Combined with conventional rehabilitation of the upper limbs, kinesthetic motor imagery (KMI) is a promising direction in post-stroke neurorehabilitation. Unfortunately, KMI is a complex mental task for people, as it provides no feedback, making it impossible to self-assess, correct, and improve their performance and, consequently, their rehabilitation. To overcome this difficulty, we have designed Sense-IT, a deformable interface coupled with a gamified BCI that provides tangible multisensory feedback (visual and kinesthetic) to allow for a supportive and differentiable rehabilitation program according to patients’ needs and preferences. This original double-blind and mixed study (N=36) compares the effects of three feedback modalities (visual, kinesthetic via Sense-IT, bimodal) on the user experience and motor area stimulation. Although neurophysiological results did not reveal significant differences in contralateral motor cortex activation across the three feedback modalities, subjective measures highlighted the added value of tangible and multimodal feedback. Participants reported that the kinesthetic feedback provided by Sense-IT enhanced their engagement and task comprehension. Overall, these findings support the relevance of combining visual and kinesthetic neurofeedback to improve user experience and emphasize the importance of delivering reliable and meaningful feedback in BCI-based motor rehabilitation.

We put forth Physiologically Driven Storytelling, a new approach to interactive storytelling where narratives adaptively unfold based on the reader's physiological state. We first describe a taxonomy framing how physiological signals can be used to drive interactive systems both as input and output. We then propose applications to interactive storytelling and describe the implementation of a software tool to create Physiological Interactive Fiction (PIF). The results of an online study (N=140) provided guidelines towards augmenting the reading experience. PIF was then evaluated in a lab study (N=14) to determine how physiological signals can be used to infer a reader's state. Our results show that breathing, electrodermal activity, and eye tracking can help differentiate positive from negative tones, and monotonous from exciting events. This work demonstrates how PIF can support storytelling in creating engaging content and experience tailored to the reader. Moreover, it opens the space to future physiologically driven systems within broader application areas.

Our physiological activity reflects our inner workings. However, we are not always aware of it in full detail. Physiological devices allow us to monitor and create adaptive systems and support introspection. Given that these devices have access to sensitive data, it is vital that users have a clear understanding of the internal mechanisms (extrospection), yet the underlying processes are hard to understand and control, resulting in a loss of agency. In this work, we focus on bringing the agency back to the user, by using design guidelines based on principles of honest communication and driven by positive activities. To this end, we conceived a tangible, modular approach for the construction of physiological interfaces that can be used as a prototyping toolkit by designers and researchers, or as didactic tools by educators and pupils. We show the potential of such an approach with a set of examples, supporting introspection, dialog, music creation, and play.

The consumer drone market has shown a constant growth for the past few years. As drones become increasingly autonomous and used for a growing number of applications, it is crucial to establish parameters for collocated human-drone interaction. Prior research showed how ground robots should approach a person to initiate interaction. This paper builds upon prior work and investigates how a flying robot should approach a person. Because of the flight capability, drones present more approach parameters than ground robots and require further study to properly design future interactions. Since research methodologies in aerial robotics are not well established, we present a taxonomy of methodologies for human-drone interaction studies to guide future researchers in the field. This paper then contributes a user study (N=24) investigating proximity, speed, direction, and trajectory towards a comfortable drone approach. We present our study results and design guidelines for the safe approach of a drone in a collocated indoor environment.

Cerebral activity is an intangible physiological process that is difficult to apprehend, especially for children. To overcome this difficulty, Teegi was designed as a new type of educational support. This tangible interface enables children to discover the relationship between brain activity and the functions of the human body. We developed a multimethods research approach to estimate the pedagogical potential of Teegi used in a real-life educational context. Using this interdisciplinary methodology, we conducted a user study (N=29) that highlighted the strengths of this interface, both in terms of its usability and its impact on learning. Moreover, results revealed possible improvements to further increase pedagogical effectiveness. This type of interface, as well as the evaluation method that we propose, contribute to extending our knowledge concerning the pedagogical use of new interactive tools at school.

Digitally presenting physiological signals as biofeedback to users raises awareness of both body and mind. This paper describes the effectiveness of conveying a physiological signal often overlooked for communication: breathing. We present the design and development of digital breathing patterns and their evaluation along three output modalities: visual, audio, and haptic. We also present Breeze, a wearable pendant placed around the neck that measures breathing and sends biofeedback in real-time. We evaluated how the breathing patterns were interpreted in a fixed environment and gathered qualitative data on the wearable device's design. We found that participants intentionally modified their own breathing to match the biofeedback, as a technique for understanding the underlying emotion. Our results describe how the features of the breathing patterns and the feedback modalities influenced participants' perception. We include guidelines and suggested use cases, such as Breeze being used by loved ones to increase connectedness and empathy.

Interactive fiction is a literary genre that is rapidly gaining popularity. In this genre, readers are able to explicitly take actions in order to guide the course of the story. With the recent popularity of narrative focused games, we propose to design and develop an interactive narrative tool for content creators. In this extended abstract, we show how we leverage this interactive medium to present a tool for interactive storytelling in virtual reality. Using a simple markup language, content creators and researchers are now able to create interactive narratives in a virtual reality environment. We further discuss the potential future directions for a virtual reality storytelling engine.

Digital technology has been completely integrated into our daily lives, yet the potential of technology to improve its users' life satisfaction is still largely untapped. Mindfulness, the act of paying a deliberate and non-judgmental attention to the present moment, has been shown to have a positive impact on a person's health and subjective well-being--commonly called "happiness". Based on an iterative process with meditation teachers and practitioners, we designed a new tool to support mindfulness practices. This tool takes the shape of an augmented sandbox, designed to inspire the user's self-motivation and curiosity. By shaping the sand, the user creates a living miniature world that is projected back onto the sand. The natural elements of the garden are connected to real-time physiological measurements, such as breathing, helping the user to stay focused on the body. Moreover, using a Virtual Reality headset, they can travel inside their garden for a dedicated meditation session. Preliminary results seem to indicate that the system is well suited for mindfulness and induces a calm and mindful state on the user. The meditation teachers envisioned the use of Inner Garden in their practice.

Measuring brain activity with electroencephalography (EEG) is mature enough to assess mental states. Combined with existing methods, such tool can be used to strengthen the understanding of user experience. We contribute a set of methods to estimate continuously the user's mental workload, attention and recognition of interaction errors during different interaction tasks. We validate these measures on a controlled virtual environment and show how they can be used to compare different interaction techniques or devices, by comparing here a keyboard and a touch-based interface. Thanks to such a framework, EEG becomes a promising method to improve the overall usability of complex computer systems.

We propose a toolkit for creating Tangible Out-of-Body Experiences: exposing the inner states of users using physiological signals such as heart rate or brain activity. Tobe can take the form of a tangible avatar displaying live physiological readings to reflect on ourselves and others. Such a toolkit could be used by researchers and designers to create a multitude of potential tangible applications, including (but not limited to) educational tools about Science Technologies Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and cognitive science, medical applications or entertainment and social experiences with one or several users or Tobes involved. Through a co-design approach, we investigated how everyday people picture their physiology and we validated the acceptability of Tobe in a scientific museum. We also give a practical example where two users relax together, with insights on how Tobe helped them to synchronize their signals and share a moment.

The digital revolution made available vast amounts of data both in industry and in the research landscape. The ability to manipulate and extract knowledge and value from this data represents a new profession called the Data Scientist: expected to be the most visible job in future years. The EDISON project has been established in order to support universities, research centers, industry and research infrastructure organisations to cope with the potential shortfall of Data Scientists, to define the framework of competences as well as the body of knowledge for this profession. In this paper the EDISON team describes how it intends to nurture the profession of Data Scientist to cope with the expected increase in demand. The strategy proposed is based on both the analysis of the demand side (industries, research centers and research infrastructure organisations) and the supply side (Universities and training centers) bridging between the providers and employers by cooperating on the establishment of a Competence Framework and a Body of Knowledge for the Data Scientist Professional. The project will exploit piloting initiatives in cooperation with pioneer universities and also involve external experts as evangelists.

We introduce Teegi, a Tangible ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG) Interface that enables novice users to get to know more about something as complex as brain signals, in an easy, engaging and informative way. To this end, we have designed a new system based on a unique combination of spatial augmented reality, tangible interaction and real-time neurotechnologies. With Teegi, a user can visualize and analyze his or her own brain activity in real-time, on a tangible character that can be easily manipulated, and with which it is possible to interact. An exploration study has shown that interacting with Teegi seems to be easy, motivating, reliable and informative. Overall, this suggests that Teegi is a promising and relevant training and mediation tool for the general public.