Céline Mougenot

The influence of robot appearance on assessment

This paper presents the influence of robot appearance on perception. The goal is to come to an initial understanding of what design and features of robots affect people. We explore the differences how people perceive pet, service, humanoid and android robots. The associations, associated tasks, perception, fears and expectations towards the four different types are evaluated.

Cross-Cultural Study of Tactile Interactions in Technologically Mediated Communication

In order to design tactile devices for technologically mediated communication, we investigated what tactile and gestural interactions would be spontaneously used for sharing emotions in mediated communication. In an experiment with 40 participants, we identified relations between hand gestures performed with a concept device and emotions that a “sender” intends to convey to a “receiver”. Among others, our results show that squeezing and shaking are the most popular chosen hand gesture interaction. Gesture intensity and speed follow the arousal (intensity) and temperature follows the valence (pleasure). Emotions that subjects are most are willing to share with such a tactile are gratitude, love, happy, sad, astonished, excited, angry and worried.

Erratum to: Towards user empowerment in product design: a mixed reality tool for interactive virtual prototyping

Designing new products according to user needs and requirements is a key success factor for companies. However, the characterization of user requirements in the early design stages is not an easy task due to the subjective nature of these requirements and because of the communication gap between users and designers. Digital design tools have the potential to enable users to actively participate in the design process and to directly interact with representations of the future product. Yet, they suffer a trade-off between their ability to accurately represent the user experience with the future product and their capacity to offer simple interfaces for the end user to manipulate. To overcome this issue, we introduce a new modular digital tool that allows users to become active participants of the design process through a high level of both immersion and control. The tool consists in a combination of a virtual reality environment for immersion and intuitive physical interfaces for direct control, resulting in a mixed reality hardware/software system. The hardware is made of modular tangible user interfaces (TUIs), custom-made by 3D printing and powered by a 3D game engine while the interactive content is displayed in virtual reality. The modularity of the system allows several TUIs and 3D content behaviours configurations to bring user friendliness and intuitively for each specific design project.

Towards Co-designing with Users: A Mixed Reality Tool for Kansei Engineering

Some costly and complex technical products, such as walking assistance devices, require ad-hoc design processes to address the very specific needs of each user. However, the depiction of customer/user requirements in the early stage of design stands difficult due to their subjective nature and the separation between the user and the designer. To bridge these gaps, we introduce the definition of a new modular digital toolbox based upon mixed reality system and kansei engineering techniques. The hardware consists in modular Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs), custom made by 3D printing and powered by a 3D game engine. The interactive content is displayed in mixed reality, simultaneously to the user and the designer. Kansei data are collected through questionnaires and psychophysical measurements, during multiple collaboration phases. The modularity of the system allows the evaluation of various TUIs, 3D content behaviours and the best fitting type of display.

Design of a Massage-Inspired Haptic Device for Interpersonal Connection in Long-Distance Communication

The use of tactile senses in mediated communication has generated considerable research interest in past decades. Since massage is a common practice in Asian cultures, we propose to introduce massage-based interactions in mediated communication between people in a close relationship. We designed a device for distant interactive massage to be used during online conversation and we assessed its effect on interpersonal connection with eight pairs of Chinese participants in romantic relationships. All pairs were asked to engage in a conversation, either through a video call or through a massage-assisted video call. The findings showed that the use of the massage device significantly increased the perceived emotional and physical connection between the users. The results also showed a significant increase in the engagement in the massage activity, e.g., total massage time and average force per finger, from positive conversation to negative conversation, demonstrating an evidence of the interplay between audio-visual and haptic communication. Post hoc interviews showed the potential of the massage device for long-distance communication in romantic relationships as well as in parents-children relationships.

Tensions in Creativity Workshops

This research aims to go beyond classical brainstorming methods, with the classical divide between (irenic) idea generation and (eristic) selection, to explore creative means for shaping group creativity by intervening on the socio-affective dimension of group dynamics. In this paper, we develop the design rationale of a suite of four group creativity workshops (Time Trial, Idea Sports, Argument Clinic and Idea Gym), based on three approaches to introducing creative tensions, defined as pressure and disturbances in time management, in interpersonal relations and in use of artefacts in the workshops. We also report on a preliminary evaluation carried out with groups of students, into Masters-level training.

Cultures of collaboration in engineering design education: a contrastive case study in France and Japan

Abstract Engineering students need to learn to collaborate, to create and to innovate in culturally diverse socio-organisational contexts. However, research on intercultural differences provides results that are not specifically grounded in collaborative and creative engineering education practices. This paper presents a contrastive case study of engineering students’ appraisals of the quality of collaboration in collaborative design situations. Based on an extended multidimensional appraisal method (called ‘QC2’), we contrasted French and Japanese engineering students’ appraisals of: (1) ideal collaboration in design; (2) quality of collaboration with respect to actual cases of collaborative design in France and in Japan (as shown on videos). Results showed a common French–Japanese culture of collaboration across the engineering students with respect to aspects of design relating specifically to the domain of engineering, yet differences with respect to appraisals of dimensions of group work (task/group orientation and argumentation). These results, of a detailed situated case study, are compared with results of (mostly questionnaire-based) research on general cultural differences. We conclude with prospects for elaborating an operational trans-cultural concept of institutional culture of collaboration, and implications for training engineering students, especially for multicultural collaboration.

Sensory Stimulation of Designers

This chapter examines the role of designers’ own experience and perception in the process of designing new products, based on an experimental approach with designers. So far, most design studies have investigated the role of visual stimuli and visual modality in the design process. Designers being humans with senses, we claim that other sensory modalities might affect the design process and outcomes. We propose an approach to study the practice of designing where both creativity and designers’ sensory impressions are investigated jointly.