Mental task classification using single-electrode brain computer interfaces

In the recent years, the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has greatly evolved to involve new and exciting interaction paradigms that allow users to interact with their environment and with technology in a more intuitive and ergonomic way. These interaction paradigms include voice, touch, virtual reality, and more recently, the brain. A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a an interface system allowing users to control devices without using the normal output pathways of peripherals, instead, by using neural activity generated in the brain. BCIs have a huge potential in a multitude of fields, all the way from providing users with severe motor disabilities with means for interaction with the external world, to entertainment, gaming, user state monitoring, and self-tracking systems. The potentials of BCI have sparked the interest of researchers, gaming markets and healthcare providers more and more in the recent years. The is due to the emergence of new commercial lightweight, low cost Electroencephalograph (EEG) equipment that made it possible to create more portable and usable BCI systems and expanded their fields of application. This Master thesis aims to explore the state of the art commercial BCI as well as the uses and challenges related to them. Commercially available EEG equipment, namely the Neurosky Brainband and Neurosky Mindset, will be investigated. User tests will be carried out to investigate whether such equipment with low accuracy and low cost can be used to recognize various mental activities. This would be performed by first collecting a dataset of brain signals during performing a set of mental tasks, which is one of the contributions of this project, followed by applying a set of signal processing algorithms, then exploring various classification techniques to classify the collected signals

Brainatwork: Logging Cognitive Engagement and Tasks in the Workplace Using Electroencephalography

Today's workplaces are dynamic and complex. Digital data sources such as email and video conferencing aim to support workers but also add to their burden of multitasking. Psychophysiological sensors such as Electroencephalography (EEG) can provide users with cues about their cognitive state. We introduce BrainAtWork, a workplace engagement and task logger which shows users their cognitive state while working on different tasks. In a lab study with eleven participants working on their own real-world tasks, we gathered 16 hours of EEG and PC logs which were labeled into three classes: central, peripheral and meta work. We evaluated the usability of BrainAtWork via questionnaires and interviews. We investigated the correlations between measured cognitive engagement from EEG and subjective responses from experience sampling probes. Using random forests classification, we show the feasibility of automatically labeling work tasks into work classes. We discuss how BrainAtWork can support workers on the long term through encouraging reflection and helping in task scheduling

GazeTouchPIN: Protecting Sensitive Data on Mobile Devices Using Secure Multimodal Authentication

Although mobile devices provide access to a plethora of sensitive data, most users still only protect them with PINs or patterns, which are vulnerable to side-channel attacks (e.g., shoulder surfing). How-ever, prior research has shown that privacy-aware users are willing to take further steps to protect their private data. We propose GazeTouchPIN, a novel secure authentication scheme for mobile devices that combines gaze and touch input. Our multimodal approach complicates shoulder-surfing attacks by requiring attackers to ob-serve the screen as well as the user’s eyes to and the password. We evaluate the security and usability of GazeTouchPIN in two user studies (N=30). We found that while GazeTouchPIN requires longer entry times, privacy aware users would use it on-demand when feeling observed or when accessing sensitive data. The results show that successful shoulder surfing attack rate drops from 68% to 10.4%when using GazeTouchPIN

Investigating User Needs for Bio-sensing and Affective Wearables

Bio-sensing wearables are currently advancing to provide users with a lot of information about their physiological and affective states. However, relatively little is known about users' interest in acquiring, sharing and receiving this information and through which channels and modalities. To close this gap, we report on the results of an online survey (N=109) exploring principle aspects of the design space of wearables such as data types, contexts, feedback modalities and sharing behaviors. Results show that users are interested in obtaining physiological, emotional and cognitive data through modalities beyond traditional touchscreen output. Valence of the information, whether positive or negative affects the sharing behaviors

GazeTouchPass: Multimodal Authentication Using Gaze and Touch on Mobile Devices

We propose a multimodal scheme, GazeTouchPass, that combines gaze and touch for shoulder-surfing resistant user authentication on mobile devices. GazeTouchPass allows passwords with multiple switches between input modalities during authentication. This requires attackers to simultaneously observe the device screen and the user's eyes to find the password. We evaluate the security and usability of GazeTouchPass in two user studies. Our findings show that GazeTouchPass is usable and significantly more secure than single-modal authentication against basic and even advanced shoulder-surfing attacks

What If Your Car Would Care? Exploring Use Cases For Affective Automotive User Interfaces

In this paper we present use cases for affective user interfaces (UIs) in cars and how they are perceived by potential users in China and Germany. Emotion-aware interaction is enabled by the improvement of ubiquitous sensing methods and provides potential benefits for both traffic safety and personal well-being. To promote the adoption of affective interaction at an international scale, we developed 20 mobile in-car use cases through an inter-cultural design approach and evaluated them with 65 drivers in Germany and China. Our data shows perceived benefits in specific areas of pragmatic quality as well as cultural differences, especially for socially interactive use cases. We also discuss general implications for future affective automotive UI. Our results provide a perspective on cultural peculiarities and a concrete starting point for practitioners and researchers working on emotion-aware interfaces

Nasopharyngeal Isolates from a Cohort of Medical Students with or without Pharyngitis

Objectives: Few studies have investigated pharyngeal colonisation in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study aims to identify the pharyngeal organisms present in a cohort of medical students with and without symptomatic pharyngitis. Methods: This study was conducted between September 2016 and June 2018 at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, Al-Ain. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from preclinical and clinical medical students attending the college during the study period. The specimens were tested for 16 viral and nine bacterial pathogens using a real-time polymerase chain reaction assay. Results: A total of 352 nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from 287 students; of these, 22 (7.7%) had pharyngitis symptoms. Overall, the most common isolates were human rhinovirus, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae, with no significant differences in terms of gender, year of study or stage of study. The prevalence of S. pyogenes in asymptomatic and symptomatic students was 1.1% and 0%, respectively. A Centor score of ≥2 was not associated with S. pyogenes-positive samples. Six pathogens were isolated from symptomatic students including H. influenzae. Fusobacterium necrophorum was not detected in any of the samples. Conclusion: The diagnosis and management of pharyngitis should be tailored to common pathogens in the region. This study found that S. pyogenes and F. necrophorum were not detected among students with symptoms of pharyngitis; moreover, Centor scores of ≥2 were not associated with the presence of S. pyogenes. This cut-off score therefore should not be employed as an empirical measure to initiate penicillin therapy in this population.Keywords: Pharyngitis; Pharynx; Asymptomatic Infections; Carrier State; Fusobacterium necrophorum; Streptococcus pyogenes; Penicillins; United Arab Emirates

MEEC: Second workshop on momentary emotion elicitation and capture

Recognizing human emotions and responding appropriately has the potential to radically change the way we interact with technology. However, to train machines to sensibly detect and recognize human emotions, we need valid emotion ground truths. A fundamental challenge here is the momentary emotion elicitation and capture (MEEC) from individuals continuously and in real-time, without adversely affecting user experience nor breaching ethical standards. In this virtual half-day CHI 2021 workshop, we will (1) have participant talks and an inspirational keynote presentation (2) ideate elicitation, sensing, and annotation techniques (3) create mappings of when to apply an elicitation method

Estimating Visual Discomfort in Head-Mounted Displays Using Electroencephalography

Part 4: Virtual Reality and Feeling of ImmersionInternational audienceHead-Mounted displays, while providing unprecedented immersiveness and engagement in interaction, can substantially add mental workload and visual strain on users. Being a novel technology, users often do not know what to expect and therefore accept visual stress as being state of the art. Assessing visual discomfort is currently possible through questionnaires and interviews that interrupt the interaction and provide only subjective feedback. Electroencephalography (EEG) can provide insights about the visual discomfort and workload of HMDs. We evaluate the use of a consumer-grade Brain Computer Interface for estimating visual discomfort in HMD usage in a study with 24 participants. Our results show that the usage of a BCI to detect uncomfortable viewing conditions is possible with a certainty of 83% in our study. Further the results give insights on the usage of BCIs in order to increase the detection certainty by reducing costs for the hardware. This can pave the way for designing adaptive virtual reality experiences that consider user visual fatigue without disrupting immersiveness