Designing with biosignals: Challenges, opportunities, and future directions for integrating physiological signals in human-computer interaction

Biosensing technologies are a rapidly increasing presence in our daily lives. These sensor-based technologies measure physiological processes including heart rate, breathing, skin conductance, brain activity and more. Researchers are exploring biosensing from perspectives including: engineering, human-computer interaction, medicine, mental health, consumer products, and interactive art. These technologies can enhance our interactions allowing connection to our bodies and others around us across diverse application areas. However, designing with biosignals in Human-Computer Interaction presents new challenges pertaining to User Experience, Input/Output, interpretation of signals, representation, and ethics. There is an urgent need to build a scholarly community that includes the diverse perspectives of researchers, designers, industry practitioners and policymakers. The goal of this workshop is to leverage the knowledge of this community aiming to map out the research landscape of emerging challenges and opportunities, and to build a research agenda for future directions

Developmentally situated design (DSD: making theoretical knowledge accessible to designers of children’s Technology

There is a wealth of theoretical knowledge about the developmental abilities and skills of children. However, this knowledge is not readily accessible to designers of interactive products. In this paper, we present the requirements, design and evaluation of developmentally situated design (DSD) cards. DSD cards are a design tool that makes age specific information about children's developing cognitive, physical, social, and emotional abilities readily accessible for designers. Initial requirements were elicited through interviews with design practitioners and students. The cards were evaluated through a design-in-use study in which design students used the cards to address three different design problems. Our analysis of observational notes and post-design interviews revealed how the cards' characteristics enabled different kinds of uses including framing, orienting, inspiring, informing, integrating and constraining. We conclude with a discussion of possible refinements and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of our approach

Workshop on embodied interaction : theory and practice in HCI

For over ten years researchers in human-computer interaction (HCI) have explored an embodied perspective that seeks to describe and explain the fundamental role played by the physical body in how we experience, interact with and understand computation in the world we live in. Recently, such a perspective has been used to discuss human actions and interactions with a range of computational applications including tangibles, mobiles, wearables, tabletops and interactive environments. This workshop aims to enable participants to critically explore the different approaches to incorporating an embodied perspective in HCI research, and to develop a shared set of understandings and identification of differences, similarities and synergies between our research approaches

Identifying embodied metaphors in children's sound-action mappings

Physical activity and manipulating physical objects can be beneficial for learning. Earlier studies 2 have shown that interaction models that rely on unconscious and embodied knowledge (based on embodied metaphors) can benefit the learning process. However, more than one embodied metaphor might be applicable. In this paper, we present the results of a user study (n=65) designed to identify embodied metaphors seven to nine year old children use when enacting abstract concepts related to musical sound. The results provide evidence that multiple different embodied metaphors can unconsciously be used to structure the understanding of these concepts. In addition, we have identified and categorized commonly used metaphors based on the children's enactments of changing sound concepts

MoSo tangibles : evaluating embodied learning

Using tangible interaction in interactive educational systems can benefit learning. This can be supported by relying on experientially originating schemata in the interaction design of learning systems. This paper presents the design and evaluation of MoSo Tangibles, a set of interactive, physical artifacts with which children manipulate the pitch, volume and tempo of ongoing tones, in order to structure their understanding of these abstract sound concepts in terms of multiple different concrete body-based concepts. The results indicate that MoSo provided children with a physical handle to reason about the targeted abstract concepts

Designing to support reasoned imagination through embodied metaphor

Copyright 2009 ACM. Supporting users' reasoned imagination in sense making during interaction with tangible and embedded computation involves supporting the application of their existing mental schemata in understanding new forms of interaction. Recent studies that include an embodied metaphor in the interaction model, which relates action-based inputs to digital outputs, have provided evidence that this approach is beneficial. Yet the design of such systems has been difficult and full of setbacks. Wide spread adoption of this approach requires a better understanding of how to design such embodied metaphor-based interactional models. We analyze three recent design-based research studies in which we have been involved in order to derive design knowledge that may inform others. Following a case study methodology we identify kernels or points in the design process where discontinuities between predicted and actual interaction highlight important design knowledge

Exploring how tangible tools enable collaboration in a multi-touch tabletop game

Digital tabletop surfaces afford multiple user interaction and collaboration. Hybrid tabletops that include both tangible and multi-touch elements are increasingly being deployed in public settings (e.g. Microsoft Surface, reacTable). Designers need to understand how the different characteristics of tangible and multi-touch interface elements affect collaborative activity on tabletops. In this paper, we report on a mixed methods exploratory study of a collaborative tabletop game about sustainable development. We explore the effects of tangible and multi-touch tools on collaborative activity. Forty-five participants, in trios, played the game using both versions of the tools. Our analysis includes quantitative performance measures, qualitative themes and behavioral measures. Findings suggest that both tangible and multi-touch tools enabled effective tool use and that collaborative activity was more influenced by group dynamics than tool modality. However, we observed that the physicality of the tangible tools facilitated individual ownership and announcement of tool use, which in turn supported group and tool awareness