Expressive haptics for enhanced usability of mobile interfaces in situations of impairments

Designing for situational awareness could lead to better solutions for disabled people, likewise, exploring the needs of disabled people could lead to innovations that can address situational impairments. This in turn can create non-stigmatising assistive technology for disabled people from which eventually everyone could benefit. In this paper, we investigate the potential for advanced haptics to compliment the graphical user interface of mobile devices, thereby enhancing user experiences of all people in some situations (e.g. sunlight interfering with interaction) and visually impaired people. We explore technical solutions to this problem space and demonstrate our justification for a focus on the creation of kinaesthetic force feedback. We propose initial design concepts and studies, with a view to co-create delightful and expressive haptic interactions with potential users motivated by scenarios of situational and permanent impairments.Comment: Presented at the CHI'19 Workshop: Addressing the Challenges of Situationally-Induced Impairments and Disabilities in Mobile Interaction, 2019 (arXiv:1904.05382

From ‘hands up’ to ‘hands on’: harnessing the kinaesthetic potential of educational gaming

Traditional approaches to distance learning and the student learning journey have focused on closing the gap between the experience of off-campus students and their on-campus peers. While many initiatives have sought to embed a sense of community, create virtual learning environments and even build collaborative spaces for team-based assessment and presentations, they are limited by technological innovation in terms of the types of learning styles they support and develop. Mainstream gaming development – such as with the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii – have a strong element of kinaesthetic learning from early attempts to simulate impact, recoil, velocity and other environmental factors to the more sophisticated movement-based games which create a sense of almost total immersion and allow untethered (in a technical sense) interaction with the games’ objects, characters and other players. Likewise, gamification of learning has become a critical focus for the engagement of learners and its commercialisation, especially through products such as the Wii Fit. As this technology matures, there are strong opportunities for universities to utilise gaming consoles to embed levels of kinaesthetic learning into the student experience – a learning style which has been largely neglected in the distance education sector. This paper will explore the potential impact of these technologies, to broadly imagine the possibilities for future innovation in higher education

Consumer acceptance of Wood-Polymer Composites: a conjoint analytical approach with a focus on innovative and environmentally concerned consumers

Wood-Polymer Composites (WPCs) can contribute towards resource efficiency as they mainly consist of wood by-products and/or waste materials. The eco-innovative materials represent a hybrid solution on the ‘two-evils’ continuum’ constituted by the competing materials of wood and plastics; the former being too expensive and resource consuming in mass consumption, the latter cheap but environmentally hazardous. However, consumer acceptance of WPCs is questioned due to the merger of components consumers perceive as being contradictory (wood and plastics). Additionally, it is discussed whether consumers' innovativeness enhances WPC acceptance, while eco-friendly consumers may reject WPCs because of environmental concerns related with the synthetic components. To determine the potential market for products made of eco-innovative materials, two German-language online studies (n = 198, n = 357) were created to examine consumer acceptance of WPCs in relation to the competing materials. Study 1 introduced a 3 (material: wood, WPC, plastics) × 2 (appearance: wooden or synthetic) within-subject design. Consistent with the expectations, study 1 showed a clear preference for wood over plastics based on a convenient sample. WPCs remained in the centre position, even for environmentally concerned consumers. Study 2 was conducted to replicate the findings with a representative sample. It additionally considered consumer innovativeness and included further product categories. WPCs only slightly deviated from the centre position in study 2. Mostly important, study 2 proved that the higher the environmental concern and the innovativeness of consumers, the more WPCs were accepted. When taken together, the results point to a greater WPC market than previous research had indicated. In general, premature concerns about innovative materials can be prevented by consumer acceptance studies examining the new materials' position in a surrounding ‘multi evils’ continuum’

Understanding customers' holistic perception of switches in automotive human–machine interfaces

For successful new product development, it is necessary to understand the customers' holistic experience of the product beyond traditional task completion, and acceptance measures. This paper describes research in which ninety-eight UK owners of luxury saloons assessed the feel of push-switches in five luxury saloon cars both in context (in-car) and out of context (on a bench). A combination of hedonic data (i.e. a measure of ‘liking’), qualitative data and semantic differential data was collected. It was found that customers are clearly able to differentiate between switches based on the degree of liking for the samples' perceived haptic qualities, and that the assessment environment had a statistically significant effect, but that it was not universal. A factor analysis has shown that perceived characteristics of switch haptics can be explained by three independent factors defined as ‘Image’, ‘Build Quality’, and ‘Clickiness’. Preliminary steps have also been taken towards identifying whether existing theoretical frameworks for user experience may be applicable to automotive human–machine interfaces

Digital vs. Print: Reading Comprehension and the Future of the Book

The future of books and libraries is put into question by the increasing popularity of e-books and the use of computers as text platforms. In an effort to anticipate which reading platform—print, e-readers, or computers displays—will dominate in the coming years, recent research and experimental data on the suitability of each reading platform for reading comprehension will be considered, from the perspectives of optical issues, cognition, and metacognition. It will be shown that, while printed books are most conducive to learning from longer, more difficult texts, e-readers and computer displays offer convenience and some distinct advantages to readers in particular situations. This synthesis of current research will be helpful to librarians working in digital and print book purchasing and collection development, as well as those making long-range planning decisions

Mourning, materiality and the feminine: Sarah Pucill’s films 2004-2010

The writing-up of this PhD has examined experimental films I made between 2004 and 2010, in all five 16mm films: Stages Of Mourning, (17min, 2004), Taking My Skin, (35min, 2006), Blind Light (21min, 2007), Fall In Frame (19min, 2009), Phantom Rhapsody (19min, 2010). As I have been making films that have been exhibited and funded in the public field since 1990, the films included here constitute just less than half of my total films to date. The commentary is divided into three sections, each of which analyses the films from a particular perspective. In each section the five films are considered in turn, in chronological order. The rationale for having three different perspectives to analyse each film is that this provides a means of acknowledging and preserving a sense of the alterity of artists’ film, where readings are understood more as interpretations than as explanations. The choice of focus in each section summarises key considerations that have been relevant to my filmmaking practice over this time period, if not since the start of my filmmaking in 1990. In addition to providing contextual international film artists from both avantgarde and feminist film, I also reference theorists from philosophy to film and feminist studies who have been instrumental in the rationale for the films. The first section explores the films from the point of view of cinematic space, examining factors such as camera frame, angle, lens and edit as well as qualities of lighting, and durational qualities where for example a slowing of time might expand an idea of the space. Cinematic space is as much expressed through sound, so where relevant this is also discussed. The second section focuses on qualities of texture through both image and sound. In particular, as all the films were shot and printed onto 16mm, the question of the haptic in relation to the films is discussed, as is the low-budget hand-made texture of image and sound that is the materiality of the unpolished. Vivian Sobchack (The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience, 1992), Sobchack (Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Propositions on Death, Representation and Documentary, 1984) Laura U. Marks (The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, 2000) and Tom Gunning (The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde, 2006) are key texts I refer to. The third section focuses on issues of gender, in particular the female body, the female and lesbian gaze, and queer sexuality. Where the first two sections focus more on the structure and language or form of the films, this section focuses on social and philosophical questions of gender difference as points of critique or protest in the films. Luce Irigaray (Speculum Of The Other Woman, 1985 and This Sex Which Is not One, 1985) and Laura Mulvey (‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 1975) are key texts that inform the writing