Calm ICT design in hotels: A critical review of applications and implications

There has recently been a call for revisiting the effect of ICT on guest experience in hotels. This is because ICT solutions can act not only as enhancers of hotel guest experience, but also as its inhibitors. In response to this call, the notion of calm ICT design has recently been introduced. Calm ICT design describes the ICT solutions that are used only when and if required, thus not calling user’s attention at all times. Although this concept is highly relevant to the hospitality industry, it has never been systematically considered within. This paper conceptualizes calm ICT design for application in the hospitality context. To this end, it analyzes the ICT solutions that are currently employed by hospitality businesses from the calm ICT design perspective; discusses how the opportunities offered by calm ICT design can be better capitalized upon by hospitality managers; and outlines directions for future research

Reviving calm technology in the e-tourism context

Tourism industry practitioners should understand the controversial nature of the information and communication technology (ICT) proliferation to ensure the ICT solutions do not consume too much of their attention, thus jeopardizing consumer enjoyment of tourism services. The concept of calm technology or calm design serves this purpose. Calm design suggests that technology should quietly recede in the background and come into play with users when and if required, thus delivering and/or enhancing a desired experience. Although this concept is of relevance to e-tourism, until recently, it has never been considered within. This is where this paper contributes to knowledge as, for the first time, it introduces calm design into the e-tourism context and critically evaluates the determinants of its broader adoption within the tourism industry. It positions calm design within the e-tourism realm, discusses its implications for customer service management, supply chain management and destination management, and discloses opportunities for future research

Affective Affordance of Message Balloon Animations: An Early Exploration of AniBalloons

We introduce the preliminary exploration of AniBalloons, a novel form of chat balloon animations aimed at enriching nonverbal affective expression in text-based communications. AniBalloons were designed using extracted motion patterns from affective animations and mapped to six commonly communicated emotions. An evaluation study with 40 participants assessed their effectiveness in conveying intended emotions and their perceived emotional properties. The results showed that 80% of the animations effectively conveyed the intended emotions. AniBalloons covered a broad range of emotional parameters, comparable to frequently used emojis, offering potential for a wide array of affective expressions in daily communication. The findings suggest AniBalloons' promise for enhancing emotional expressiveness in text-based communication and provide early insights for future affective design.Comment: Accepted by CSCW 2023 poste

Designing and evaluating the calm electronic newspaper

This paper reports from an ongoing action research study concerning the design of the future enewspaper, i.e. a newspaper on e-paper technology. The e-paper innovation is of great importance to the newspaper publishers since it has the potential of eventually replacing the printed newspaper due to its readability and high contrast. This study addresses the challenge of how to design calm user experience of the e-newspaper. The action research approach followed the canonical action research method, in collaboration with publisher, reader and advertiser clients. The activities include a range of data collection techniques such as project meetings, workshops, interviews and prototype testing. In the diagnosing phase we identified the core challenges for designing the e-newspaper which directed us to the literature of calm technology. Three design principles for calm user experience were formulated in the action planning phase, followed by designing three e-newspaper prototypes, which embeds the design principles, in the action taking phase. The prototypes were evaluated with 36 readers in the evaluating phase and the outcome of these evaluations was later assessed in collaboration with newspaper designers for specifying learning. The results indicate that the design principles support calm user experience

The experience of enchantment in human-computer interaction

Improving user experience is becoming something of a rallying call in human–computer interaction but experience is not a unitary thing. There are varieties of experiences, good and bad, and we need to characterise these varieties if we are to improve user experience. In this paper we argue that enchantment is a useful concept to facilitate closer relationships between people and technology. But enchantment is a complex concept in need of some clarification. So we explore how enchantment has been used in the discussions of technology and examine experiences of film and cell phones to see how enchantment with technology is possible. Based on these cases, we identify the sensibilities that help designers design for enchantment, including the specific sensuousness of a thing, senses of play, paradox and openness, and the potential for transformation. We use these to analyse digital jewellery in order to suggest how it can be made more enchanting. We conclude by relating enchantment to varieties of experience.</p

Mobile Health interventions to enhance physical activity. Overview, methodological considerations, and just-in-time adaptive interventions

Physical activity has far-reaching health benefits and contributes to the prevention of noncommunicable diseases like cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. Today\u27s level of physical activity; however, is below the recommendations of e.g. the World Health Organization for all age groups. This amount of physical inactivity (i.e. not meeting physical activity guidelines) contributes to the rising cases of noncommunicable diseases and is responsible for over 7% of all-cause deaths along with a huge economic toll on the society. Recently, the COVID-19 crisis aggravated matters as many opportunities to be physically active were limited and sports clubs were temporarily closed. Today, effective interventions with a large reach are required to facilitate health behavior change towards more physical activity in the population. Here, even minor changes towards a more physically active lifestyle e.g. going for a daily ten-minute walk or interrupting prolonged physical inactivity can accumulate valuable health benefits over time. There are a variety of evidence-based interventions for different settings which range from individual or group-based face-to-face interventions to digital interventions. While the former is well established in today\u27s physical activity promotion, especially for rehabilitation, the latter is especially promising to promote physical activity on a broad scale due to the availability, fast-evolving technological progress, and ease of use of digital devices in modern society. Digital interventions for health behavior change can be delivered on desktop personal computers (e.g. via DVD), over the internet (e.g. on websites), or on mobile devices (e.g. via text message or mobile application). As nearly every household worldwide has access to and experience with at least one of those devices, the potential reach and cost-efficiency of such interventions are promising. Here, the use of information and communication technologies for health, in general, is defined as electronic health while every health practice supported by mobile devices is defined as mobile health. Recently, technological advances lead to the development of smaller, more convenient, and accurate devices to continuously measure physical activity (e.g. energy expenditure, step count, and classification of physical exertion), physiological (e.g. heart rate, blood sugar, and cortisol), and report psychological (e.g. valence, energetic arousal, and calmness) parameters. This opens up new perspectives using multilevel modeling in longitudinal designs to distinguish between within- and between-person effects and allows for a higher grade of individualization of interventions. One intervention type which greatly benefits from these continuous measurements and the technological advances is just-in-time adaptive interventions. These interventions aim to deliver interventional content (e.g. motivation to be physically active) during the most promising time for the desired health behavior (i.e. physical activity) or during the most vulnerable time for unhealthy behavior (i.e. inactivity) and aim to maximize the usefulness of the intervention while minimizing participant burden. To do so, they rely on high-resolution data to depict opportune moments to deliver the intervention content. Recent progress with machine learning processes also benefits just-in-time adaptive interventions by offering sophisticated decision-making algorithms which can be guided by participants\u27 behavior and preferences. Previous studies on electronic and mobile interventions found heterogenic results for the effectiveness of digital health interventions for physical activity promotion. Here, evidence- and theory-based interventions which are guided by behavior change techniques (e.g. goal-setting or demonstration of behavior) were associated with higher intervention effectiveness. Furthermore, including the social context (e.g. peers, school, work, or family) in the interventions can be beneficial but it is important to distinguish between e.g. collaborative vs competitive settings based on participants\u27 preferences. Finally, a high degree of individualization delivered by e.g. just-in-time adaptive interventions can enhance the effectiveness of mobile health interventions. However, the importance of the different interventional and contextual facets along with additional influences on the evaluation of the effectiveness remains unclear in the fast-developing field of electronic and mobile health behavior change interventions for children, adolescents, and adults. To help close the gap between technological advances and the state of the research in electronic and mobile health interventions for physical activity promotion, this thesis aimed to 1) provide an overview of the effectiveness of electronic and mobile health interventions regarding physical activity promotion and 2) delve into important considerations and research gaps depicted by the overview (i.e. the choice of a measurement tool for physical activity and just-in-time adaptive interventions). In our first paper, we conducted an umbrella review to summarize the evidence on the overall effectiveness of electronic and mobile health interventions along with the association of the key facets of theoretical foundation, behavior change techniques, social context, and just-in-time adaptive interventions with effectiveness. Derived from the eleven included reviews (182 original studies) we found significant benefits in favor of the intervention group (vs. control or over time) in the majority of interventions (59%). Here, the use of theoretical foundations and behavior change techniques were associated with higher effectiveness, the social context was often reported but not evaluated and just-in-time adaptive interventions were not included in any of the studies. One frequently reported shortcoming was the difficulty do compare self-reported and device-based measured results between studies. These findings suggest the potential effectiveness of digital interventions which is very likely facilitated by the key facets. Moreover, these findings helped us to determine promising but understudied facets of intervention effectiveness (i.e. just-in-time adaptive interventions) and depict frequently reported methodological issues (i.e. comparability of different measurement tools) which we could address within our thesis. In our second paper, we explored the reliability, comparability, and stability of self-reported (i.e. questionnaire and physical activity diary) vs. device-based measured physical activity (i.e. analyzed using 10-second and 60-second epochs) in adults and children. We included two independent measurement weeks from 32 adults and 32 children in the control group of the SMARTFAMILY trial to investigate if the differences between measurement tools were systematic over time. Here, participants wore an accelerometer on the right hip during daily life and completed a daily physical activity diary for seven consecutive days. Additionally, the international physical activity questionnaire was completed by participants at the end of each week. Results indicated non-systematic differences between the measurement tools (up to four-fold). Higher associations between the measurement tools were found for moderate than for vigorous physical activity and the results differed between children and adults. These results confirm the importance of carefully considering the measurement tool to be suitable for the research question and target group and the very limited comparability between different measurement tools. Additionally, the differences within accelerometer-derived results (10-second epochs vs. 60-second epochs) point to the need for comprehensive reporting for each measurement tool to compare and replicate the results. In our third paper, we summarized previous frameworks of just-in-time adaptive interventions and pointed out opportunities and challenges within this research field. We combined recommendations of three previous frameworks and refined that just-in-time adaptive interventions should 1) correspond to real-time needs; 2) adapt to input data; 3) be system-triggered. This can be enhanced by 4) be goal-oriented; and 5) be customized to user preferences. By doing so, just-in-time adaptive interventions can achieve a high degree of individualization which is closely fitted to each individual. The main challenge hereby remains the opportune moment identification (i.e. the exact moment when participants are either likely to engage in unhealthy behavior or when they face opportunities to perform healthy behaviors) to timely deliver intervention content. This can be explored using ambulatory assessments and assessing the context of the behavior. The decision-making process can be enhanced by machine learning algorithms. These results guided the reporting and design of the examinations included in our fourth and fifth papers. In our fourth paper, we evaluated the importance of engaging with a just-in-time adaptive intervention triggered after a period of physical inactivity. For this secondary data analysis, 47 adults and 33 children were included in the analysis who wore an accelerometer on the right hip and used our SMARTFAMILY2.0 application during the three-week intervention period of the SMARTFAMILY2.0 trial. Here, we analyzed 907 just-in-time adaptive intervention triggers and compared step and metabolic equivalent count in the hour after occasions when participants answered the trigger (i.e. responded to the question regarding their previous physical inactivity) within 60 minutes ("engaged" condition) with the hour after occasions when they did not answer the trigger within 60 minutes ("not engaged" condition) in the mobile application. Results indicated significantly higher metabolic equivalent and step count for the "engaged" condition within-persons. This shows that if a person engaged with a trigger within 60 minutes, he or she showed significantly higher physical activity in the following hour compared to when the same person did not engage with the trigger. This expands previous research about participants\u27 engagement with the intervention and the importance of an opportune moment identification to enhance this engagement. In our fifth paper, we explored the association of sleep quality and core affect with physical activity during a mobile health intervention period. Based on the same intervention period reported in the fourth paper, but with different inclusion criteria for the data (e.g. minimum wear time of the accelerometer for 8 hours per day instead of 80% of the hour of interest), daily accumulated self-rated mental state was compared to step count and minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for 49 adults and 40 children in a secondary data analysis. Overall, 996 measurement days of the participants were included in this analysis. Our results showed that higher reported valence and energetic arousal values were associated with more physical activity, while higher reported calmness values were associated with less physical activity within-persons on the same day. No distinct association was found between sleep quality and physical activity. Our results confirm previous ambulatory assessment studies and we suggest that within-person associations of core affect should be considered when designing physical activity interventions for both children and adults. Additionally, core affect might be a promising consideration for opportune moment identifications in just-in-time adaptive interventions to evaluate the feasibility and causality of targeting changes in e.g. valence to improve subsequent and daily physical activity of participants using micro-randomized trials. Based on the current state of knowledge, our results above address important research gaps depicted by our overview in the field of digital interventions for physical activity promotion. One example is the understudied area of just-in-time adaptive interventions for which we provided a framework, evaluated the effect of engaging with such interventions on subsequent physical activity, and explored core affect and sleep quality as facilitators of physical activity behavior. With these findings in mind, we discussed important considerations to progress future mobile health studies for physical activity promotion in general, and just-in-time adaptive interventions in particular at the end of this work. Finally, we aimed to transfer this knowledge into a proposal for designing a just-in-time adaptive intervention in the special group of participants at risk for or with knee osteoporosis who could specifically benefit from this highly individualized approach

ViBreathe: Heart Rate Variability Enhanced Respiration Training for Workaday Stress Management via an Eyes-free Tangible Interface

Slow breathing guiding applications increasingly emerge, showing promise for helping knowledge workers to better cope with workaday stress. However, standard breathing guidance is non-interactive, with rigid paces. Despite their effects being proved, they could cause respiratory fatigue, or lack of training motivation, especially for novice users. To explore new design possibilities, we investigate using heart rate variability (HRV) data to mediate breathing guidance, which results in two HRV-enhanced guidance modes: (i) responsive breathing guidance and (ii) adaptive breathing guidance. These guidance modes are implemented on a soft haptic interface named “ViBreathe”. We conducted a user test (N\ua0=\ua024), and a one-week field deployment (N\ua0=\ua04) with knowledge workers, to understand the user experience of our design. The HRV-enhanced modes were generally experienced to reduce tiresome and improve engagement and comfort. And Vibreathe showed great potential for seamlessly weaving slow breathing practice into work routines. We thereby summarize related design insights and opportunities

Towards a Better Understanding of Emotion Communication in Music: An Interactive Production Approach.

It has been well established that composers and performers are able to encode certain emotional expressions in music, which in turn are decoded by listeners, and in general, successfully recognised. There is still much to discover, however, as to how musical cues combine to shape different emotions in the music, since previous literature has tended to focus on a limited number of cues and emotional expressions. The work in this thesis aims to investigate how combinations of tempo, articulation, pitch, dynamics, brightness, mode, and later, instrumentation, are used to shape sadness, joy, calmness, anger, fear, power, and surprise in Western tonal music. In addition, new tools for music and emotion research are presented with the aim of providing an efficient production approach to explore a large cue-emotion space in a relatively short time. To this end, a new interactive interface called EmoteControl was created which allows users to alter musical pieces in real-time through the available cues. Moreover, musical pieces were specifically composed to be used as stimuli. Empirical experiments were then carried out with the interface to determine how participants shaped different emotions in the pieces using the available cues. Specific cue combinations for the different emotions were produced. Findings revealed that overall, mode and tempo were the strongest contributors to the conveyed emotion whilst brightness was the least effective cue. However, the importance of the cues varied depending on the intended emotion. Finally, a comparative evaluation of production and traditional approaches was carried out which showed that similar results may be obtained with both. However, the production approach allowed for a larger cue-emotion space to be navigated in a shorter time. In sum, the production approach allowed participants to directly show us how they think emotional expressions should sound, and how they are shaped in music