CARTON Project: Do-It-Yourself Approach to Turn a Smartphone into a Smart Eyewear

International audienceThis paper presents a tool to transform a smartphone into a smart eyewear, named "CARTON", following a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach. The hardware prototype is made with very simple materials and regular tools we could find anywhere. It also includes a Software Development Kit (SDK) with samples in order to easily adapt or develop new mobile app compatible with this kind of device. By providing everything open-source and open-hardware, we intend to solve the reachability of technologies related to smart eyewear and aim to accelerate research around it. Users experiments were conducted in which participants were asked to create, by themselves, the CARTON's hardware part and perform usability tests with their own creation. Qualitative user feedback and quantitative results prove that CARTON is functional and feasible by anyone, without specific skills

SHOW ME WHAT YOU MEAN: Gestures and drawings on physical objects as means for remote collaboration and guidance

This thesis presents findings based on the study of remote projected interaction and guidance on physical objects. First, the results are based on the study of literature and previous research in the fields of ubiqutious computing and environment, augmented reality, remote collaboration and guidance. Second, the results are based on findings through testing projector technology in remote interaction and guidance with users with the help of prototype. Previous studies indicate that guidance on physical objects is seen as valuable and in such interaction, the focus should be shifted to the actual object. This thesis contributes to previous research and suggest better integration of hand gestures and drawings into remote collaboration and guidance. Projected interaction model, described in this thesis, enhances the feeling of togetherness between remote users (expert and novice), and provides critical help in conversational grounding in remote collaboration and guidance with physical objects

Kolab: appropriation & improvisation in mobile tangible collaborative interaction

Current design guidelines for conventional tangible systems suggest that the representational significance of tangible tokens is an important consideration in the design of tangible interaction, especially in collaborative contexts. Such advice might be assumed to imply that nomadic tangible systems that employ improvised tokens are liable to have highly impaired usability. In this paper we describe a proof of concept experiment for Kolab, a nomadic tangible interaction system that permits any surface to be appropriated as a collaborative tabletop, and which affords the use of a wide range of appropriated artifacts as improvised tangibles. We demonstrate an approach for realizing the necessary interaction techniques combining tangibles and hand gestures using a fusion of image and depth sensing. We present the results of a user study showing that while users' choices of artifacts were seen to follow an unexpected pattern, various artifacts were appropriated and improvised as tangibles, and the system was found to be both usable and well able to support user collaboration

Kolab: Improvising Nomadic Tangible User Interfaces in the Workplace for Co-Located Collaboration

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) [Ishii 1997] offer an interface style that couples "digital information to everyday physical objects and environments" [Ishii 1997 page 2]. However this physicality may also be a limitation as the tendency to use iconic representations for tangibles can result in inflexible 'concrete and specialised objects' [Shaer 2009 page 107]. The current research investigates whether by reducing the dependence on specific tangible sets through the use of improvised tangibles we may begin to address the issue of tangible flexibility within TUIs. Improvised tangibles may be characterised by being potentially arbitrary and abstract, in that they may bear little or no resemblance to the underlying digital value. Core literature in the field (e. g. [Fitzmaurice 1996] [Ishii 2008] [Hornecker 2006] [Holmquist 1999]) suggests that a system based on improvised tangibles would suffer from impaired usability and so the research focuses on the impact on usability due to a lack of close representational significance [Ullmer 2000] during co-located collaboration. Using a prototyping methodology a functional, shareable, TUI system was developed based on computer vision techniques using the Microsoft Kinect [Microsoft2011]. This prototype system ('Kolab') was used to explore an interaction design that supports the dynamic binding of improvised tangibles to digital values. A simple co-located collaborative task was developed using 'Kolab' and a user study was conducted to investigate the usability of the system in a collaborative context. Within the limitations of the simple task the results of the study show that a) users appeared comfortable with improvising artefacts b) the high rate of task completion strongly suggests that a lack of close representational significance does not impair system usability and c) despite some temporary issues with users interfering with other's action an overall indication of equitable participation suggests that collaboration was not impaired by the 'Kolab' prototype

Facilitating Understanding of Movements in Dynamic Visualizations: An Embodied Perspective

Learners studying mechanical or technical processes via dynamic visualizations often fail to build an accurate mental representation of the system's movements. Based on embodied theories of cognition assuming that action, perception, and cognition are closely intertwined, this paper proposes that the learning effectiveness of dynamic visualizations could be enhanced by grounding the movements of the presentation in people's own bodily experiences during learning. We discuss recent research on embodied cognition and provide specific strategies for how the body can be used to ground movements during the learning process: (1) making or observing gestures, (2) manipulating and interacting with objects, (3) using body metaphors, and (4) using eye movements as retrieval cues. Implications for the design of dynamic visualizations as well as directions for future research are presented

A health-oriented emotion-centred origami-based PSS concept. A product-service system concept aimed to help users manage and reduce their stress more tangibly to improve their health and well-being.

Emotions have a fundamental role in the experience, perception, cognition, and development of people (Barrett et al., 2016; Plutchik, 2001). Negative emotions such as stress, if not managed appropriately, may be a risk factor in developing diseases such as dementia, cardiovascular problems, and depression, amongst others (Dum et al., 2016; Sandi et al., 2001). This interdisciplinary research presents OrigamEase, a health-oriented emotion-centred origami-based PSS concept to help adults manage their stress more tangibly, in response to its main research question: How can engineering design research contribute to improving people’s emotional health and wellbeing? OrigamEase was designed throughout this research, and its design and testing served to develop a health & well-being oriented, emotion-centred engineering design methodology (HWOEED). Therefore, the design of this methodology is the result of the structuring and ordering of the developmental process of exploring, conducting and streamlining the research, design and testing of OrigamEase. The design of OrigamEase (both the product and the service part) is based on the cognitive research stream of emotions and stress. Therefore, this research also aims to broaden the knowledge about the implications and management of the emotional experience of stress from an engineering and design point of view, complementing the available solutions for stress management through a structured, measurable, and tangible tool. The HWOEED methodology is influenced by Kansei Engineering and Design Thinking methodologies and integrates various engineering design research methods. However, this methodology proposes a different application of the integration of emotional considerations into engineering design processes., it seeks to improve the emotional experience of users to preserve and promote their health and well-being through specifically designed products, services or PSS. Therefore, these designs become the means and not the end of the engineering design efforts. Also, this methodology can be transferrable to other engineering design solutions. OrigamEase was tested with 114 adults between 18 and 70 years old through three pilot tests (n=43) and six trial tests (n=71) using a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design. Then the results from these tests were contrasted with two control tests (n=22). The results show that using OrigamEase reduced the measured stress levels of participants (self-reported, heart rate and electrodermal activity) significantly, supporting the experiment hypothesis. Stress levels were recorded before and after using OrigamEase; then, a repeated-measures t-test was applied to find if these differences were significant or not. After using OrigamEase, 73.2% of participants reported feeling less stressed (mean reduction=13.94%), 85.5% experienced a reduction in their heart rate (mean reduction=9.8 bpm), and 78.9% had a lower electrodermal activity (mean reduction= 10.8 points). The testing of OrigamEase served as an initial application validation of the HWOEED methodology. This research demonstrates that engineering and design fields not only can but need to contribute to research on emotions through interdisciplinary research. Emotions are a fundamental part of all human experiences, impacting a person’s health and well-being profoundly

Meaningful Hand Gestures for Learning with Touch-based I.C.T.

The role of technology in educational contexts is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, with very few students and teachers able to engage in classroom learning activities without using some sort of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Touch-based computing devices in particular, such as tablets and smartphones, provide an intuitive interface where control and manipulation of content is possible using hand and finger gestures such as taps, swipes and pinches. Whilst these touch-based technologies are being increasingly adopted for classroom use, little is known about how the use of such gestures can support learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate how finger gestures used on a touch-based device could support learning