A Design Kit for Mobile Device-Based Interaction Techniques

Beside designing the graphical interface of mobile applications, mobile phones and their built-in sensors enable various possibilities to engage with digital content in a physical, device-based manner that move beyond the screen content. So-called mobile device-based interactions are characterized by device movements and positions as well as user actions in real space. So far, there is only little guidance available for novice designers and developers to ideate and design new solutions for specic individual or collaborative use cases. Hence, the potential for designing mobile-based interactions is seldom fully exploited. To address this issue, we propose a design kit for mobile device-based interaction techniques following a morphological approach. Overall, the kit comprises seven dimensions with several elements that can be easily combined with each other to form an interaction technique by selecting at least one entry of each dimension. The design kit can be used to support designers in exploring novel mobile interaction techniques to specic interaction problems in the ideation phase of the design process but also in the analysis of existing device-based interaction solutions

Digital Barriers: Making Technology Work for People

This paper was originally given as an oral presentation at the ‘3rd International Conference for Universal Design’, International Association for Universal Design, Hamamatsu, Japan (2010) and subsequently published. Peer reviewed by the conference’s International Scientific Committee, it looks at how the emerging techniques of design ethnography could be applied in a business context and qualitatively evaluates the benefits. It outlines the differences between inclusive design research conducted for digital devices/services and the large body of existing research on inclusive products, buildings and environments. It advances the view that technology companies are today in danger of repeating the same inclusive design mistakes made by kitchen and bathroom manufacturers 20 years ago, and calls for technology companies to develop new techniques to avoid this happening. The paper charts in detail the challenges and processes involved in transferring academic inclusive design research into the business arena, describing research conducted by Gheerawo and his co-authors on projects with research partners Samsung and BlackBerry. The paper helped define the ‘people and technology’ research theme in the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design’s Age & Ability Research Lab, which Gheerawo leads. It was also important, as part of evidence of the benefits of an inclusive technology approach, in persuading a number of companies (Sony, BT, Samsung) to undertake new studies with the Lab. Gheerawo used this pathfinder paper in further work, including an essay on digital communication for www.designingwithpeople.org (i-Design3 project EPSRC), membership of the steering committee for Age UK’s Engage accreditation for business, and lectures at ‘CitiesforAll’ conference, Helsinki (2012), ‘WorkTech’, London (2010), ‘Budapest Design Week’ (2011) and the ‘Business of Ageing’ conference, Dublin (2011). Gheerawo also co-wrote an article ‘Moving towards an encompassing universal design approach in ICT’ in The Journal of Usability Studies (2010), for which he was also a guest editor

Software for Wearable Devices: Challenges and Opportunities

Wearable devices are a new form of mobile computer system that provides exclusive and user-personalized services. Wearable devices bring new issues and challenges to computer science and technology. This paper summarizes the development process and the categories of wearable devices. In addition, we present new key issues arising in aspects of wearable devices, including operating systems, database management system, network communication protocol, application development platform, privacy and security, energy consumption, human-computer interaction, software engineering, and big data.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, for Compsac 201

Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research

Exploring the Front Touch Interface for Virtual Reality Headsets

In this paper, we propose a new interface for virtual reality headset: a touchpad in front of the headset. To demonstrate the feasibility of the front touch interface, we built a prototype device, explored VR UI design space expansion, and performed various user studies. We started with preliminary tests to see how intuitively and accurately people can interact with the front touchpad. Then, we further experimented various user interfaces such as a binary selection, a typical menu layout, and a keyboard. Two-Finger and Drag-n-Tap were also explored to find the appropriate selection technique. As a low-cost, light-weight, and in low power budget technology, a touch sensor can make an ideal interface for mobile headset. Also, front touch area can be large enough to allow wide range of interaction types such as multi-finger interactions. With this novel front touch interface, we paved a way to new virtual reality interaction methods

Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys

Touch-based devices, despite their mainstream availability, do not support a unified and efficient command selection mechanism, available on every platform and application. We advocate that hotkeys, conventionally used as a shortcut mechanism on desktop computers, could be generalized as a command selection mechanism for touch-based devices, even for keyboard-less applications. In this paper, we investigate the performance and usage of soft keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys (abbreviated SoftCuts) through two studies comparing different input methods across sitting, standing and walking conditions. Our results suggest that SoftCuts not only are appreciated by participants but also support rapid command selection with different devices and hand configurations. We also did not find evidence that walking deters their performance when using the Once input method.Comment: 17+2 pages, published at Mobile HCI 202