Full Paper Chairs of the British Human-Computer Interaction Conference (BHCI) 2021 This special issue is a collection of nine papers, which are the expanded versions of the best papers presented at the 34th British Human–Computer Interaction Conference, 19–21 July 2021. The conference was held entirely online due to the pandemic. The theme of the conference ‘Post-pandemic HCI – Living Digitally’ aimed to raise hopes in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community about an eventual end to the pandemic and to invite reflective as well as visionary thinking about how post-pandemic lives could or should be with (or without) technology. Two distinct scenarios may happen as the pandemic subsides. Some people discard the technologies that they have been obliged to adopt during the pandemic because they yearn to resume pre-pandemic routines and practices (e.g. in-person learning activities at schools). In contrast, some people become so reliant on the technological solutions they have utilized during the pandemic that they continue deploying them, despite being advised otherwise (e.g. working from home). Others may opt for variants of these two contrasting scenarios. Regardless of people’s preference on how dominant technologies should play in their everyday lives, the ever-increasing digitalization of essential services (e.g. health, transport, education) renders it inevitable that people’s well-being is shaped and regulated by digital technologies (Scoglio et al., 2019). In fact, the heavy usage of social media during the pandemic is a double-edged sword for psychological well-being. On the one hand, such platforms enable people to remain connected, sustaining their social and emotional well-being (e.g. Goldschmidt, 2020). On the other hand, the same platforms can exacerbate the vulnerability of those who are prey to manipulation by online predators (e.g. Williams et al., 2020). Indeed, one of the post-pandemic grand challenges is to identify effective means to improve people’s psychological well-being, which has been undermined by the negative experiences of the pandemic. Research on understanding the intricate relations between well-being and technology has visibly grown in the past decade (e.g. Cheng et al., 2019; Scoglio et al., 2019), which is strongly linked to the work on positive psychology (e.g. Seligman, 2012) and happiness studies (e.g. Veenhoven, 2008). Presumably, the research area of positive computing posited by Calvo and Peters (2014) has promoted this line of inquiry in the field of HCI. From the design perspective, the frameworks put forward by Desmet and colleagues (Desmet & Hassenzahl, 2012; Desmet and Pohlymeyer, 2013; Klapperich et al., 2019) have stimulated related research endeavours exploring the notion of eudaimonia and meaningfulness for HCI (e.g. Mekler and Hornbaek, 2016). Identifying robust theoretical and methodological frameworks for designing, developing and deploying digital technologies to enhance people’s (and other animal’s) well-being can arguably be the fourth wave of HCI (cf. the third wave HCI; Bødker, 2015). In short, the theme of the next HCI wave may be well-being-driven HCI. There exist alternative proposed themes, such as ‘Entanglement HCI’ (Frauenberger, 2019), which has inspired the soma-focused ‘more-than-human bodies’ approaches (Homewood et al., 2020). While we do not delve into these pioneering efforts on paving the ground for the next HCI wave, it is relevant to point out that their strong ethical views on HCI work resonates with the topic of well-being-driven digital technologies, which we take a closer look subsequently. Digital technologies, when properly designed, developed and deployed, can lead to pleasurable and meaningful everyday experiences, which in turn contribute to people’s psychological well-being or happiness (Lyubomirsky, 2007; Ryan and Deci, 2001). Psychological well-being can be broadly understood as the frequent experience of positive moments and a general feeling of being satisfied with life (Diener et al., 1999). As a multifarious concept, well-being should be understood from multiple perspectives, including psychological, sociological, philosophical, economic and technological (Amichai-Hamburger, 2009; Kahneman, 2011). Furthermore, research on well-being allows insights to be gained for policymaking, organizational management, gender equality and other societal impacts. Given the robust finding that happy people are healthier (e.g. Veenhoven, 2008) and more productive (e.g. Oswald et al., 2015), well-being can be considered as a highly desirable individual and collective goal, a yardstick for policy interventions, a central productivity factor for organizations and a key value proposition and market differentiator for products and services. Digital technologies, including those currently as widespread as smartphones, provide an infrastructure capable of enhancing well-being in many ways. Nonetheless, technology does not intrinsically have values (Amichai-Hamburger, 2009), but values are integrated into digital products and services through design (Verbeek, 2011; cf. value-sensitive design; Friedman et al., 2013). Moreover, depending on how users appropriate the original design goal, a digital product or service can have detrimental effects on well-being. Salient examples are the addictiveness of social media (e.g. Brailovskaia and Teichert, 2020) and excessive tracking of one’s health parameters with self-monitoring technologies (e.g. Storni, 2010), leading to debilitating anxiety and poor self-esteem. A key research challenge for the HCI community to tackle is how digital technologies can be designed to facilitate well-being. How do we fit the technical opportunities provided by digital technologies into people’s everyday lives? How can we make everyday life meaningful and enjoyable through interactive technologies? How can the burgeoning range of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-infused autonomous products and services be utilized to promote well-being? HCI researchers and practitioners often attempt to answer these questions with the established user-centred design (or human-centred design) (UCD/HCD) (ISO 9241-210:2019, n.d.). While UCD/HCD is a relevant starting point, it needs augmented as well as concretized to address the challenges for being not only human-centred but also well-being-driven design. These challenges have recently become more acute, thanks to high complexities and uncertainties of AI-infused systems (Yang et al., 2020). In the following, we discuss three main challenges. Developing models to understand the interplay between well-being and technology in context. To design for well-being requires foremost a deep understanding of what well-being is. While models of well-being in psychology and other social sciences (e.g. Kahneman, 2011) are inspiring, they are not concrete enough for designing interactive technologies for specific applications, especially AI-infused ones. It is imperative to develop models to summarize and systemize well-being-related knowledge, making it applicable to the design of well-being-driven technologies in diverse contexts. Identifying ethical, political and societal implications of well-being-driven HCI. Designing for well-being has deep ethical, political and societal implications. Current HCI and AI ethics work (e.g. Canca, 2020; Kisselburgh et al., 2020) need to be refined, given that well-being-driven design tends to realize certain values. The key ethical concern is whose values (Vallor, 2016). As different cultures, worldviews and people value different forms of well-being, it becomes a critical ethical choice what kinds of well-being to prioritize and drive with digital technologies. Furthermore, it is also important to ensure that the design is democratically legitimate and mindful of minorities, becoming a key political concern of well-being-driven HCI. While western societies tend to frame the pursuit of well-being as a private endeavour, it is strongly affected by collective systems and actions. Well-being-driven HCI should reconcile the pursuit of individual well-being with social responsibility towards collectives (Klapperich et al., 2019). Developing methods and tools for evaluating well-being-driven digital technologies. Understanding and positioning what well-being is and accepting it as a legitimate goal are important preconditions for well-being-driven digital technologies. On top of that, it is necessary to develop innovative and valid methods and tools to evaluate the user experience, user engagement and other specific well-being-oriented criteria of these technologies. For instance, how to measure validly and viably memory-based and moment-based experience (i.e. ‘experienced utility’; Kahneman, 2011), which is strongly linked to well-being (Soleimani and Law, 2017), is one of the challenges to tackle. The topics of the nine accepted papers for this special issue are related to the above discussions on well-being-driven technologies, albeit to different extents. Two of the papers have the word well-being in the title, with one addressing physical health (Goffe et al., 2022) and the other, mental health (Noronha and Campos, 2022). Indeed, health is a dominant domain for this batch of papers: two related topics are digital telecare (Taylor et al., 2022) and digital twins in healthcare (De Maeyer and Markopoulos, 2022). Apart from health, utilizing interactive technologies to improve education (Schaper et al., 2022) and transport (Goodman-Deane et al., 2022) contributes to well-being-oriented goals. Putting in a broader context, all these essential everyday services are only sustainable in a peace time when safety is assured, but sadly, this very basic existential condition cannot be taken for granted even in the 21st century (NB: the Ukraine war is still raging at the time of writing this editorial). The paper by Paracha et al. (2022) on peacekeeping is particularly timely and relevant. The remaining two papers (de Quincey and Mitchell, 2022; Wright and Kefalidou, 2022), while not directly addressing well-being, can have methodological implications for well-being research through their user experience-focused studies. In ‘Web augmentation for wellbeing’, Goffe et al. (2022) grounded their work in the concepts of digital civics and public health. Based on the empirical data gathered over a sustained period of 12 months on users’ food-ordering behaviours and experiences with a dedicated platform, the authors proposed modifications to the platform. The authors combined the participatory UCD approaches with the web augmentation method to address the goal of enabling users to make healthy food choices. While the impact on well-being is yet to demonstrate, the case study provides methodological insights. In ‘Harnessing virtual reality nature to promote well-being’, as the title indicates, Noronha and Campos (2022) aimed to demonstrate the utility of immersive experience enabled by virtual reality (VR) for improving people’s mental health through relaxation exercises. The nature scenes in VR proved effective in increasing people’s calmness while decreasing their arousal and energy level. This work strengthened the assumption that VR can be a well-being-enhancement tool. In ‘Supporting safe and independent living’, Taylor et al. (2022) identified the innovative digital telecare concepts for older adults by applying the UCD approaches and synthesizing user engagement findings. Apart from the identified themes for future work in the field-community-based support, the authors illustrated comprehensively the process of gathering users’ needs and translating them into actionable design concepts. In ‘Digital Twins in healthcare’, De Maeyer and Markopoulos (2022) reported how experts in digital transformation of healthcare envisaged the application of the emerging digital twins technology. In addition to practical insights on exploring the potential of this technology for personalized well-being, methodological insights on the use of Delphi study for eliciting expert views were obtained. Paracha et al. (2022) stated a lucid message: for the digital transformation of peacekeeping, it is recommendable to put humans before technological solutions. Using the value-sensitive design approach (Friedman et al., 2013), the authors argued for integrating human values into technological designs. Several core values were identified across three use contexts, including peacekeepers’ well-being. This work lent further evidence to the importance of human-centred technological interventions. In the same vein, Schaper et al. (2022) demonstrated how they successfully applied the UCD approaches to digitizing iteratively an analogue syllable-based reading intervention. Specifically, they conducted expert reviews and interviews with end-users (primary school pupils) to gather concepts for digital prototypes, which were usability evaluated. Goodman-Deane et al. (2022) aimed to address the ethical concern of inclusiveness for digital mobility services by paying particular attention to people with diverse backgrounds. As an integral part of the UCD process, the authors captured user requirements by conducting a relatively large-scale interview study with 1010 participants. De Quincey and Mitchell (2022) also applied the UCD approach with a different method and in a different context. Specifically, they applied a special type of card sorting—repeated-single-criterion sorting—to understand and analyse user-based music categorization. On a different domain, Wright and Kefalidou (2022) studied the phenomenon of synaesthesia in the context of mixed reality. They posited that multimodal design characteristics could inform a more synaesthetic design approach in MR, which may have implications for supporting people’s mental health (cf. Noronha and Campos’ work on VR-based relaxation). Overall, majority of the papers in this volume have contributed to the understanding of well-being-oriented research, especially in the domain of healthcare. Nevertheless, there exists a substantial challenge in bridging the gap between the provision of technological solutions and real-life adoption (Blandford, 2019), despite the systematic application of the UCD approaches. Furthermore, AI-infused systems may contest the prevailing concepts, methods and tools of UCD. This may instigate a paradigm shift that launches the next wave of HCI, which can be well-being-driven HCI!

Web accessibility evaluation requires tests to be carried out with real users with disabilities performing real tasks or activities. To recruit an appropriate group of users and to observe their performance in the real world is difficult. For this reason we have developed RemoTest, a platform that assists researchers designing experiments, conducting remote and in-situ experimental sessions and analyzing the data gathered while the users are accessing the Web. Although this tool is oriented to experimenters, it is necessary to check whether the evaluation environments created by RemoTest are accessible or not to the users that participate in the tests. To this end, we conducted formal in-situ evaluations with 36 users with diverse characteristics. For this assessment, the participants were asked to install the platform, to fill in some automatically created questionnaires and to carry out several web navigation tasks. From the data gathered we analyzed the ease of the installation process, the accessibility of the automatically generated questionnaires, and user satisfaction. The results revealed the suitability of the platform for conducting inclusive experiments both in remote and in-situ contexts and provided guidelines on how the experiments should be set out.

People with motor impairments (MI) may face accessibility barriers when using computers due to their health conditions and therefore need to use alternative devices to a standard mouse for pointing and clicking in graphical user interfaces (GUI). In this study with users of different pointing devices, we evaluate 2 virtual cursors (the novel cross cursor and the standard area cursor) implemented for assisting link selection on the Web by reducing respectively cursor displacement and the precision required. Both cursor adaptations were developed for this work based on previous research, and have been compared with the original unassisted cursor in a web-based study with fifteen regular computer users applying their usual pointing device. Nine participants with MIs participated, including 4 using keyboards as an alternative pointing device, 4 joystick users and 1 trackball user. Six participants without MIs also participated in the study applying a standard mouse to complete the same experimental tasks. User interactions with the pointing device, as well as subjective assessments about the usability of the cursor variants tested were gathered from study participants. An in-depth analysis of point and click trajectories showed that virtual cursors improved the effectiveness and efficiency of most participants with MIs in link selection. Subjective assessments about cursor variants tested showed that a majority of participants with MIs generally preferred one of either the two virtual cursors to the original one for web navigation.

People with disabilities frequently use the Internet to perform a variety of common activities; however, they may often encounter aggravated accessibility barriers when using mobile devices to access the Web. In order to alleviate the problems faced by this group when using mobile devices, we have extended a previously developed transcoding-based system that adapts non-accessible web pages to the needs of specific users in order to enhance their accessibility. In this version, we included new adaptation techniques gathered from the literature in order to apply transcoding techniques to mobile devices. The enhanced system was evaluated with eight users with reduced mobility using tablets. The exploratory study suggests that alternative interaction methods such as the ones named ‘end tap’ and ‘steady tap’ are beneficial for some participants with reduced mobility, dexterity or strength in the upper limbs. Other results show that six of the eight users preferred the adapted version with enlarged interaction elements which required less physical effort, even if this adaptation increases the size of the page with the disadvantages associated with such a change.

Using standard keyboard for pointing and clicking interactions seems to be an affordable option for people who have difficulties handling a standard mouse due to a lack of dexterity or temporal disability conditions. The keypad mouse uses discrete input based on keystrokes to perform cursor movements. This distinctive feature along with others related to cursor motion behavior, make the keypad mouse a unique pointing interface when compared with alternatives. We have carried out a study with expert users of different pointing devices. Results of the study revealed significant differences in the performance values among participants in the three groups. Direction on aimed cursor movements proved to be a crucial factor to be taken into account for keyboard-only users. The findings presented in this paper have a broad application when it comes to designing effective predictive models as well as to proposing design guidelines, novel interaction techniques and adaptation techniques for this collective.

Egoki is an automatic generator of accessible user interfaces designed to allow people with disabilities to access supportive ubiquitous services. Egoki follows a model-based approach and selects suitable interaction resources and modalities depending on users' capabilities. A proof-of-concept prototype evaluation was conducted with accessibility experts and participants in two different scenarios: one devoted to blind people and the other to people with cognitive impairments. Two services were developed for each scenario: a service for selecting the menu for lunch and a bus schedule service. The tailored user interfaces automatically generated for both scenarios were evaluated by accessibility experts following a barrier walkthrough method. In addition, a user evaluation was performed with eleven participants (two blind participants and nine participants with cognitive impairments). Observational methods were employed during the evaluation sessions where participants were asked to perform several tasks. The results revealed that the tailored user interfaces automatically generated by Egoki were operable and accessible and that all of the participants were able to complete the proposed tasks.

Remote rehabilitation applications still have limited deployment. The path to achieve greater user acceptance and adherence lies in the provision of solutions in their real-life context. Such acceptance is gained through flexibility provided in terms of location, client device, interaction means, and content. This article presents a universal remote rehabilitation delivery approach supporting the introduced flexibility needs. Furthermore, an implementation of the approach in joint rehabilitation for the elderly is described. The approach has been evaluated in a real scenario within Donostia Hospital. The usability evaluation results show the validity of the approach and the acceptance of the developed human −computer interaction paradigm.

Ambient Assisted Living environments provide support to people with disabilities and elderly people, usually at home. This concept can be extended to public spaces, where ubiquitous accessible services allow people with disabilities to access intelligent machines such as information kiosks. One of the key issues in achieving full accessibility is the instantaneous generation of an adapted accessible interface suited to the specific user that requests the service. In this paper we present the method used by the EGOKI interface generator to select the most suitable interaction resources and modalities for each user in the automatic creation of the interface. The validation of the interfaces generated for four different types of users is presented and discussed.

One of the challenges that Ambient Intelligent (AmI) faces is the provision of a usable interaction concept to its users, especially for those with less technical background. In this paper, we describe a new approach to integrate interactive services provided by an AmI environment with the television set, which is one of the most used interaction client in the home environment. An implementation of this approach has been carried out as a multimodal/multi purpose natural human computer interface for elderly people, by creating adapted graphical user interfaces and navigation menus together with multimodal interaction (simplified TV remote control and voice interaction). In addition, this user interface can also be suited to other user groups. We have tested a prototype that adapts the videoconference and the information service with a group of 83 users. The results from the user tests show that the group found the prototype to be both satisfactory and efficient to use.

Deaf users might find it difficult to navigate through websites with textual content which, for many of them, constitutes the written representation of a non-native oral language. With the aim of testing how the information structure could compensate for this difficulty, 27 prelingual deaf users of sign language were asked to search a set of headlines in a web newspaper where information structure and practice were manipulated. While practice did not affect deep structures (web content distributed through four layers of nodes), wide structures (web content concentrated in two layers) did facilitate users' performance in the last trial block and compromised it in the first trial block. It is argued that wide structures generate a textual information overload for deaf users, which decreases with practice. Thus, wide structures seem preferable for websites requiring frequent use, rather than for those intended for occasional interaction.

AmbienNet is an ongoing project aiming to demonstrate the viability of accessible intelligent environments to support people with disabilities and elderly people living autonomously. Based on the Ambient Intelligence paradigm, it tries to study in depth its advantages and disadvantages for people with sensory, physical or cognitive restrictions. To this end diverse supporting technologies and applications have been designed, in order to test their accessibility, usability and validity. After introducing the objectives and findings of the project, in this paper a number of preliminary results are presented and discussed.

This paper explores the effect of substituting textual links for graphical ones on the performance of deaf signers in hypertext information retrieval (HIR). Both deaf and hearing users found more targets, were faster and became less disoriented in the verbal hypertext interface than in the graphical one. Deaf users were outperformed by hearing users in all conditions except in short paths with the graphical interface. The results and its applied consequences, which would be also relevant to other users with similar problems than those of deaf signers (elderly people, people with dyslexia, people navigating in a website using a foreign language or people with low literacy) are discussed in relation to the CoLiDeS model of web interaction (Kitajima et al. 2000 Kitajima, M., Blackmon, M. H. and Polson, P. G.A. 2000. “Comprehension-based model of Web navigation and its application to Web usability analysis”. In People and Computers XIV Edited by: McDonald, S., Waern, Y. and Cockton, G. 357–373. UK )Springer) [Google Scholar]) and to the overgeneralisation of ‘Picture superiority effect’ (Nelson et al. 1976 Nelson, D. L., Reed, U. S. and Walling, J. R. 1976. Picture superiority effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2: 523–528. [Crossref], [PubMed] , [Google Scholar]).

Ubiquitous (or pervasive) systems are characterized by component distribution and dynamic behavior. In a ubiquitous environment, such as a future automated home (also called a domotic environment), user devices explore the environment to discover resources and services to control. This paper analyzes architectures for ubiquitous systems based on the structure of the environment and the way discovery mechanisms (such as Jini and UPnP) operate. As a result, a framework to classify the architectures is provided. As an example, a UPnP-based prototype for a domotic environment is presented. We use standard devices, such as PDAs and cell phones, to allow users to access and control virtual resources. The system provides user management capabilities, persistence, and standard interfaces, while preserving full UPnP compatibility. The prototype can be easily transferred to future realistic domotic installations.

Most people acknowledge that personal computers have enormously enhanced the autonomy and communication capacity of people with special needs. The key factor for accessibility to these opportunities is the adequate design of the user interface which, consequently, has a high impact on the social lives of users with disabilities. The design of universally accessible interfaces has a positive effect over the socialisation of people with disabilities. People with sensory disabilities can profit from computers as a way of personal direct and remote communication. Personal computers can also assist people with severe motor impairments to manipulate their environment and to enhance their mobility by means of, for example, smart wheelchairs. In this way they can become more socially active and productive. Accessible interfaces have become so indispensable for personal autonomy and social inclusion that in several countries special legislation protects people from ‘digital exclusion’. To apply this legislation, inexperienced HCI designers can experience difficulties. They would greatly benefit from inclusive design guidelines in order to be able to implement the ‘design for all’ philosophy. In addition, they need clear criteria to avoid negative social and ethical impact on users. This paper analyses the benefits of the use of inclusive design guidelines in order to facilitate a universal design focus so that social exclusion is avoided. In addition, the need for ethical and social guidelines in order to avoid undesirable side effects for users is discussed. Finally, some preliminary examples of socially and ethically aware guidelines are proposed.

ADSTRACT Word-prediction is a technique commonly used to reduce the amount of keystrokes needed to input text by people with severe physical disabilities. Several methods based on word frequencies have been developed so far. Many of them do not take advantage of the information inherent to the syntactic sentence structure. This paper puts forth a word-prediction method based on the syntactical analysis of a sentence, carried out using the “chart” parsing method proposed by Allen. This method also adapts its behaviour to the user’s lexicon. The obtained results are compared to others obtained from a pure statistical predictor,

The use of telecommunications to overcome the isolation of disabled people is analyzed. In order to use these kinds of services, such abilities as hearing and vision are necessary. Any lack of these abilities must be compensated for with technical aids to allow these people to have an independent and productive life. Experience in this field is described, and different efforts in Europe toward integration of disabled people into society by using modern telecommunication services are outlined.>