AR) application, are presented and evaluated via a focus group study, an online survey and an in-the-wild study. Our findings highlight that when designing wearable computing garments, the visual design is very important for acceptability, and that a user's personal style largely dictates their preference for the concept and willingness to wear the garment. Wearable AR markers were considered as suitable for wear in social situations, such as parties or events, and as a tool for group cohesion or for showing campaign or ideological information.

Mobile devices are currently the most commonly used platform to experience Augmented Reality (AR). Nevertheless, they typically provide a less than ideal ergonomic experience, requiring the user to operate them with arms raised. In this paper we evaluate how to improve the ergonomics of AR experiences by modifying the angle between the mobile device's camera and its display. Whereas current mobile device cameras point out vertically from the back cover, we modify the camera angle to be 0, 45 and 90 degrees. In addition, we also investigate the use of the smartwatch as an AR browser form factor. Key findings are, that whilst the current approximately see-through configuration provides the fastest task completion times, a camera offset angle of 45° provides reduced task load and was preferred by users. When comparing different form factors and screen sizes, the smartwatch format was found to be unsuitable for AR browsing use.

We present an in-the-wild user study (n=27) investigating the combination of two mobile technologies - picoprojectors and marker based information browsing. We studied a tour, where the tour guide used combinations of fixed and projected elements to present information, and compare four cases: A) as a baseline, a traditional paper poster, B) a projected poster, C) a printed paper fiducial marker, viewed through a mobile device browser application, and D) a projected fiducial marker viewed through a mobile device browser application. As a contribution, we present a novel approach to ad hoc projection of markers, and the findings of the user study. Here, the salient findings suggest that the techniques using markers have the potential to enhance tour participants' experience, but face practical challenges due to lighting conditions and image stability.

This paper explores experiences with ring and bracelet activity tracker form factors. During the first week of a 2-week field study participants (n=6) wore non-functional mock-ups of ring and bracelet wellness trackers, and provided feedback on their experiences. During the second week, participants used a commercial wellness tracking ring, which collected physical exercise and sleep data and visualized it in a mobile application. Our salient findings based on 196 user diary entries suggest, that the ring form factor is considered beautiful, aesthetic and contributing to the wearer's image. However, the bracelet form factor is more practical for active lifestyle, and preferred in situations where the hands are performing tasks requiring gripping objects, such as sport activities, cleaning the car, cooking and washing dishes. Users strongly identified the ring form factor as jewellery that is intended to be seen, whereas bracelets were considered hidden and inconspicuous elements of the user's ensemble.

In this paper, we explore design preferences and possibilities for smart handbags from the user perspective. We present designs and findings derived through a co-design process, which consisted of two studies; first with individual drawing based brainstorming (n=20), and second with two co-design workshops (n=10), where participants assessed different designs and features, and created low-fi prototypes of smart handbag concepts. Participants proposed large shape and style variations for smart handbags, according to the intended contexts, use cases, and lifestyle. In this respect the desire for modifiability, e.g. adapting in size and shape, was highlighted. The handbag's durability, weatherproofness and use of high quality materials were also raised.

This paper describes the use of a head mounted display as a design tool to gain better understanding of the issues faced by visually impaired people. The Oculus Rift Head Mounted Display (HMD) was used to navigate through a virtual 3D city model whilst conducting wayfinding and target location tasks. In addition to the baseline of normal vision, we simulated visual disabilities (macular degeneration. cataracts, glaucoma and myopia), such that the user experienced them in first person. We evaluated the system with 14 design students, who found the system useful and helpful in understanding the challenges faced by the visually impaired. The method can be applied to the early design phases of architectural and space design, where 3D models are increasingly commonly used.

Until today, mobile computing has been very much confined to conventional computing form factors, i.e. laptops, tablets and smartphones, which have achieved de facto design standards in outlook and shape. However, wearable devices are emerging, and especially glasses are an appealing form factor for future devices. Currently, although companies such as Google have productized a solution, little user research and design exploration has been published on either the user preferences or the technology. We set ourselves to explore the design directions for smart glasses with user research grounded use cases and design alternatives. We describe our user research utilizing a smart glasses design probe in an experience sampling method study (n=12), and present a focus group based study (n=14) providing results on perceptions on alternative industrial designs for smart glasses.

In this demo, we present a set-up that utilizes augmented reality (AR) in a display set-up combining a public and a private display for presenting health related information. Our installation includes a life-size poster of a human body, which is viewed through a mobile phone camera viewfinder that augments different body parts with health related data. We envision that this kind of set-up could be utilized in contexts where informative posters or similar are commonly used, and where people would benefit from accessing personal wellness or health information, such as a gym or medical doctor's waiting room.

In the age of mobile communications and social media, users are connected to interact with other people, and often obliged to be socially active as technology drives to connect us. In this paper, we harness the technology for the opposite use: helping people to avoid company instead of encouraging interaction. We have developed the concept of an asocial hiking application (app), in which users can generate routes that avoid meeting other people. We developed the concept based on user feedback data derived from an online survey (n=157) and two focus groups, and created a tool that generates solitary hiking routes based on OpenStreetMap data and additional information from the web. In addition, to make the application react to dynamic changes in the environment, we developed a mobile application prototype that scans Wi-Fi signals to detect other hikers nearby and warn of their approach. The prototype was tested and evaluated with 8 hikers in-the-wild. In addition to the concept design and the functional prototype, we present findings on people's, especially hikers, need for solitude, and introduce user feedback from each stage of the prototype design process as well as design recommendations for an asocial navigation application.

The entertainment industry is going through a transformation, and technology development is affecting how we can enjoy and interact with the entertainment media content in new ways. In our work, we explore how to enable interaction with content in the context of 3D cinemas. This allows viewers to use their mobile phone to retrieve, for example, information on the artist of the soundtrack currently playing or a discount coupon on the watch the main actor is wearing. We are particularly interested in the user experience of the interactive 3D cinema concept, and how different interactive elements and interaction techniques are perceived. We report on the development of a prototype application utilizing smart phones and on an evaluation in a cinema context with 20 participants. Results emphasize that designing for interactive cinema experiences should drive for holistic and positive user experiences. Interactive content should be tied together with the actual video content, but integrated into contexts where it does not conflict with the immersive experience with the movie.

We present an interactive cinema concept, where the audience can interact with the movie through an interactive pillow. We report on a background study (n=30) and a study evaluating a simulated tangible UI concept (n=10). Our findings indicate that tangible UIs have potential as a non-distractive interaction medium, e.g. as they don't create light pollution, can be used in different postures, and allow detection of spontaneous input actions such as squeezing. The results also show that people are interested in seeing records of not only their own performance, but also of the reactions and highlights experienced by their fellow spectators.

Mobile stereoscopic 3D (S3D) user experience (UX) design has not yet been widely studied. Stereoscopy in today's products is used for visual design purposes, whilst the potential for holistic interaction design and utilitarian aspects have been neglected. In this paper we introduce the design, implementation and evaluation of a mobile S3D phonebook application. In the application stereoscopy was used to augment the 2D user interface (UI) design to provide information related to the time when the last call with each phonebook contact was made. We describe the results of the pilot study charting the design directions, laboratory study of first impressions, and results of a field trial, where 21 participants used the application for a few days. The S3D UI design provoked first impressions related to entertainment and 2D UI to practical qualities, whereas the field study showed that our S3D phonebook design successfully demonstrated that utilitarian value can be incorporated to the design.

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.

In this paper, we describe our demonstration utilizing an urban landmark, a monument in a city center, for interaction. The City Mouse is an interactive media installation, where the participants rotate a 3D model of the Earth presented on a screen by rolling a large stone ball resting on a water fountain in a stone slab. During a public trial, approximately a hundred people interacted with the system. We demonstrate how an existing landmark in urban spaces can be used in an interactive experience, and report the experiences with the installation. We present how the communal ownership, associations and existing practices were connected to the successful design of the media installation.

In this paper, we present our co-creation work on a digital 3D city model, where school children were asked create drawings for the city landscape of their hometown. Altogether 40 drawings were then integrated into the 3D virtual world model to form a decorated 3D view of the city square and the main street. Our work presents a novel use case in using the local 3D city model as a creativity platform for children, opening a new viewpoint on how virtual world presentations can be used with e.g. to facilitate the perception of the local community.

Mobile user interfaces (UIs) utilizing stereoscopic 3D have so far been driven predominantly by visual design, and when interaction design has been considered, the focus has been on single user use cases. In this paper, we introduce a novel way to utilize stereoscopy in a mobile user interface in a collaborative task. We define a shared space, appearing below the screen level, which is used in a collaborative task of sharing mobile phone photos. Two users are able to share content by moving items between the private layer, at zero parallax, and shared layer, at positive parallax. We developed the application through an iterative design process including two user studies (n=27, n=19). We report positive evaluation results especially in regard of the utilitarian aspects of the UI design.

In our research, we explore the possibilities for combining digital 3D city representation with a wellness application, and introduce our demo that aims to make running in a gym more inspiring and motivating. We present a prototype, where the running exercise on a treadmill is converted to a distance on the local city map, and visualized in a 3D mirror world presentation of the city. The user leaves a personalized tag on the spot reached, and in addition to his achievement, is able to see the performance of other runners on the streets of the virtual world. We evaluated the system in the gym, where 32 people tried out the prototype. The application was perceived entertaining and interesting, and especially the ability to compare the results with earlier runners was perceived motivating.

In this paper, we focus on charting future ubiquitous computing use cases utilizing mixed reality (MR) in domestic environments, which has so far been an unexplored domain for MR. We describe our early user research, where during one week participants from 12 households were asked to brainstorm and assess their perceptions of imaginary mixed reality in their homes. During the one-week period this resulted in 167 user generated concept ideas. We focus on the thematic findings that emerged from the collected material, and describe how people most often related the potential of MR concepts with applications related to wellbeing, home-related information, communication and entertainment.

Thanks to the rapid development of mobile technologies, smartphones allow people to be reachable anywhere and anytime. In addition to the benefits for end users, researchers and developers can also benefit from the powerful devices that participants potentially carry on a daily basis. This minitrack workshop brings together researchers with an interest on using mobile devices as instruments to collect data and conduct mobile user studies, with a focus on understanding human-behavior, routines and gathering context.

Mobile phones have become pervasive in the developing world and are much more affordable and accessible than computers. For many children and teenagers, phones have become a familiar tool for communication as well as for multimedia creation and consumption. We run a two-week field study with 78 students and 6 teachers, where the use of mobile phones was integrated to the regular school days in the rural Panama. Based on our findings, we present recommendations how the applications and the general phone user interface design could be improved to better support teaching and learning tasks. The results show that there is potential for a tighter integration of applications to improve the learning experience.

In this paper we present our work on exploring the possibilities of using 3D projection, instead of 2D displays, for a media installation set-up, which we aim to use for exhibition and teaching purposes. We compare two visual media installations presenting a rotating Earth, one presented on a 2D display and the other projected on a physical 3D object, and present the feedback collected by using the product evaluation cards method.

During recent years augmented reality services have become commonly known. To ensure the acceptance of these services, their development should be based on the users' expectations and needs. In this paper, we investigate the initial user perceptions of service content in a mobile mixed reality (MMR) application through a two-phase user study, where early concept ideas were charted. We conducted a field study with 35 participants, and an online survey filled out by 111 people. Our findings provide indication of desired content types and differences between local and visiting people.

Location sharing applications are becoming increasingly popular in social media and for use on mobile devices, yet little research has focused on their user interface design. In this paper we describe our method of charting and creating comparable designs, and present a survey-based study of 106 social media users on their preferences regarding location indicators. Our paper contributes in proposing a methodology for visual element evaluation purposes, and reveals results, e.g., that users preferred simple indicators such as points or pins for their own location, and friend location indicators to include the corresponding name.

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.

In this paper we evaluate the possibilities of autostereo-scopic three-dimensional displays in aiding the user in a selection task on a mobile touch-screen user interface. We describe a user study which measures the effectiveness of realistic depth illusion as an emphasizing method in a conventional mobile user interface concept. In our experiment, 35 people completed simple thumbnail visual search tasks, where horizontal disparity, color shading, and their combination were used as the emphasizing method. The results indicate that using disparity alone as a visual indicator does not provide enough support in find-and-select tasks to improve the user performance or perceived comfort with the task. However, when combined with other visual cues, disparity can significantly improve performance and satisfaction.

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.

A smartphone having touchscreen and short-range networking facilities makes efficient remote control for a large display. In this paper, we report on the results of a case study examining the user performance of Proximal Selection (PS) and Distal Selection (DS) of remote control widgets. DS uses a mobile pointer to zoom-in the region of interest and select the widgets on the large display. PS involves pointing at the large display to transfer the zoom-in view of the pointed region onto the mobile touchscreen and make selections thereafter. The experimental results indicate that PS outperforms DS in terms of speed and user satisfaction with physical effort involved especially in complex tasks requiring multiple widget selection. DS was found to be favorable for simple tasks as it has lower error rate and it does not require attention switch between the mobile and the large display.

We know that phone calls and mobile text messages are not always promptly answered and responded to, yet we know little about the reasons for unavailability, its effects on a user's image, the ways in which users explain the reasons for it, and actions when users cannot reach someone. Usage logs (2,983 phone use events), Web-based diaries, and interviews (N = 20) were used to investigate occasional unavailability in a mobile communication context. We identified four categories of unavailability and found that 31.1% of the phone calls consisted of unsuccessful communication attempts and reciprocal calls back from people who were unavailable earlier. Interestingly, while participants paid attention to the need to give reasons for unavailability, they did not require the explanations to be truthful. These findings have implications for design of systems that better support the needs to manage and explain unavailability and manage pending communication requests.

The capability to present advanced graphics in the present mobile devices can be utilized to improve their usability and overall user experience. Mobile devices have limitations compared to PCs due to their inferior computing power and small screens, but a successful design of animated transitions can hide processing delays and make the user experience smoother. In this paper, we describe the design of animated transitions and present a user study on how they are perceived. The results show that in the transition between two images, bringing up the next image earlier dominates the perception of a fast transition over other variables examined in the study.

Despite the availability of other mobile messaging applications, SMS has kept its position as a heavily used communication technology. However, there are many situations in which it is inconvenient or inappropriate to check a message's content immediately. In this paper, we introduce the concept of audio previews of SMS. Based on a real-time analysis of the content of a message, we provide auditory cues in addition to the notification tone upon receiving an SMS. We report on a field trial with 20 participants and show that the use of audio-enhanced SMS affects the reading and writing behavior of users. Our work is motivated by the results of an online survey among 347 SMS users of whose we analyzed 3400 text messages.

We describe an in-the-wild experiment with non-verbal ad-hoc communication between strangers. We connected two night clubs via two interactive tables that allowed people at each end interact via shared drawings, pre-made symbols and actions. We interviewed 50 and observed approximately 200 participants. In local interaction, collaboration was the preferred mode of use, whereas with remote interaction, communication prevailed. This study demonstrated that people have such a strong desire to communicate that they are willing to forgive many imperfections in the channel. It was also evident that people resorted to stereotypical information to ease the rapid flow of conversation, when they had only limited knowledge of the other party (just the place). This paper describes our system design, the user study, and discusses implications on designing for ad hoc communication and context sharing in urban everyday environment.

Mobile phones are designed as personal devices, and thus mobile games often lack the social element present in other game platforms, e.g., in console games. In this paper, we present an interaction method for social gaming with portable devices. The interaction method combines displays of multiple devices to form a shared screen visible to all players. We conducted an experiment with 40 participants to compare the social setting between our method and a typical console game environment. The results show that the amount of oral communication was significantly higher in the mobile device setup. The results on subjective experience were inconclusive, but revealed that players' perceptions of a social situation were affected by various factors such as ergonomics, distance, support for spectators, and symbolic meanings of the seating arrangement. Our findings help to understand the design space of social co-located gaming, and show that mobile phones are a potential platform for such games.

Mobile communication technology has become an integral part of our everyday lives. Yet, do we recognize the patterns how we communicate with each other? In this paper we describe our work on increasing users' self-awareness of their communication with their social network with a mobile phone. We have developed two mobile phone applications, which log and visualize different elements of these patterns, enabling users to recognize the activity and responsiveness of their communication behavior more easily. We conducted a user study with 50 participants, where we compared the two applications and derived information of visualizing personal mobile communication patterns. Our research showed that although people were mostly well aware of the patterns of their social activity, still the majority of them found the applications interesting enough to view on a daily basis. We also report on findings on increased awareness of communication gaps, unexpected activity histories, and unbalanced communication behavior with incoming and outgoing calls/messages.

Projector-enabled mobile devices and handheld projectors will provide new possibilities for ubiquitous and mobile multimedia by creating novel interaction methods and use cases. In this paper, we introduce our Burn-to-Share concept, which is a novel system for sharing pictorial content on public surfaces with mobile projectors. Contrary to earlier methods in visual content sharing between mobile devices and public displays, our concept uses optical capture, making software installations, pairing and data connectivity unnecessary. Furthermore, with our approach the interaction is immediate and intuitive.

Context-awareness is one of the rising trends of future mobile technology, and due to advances in technology development, new application and service concepts are being developed and demonstrated in an ever-increasing manner. This workshop brings together researchers and practitioners working on humancomputer interaction (HCI) aspects of context-aware mobile technology and communities to present their insights and research on new concepts, interaction design for mobile context-awareness, usability challenges, collaborative context-aware services and applications for supporting communities, and other topics related to HCI with mobile context-aware technology.

Mobile phones with integrated video cameras have become ubiquitous tools that people use both to document everyday surroundings and to express themselves artistically. In this paper we report the findings of a user study on user created mobile videos, where the actions of 11 active mobile video users were documented for 2 weeks, the collected material including diaries, device logs, and altogether 255 videos. We describe the patterns related to the creation, sharing and consuming mobile videos, revealing characteristics of both context and content of the video material.

In their role as personal communication devices, mobile phones are a natural choice for sharing and communicating emotions. However, their functionalities are currently very limited in power to express affective messages. In this paper, we describe the design of a system that allows users to easily compose melodies and share them via mobile phones. We show that by using these melodies information about the current emotional state of the sender can be expressed and recognized synchronously by the receiver in a simple, quick, and unobtrusive way. Further, we reveal that self-composed melodies have a stronger impact than pre-composed or downloaded messages, similar to crafted pieces of art offered to a beloved person. We then present findings from a user study that assesses the implementation of a functional prototype and the adequacy of the system for emotional communication.

This paper presents research findings on designing social features for mobile wellness applications. The focus is on opportunities to support and motivate wellness by utilizing and enhancing social interaction between users. New knowledge is created using a 'Research through Design' process. The process combines findings of the user studies performed in India during the year 2008, existing research knowledge on mobile communication technology that provides social features to support wellness activities, and technological possibilities provided by the mobile devices available in the market at the time of the research. New design knowledge is presented in the format of design findings and concept descriptions, as well as concept evaluations. These can then be used by practitioners as inspirational material for product design, and by researchers for exploring the domain of wellness applications.

Recent development in indoor navigation systems and related studies imply that these applications will become common in the future. A variety of solutions utilizing different mediums is being developed. Lately, a range of mobile devices have started to support outdoor pedestrian navigation, and these devices presumably keep guiding the users also when moving indoors. However, the design patterns from the outdoor world do not necessarily work indoors. In order to understand the distinctive UI requirements of indoor navigation, we conducted a user study involving 23 people using a mobile phone-based, location-sensitive service. In this paper, we reveal our findings that the visualizations and UI designs resembling conventional outdoor maps or floor layouts are not optimal for indoor navigation, and present recommendations for the future design of indoor navigation systems.

During recent years, mobile devices have become tools for versatile activities related to multimedia content. Especially mobile phones have emerged in this field, integrating the features of music players and digital and video cameras into mobile communication technologies. Multimedia messaging has followed text messaging, and Mobile TV is taking its steps towards large audiences. This workshop aims to gather researchers and practitioners who look at existing and anticipated end-user trends and usage culture in using and creating mobile multimedia content, as well as novel applications and ideas related to human computer interaction with mobile multimedia devices.

Wearable computing and smart clothing have attracted a lot of attention in the last years. For a variety of applications, it can be seen as potential future direction of mobile user interfaces. In this paper, we concentrate on usability and applicability issues concerned with capacitive touch input on clothing. To be able to perform user studies, we built a generic platform for attaching, e.g., capacitive sensors of different types. On top of that, several prototypes of wearable accessories and clothing and implemented various application scenarios. We report on two studies we undertook with these implementations with a user group randomly sampled at a shopping mall. We provide a significant set of guidelines and lessons learned that emerged from our experiences and those studies. Thus, developers of similar projects have to put major efforts into minimizing the delay between button activation and feedback and to make location and identification of controls and their function as simple and quick as possible. Issues that have to be treated in all designs include the requirement of one-handed interaction and that, even for minimal functionality, to find a general solution with regard to layout and button-to-function mapping is hardly possible. Additionally, in order to generate a satisfactory user experience good usability must be combined with aesthetical factors.

We present a platform to evaluate mobile phone applications that make use of an additional dimension for key presses. Using capacitive sensors on each key, merely touching buttons as well as the force of the press can be measured. A set of applications well known from current mobile phones has been extended with functionality exploiting those new possibilities. The results of a study undertaken with this prototype are presented and conclusions are drawn for the design and implementation of such applications.

In this paper, we present a study of user perceptions on mobile interaction with visual and RFID tags. Although mobile interaction with tags has been proposed in several earlier studies, user perceptions and usability comparisons of different tag technologies have not been intensively investigated. In contrast to earlier studies, which report on user studies with evaluating new concepts or interaction techniques, we take another approach and examine the current understanding of the techniques and user perceptions on them. Our field study of 50 users charts currently existing user perceptions and reveals potential usability risks that are due to the limited or erroneous understanding of the interaction technique.

In this paper, we describe the development and experiences with a mobile group communication application, mCell, that runs on a mobile phone. We present the underlying design implications, the application implementation, and a user study, where three groups used the application for one month. The findings of the user study reveal general user experiences with the application and show different patterns of usage depending on the social setting of the group, and how the preferred features vary accordingly.

In this paper we describe a novel interaction method for interacting with mobile devices without the need to access a keypad or a display. A tap with a hand can be reliably detected e.g. through a pocket by means of an acceleration sensor. By carefully designing the user interface, the tap can be used to activate logically similar functionalities on the device, leading to a simple but useful interaction method. We present results of user tests aimed at studying the usability of various tap input based user interface applications.

No abstract available.

This paper presents a study examining users' perceptions of privacy relating to mobile phone usage, and more specifically on the use of short message service (SMS) messages. The study also looks at the reasons for mobile phone ownership, and user perceptions on possibilities for added privacy with mobile messaging communication. The user study consisted of a written survey of 119 people and ten interviews. Results confirm that most respondents feel mobile phones are private and personal devices, and that SMS messages are perceived as more private than normal calls. This research found user privacy is guarded by widely accepted, unwritten rules of treating phones and messages as confidential.

Quickly emerging usage of multimedia messages offers new approach for mobile and collaboration between users and services by providing a mature and easy accessible technology. This paper investigated possibilities of location related messaging, where pictorial and textual information are combined. We present a model involving contextual information delivery for a mobile user, and evaluate it by user tests with location sensitive multimedia messaging representing different application categories. The results show that the functionality and social acceptance varies between different message categories. It is suggested that distinct information elements should employ sharing and access right management, and a commonly agreed categorization system is required for successful information filtering.

Context Studio, an application personalisation tool for semi-automated context-based adaptation, has been proposed to provide a flexible means of implementing context-aware features. In this paper, Context Studio is further developed for the end users of small-screen mobile devices. Navigating and information presentation are designed for small screens, especially for the Series 60 mobile phone user interface. Context ontology, with an enhanced vocabulary model, is utilized to offer scalable representation and easy navigation of context and action information in the UI. The ontology vocabulary hierarchy is transformed into a folder-file model representation in the graphical user interface. UI elements can be directly updated, according to the extensions and modifications to ontology vocabularies, automatically in an online system. A rule model is utilized to allow systematic management and presentation of context-action rules in the user interface. The chosen ontology-based UI model is evaluated with a usability study.

The user expectations for usability and personalization along with decreasing size of handheld devices challenge traditional keypad layout design. We have developed a method for on-line adaptation of a touch pad keyboard layout. The method starts from an original layout and monitors the usage of the keyboard by recording and analyzing the keystrokes. An on-line learning algorithm subtly moves the keys according to the spatial distribution of keystrokes. In consequence, the keyboard matches better to the users physical extensions and grasp of the device, and makes the physical trajectories during typing more comfortable. We present two implementations that apply different vector quantization algorithms to produce an adaptive keyboard with visual on-line feedback. Both qualitative and quantitative results show that the changes in the keyboard are consistent, and related to the user's handedness and hand extensions. The testees found the on-line personalization positive. The method can either be applied for on-line personalization of keyboards or for ergonomics research