Desk workers may often experience more negative than positive emotions in office settings, making emotion regulation (ER) crucial for their mental health. Squeezable interfaces have shown the potential to reduce anxiety and stress in digital and non-digital ER. However, few studies have explored how they can be leveraged to provide tangible and embodied support for workplace ER. We interviewed five mental health experts and 16 desk workers and conducted five co-design workshops with 17 desk workers, aiming to understand how validated practices can be integrated into squeezable interfaces and how they should be designed to support ER and accommodate diverse needs in the context of the workplace. This study contributes to digital ER by identifying design opportunities for squeezable interfaces and by outlining design considerations and challenges for tangible and embodied interactions in ER support within the workplace.

status: Published

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) have been applied to assess, communicate, or regulate human core affect, emotions, or moods. Previous studies identified TUIs as an innovative way to serve people’s affective needs. This review examines the design and evaluation of tangible interactive systems that focus on human core affect, emotions, and moods. We provide an overview of current studies. We summarize how tangibility can be leveraged to support affective interaction, and we propose the dimensions of tangible affective interaction, deriving guidelines for design. We highlight three main challenges: understanding tangible affective interaction within real-life scenarios, utilizing embodied interaction to express or influence affective states, and establishing benchmarks for evaluating tangible affective interfaces.

Squeezing objects has been proven to be effective in helping people release negative emotions. This work-in-progress study revolves around the design and development of a proof-of-concept system to facilitate conversations on how to design squeezable interfaces for emotion regulation in the workplace. In this paper, we describe the design and development of EmoSkweezee, an interactive desktop wallpaper controlled by a squeezable ball to support emotion regulation in a peripheral way. In our pilot study, we utilized this proof-of-concept system to provoke discussions with HCI practitioners about their perspectives and the potential of squeezable interfaces for emotion regulation. In the future, the requirements for a squeezable interface for emotion regulation will be explored with desk workers and experts through interviews and co-design workshops. This proof-of-concept will serve as a catalyst for conversations in our future user studies.

Gamification is a popular technique to improve task engagement, and has broadly been deployed in health and education to a point where many users now expect gameful experiences in these settings. However, gamification has been criticised for being a potential obstacle to the experience of reflection. Motivated by this tension, our work examines how the addition of gamification to a Virtual Reality simulation of breastfeeding impacts player experience and reflection. Using a within-subjects design, we invited 34 participants to take part in a mixed-methods evaluation of a gamified and non-gamified variant of the simulation that included questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Results show that gamification improved player experience and encouraged players to reflect on goal achievement and performance. However, it also diverted players’ attention from nuances within the act of nursing. Drawing on our findings, we contribute considerations for the application of gamification in personal and sensitive settings such as breastfeeding.

Wearable activity trackers are inaccessible to older adults who use mobility aids (e.g., walker, wheelchair), because the accuracy of trackers drops considerably for such movement modalities (MMs). As an initial step to address this problem, we implemented and tested a minimum distance classifier to automatically identify the used MM out of seven modalities, including movement with or without a mobility aid, and no movement. Depending on the test setup, our classifier achieves accuracies between 82 % and 100 %. These findings can be leveraged in future work to combine the classifier with algorithms tailored to each mobility aid to make activity trackers accessible to users with limited mobility.

Breastfeeding can be challenging, but it is difficult for antenatal education to convey issues associated with the lived experience of breastfeeding. In our work, we explore the potential of interactive simulations to support antenatal education, and present Virtual Feed, a Virtual Reality breastfeeding simulation for parents-to-be developed following a three-step process. (1) We created an experience prototype that features basic VR scenarios and a tangible baby, (2) we engaged in design sessions with 19 parents and parents-to-be to derive design implications to further refine the simulation, and (3) we evaluated the system through case studies to examine the perspectives of parents and parents-to-be on the simulation. Our results show that the simulation successfully engaged users and sparked curiosity, while also encouraging reflection about the challenges of breastfeeding. On this basis, we discuss challenges for the design of simulations with the purpose of supplementing antenatal education.

Maker culture encourages do-it-yourself practices to create, repair, and repurpose technology. In Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, it is seen as a means of empowering people, providing affordable and customisable technology with potential to enrich areas such as education or assistive technology. To investigate this alleged potential, we performed an anthropological inquiry at an elementary school for disabled children that lasted one year, participating in everyday activities with students, teachers, and therapists. We observed ‘heterogeneity in a fluid environment’ and ‘creativity in the moment’ in an ‘endemically underfunded’ setting. We saw how technology is ‘injecting dependencies’, ‘reinforcing disability’, and ‘occupying time and space’, changing our view on the role that making can have. Leveraging Empowerment Theory, we highlight how (making) technology risks ignoring the intertwined dynamics between the individual, the organisational, and the community, and articulate points for reflection for technology in schools for disabled children for the HCI research community.

Breastfeeding brings benefits for newborns and parents, but can be a challenging process. In this paper, we leverage a mixed-methods approach that builds on the Integrated Behavioural Model (IBM) to explore parents’ perspectives toward breastfeeding along with their lived experiences, and examine the role of technology in this setting. Results of twelve semi-structured interviews and 175 online survey responses suggest generally positive attitudes toward breastfeeding and good theoretical knowledge. This is combined with a complex lived experience of breastfeeding where main challenges are situated in practical, emotional, and environmental/societal aspects, which are currently not sufficiently recognised by technology that seeks to support breastfeeding. Building upon our findings, we present points for reflection for the design of technology to support breastfeeding, focusing on the importance of drawing from the lived experience of parents, and ensuring that technology not only casts breastfeeding as an individual but also as a collective effort.

Physical activity (PA) positively impacts the quality of life of older adults, with technology as a promising factor in maintaining motivation. Within Computer Science and Engineering, research investigates how to track PA of older adults for various purposes. We present a systematic review of 204 papers and discuss wearable tracking systems according to their purpose, technological context, and target audience, as well as design and evaluation processes with particular attention to the meaningful involvement of older adults. Our results show that most systems focus on supervising older adults in the context of disease and frailty management. Only few systems focus on supporting older adults by promoting rehabilitation and respecting agency of older adults via self-monitoring PA, or encouraging PA to maintain healthy levels of activity. Moreover, systems are often narrowly limited to walking, although older adults may enjoy a broader range of activities. Likewise, the involvement of older adults in design processes is scarce, and their experience with a given technology is rarely considered relevant for evaluation. In sum, we contribute an overview of wearable technology for tracking older adults’ PA, contextualize our findings within recommendations provided by Sports and Rehabilitation Science, and illustrate opportunities for future work.

Squeeze interaction, defined as squeezing a soft object that affects computed feedback, is a promising interaction technique due to its expressive character. Skweezee for Processing is a Processing library that allows makers to implement squeeze interactions in a lightweight manner. The library offers a set of features based on data extraction algorithms and aims to preserve the dynamics of squeezes in the mapping from user action to system output. Distributing Skweezee for Processing as an open source library, we invite the community to further investigate the potential of squeeze interactions and to contribute to the extension and improvement of the library. We emphasize the potential for rich squeeze interaction by demonstrating a game that implements squeeze interaction as core mechanic. Additionally, we demonstrate the ease of implementing squeeze interactions in a variety of settings using the Skweezee for Processing library.

We present an evaluation of a DIY-toolkit, designed to empower caregivers to create tailor-made, unique assistive solutions for their clients. More specifically, the toolkit aims to enable occupational therapists to turn everyday soft objects into smart devices that can be programmed to recognize certain manipulations. These smart objects can then be used to control applications or to play certain games. Our evaluation reveals that occupational therapists were able to make use of the toolkit without the aid of a technical expert. The therapists hacked everyday objects such as cushions, socks, cuddly toys and repurposed them for therapy. They computationally augmented them and tailored them to clients' needs and desires. From our evaluation, we also derive five guidelines that can inform others when creating DIY-toolkits for assistive technology.

Skweezees are soft, deformable objects that recognize their shape deformation. Typically, a Skweezee has a fabric 'skin' and is filled with conductive padding. Several fabric electrodes are dispersed over the shape, and a small electronic circuit measures the resistance between each possible pair of electrodes. As the shape is deformed as a result of a squeeze gesture, the resistance patterns between electrode pairs change. A machine learning algorithm allows to differentiate between the different shape deformations. In addition, user-friendly open source software allows defining and recording squeeze gestures. Consequently, Skweezees enable rich gestural squeeze interaction for the DIY community. In this Skweezee Studio, participants are invited to bring their own plush toy (or another soft object) and to transform it into a Skweezee. Moreover, participants will be introduced to the mechanical, electrical and digital properties of Skweezees and participants will be able to explore and discuss the potential of e-textile, and of soft, tangible and haptic interactions in general.

Over the past decades, preschoolers emerged as frequent and experienced users of new digital media. As this trend continues, it is important for game designers to address the gratifications of this new gaming audience. Unfortunately, existing theoretical frameworks on meaningful gameplay for preschoolers are rare, outdated, or they lack a comprehensive validation. In this paper, we present a User Experience (UX) Laddering study to unveil the gameplay preferences of preschoolers, relying on five-year olds (n=25) as active research participants. The results of this study provide a set of meaningful and useful guidelines for future game designers, directed at this young target group.

The Skweezee System is an easy, flexible and open system for designing and developing squeeze-based, gestural interactions. It consists of Skweezees, which are soft objects, filled with conductive padding, that can be deformed or squeezed by applying pressure. These objects contain a number of electrodes that are dispersed over the shape. The electrodes sense the shape shifting of the conductive filling by measuring the changing resistance between every possible pair of electrodes. In addition, the Skweezee System contains user-friendly software that allows end-users to define and to record their own squeeze gestures. These gestures are distinguished using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. In this paper we introduce the concept and the underlying technology of the Skweezee System and we demonstrate the robustness of the SVM based classifier via two experimental user studies. The results of these studies demonstrate accuracies of 81% (8 gestures, user-defined) to 97% (3 gestures, user-defined), with an accuracy of 90% for 7 pre-defined gestures.

In this paper we extend the field of organic user interfaces and introduce the Splash Controller. The main concept of a Splash Controller is that a user interacts with computing technology by manipulation of water in some kind of receptacle. To this end we highlight the possibilities of Splash Controllers, specifically as game controllers. Next, we specify a simple and robust technology for the detection of water. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of a Splash Controller, we additionally present the design and development of one specific Splash Controller prototype.

With the advent of computer games involving the movement of the player's whole body or body parts, an opportunity arises to develop games for people with motor disabilities. In this paper we present four minigames developed for people suffering from spasticity and loss of motor control. We thereby focus on the input devices, sensor signal processing and mapping of players' actions on events in the game. In order to adapt the game to the player's motor skills and goals, specific attention should be paid to calibration procedures and adjustable parameters. We illustrate how this can be done and simultaneously, we demonstrate the feasibility for the development of digital games for physical therapy with currently available commercial input devices.