Gastric interoception influences eating behavior and emotions, making its modulation valuable for healthcare and human-computer-interaction applications. However, whether gastric interoception can be modulated noninvasively in humans remains unclear. While previous research indicates that abdominal-sound-driven haptic feedback resembles gut sensations, its impact on gastric feelings and gastric interoceptive behavior is unknown. We conducted three experiments totalling 55 participants to investigate how gut-sound-driven audio-haptic feedback applied to the stomach (1) affects user’s feelings (2) influences perception of hunger and satiety levels and (3) influences gastric interoceptive behavior, quantified with Water Load Test-II. Results revealed that audio-haptic feedback patterns (a) induced the feelings of hunger, fullness, thirst, stomach upset, (b) increased hunger level, and (c) significantly increased volumes of ingested water. This work provides the first evidence that audio-haptic stimulation can alter gastric interoceptive behavior, motivating the use of noninvasive methods to influence users’ feelings and behaviors in future applications.

We introduce Flexibles: 3D-printed flexible tangibles that are deformation-aware and operate on capacitive touchscreens. Flexibles add expressive deformation input to interaction with on-screen tangibles. Based on different types of deformation mapping, we contribute a set of 3D-printable mechanisms that capture pressing, squeezing, and bending input with multiple levels of intensities. They can be integrated into 3D printed objects with custom geometries and on different locations. A Flexible is printed in a single pass on a consumer-level 3D printer without requiring further assembly. Through a series of interactive prototypes, example applications and a technical evaluation, we show the technical feasibility and the wide applicability of Flexibles.

Accessing printed text in a mobile context is a major challenge for the blind. A preliminary study with blind people reveals numerous difficulties with existing state-of-the-art technologies including problems with alignment, focus, accuracy, mobility and efficiency. In this paper, we present a finger-worn device, FingerReader, that assists blind users with reading printed text on the go. We introduce a novel computer vision algorithm for local-sequential text scanning that enables reading single lines, blocks of text or skimming the text with complementary, multimodal feedback. This system is implemented in a small finger-worn form factor, that enables a more manageable eyes-free operation with trivial setup. We offer findings from three studies performed to determine the usability of the FingerReader.

The increasing number of smart objects in our everyday life shapes how we interact beyond the desktop. In this workshop we discussed how the interaction with these smart objects should be designed from various perspectives. This year's workshop put a special focus on affective computing with smart objects, as reflected by the keynote talk.

We contribute Permulin, an integrated set of interaction and visualization techniques for multi-view tabletops to support co-located collaboration across a wide variety of collaborative coupling styles. These techniques (1) provide support both for group work and for individual work, as well as for the transitions in-between, (2) contribute sharing and peeking techniques to support mutual awareness and group coordination during phases of individual work, (3) reduce interference during group work on a group view, and (4) directly integrate with conventional multi-touch input. We illustrate our techniques in a proof-of-concept implementation with the two example applications of map navigation and photo collages. Results from two user studies demonstrate that Permulin supports fluent transitions between individual and group work and exhibits unique awareness properties that allow participants to be highly aware of each other during tightly coupled collaboration, while being able to unobtrusively perform individual work during loosely coupled collaboration.

User input on television (TV) typically requires a mediator device such as a handheld remote control. While this is a well-established interaction paradigm, a handheld device has serious drawbacks: it can be easily misplaced due to its mobility and in case of a touch screen interface, it also requires additional visual attention. Emerging interaction paradigms such as 3D mid-air gestures using novel depth sensors (e.g. Microsoft Kinect), aim at overcoming these limitations, but are known to be tiring. In this article, we propose to leverage the palm as an interactive surface for TV remote control. We present three user studies which set the base for our four contributions: We (1) qualitatively explore the conceptual design space of the proposed imaginary palm-based remote control in an explorative study, (2) quantitatively investigate the effectiveness and accuracy of such an interface in a controlled experiment, (3) identified user acceptance in a controlled laboratory evaluation comparing PalmRC concept with two most typical existing input modalities, here conventional remote control and touch-based remote control interfaces on smart phones for their user experience, task load, as well as overall preference, and (4) contribute PalmRC, an eyes-free, palm-surface-based TV remote control. Our results show that the palm has the potential to be leveraged for device-less eyes-free TV remote interaction without any third-party mediator device.

Although smartphones and tablets become increasingly popular, pen and paper continues to play an important role in mobile practices, such as note taking or creative discussions. Applications designed to combine the benefits of both worlds in a mobile paper-digital ensemble require a theoretical understanding of interaction, to inform the design of adequate interaction techniques. To fill this void, we propose a theory based on the results of a stimulus driven exploratory study.

Pico projectors have lately been investigated as mobile display and interaction devices. We propose to use them as 'light beams': Everyday objects sojourning in a beam are turned into dedicated projection surfaces and tangible interaction devices. This way, our daily surroundings get populated with interactive objects, each one temporarily chartered with a dedicated sub-issue of pervasive interaction. While interaction with objects has been studied in larger, immersive projection spaces, the affordances of pico projections are fundamentally different: they have a very small, strictly limited field of projection, and they are mobile. This paper contributes the results of an exploratory field study on how people interact with everyday objects in pico projections in nomadic settings. Based upon these results, we present novel interaction techniques that leverage the limited field of projection and trade-off between digitally augmented and traditional uses of everyday objects.

Increasingly powerful mobile devices like the Apple iPhone empower learners to watch e-lectures not only at home but also in mobile learning scenarios virtually anywhere and anytime. However, state of the art mobile video browsers do not support learners in getting an overview on and navigating between the large amounts of semantically related e-lectures, which are available in various digital libraries. We contribute a novel user interface for the mobile use of e-lectures. Leveraging a spatial navigation metaphor, it supports both linear and nonlinear interaction within a single lecture, as well as the efficient navigation within large e-lecture libraries. Evaluation results show that our e-lecture browser significantly improves the learning process and leads to significantly higher efficiency and user satisfaction.

Increasingly powerful mobile devices enable users to access and watch videos in mobile settings. While some concepts for mobile video browsing have been presented, the field still lacks a general understanding of the design space and of the characteristics of interaction concepts. In order to improve user interfaces for mobile video browsing, this paper includes three contributions. First, we setup a design space for mobile video browsing and contribute seven novel interface concepts. They rely on GUI-based, on touch-gesture-based, and on physical interaction. Second, we present the results of an in-depth evaluation and comparison of these concepts. They are based on an ascriptive analysis of 18 hours of video observations from a controlled experiment with 44 participants. The results provide insights into common usability errors and misconceptions. Third, we derive implications for the design of mobile video browsers to minimize errors and to increase usability.

As users get accustomed to an increasing diverse range of mobile devices, personal computers, intelligent home and office appliances, as well as shared public devices, collaborative multi-device systems are emerging to benefit from using together devices of different users and different capabilities. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the systematic design of such systems in symbiotic environments. It distinguishes between information and interaction spaces. Focusing on using devices together, we introduce relationships between interaction spaces and annotatable mappings between the information space and the interaction spaces. Customizable annotations and the corresponding transformation of information support the development of collaborative systems for different scenarios. To demonstrate the validity of our framework, we introduce an architecture for multi-device web-browsing systems, and an annotation vocabulary which particularly focuses on symbiotic environments. The evaluation of our implemented prototype confirms the usefulness of multi-browsing, and the need for supporting both developers and end users to individually annotate web pages.