Exploring Gaze Interaction Design in Games:Playing with Vision

Gaze interaction in games is rapidly increasing with examples in mainstream franchises. This research focuses on investigating new opportunities for gaze-enable game design moving away from sensing-based dynamics grounded in gaze pointing and consider a user-centred approach which has its starting point in visual capabilities and metaphors of looking. This approach will lead to the development of examples that illustrate novel and playful experiences that can be designed thinking about how the players see rather than where and what they look at. This research aims to contribute to the understanding of how to create playful gaze-based experiences by providing a design framework and inspire designers to engage in the conversation to shape the future of gaze interaction in play

Interactive text visualization with Text Variation Explorer

Digitalization is changing how research is carried out in all areas of science. Humanities is no exception - materials that used to be hand-written or printed on paper are increasingly available in digital form. This development is changing how scholars are interacting with their material. We are addressing the problem of interactive text visualization in the context of sociolinguistic language study. When a scholar is reading and analyzing text from a computer screen instead of a paper, we can support this by providing a dashboard for reading, and by creating visualizations of the text structure, variation, and change. We have designed and developed a software tool called Text Variation Explorer (TVE) for sociolinguistic language study. It is based on interactive visualization with a direct manipulation user interface, and aimed for exploratory corpus linguistics. The TVE software tool has proven to be useful in supporting the study of language variation and change in its social contexts, or sociolinguistics. It is, to a certain degree, language-independent, and generic enough to be useful in other linguistic contexts as well. We are now in the process of designing and implementing the next iteration of TVE. We present the lessons learned from the first version, discuss the old and the new design, and welcome feedback from the communities involved.Peer reviewe

Haptic feedback in eye typing

Proper feedback is essential in gaze based interfaces, where the same modality is used for both perception and control. We measured how vibrotactile feedback, a form of haptic feedback, compares with the commonly used visual and auditory feedback in eye typing. Haptic feedback was found to produce results that are close to those of auditory feedback; both were easy to perceive and participants liked both the auditory ”click” and the tactile “tap” of the selected key. Implementation details (such as the placement of the haptic actuator) were also found important

The Interplay Between Affect, Dog's Physical Activity and Dog-Owner Relationship

Leaving a dog home alone is part of everyday life for most dog owners. Previous research shows that dog-owner relationship has multifarious effects on dog behavior. However, little is known about the interplay between dog-owner relationship, physical activity of the dog, and affective experiences at the time of the owner leaving home and reunion when the owner comes home. In this paper, we explored how the general (daily, home alone, and over the 2-week study period) physical activity of the dog, and owner's perceptions of the dog's affective state were correlated at those particular moments. Nineteen volunteer dog owners had their dogs (N = 19) wear two activity trackers (ActiGraph wGT2X-GT and FitBark2) for 2 weeks 24 h/day. Prior to the 2-week continuous physical activity measurement period, the owners filled in questionnaires about the dog-owner relationship and the dog behavior. In daily questionnaires, owners described and assessed their own and their perception of the emotion-related experiences of their dog and behavior of the dog at the moment of separation and reunion. The results indicated that the dog-owner relationship has an interplay with the mean daily and weekly physical activity levels of the dog. An indication of strong emotional dog-owner relationship (especially related to the attentiveness of the dog, continuous companionship, and time spent together when relaxing) correlated positively with the mean daily activity levels of the dog during the first measurement week of the study. Results also suggest that the mean daily and over the 2-week measurement period physical activity of the dog correlated the affective experiences of the dog and owner as reported by the owner when the dog was left home alone. More research is needed to understand the interplay between affect, physical activity of the dog, dog-owner relationship, and the effects of these factors on, and their interplay with, the welfare of dogs.Peer reviewe

SuperVision:Playing with Gaze Aversion and Peripheral Vision

In this work, we challenge the Gaze interaction paradigm" What you see is what you get" to introduce" playing with peripheral vision". We developed the conceptual framework to introduce this novel gaze-aware game dynamic. We illustrated the concept with SuperVision, a collection of three games that play with peripheral vision. We propose perceptual and interaction challenges that require players not to look and rely on their periphery. To validate the game dynamic and experience, we conducted a user study with twenty-four participants. Results show how the game concept created an engaging and playful experience playing with peripheral vision. Participants showed proficiency in overcoming the game challenges, developing clear strategies to succeed. Moreover, we found evidence that playing the game can affect our visual skills, with greater peripheral awareness

Experience-Dependent Effects to Situational Awareness in Police Officers : An Eye Tracking Study

Police work requires making suitable observations which form the basis of situational awareness (SA) of the encounter in progress. Incomplete early-stage SA (i.e., perception) can lead to errors in subsequent judgement and decision-making that can have severe consequences for performance, learning, and occupational health. SA in police contexts is still relatively understudied and requires closer examination using objective measures. The current preliminary study aimed to measure the gaze and fixation patterns among novice and expert police officers to understand early-stage SA at different levels of professional experience. Participants included 23 novices (10 early, 13 intermediate) and 11 experienced officers and instructors in tactics and use of force. Visit duration and fixation order were measured while participants viewed various static images of staged encounters. Results showed that all participants fixated longer on targets compared to the periphery, and fixated earlier on suspects’ faces compared to hands, bodies, or the environment. Further, experts fixated earlier on hands and spent less time scanning the environment than early novices. The current findings reveal eye movement patterns while officers engaged in typical police encounters. Future research can inform evidence-based police training to achieve optimal SA and minimize negative outcomes in training and operational field settings.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Facilitating Implicit Emotion Regulation in Online News Commenting—An Experimental Vignette Study

An online experiment investigated the perceived effects of a user interface (UI) intervention aiming to support online news commenters’ emotion regulation. By describing the comment’s tone to the user, the expected effect was activation of the implicit emotion regulation process of affect labeling (i.e., naming emotions). The perceived emotion- and behavior-related effects of the Labeling intervention were investigated using the experimental vignette methodology. Participants read a vignette describing the behavior of an uncivil commenter and assessed the commenter’s probable responses to the Labeling intervention or a control intervention shown in the UI. The results showed that, when compared to a control condition, the Labeling intervention was assessed to evoke positive emotions and to result in mitigation of uncivil behavior. This suggests that UI solutions that support emotion regulation are a promising approach to reducing uncivil comments that users might afterwards regret, and hence potentially improving the quality of online discussions.Peer reviewe

Online Survey on Novel Designs for Supporting Self-Reflection and Emotion Regulation in Online News Commenting

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User-centred quality of UI interventions aiming to influence online news commenting behaviour

While HCI literature offers general frameworks for understanding user-centred quality, specific application areas may call for more detailed contextualisation of it. This paper focuses on socio-technical context of online news commenting by investigating speculative UI interventions intended to influence users’ emotions and social behaviour. To understand the aspects of quality that matter to users in such UI interventions, we conducted an international online survey (N = 439) and qualitatively analysed respondents’ first impressions of eight different design proposals. The findings describe contextually relevant socio-technical viewpoints and offer actionable considerations for design. For example, the findings imply that designers should be mindful of possible unintentional misuse that may result from the UI reinforcing specific emotional states or affording stigmatisation of individual users. The study advances understanding of which aspects of quality should be considered when designing and deploying UI interventions for digital media services and evaluating them with potential end-users.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Emotionally toned online discussions evoke subjectively experienced emotional responses

acceptedVersionPeer reviewe