Design and Evaluation of a Playful Mobile Application to Facilitate Group Interaction

People are often involved in situations where they are required to interact with a group of strangers. The social interaction in these situations can be hindered by several factors, such as a person‟s shyness or inhibition, and the lack of common ground. In order to overcome these obstacles, various group activities known as ice-breaking or team-building activities, have been developed and put to use. Electronic mobile devices with networking capabilities like tablets and smartphones are nowadays used extensively in everyday life. One of their many use cases is to help people socialize, either by meeting new people or communicating with friends. Additionally, video games have been proven efficient in motivating people to socialize, either by inspiring players to form groups and communities over distance, or by facilitating interaction between collocated people. The main objective of this thesis is to design, implement and evaluate an ice-breaking activity for a group of strangers, utilizing the benefits of mobile technology and video games mentioned above. The result was a quiz-based, multi-player, mobile game called Who‟s Next, built for mobile devices that run the Android operating system. The Wi-Fi Direct framework was used to establish connection and data exchange between the devices. The thesis was written within the borders of the Human-Technology Interaction research field, using the User-Centered Design methodology. Thus, the thesis begins with a theoretical study on video games and their social impact, and the different social relationships and groups between people. Next, a description of traditional ice-breaking activities and their characteristics is presented. Moreover, previous attempts to utilize technology -and mobile devices in particular- in such activities are explored. To evaluate the effects of the game as an ice-breaker, a user study with six group sessions of 4 to 5 participants were conducted. The participants‟ behaviour during the sessions, as well as their feedback given in an interview afterwards, were examined and analyzed to form conclusions about the appropriateness of the game and the players‟ overall user experience. According to the results, Who‟s Next was found to be an engaging application that encourages social interaction in a group, and which helps strangers get to know each other. Most participants found it preferable to other ice-breaking activities, since it provided more a comfortable way to share their personal information with a group

Design and Evaluation of a Playful Mobile Application to Facilitate Group Interaction

People are often involved in situations where they are required to interact with a group of strangers. The social interaction in these situations can be hindered by several factors, such as a person‟s shyness or inhibition, and the lack of common ground. In order to overcome these obstacles, various group activities known as ice-breaking or team-building activities, have been developed and put to use. Electronic mobile devices with networking capabilities like tablets and smartphones are nowadays used extensively in everyday life. One of their many use cases is to help people socialize, either by meeting new people or communicating with friends. Additionally, video games have been proven efficient in motivating people to socialize, either by inspiring players to form groups and communities over distance, or by facilitating interaction between collocated people. The main objective of this thesis is to design, implement and evaluate an ice-breaking activity for a group of strangers, utilizing the benefits of mobile technology and video games mentioned above. The result was a quiz-based, multi-player, mobile game called Who‟s Next, built for mobile devices that run the Android operating system. The Wi-Fi Direct framework was used to establish connection and data exchange between the devices. The thesis was written within the borders of the Human-Technology Interaction research field, using the User-Centered Design methodology. Thus, the thesis begins with a theoretical study on video games and their social impact, and the different social relationships and groups between people. Next, a description of traditional ice-breaking activities and their characteristics is presented. Moreover, previous attempts to utilize technology -and mobile devices in particular- in such activities are explored. To evaluate the effects of the game as an ice-breaker, a user study with six group sessions of 4 to 5 participants were conducted. The participants‟ behaviour during the sessions, as well as their feedback given in an interview afterwards, were examined and analyzed to form conclusions about the appropriateness of the game and the players‟ overall user experience. According to the results, Who‟s Next was found to be an engaging application that encourages social interaction in a group, and which helps strangers get to know each other. Most participants found it preferable to other ice-breaking activities, since it provided more a comfortable way to share their personal information with a group

Voice assistants for people with cognitive impairments due to acquired brain injury

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) can cause a wide range of cognitive and physical impairments, which can affect the person’s ability to perform everyday tasks, and reduce their independence. The everyday functioning of people with ABI can be improved through rehabilitation, and through the use of external aids, which can be paper-based tools or electronic devices. Although research shows that the latter can be more effective, there are several barriers that can prevent their efficient. Voice Assistants offer the potential to provide support for people with ABI, overcoming some of this barriers through their hands-free and eyes-free interaction. However, there exist several challenges associated with the usability of speech-only interaction, and the use of VAs in that context has not been thoroughly examined. This thesis presents a set of requirements capturing studies, aiming to examine how VAs can be used to benefit people with ABI, to identify the factors that can limit their usability in this context, and to explore ways to improve their usability through the design of their voice user interface. Study 1 investigated the common effects of ABI and how the users’ background correlates to the use of external aids, and acquired initial information about the use of VAs among people with ABI. Study 2 further investigated the common cognitive effects of ABI, examined the common methods and objectives of ABI rehabilitation, and acquired the view of ABI experts on the application and design of technological aids. Study 3 gathered additional information about the impact of the effects of ABI on the use of external aids, and acquired feedback by people with ABI on the concept of using VAs as cognitive aids. Study 4 examined how people with ABI use VAs, and how they compared them to other tools. The results were used to define a set of use-cases, describing how VAs can be used to support cognitive functioning, and facilitate the rehabilitation process. Study 5 further examined how people with ABI interact with VAs, identifying the different factors that can hinder their usability in a variety of tasks. Finally, Study 6 evaluated different methods to design the voice user interface of a VA-based prompting system for people with ABI, presenting design guidelines to improve the presentation of conveyed information, to increase the effectiveness of conveyed prompts, to facilitate information input and reduce user errors, and techniques to provide help to the users and improve learnability

Playfulness and progression in technology-enhanced social experiences between nearby strangers

acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Design and Evaluation of a Playful Mobile Application to Facilitate Group Interaction

People are often involved in situations where they are required to interact with a group of strangers. The social interaction in these situations can be hindered by several factors, such as a person‟s shyness or inhibition, and the lack of common ground. In order to overcome these obstacles, various group activities known as ice-breaking or team-building activities, have been developed and put to use. Electronic mobile devices with networking capabilities like tablets and smartphones are nowadays used extensively in everyday life. One of their many use cases is to help people socialize, either by meeting new people or communicating with friends. Additionally, video games have been proven efficient in motivating people to socialize, either by inspiring players to form groups and communities over distance, or by facilitating interaction between collocated people. The main objective of this thesis is to design, implement and evaluate an ice-breaking activity for a group of strangers, utilizing the benefits of mobile technology and video games mentioned above. The result was a quiz-based, multi-player, mobile game called Who‟s Next, built for mobile devices that run the Android operating system. The Wi-Fi Direct framework was used to establish connection and data exchange between the devices. The thesis was written within the borders of the Human-Technology Interaction research field, using the User-Centered Design methodology. Thus, the thesis begins with a theoretical study on video games and their social impact, and the different social relationships and groups between people. Next, a description of traditional ice-breaking activities and their characteristics is presented. Moreover, previous attempts to utilize technology -and mobile devices in particular- in such activities are explored. To evaluate the effects of the game as an ice-breaker, a user study with six group sessions of 4 to 5 participants were conducted. The participants‟ behaviour during the sessions, as well as their feedback given in an interview afterwards, were examined and analyzed to form conclusions about the appropriateness of the game and the players‟ overall user experience. According to the results, Who‟s Next was found to be an engaging application that encourages social interaction in a group, and which helps strangers get to know each other. Most participants found it preferable to other ice-breaking activities, since it provided more a comfortable way to share their personal information with a group

Increasing collocated people's awareness of the mobile user's activities : A field trial of social displays

Many activities that have traditionally been performed with different dedicated physical artifacts are now done with personal mobile devices. Consequently, the privacy of mobile interfaces has hampered social observability and chances for serendipitous interactions. For example, reading an electronic newspaper with a mobile device does not allow the surrounding people to be similarly aware of the reader's activity as traditional newspapers. Social displays are additional displays on mobile devices providing the surrounding people with light-weight cues about the activities of the device user. We implemented a prototype that reveals the user's current active application and presents its name on an e-ink display on the backside of a mobile device. We conducted a ten-day field trial with 13 participants using the prototype. The results show that the prototype was able to increase awareness of users' mobile activities and occasionally triggered interactions with others, without significantly violating the sense of privacy.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Social display...We can see what you are doing on your mobile device

Mobile devices have become powerful in terms of computing and supporting various human activities. People have moved some of their activities that earlier have been done with dedicated artifacts to mobile devices. However, due to the rather private and personal interfaces of mobile devices, activities that earlier were easily observable by surrounding others have become private, decreasing the surroundings people's awareness of a mobile user's activity and thus the possibilities for serendipitous interactions. We developed a prototype called social display; it provides light-weight visual cues about mobile user's current activity with the device. The cues are displayed on a display attached to the backside of the user's mobile device. We present the concept, explain the design decisions and briefly report key findings from, first, a focus group study and, second, a field trial study.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

How to Evaluate the Social Effects and User Experience of Systems Enhancing Collocated Interactions?

Enhancing collocated interactions with interactive technology has quickly gained plenty of interest in the HCI community. Our approach within this research domain is to design and study mobile and wearable technology that encourages and motivates social interaction between collocated people. This paper sheds light on the considerations related to evaluating systems that address the complex and delicate issues related to social interaction. How do we evaluate the effectiveness of enhancing social interaction? How do we know if a system or a prototype is of high quality? What are the quality attributes? We highlight various evaluation challenges we have encountered in our studies and provide considerations for future research.acceptedVersio