Public HMDs: Modeling and Understanding User Behavior Around Public Head-Mounted Displays

Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) are becoming ubiquitous; we are starting to see them deployed in public for different purposes. Museums, car companies and travel agencies use HMDs to promote their products. As a result, situations arise where users use them in public without experts supervision. This leads to challenges and opportunities, many of which are experienced in public display installations. For example, similar to public displays, public HMDs struggle to attract the passer-by's attention, but benefit from the honeypot effect that draws attention to them. Also passersby might be hesitant to wear a public HMD, due to the fear that its owner might not approve, or due to the perceived need for a prior permission. In this work, we discuss how public HMDs can benefit from research in public displays. In particular, based on the results of an in-the-wild deployment of a public HMD, we propose an adaptation of the audience funnel flow model of public display users to fit the context of public HMD usage. We discuss how public HMDs bring in challenges and opportunities, and create novel research directions that are relevant to both researchers in HMDs and researchers in public displays

Computational offloading: Supporting distributed team working through visually augmenting verbal communication

Abstract Distributed team working often involves close-knit groups collaborating over a large geographical space performing time-critical tasks. We present a field study of the way a dispersed team of technicians coordinate their work, highlighting the phenomenon of extraneous 'detective work' -where much communication, via walkie-talkies, needs to take place to resolve uncertainty arising in their work. We suggest one way of improving the way team members maintain their awareness of what is going on in different places and times is to offload some of the computation involved, by augmenting the verbal channel with visual information. Using the external cognition framework, we describe how we designed a dynamic visualization that allowed salient verbal information to be re-represented as an external cognitive trace. To test our assumption about externalization and computational offloading, we carried out an experiment, with three different conditions: visualization, pen and paper and no cognitive aid. Our findings showed that allowing users to create and view a dynamic visualization improves awareness of what is going on and the way distributed work is coordinated

A Model of the Deviation between the Intended and the Actual Experiences with Interactive Installations

Interactive installations engage people in different ways, many of which are different than originally intended by the designer. We present a model that illustrates the differences between the intended experience and the actual experience of people. The model is demonstrated through the analysis of one interactive installation at the Science Museum (London) and the various parameters are mapped and visualized. We suggest that the participants of interactive installations engage differently than originally intended by the designer, which can be defined here as "deviation". There are several levels of deviation, and the proposed model will illustrate the critical interaction stages and visualize the deviations. This model offers new tools for designers and curators alike

When the Good Turns Ugly:Speculating Next Steps for Digital Wellbeing Tools

Concerns surrounding technology use in society has led to the HCI community creating tools for ‘digital wellbeing’. These aim to improve users’ relationships with technology, but these positively motivated tools may initiate further negative impacts for users e.g. on their privacy or autonomy. Using Pierce’s speculative design concepts of ‘foot-in-the-door’ technologies and focusing on three common digital wellbeing features (time limits and prompts, social ‘do not disturb’ modes, app and service blocking), I highlight how these tools are a small step away from being used to manipulate users which could enact slow shifts in users accepting such manipulation. Through this and the discussion, I accentuate that positively motivated designs may not explicitly lead to positive interactions by default. I hope this paper will facilitate speculative design and discussion in the digital wellbeing community, to ensure that our designs continue to mitigate negative impacts from technology now and in the future

Ways of spectating: unravelling spectator participation in Kinect play

We explore spectating on video game play as an interactional and participatory activity. Drawing on a corpus of video recordings capturing 'naturally occurring' Kinect gaming within home settings, we detail how the analytic 'work' of spectating is interactionally accomplished as a matter of collaborative action with players and engagement in the game. We examine: spectators supporting players with continuous 'scaffolding'; spectators critiquing player technique during and between moments of play; spectators recognising and complimenting competent player conduct; and spectators reflecting on prior play to build instructions for the player. From this we draw out a number of points that shift the conversation in HCI about 'the spectator' towards understanding and designing for spectating as an interactional activity; that is, sequentially ordered and temporally coordinated. We also discuss bodily conduct and the particular ways of 'seeing' involved in spectating, and conclude with remarks on conceptual and design implications for HCI

Econundrum:Visualizing the Climate Impact of Dietary Choice through a Shared Data Sculpture

While there is a strong relationship between climate change and human food consumption, it is challenging to understand the implications and impact from an individual perspective. The lack of a shared frame of reference, that allows people to compare their impact to others, limits awareness on this complex topic. To support group reflections and social comparison of the impact of people’s food consumption on climate change, we designed Econundrum, a shared physical data sculpture that visualizes carbon emissions resulting from dietary choices of a small community. Our three-week field study demonstrates how Econundrum helped people (i) understand the climate impact of various food types, (ii) reflect on the environmental impact of their food choices; and (iii) discuss the relation between climate impact and food consumption with others. Our study shows how a shared physical data sculpture mediates a complex topic to a community by facilitating the social dynamics in context

ThoughtCloud: Exploring the Role of Feedback Technologies in Care Organisations

ThoughtCloud is a lightweight, situated, digital feedback system designed to allow voluntary and community sector care organisations to gather feedback and opinions from those who use their services. In this paper we describe the design and development of ThoughtCloud and its evaluation through a series of deployments with two organisations. Using the system, organisations were able to pose questions about the activities that they provide and gather data in the form of ratings, video or audio messages. We conducted observations of ThoughtCloud in use, analysed feedback received, and conducted interviews with those who 'commissioned' feedback around the value of comments received about their organisation. Our findings highlight how simple, easily deployable digital systems can support new feedback processes within care organisations and provide opportunities for understanding the personal journeys and experiences of vulnerable individuals who use these care services

Virtual Field Studies: Conducting Studies on Public Displays in Virtual Reality

Field studies on public displays can be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. We investigate the feasibility of using virtual reality (VR) as a test-bed to evaluate deployments of public displays. Specifically, we investigate whether results from virtual field studies, conducted in a virtual public space, would match the results from a corresponding real-world setting. We report on two empirical user studies where we compared audience behavior around a virtual public display in the virtual world to audience behavior around a real public display. We found that virtual field studies can be a powerful research tool, as in both studies we observed largely similar behavior between the settings. We discuss the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of using virtual reality to conduct field studies, and provide lessons learned from our work that can help researchers decide whether to employ VR in their research and what factors to account for if doing so

A Thing of Beauty: Steering Behavior in an Interactive Playground

Interactive playgrounds are spaces where players engage in collocated, playful activities, in which added digital technology can be designed to promote cognitive, social, and motor skills development. To promote such development, different strategies can be used to implement game mechanics that change player's in-game behavior. One of such strategies is enticing players to take action through incentives akin to game achievements. We explored if this strategy could be used to influence players' proxemic behavior in the Interactive Tag Playground, an installation that enhances the traditional game of tag. We placed the ITP in an art gallery, observed hundreds of play sessions, and refined the mechanics, which consisted in projecting collectible particles around the tagger that upon collection by runners resulted only in the embellishment of their circles. We implemented the refined mechanics in a study with 48 children. The playground automatically collected the players' positions, and analyses show that runners got closer to and moved more towards taggers when using our enticing strategy. This suggests an enticing strategy can be used to influence physical in-game behavior