Gamification of a To-Do List with Emotional Reinforcement

Gamification can change how and why people interact with software. A common approach is to use quantitative feedback to give users a feeling of progress or achievement. There are, however, other ways to provide users with motivation or meaning during normal computer interactions, such as using emotional reinforcement. This could provide a powerful new tool to allow the positive effects of gamification to reach wider contexts. This paper investigates the design and evaluation of a mobile to-do list application, 'Tamu To-Do', which utilises gamified emotional reinforcement, as seen in Figure 1. A week-long field study (N=9) recorded user activity and impressions with the application. The results supported emotional reinforcement's potential as a gamification strategy to improve user motivation and engagement

PickCells: A Physically Reconfigurable Cell-composed Touchscreen

Touchscreens are the predominant medium for interactions with digital services; however, their current fixed form factor narrows the scope for rich physical interactions by limiting interaction possibilities to a single, planar surface. In this paper we introduce the concept of PickCells, a fully reconfigurable device concept composed of cells, that breaks the mould of rigid screens and explores a modular system that affords rich sets of tangible interactions and novel acrossdevice relationships. Through a series of co-design activities – involving HCI experts and potential end-users of such systems – we synthesised a design space aimed at inspiring future research, giving researchers and designers a framework in which to explore modular screen interactions. The design space we propose unifies existing works on modular touch surfaces under a general framework and broadens horizons by opening up unexplored spaces providing new interaction possibilities. In this paper, we present the PickCells concept, a design space of modular touch surfaces, and propose a toolkit for quick scenario prototyping

Can Privacy-Aware Lifelogs Alter Our Memories?

The abundance of automatically-triggered lifelogging cameras is a privacy threat to bystanders. Countering this by deleting photos limits relevant memory cues and the informative content of lifelogs. An alternative is to obfuscate bystanders, but it is not clear how this impacts the lifelogger's recall of memories. We report on a study in which we compare viewing 1) unaltered photos, 2) photos with blurred people, and 3) a subset of the photos after deleting private ones, on memory recall. Findings show that obfuscated content helps users recall a lot of content, but it also results in recalling less accurate details, which can sometimes mislead the user. Our work informs the design of privacy-aware lifelogging systems that maximizes recall and steers discussion about ubiquitous technologies that could alter human memories

Designing for digital playing out

We report on a design-led study in the UK that aimed to understand barriers to children (aged 5 to 14 years) 'playing out' in their neighbourhood and explore the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for supporting children's free play that extends outdoors. The study forms a design ethnography, combining observational fieldwork with design prototyping and co-creative activities across four linked workshops, where we used BBC micro:bit devices to co-create new IoT designs with the participating children. Our collective account contributes new insights about the physical and interactive features of micro:bits that shaped play, gameplay, and social interaction in the workshops, illuminating an emerging design space for supporting 'digital playing out' that is grounded in empirical instances. We highlight opportunities for designing for digital playing out in ways that promote social negotiation, supports varying participation, allows for integrating cultural influences, and accounts for the weaving together of placemaking and play

Airport Accessibility and Navigation Assistance for People with Visual Impairments

People with visual impairments often have to rely on the assistance of sighted guides in airports, which prevents them from having an independent travel experience. In order to learn about their perspectives on current airport accessibility, we conducted two focus groups that discussed their needs and experiences in-depth, as well as the potential role of assistive technologies. We found that independent navigation is a main challenge and severely impacts their overall experience. As a result, we equipped an airport with a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon-based navigation system and performed a real-world study where users navigated routes relevant for their travel experience. We found that despite the challenging environment participants were able to complete their itinerary independently, presenting none to few navigation errors and reasonable timings. This study presents the first systematic evaluation posing BLE technology as a strong approach to increase the independence of visually impaired people in airports

Passquerade: Improving Error Correction of Text Passwords on Mobile Devices by using Graphic Filters for Password Masking

Entering text passwords on mobile devices is a significant challenge. Current systems either display passwords in plain text: making them visible to bystanders, or replace characters with asterisks shortly after they are typed: making editing them harder. This work presents a novel approach to mask text passwords by distorting them using graphical filters. Distorted passwords are difficult to observe by attackers because they cannot mentally reverse the distortions. Yet passwords remain readable by their owners because humans can recognize visually distorted versions of content they saw before. We present results of an online questionnaire and a user study where we compared Color-halftone, Crystallize, Blurring, and Mosaic filters to Plain text and Asterisks when 1) entering, 2) editing, and 3) shoulder surfing one-word passwords, random character passwords, and passphrases. Rigorous analysis shows that Color-halftone and Crystallize filters significantly improve editing speed, editing accuracy and observation resistance compared to current approaches

SketCHI 2.0: Hands-On Special Interest Group on Sketching in HCI

Sketching is universal. It enables us to work through problems, communicate complexity, work with people who have diverse needs, and document work processes we employ within Human-Computer Interaction. Increased interest in sketching as a methodology within HCI has led to increased attendance of interactive courses, meet-ups, and discussion groups, from those who are complete beginners, to seasoned researchers with the skills and knowledge to support others. By bringing together these individuals, we are able to advance the understanding of how sketching underpins research, and how we might work with sketching as technology advances. SketCHI 2.0 aims to support ongoing discussions and collaborations around sketching in HCI, and further build the Sketching HCI community. As well as drawing on location, feedback, and discussion, we will form collaborative working groups to further our collective interest in this area and conduct high-level discussions about the practical applications and outputs of sketching in HCI

Sketching in HCI:Hands-on course of sketching techniques

Freehand sketching is a valuable process, input, output, and tool, often used by people to communicate and express ideas, as well as document, explore and describe concepts between researcher, user, or client. Sketches are fast, easy to create, and - by varying their fidelity - can be used in all areas of HCI. Sketching in HCI will explore and demonstrate themes around sketching in HCI with the aim of producing tangible outputs. Attendees will leave the course with the confidence to engage actively with sketching on an everyday basis in their research practice

Monotasking or multitasking:designing for crowdworkers’ preferences

Crowdworkers receive no formal training for managing their tasks, time or working environment. To develop tools that support such workers, an understanding of their preferences and the constraints they are under is essential. We asked 317 experienced Amazon Mechanical Turk workers about factors that influence their task and time management. We found that a large number of the crowdworkers score highly on a measure of polychronicity; this means that they pre- fer to frequently switch tasks and happily accommodate regular work and non-work interruptions. While a prefer- ence for polychronicity might equip people well to deal with the structural demands of crowdworking platforms, we also know that multitasking negatively affects workers’ produc- tivity. This puts crowdworkers’ working preferences into conflict with the desire of requesters to maximize workers’ productivity. Combining the findings of prior research with the new knowledge obtained from our participants, we enu- merate practical design options that could enable workers, requesters and platform developers to make adjustments that would improve crowdworkers’ experiences