Towards Coupled Interaction- Practical Integration of Physiological Signals

Abstract

The search for usable systems has highlighted design criteria like adaptiveness or accessibility support. The systemic view of interaction, encompassing the human user, artifacts, language, methodology and training, influenced the design principles of past and current systems. However, users have been taken as black boxes, communicating with the machine through more or less sophisticated languages. The recognition of cognitive or emotional status of the user and its integration in the interaction design is the basis of the coupled interaction notion, a view of the structural coupling concept derived from more general system theories. A dimension of this coupling strategy is the integration of human physiological signals. Realizing the constraints of current systems, this paper describes technical experience gained from the use of EEG (electroencephalography) for evaluation of “reading ” tasks and from the use of ECG (electrocardiography) information as an input modality, and tries to build an integrated view for interaction design with these physiological multimodalities