Digitally enhancing tasting experiences

Our experience of food and drink depends on more than merely the ingredients that have been combined in a dish or drink and the way in which it has been prepared. There is growing interest in the question of whether digital technologies/solutions can be used to enhance consumers’ multisensory tasting experiences. Projection mapping and sonic seasoning have been incorporated onto the menu in a number of world-leading restaurants for several years now. However, there has, as yet, been relatively little uptake of such digital technologies in the home environment. And while a wide (and growing) range of food and beverage brands have come out with sensory apps and sonic seasoning playlists in recent years, they do not tend to be present in the marketplace for very long. In fact, it would appear that the majority of augmented and virtual reality solutions have more relevance to the world of consumer/food science research than necessarily to enhancing the tasting experience for those in the home environment. Looking to the future, the widespread societal uptake of digitally-enhanced tasting experiences will likely only occur when such solutions provide an obvious, and demonstrable, benefit to the intended users

Examining Potential of Scents for Enhancement of User Performance with Mobile Apps

Intelligent mobile phones, or simply smartphones, have seen a large widespread usage among the entire world population during the last years. These devices are, in fact, considered as an essential tool in our current day to day life activities. Aromatherapy could be defined as the medical usage of essential oils derived from diverse types of vegetables. Although this paper does not look through direct medical usages or benefits, it is focused on one of its main effects, the stimuli to enhance focus. This study makes use of one of the main essential oils, rosemary, as olfactory stimuli over regular users performing a set of tasks with mobile apps. Results of the experimental group, when compared to regular users not affected with olfactory stimuli, aim to suggest that there is not a clear impact on mobile users' performance. Nonetheless, more research is needed to categorize the effects of aromatherapy on mobile users.FPU research staff education program of the “University of Alcala” (UAH), grant no. 30400M000.541.A 640.0

Multisensory Integration as per Technological Advances: A Review

Multisensory integration research has allowed us to better understand how humans integrate sensory information to produce a unitary experience of the external world. However, this field is often challenged by the limited ability to deliver and control sensory stimuli, especially when going beyond audio–visual events and outside laboratory settings. In this review, we examine the scope and challenges of new technology in the study of multisensory integration in a world that is increasingly characterized as a fusion of physical and digital/virtual events. We discuss multisensory integration research through the lens of novel multisensory technologies and, thus, bring research in human–computer interaction, experimental psychology, and neuroscience closer together. Today, for instance, displays have become volumetric so that visual content is no longer limited to 2D screens, new haptic devices enable tactile stimulation without physical contact, olfactory interfaces provide users with smells precisely synchronized with events in virtual environments, and novel gustatory interfaces enable taste perception through levitating stimuli. These technological advances offer new ways to control and deliver sensory stimulation for multisensory integration research beyond traditional laboratory settings and open up new experimentations in naturally occurring events in everyday life experiences. Our review then summarizes these multisensory technologies and discusses initial insights to introduce a bridge between the disciplines in order to advance the study of multisensory integration

The influence of olfaction on the perception of high-fidelity computer graphics

The computer graphics industry is constantly demanding more realistic images and animations. However, producing such high quality scenes can take a long time, even days, if rendering on a single PC. One of the approaches that can be used to speed up rendering times is Visual Perception, which exploits the limitations of the Human Visual System, since the viewers of the results will be humans. Although there is an increasing body of research into how haptics and sound may affect a viewer's perception in a virtual environment, the in uence of smell has been largely ignored. The aim of this thesis is to address this gap and make smell an integral part of multi-modal virtual environments. In this work, we have performed four major experiments, with a total of 840 participants. In the experiments we used still images and animations, related and unrelated smells and finally, a multi-modal environment was considered with smell, sound and temperature. Beside this, we also investigated how long it takes for an average person to adapt to smell and what affect there may be when performing a task in the presence of a smell. The results of this thesis clearly show that a smell present in the environment firstly affects the perception of object quality within a rendered image, and secondly, enables parts of the scene or the whole animation to be selectively rendered in high quality while the rest can be rendered in a lower quality without the viewer noticing the drop in quality. Such selective rendering in the presence of smell results in significant computational performance gains without any loss in the quality of the image or animations perceived by a viewer

Gestures and cooperation: considering non verbal communication in the design of interactive spaces

This dissertation explores the role of gestures in computer supported collaboration. People make extensive use of non-verbal forms of communication when they interact with each other in everyday life: of these, gestures are relatively easy to observe and quantify. However, the role of gestures in human computer interaction so far has been focused mainly on using conventional signs like visible commands, rather than on exploiting all nuances of such natural human skill. We propose a perspective on natural interaction that builds on recent advances in tangible interaction, embodiment and computer supported collaborative work. We consider the social and cognitive aspects of gestures and manipulations to support our claim of a primacy of tangible and multi-touch interfaces, and describe our experiences focused on assessing the suitability of such interface paradigms to traditional application scenarios. We describe our design and prototype of an interactive space for group-work, in which natural interfaces, such as tangible user interfaces and multi-touch screens, are deployed so as to foster and encourage collaboration. We show that these interfaces can lead to an improvement in performances and that such improvements appear related to an increase of the gestures performed by the users. We also describe the progress on the state of the art that have been necessary to implement such tools on commodity hardware and deploy them in a relatively uncontrolled environment. Finally, we discuss our findings and frame them in the broader context of embodied interaction, drawing useful implications for interactions design, with emphasis on how to enhance the activity of people in their workplace, home, school, etc. supported in their individual and collaborative tasks by natural interfaces

Augmenting communication technologies with non-primary sensory modalities

Humans combine their senses to enhance the world around them. While computers have evolved to reflect these sensory demands, only the primary senses of vision and audition (and to an extent, touch) are used in modern communication. This thesis investigated how additional information, such as emotion and navigational assistance, might be communicated using technology-based implementations of sensory displays that output the non-primary modalities of smell, vibrotactile touch, and thermo-touch. This thesis explored using a portable atomiser sprayer to deliver emotional information via smell to mobile phone users, a ring-shaped device worn on the finger to display emotional information using vibration and colours, and an array of thermoelectric coolers worn on the arm to create temperature sensations. Additionally, this thesis explored two methods of signalling temperature using the thermal implementation, and finally, used it in a controlled study to augment the perceived emotion of text messages using temperature. There were challenges with using some of these implementations to display information. Smells produced with the scent technology were ambiguous and highly cognitive, and poor delivery to the user produced undesirable cross-adaption effects when smells lingered and mixed in the environment. The device used to communicate vibrotactile and colour lighting cues neutralized emotions in text messages. Furthermore, temperature pattern discrimination using the thermal implementation was difficult due to non-linear interaction effects that occurred on the skin’s surface, as well as latency resulting from the thermal neurological pathway and the technology used to heat and cool the skin. However, the thermal implementation enabled more accurate user discrimination between thermal signals than what a single stimulator design provided. Furthermore, the utility of continuous thermal feedback, in the context of spatial navigation, was demonstrated, which improved user performance compared to when the user was not presented with any thermal information. Finally, temperature was demonstrated to elicit arousal reactions across subjects using the thermal implementation, and could augment the arousal of text messages, especially when the content of the message was strongly neutral. However, no similar statistical significance was observed with valence, demonstrating the complex implications of using thermal cues to convey emotional information

Connecting Couples in Long-Distance Relationships : Towards Unconventional Computer-Mediated Emotional Communication Systems

The number of couples who find themselves in a long-distance relationship (LDR) is increasing for a wide range of reasons, such as overseas employment, academic pursuits, military duty, and similar circumstances. With the myriad of communication channels enabled by the low cost and ubiquity of computer-mediated communication technologies, couples in LDRs are able to stay in touch with each other around the globe. However, recent studies have revealed that the mainstream communication tools are inadequate to support the full spectrum of communication needed in intimate relationships. Emotional communication is one of the fundamental needs in close relationships, as it forms an important part of intimacy. This dissertation argues that there is a gap between what is known about LDR couples’ needs in research and what has been implemented for them in practice. The aim of this work is to bridge this gap by mediating emotional communication through unconventional user interfaces that use interaction solutions outside of the scope of their conventional use, with a particular focus on couples who sustain a committed LDR. Here, taking research through design as a core approach, a variety of qualitative methods were employed to seek answers to the research questions. This dissertation includes eight case studies, each of which is dedicated to answering its corresponding research question(s). Study I presents a systematic literature review which explored the current state of the art and identified the design opportunities. Study II introduces a series of co-design activities with five couples in LDRs to reveal the needs and challenges of users in an LDR. Studies III and IV propose two functional prototypes for unconventional communication systems to connect couples in LDRs. Study V showcases 12 design concepts of wearables created by the participants to support their own LDR. Study VI describes how four low-resolution prototypes created for mediating LDRs by the participants in the workshop would be used in real-world contexts. Studies VII and VIII each present a novel design tool to be used as a scaffold when designing communication systems for supporting LDRs: specifically, a conceptual design framework and a card-based design toolkit. This dissertation contributes new knowledge to the field of human-computer interaction through design interventions. It showcases a spectrum of practices which can be seen as a first step towards mediating emotional communication for couples in LDRs using unconventional communication systems. The findings comprise theoretical and empirical insights—derived from the eight case studies in which the author identified design opportunities and design considerations—relating to how couples in LDRs can be better supported by unconventional computer-mediated emotional communication systems

Literacy for digital futures : Mind, body, text

The unprecedented rate of global, technological, and societal change calls for a radical, new understanding of literacy. This book offers a nuanced framework for making sense of literacy by addressing knowledge as contextualised, embodied, multimodal, and digitally mediated. In today’s world of technological breakthroughs, social shifts, and rapid changes to the educational landscape, literacy can no longer be understood through established curriculum and static text structures. To prepare teachers, scholars, and researchers for the digital future, the book is organised around three themes – Mind and Materiality; Body and Senses; and Texts and Digital Semiotics – to shape readers’ understanding of literacy. Opening up new interdisciplinary themes, Mills, Unsworth, and Scholes confront emerging issues for next-generation digital literacy practices. The volume helps new and established researchers rethink dynamic changes in the materiality of texts and their implications for the mind and body, and features recommendations for educational and professional practice