As autonomous agents, from self-driving cars to virtual assistants, become increasingly present in everyday life, safe and effective collaboration depends on human understanding of agents’ intentions. Current intent communication approaches are often rigid, agent-specific, and narrowly scoped, limiting their adaptability across tasks, environments, and user preferences. A key gap remains: existing models of what to communicate are rarely linked to systematic choices of how and when to communicate, preventing the development of generalizable, multi-modal strategies. In this paper, we introduce a multidimensional design space for intent communication structured along three dimensions: Transparency (what is communicated), Abstraction (when), and Modality (how). We apply this design space to three distinct human-agent collaboration scenarios: (a) bystander interaction, (b) cooperative tasks, and (c) shared control, demonstrating its capacity to generate adaptable, scalable, and cross-domain communication strategies. By bridging the gap between intent content and communication implementation, our design space provides a foundation for designing safer, more intuitive, and more transferable agent-human interactions.

Research on cycling safety has recently gained the attention of the HCI community. While there have been multiple proposals for automated driving features on bikes, we are unaware of a project that systematically aims to translate and evaluate driver assistance systems from the automotive to the bike domain to promote cycling safety in traffic. Thus, we implemented an adaptive cruise control and a lane-keeping/centering system with hard- and software on a motion-based bicycle simulator and investigated their potential in a virtual reality experiment. Based on performance measurements and subjective ratings, results showed significant improvements in technology acceptance, subjective workload, and driving performance regarding the cruise control. In contrast, the lane-centering and lane-keeping features were rated significantly worse than the baseline without such assistance. The paper concludes with a critical reflection on automated driving features for bicycles.

An immersive single-user virtual reality system possesses the potential to induce a paradigm shift in the realm of professional training, particularly within safety-intensive and complex procedural domains. This innovative system offers a safe, adaptable, engaging, and efficacious training experience, thereby fostering better task performance, reduced errors, and more favorable outcomes. Our goal is to delve into the opportunities and challenges associated with such training programs, while also providing guidelines for their seamless integration into educational curricula. Three case studies were conducted to gauge the efficacy of single-user VR training: the electricians’ scenario (N=30), a spatial orientation scenario (N=20), and a medical trolley scenario (N=21). Employing mixed methodologies, encompassing workshops, semi-structured interviews, and observatory data collection, insights were gathered. The core objective of this investigation was to assess the perceptions of potential users, notably those partaking in apprenticeships or vocational training, toward prototypes of single-user VR training. The study’s findings emphasize the inherent value and constructive attributes of integrating single-user VR training within the realm of professional development. This integration fosters practical experiential learning in procedures and essential competencies for ensuring safety, resulting in enhanced training outcomes. The study showcased augmented individualized learning tempos, expanded opportunities for repetition, heightened concentration, and deeper engagement within the VR-based instructional environment. Moreover, the study underscored the crucial role of personalized design enhancements and continuous content evolution to maximize the effectiveness of VR-based training methodologies. Integral to the comprehensive evaluation was the significance of user experience and the perceived value of the VR system. In parallel with the empirical investigation, foundational design principles were derived from the challenges and prospects unveiled across all three case studies.

The recycling of organic waste through composting or fermentation is an easy yet underestimated way to bind CO. Due to a lack of awareness, society is still insufficiently separating recyclable organic waste from unsuitable residual waste. Any impurities inevitably reduce the quality of a single container and, thus, the entire load of a waste transporter, resulting in its expensive and less sustainable energy recovery through incineration. To prevent the addition of impurities and the inevitable incineration of valuable organic waste, the problem must be tackled directly at the producer’s site. In the context of a preliminary experimental study, a Smart Trash Can has been developed to automatically take photos of the waste each time it is filled. It serves as a convenient means to collect a series of photos that will contribute to a large dataset for the training of machine-learning models to assess and monitor waste quality. In this way, not only can contaminated waste be separated from pure organic waste, but also feedback, incentives, or nudges can be provided to the user to lead to better waste separation.

Research on cyclists‘ safety and comfort is a growing topic. Existing works address support systems with novel interaction concepts such as augmented reality but also the design and evaluation of high-fidelity bicycle simulators. Since the field is still in its exploratory phase, there have been few attempts to systematically provide guidance for conducting experiments. For example, there is no consensus on the choice of representative driving scenarios, the proper choice of different bicycle simulators, and measurement standards to systematically compare the results of different studies. With this workshop, we want the community to gather and discuss a roadmap for the future of HCI bicycle research so that these issues can be overcome.

Recently, researchers have proposed to develop automated self-balancing functions for bicycles to increase road safety and convenience. However, no study has investigated how self-balancing bicycles are perceived by potential users in a natural urban environment. Therefore, we conducted a field study using a modified “parent-child tandem” in which both the front and back seat passengers could share control of the riding dynamics. An experimenter in the back seat acted as an automated system, and participants in the front seat experienced the ride while responding to text messages on their smartphones. Based on interviews, video observation, and eye-tracking data, the results highlight potential use cases for self-balancing bicycles and uncover that trust and multitasking freedom can lead to similar problems as in automated cars.

Research in human-robot collaboration explores aspects of using interaction modalities and their effect on human perception. Particular attention is paid to intent communication, which is essential for successful interaction and collaboration. This work investigates the effect of using audio, visual, and haptic feedback on intent communication in a human-robot collaboration task where the collaborators do not share a direct line of sight. A user study was conducted in virtual reality with 20 participants. Qualitative and quantitative feedback was collected from all participants. When compared with a baseline of no feedback given to the participants, results show that using visual feedback had a significant impact on task efficiency, user experience, and cognitive load. Audio feedback was slightly less impactful, while haptic feedback had a divisive effect. Multimodal feedback combining the three modalities showed the highest impact compared to the individual modalities, leading to the highest task efficiency and user experience, and the lowest cognitive load.

Bicycle simulators are becoming an increasingly used research tool. However, due to the complex cycling dynamics, these simulators have issues of simulator sickness and perceived realism. A potential method to address these issues could be providing a motion-based tilting function. Some bicycle simulators with tilt functionality have already been presented but still lack a systematic evaluation. In this work, we present a motion-based bicycle simulator without centrifugal force simulation and the results from a user study that compared different tilt modes. N=31 participants completed a study in virtual reality with a strong and a weak tilt mode, as well as a baseline condition without movement. We discovered that weak tilting could significantly improve the cycling realism without decreasing cycling performance and simulator sickness. Furthermore, our research suggests that there is a sweet spot for a tilting function, which facilitates a balance between presence/immersion and simulator sickness.

Advances in digital fabrication have simultaneously created new capabilities while reinforcing outdated workflows that constrain how, and by whom, these fabrication tools are used. In this paper, we investigate how a new class of hybrid-controlled machines can collaborate with novice and expert users alike to yield a more lucid making experience. We demonstrate these ideas through our system, Turn-by-Wire. By combining the capabilities of a traditional lathe with haptic input controllers that modulate both position and force, we detail a series of novel interaction metaphors that invite a more fluid making process spanning digital, model-centric, computer control, and embodied, adaptive, human control. We evaluate our system through a user study and discuss how these concepts generalize to other fabrication tools.

Occupational accidents cause physical harm to impacted employees and financial harm to employers. The most effective protection against occupational accidents is the proper usage of personal protective equipment (PPE). A huge variety of wearable sensors is available for different purposes, they have already proven their potential to support personal fitness and health. This paper describes the idea and implementation of a safety system for PPE based on such wearable sensors and wireless technology. The goal of the system is to ensure that the right PPE required for a specific task is worn. Furthermore, conclusions based on stakeholder interviews are presented. These include the feasibility of the suggested implementation on a smartwatch as well as a confirmation from domain experts that wearable sensing can improve workplace safety.

This paper provides an extended abstract. The full paper is currently under review for Electronic Markets journal.

Physical products, things, and appliances will be associated with digital counterparts, such as additional product information, instructions, API's, etc.. Thus, it will become challenging for users to consciously manage access rights of data of their objects and stay aware of which data is visible to whom. This paper proposes to transfer the notion of Google's circles for managing social relationships to managing data streams of physical objects. We describe the concept and its implementation, and provide a proof-of-concept by a sample scenario. Thus, we show that object circles offer a more intuitive way for everyday users to manage the data-streams of their objects transparently.

We evaluate a mobile application that assesses driving behavior based on in-vehicle acceleration measurements and gives corresponding feedback to drivers. In the insurance business, such applications have recently gained traction as a viable alternative to the monitoring of drivers via "black boxes" installed in vehicles, which lacks interaction opportunities and is perceived as privacy intrusive by policyholders. However, pose uncertainty and other noise-inducing factors make smartphones potentially less reliable as sensor platforms. We therefore compare critical driving events generated by a smartphone with reference measurements from a vehicle-fixed IMU in a controlled field study. The study was designed to capture driver variability under real-world conditions, while minimizing the influence of external factors. We find that the mobile measurements tend to overestimate critical driving events, possibly due to deviation from the calibrated initial device pose. While weather and daytime do not appear to influence event counts, road type is a significant factor that is not considered in most current state-of-the-art implementations.

Scanning parts of paper-based information can be time-consuming and disrupt the user's workflow. Accordingly, we investigate the performance and usability of a computer mouse with document scanning capabilities, referred to as scan mouse. We set up a user study with 20 users scanning parts of paper documents using the scan mouse, a personal desktop scanner, shared network scanner, and the camera of an iPhone. Results show that the scan mouse is both faster and perceived as easier to use than the other devices due to the seamless integration of scanning capabilities into the established routine of handling a computer mouse.

The public nature of user generated content on social media platforms offers the possibility for trend monitoring as an insight into the topics that attract the attention of a large fraction of users. While Google Trends and Twitter have already been recognized as a valuable source of trend information by the practitioners and scholars, at the moment there are no practical implementations or research efforts in the field of trend detection over Face book public posts. In this paper we present two contributions towards trend monitoring over Face book public posts. We propose and evaluate a system for trend detection based on the characteristics of the posts shared on Face book. Based on our results we propose three categories of trending topics: 'disruptive events', 'popular topics' and 'daily routines'. We analyze and compare the characteristics of the proposed categories in terms of distribution and information diffusion in order to increase the understanding of emerging trends on Face book. Finally we draw conclusions from our findings in terms of challenges and opportunities for future work in this direction.

Context-aware information is widely available in various ways such as interaction patterns, location, devices, annotations, query suggestions and user profiles and is becoming more and more important for enhancing retrieval performance and recommendation results. At the moment, the main issue to cope with is not only recommending or retrieving the most relevant items and content, but defining them ad hoc. Other relevant issues are personalizing and adapting the information and the way it is displayed to the user's current situation (device, location) and interests.

The workshop on mobile interaction in retail environments (MIRE) brings together researchers and practitioners from academy and industry to explore how mobile phones and mobile interaction can be embedded in retail environments to create new shopping experiences and mobile enhanced services.

Today most mobile operating systems provide users with an application portal where they can search for applications published by third-party developers. However, finding new apps is not an easy task and requires either to know what to look for or to go through an endless list of applications. In this paper we present work in progress of a platform that allows its users to discover mobile applications in a serendipitous manner. AppAware is a mobile application that captures and shares installations, updates, and removals of Android programs in real time. Accordingly, AppAware allows its users to see what applications are being installed right now or around their position by other people, thus introducing a new way of interaction with application portals and other mobile users.

Research has shown that product reviews on the Internet not only support consumers when shopping, but also lead to increased sales for retailers. Recent approaches successfully use smart phones to directly relate products (e.g. via barcode or RFID) to corresponding reviews, making these available to consumers on the go. However, it is unknown what modality (star ratings/text/video) users consider useful for creating reviews and using reviews on their mobile phone, and how the preferred modalities are different from those on the Web. To shed light on this we conduct two experiments, one of them in a quasi-realistic shopping environment. The results indicate that, in contrast to the known approaches, stars and pre-structured text blocks should be implemented on mobile phones rather than long texts and videos. Users prefer less and rather well-aggregated product information while on the go. This accounts both for entering and, surprisingly, also for using product reviews.

Microinsurance is a growing market in developing countries and helps low-income individuals to cover risks. Delivering these products at low costs is crucial and cannot be achieved by traditional agent-based sales processes. We develop and implement a smartphone-based sales process and run a proof of concept with 20 insurance sales agents in South Africa. With a 117 insurance policies sold we show the feasibility of the process. A detailed focus group discussion suggests that the process needs to be extended. Our results show that the micro-insurance sales process can be successfully supported by smartphones. Customer's trust however needs to be increased by product brochures.

Information about health, disease or environmental conditions is increasingly becoming available. We investigate the suitability of using mobile phones as an interface to provide information about risk-related events or conditions to the user. We approach the problem by conducting an online survey in order to match the requirements on a risk information service with the capabilities of the mobile phone and to evaluate different notification mechanisms, the usage frequency, and the influence of costs. Based on the results of the survey we confirm the suitability of the mobile phone to provide risk-related information as well as the user's willingness to pay for the service.

When it comes to vehicle accidents, people are stressed out and overstrained, even if it is just a car body damage and no one is hurt. They often lack adequate and immediate assistance and may worry about the lengthy and paper-based loss report to their insurance carrier. At the same time, it is crucial for insurance companies to receive early and detailed case circumstances in order to decrease costs and assist customers with value-added services. Against this background, we propose the usage of mobile phones in order to assist people in the aftermath of an accident. We present a concept for mobile claims assistance along with a proto-typical implementation that features an asynchronous communication between mobile phones and claims management enterprise systems based on mobile Web Services. Finally, we discuss the user perspective on mobile insurance applications and present data we collected using a combination of focus groups and user surveys.

Location Based Services (LBS) promise interesting business opportunities. Today, most LBS are either implemented in hardware devices, or downloaded and installed by mobile phone users as software applications. Both approaches lead to scattered markets and hinder standardization. This paper suggests an alternative approach, which is to enhance mobile web-browsers with location information and implement LBS at the server-side. We define the design space for the location enhanced mobile web and present an implementation of a location enhanced web browser for the currently predominant mobile phone operating system, i.e. Symbian S60.

Customer reviews and recommendations for products are provided by almost all e-business platforms, supporting consumers when shopping on the web. Mobile and ubiquitous computing provide extended means to sense input data for recommendations and to make recommendations available for consumers when shopping in traditional stores. This work contributes a comprehensive design space that outlines design options for product recommendation systems using mobile and ubiquitous technologies. A visual notation for the design space is proposed, based on which existing systems are categorized. Blank spaces are identified and concrete possible extensions are proposed by the example of an existing mobile product recommendation system. Finally, general options for future research on product recommendation systems using UbiComp technologies are discussed.

This paper presents a concept that enables consumers to access and share product recommendations using their mobile phone. Based on a review of current product recommendation mechanisms it devises a concept called APriori. APriori leverages the potential of auto-ID-enabled mobile phones (barcode/RFID) to receive and submit product ratings. Since mobile users cannot be expected to have the patience and time to compose text-based reviews on mobile phones, we introduce a new rating concept that allows users to generate new rating criteria. The concept is tailored to the limited attention and input options of mobile users in real-world environment. This work describes the architecture, implementation, and evaluation of APriori. For an evaluation we have taken the approach of interviewing 26 users in the frames of a formative user study, with the goal to further improve the system for an application in the real world. In addition, the paper discusses open issues regarding community-based product recommendations on mobile phones and proposes solutions.

In the era of ubiquitous devices and mobility, we increasingly carry objects of great value (in terms of data, money or emotions). Because of our increased mobility, we are also more inclined to lose these objects. When it comes to finding them again, current lost property offices seem rather inflexible and not fully adapted to our nomad lives. They lack dynamic information, introduce too many intermediates and induce high costs. We support the growth of a community of users able to solve the problem on their own using their mobile phones. We describe our concept and implementation of the idea based on prototypes of mobile phones enhanced with a novel type of RFID (Radio Frequency IDentifiaction) reader, the use of the EPC (Electronic Product Code) standards and the creation of both mobile and server-side software. We finally discuss how it can help making the current system more dynamic and efficient.

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework that allows mobile users to access a variety of services provided by their current environment (e.g. print services). Novel to our approach is that selection and execution of services takes into account the user’s current context. Instead of being harassed by useless activities as service browsing or configuration issues, environmental services get seamlessly aligned to the user’s present task. Thus, the challenge is to develop a new service framework that fulfils these demands. The paper proposes a document-based approach; so called Context-Aware Packets (CAPs) contain context constraints and data for describing an entire service request. The core framework, Context-Aware Packets Enabling Ubiquitous Services (CAPEUS), reverts to CAPs for realising context-aware selection and execution of services.