David V. Keyson

KidReporter: a user requirements gathering technique for designing with children

This paper describes a design method, novel to the domain of interaction design, for gathering user requirements from children called the KidReporter method. The KidReporter method was chosen and further refined based on assumptions about User-Centred Design. The method was considered to be suitable and appealing for children in terms of participating in design. Two school classes participated in making a newspaper about a zoo, to gather requirements for the design process of an interactive educational game. The educational game was developed to educate children about animals while walking through a zoo. The KidReporter methods main strengths are that it combines many techniques for eliciting information from children, such as interviews, drawing and making pictures. In this paper we describe how the KidReporter method was applied, in what manner it was successful and what we would do differently next time.

Designing collaboration in consumer products

Designers of consumer products usually try to address as wide a range of user needs as possible. Due to various design constraints, such as product size and limited interface mechanisms, typically only a portion of those needs can be supported. This paper discusses efforts to design everyday consumer products that can support a broad range of user goals and approaches to the tasks in a collaborative manner.

The case of sculpting atmospheres: towards design principles for expressive tangible interaction in control of ambient systems

According to the vision of Ambient Intelligence, technology will seamlessly merge into people’s everyday activities and environments. A challenge facing designers of such systems is to create interfaces that fit in people’s everyday contexts and incorporate the values of daily life. This paper focuses on tangible expressive interaction as one possible approach towards linking everyday experiences to intuitive forms of interaction and presents a number of principles for expressive interaction design in this field. A case study of a tangible expressive interface to control a living room atmosphere projection system (orchestrating living room lighting, audio and video-art) is presented to illustrate and reflect upon the design principles. Furthermore, the case study describes possible techniques towards integrating the design principles into a design method.

Considerate home notification systems: a field study of acceptability of notifications in the home

A field study in ten homes was conducted to understand what influences users’ acceptability of notifications in the home environment. The key finding is that perceived message urgency is the primary indicator of acceptability of notifications in the home—if people think a message is urgent, they want the message to be shown immediately, regardless of what they are doing at the time of notification. The study also shows that the acceptability of low-urgent and medium-urgent messages could be improved by taking into account mental activity load at the time of notification. No effect of physical activity was found on acceptability. The results suggest that to improve the scheduling of notifications in the home, notification systems need a mechanism assessing both the message urgency and the mental activity load, whereas physical activity can be ignored. From a methodological point of view, it is difficult to measure acceptability of notifications in a realistic setting, given the need to balance experimental control with realistic context. The present paper suggests a way to introduce controlled notifications and subjective measurements of acceptability in homes.

MusicCube: making digital music tangible

To some extent listening to digital music via storage devices has led to a loss of part of the physical experience associated with earlier media formats such as CDs and LPs. For example, one could consider the role of album covers in music appreciation. Previous efforts at making music interaction more tangible have focused mainly on access issues. A case study is presented in which several content attributes of Mp3 formatted music as well as control access are made more visible and tangible. Play lists, music rhythm, volume, and navigational feedback were communicated via multicolored light displayed in a tangible interface. Users were able to physically interact with music collections via the MusicCube, a wireless cube-like object, using gestures to shuffle music and a rotary dial with a button for song navigation and volume control. Speech and non-speech feedback were given to communicate current mode and song title. The working prototype was compared to an Apple iPod, along the dimensions of trust, engagement, ergonomic and hedonic qualities, and appeal. Subjects rated the MusicCube higher on scales associated with hedonic qualities, while the iPod was preferred for ergonomic qualities. Results on trust measures were found to correlate with ergonomic qualities, while sense of engagement related to hedonic aspects. Subjects generally valued the expressive and tangible interaction with music collections. Next design steps will focus on increasing ergonomic aspects of the MusicCube while maintaining a high hedonic rating.

Considerate home notification systems: A user study of acceptability of notifications in a living-room laboratory

Recent field experiments on acceptability of notifications in the home showed that people generally want to be informed of urgent messages as soon as possible, whereas non-urgent messages should not be presented at all. A possible way to improve the acceptability of a notification might be to adjust the presentation mode and the timing of notifications to the message content and to the state of the user. For example, acceptability might be improved by considering user activities when selecting the best time to present the message. The relation between acceptability, presentation mode and timing has not been formally studied in a controlled home setting before. This paper presents the results of a user study, in which 10 participant couples were asked to engage in everyday home activities, and to subjectively rate factors that were expected to influence acceptability. The study was situated in a living-room laboratory in which the user activities and the timing of notifications were controlled. Questionnaire data was evaluated using cluster analysis in order to construct a semantic model that describes the relationship between user, system and environment. The key findings in the present study are: (1) acceptability could be improved by adjusting the level of intrusiveness of the presentation to message urgency: urgent messages should be presented intrusively, medium-urgent messages unobtrusively, and (2) non-urgent messages should be postponed until the message urgency has increased, or skipped if the message urgency never exceeds the predefined presentation threshold. Surprisingly, the user activities at the time of notification were not found to influence acceptability. These findings have resulted in a model of acceptability of notifications for the design of future home notification systems.

Exploring the use of a game to stimulate energy saving in households

This paper presents a study called the Energy Battle, a game aimed at encouraging home occupants to save energy. Twenty student-households were provided with direct feedback and an online platform with energy feedback over time, ranking of the competing teams, tips and a game. The study showed that the game context strongly influenced the motivation to save energy. Overall, savings averaged 24%, with the highest savings level at 45%. Directly after completion of the Energy Battle, energy consumption increased among most of the households, although consumption levels tended to stay below the baseline measurement level taken before the Energy Battle. Follow-up interviews indicated that some of the behaviours developed in the game had transformed into habits. A game such as the Energy Battle appears to provide a powerful means to stimulate energy saving in the short term. The potential to achieve long term effects appears possible, however further research is required to understand long-term implications for an Energy Battle game.

Designing Acceptable Assisted Living Services for Elderly Users

With todays technology, elderly users could be supported in living independently in their own homes for a prolonged period of time. Commercially available products enable remote monitoring of the state of the user, enhance social networks, and even support elderly citizens in their everyday routines. Whereas technology seems to be in place to support elderly users, one might question the value of present solutions in terms of solving real user problems such as loneliness and self-efficacy. Furthermore, products tend to be complex in use and do not relate to the reference framework of elderly users. Consequently, acceptability of many present solutions tends to be low. This paper presents a design vision of assisted living solutions that elderly love to use. Based on earlier work, five concrete design goals have been identified that are specific to assisted living services for elderly users. The vision is illustrated by three examples of ongoing work; these cases present the design process of prototypes that are being tested in the field with elderly users. Even though the example cases are limited in terms of number of participants and quantitative data, the qualitative feedback and design experiences can serve as inspiration for designers of assisted living services.

The intelligent thermostat: a mixed-initiative user interface

Recent advances in approaches to mixed-initiative user interfaces for desktop applications provide a number of principles, which can be used to embed intelligence in consumer products. An integration of several approaches is proposed towards building an intelligent thermostat that can reduce energy consumption. A statistical model is used to spot trends in living patterns and make suggestions. An embedded task model, containing product usage patterns, can infer user intentions and serves as input to a dialog manager. Future work includes field-testing of the prototype and concepts in residential homes.

SnowGlobe: the development of a prototype awareness system for longitudinal field studies

Awareness systems are a novel class of communication systems that enable people to be conscious of each other in a peripheral way. To better understand how people experience these systems over time, and how they blend in the user context, longitudinal field studies are needed. Although tangible awareness systems are considered to be more intimate and aesthetically pleasing than screen based awareness systems, they are not often evaluated in a longitudinal setting. This may be due to several factors that complicate the field evaluation of such systems, including the robustness and reliability of the prototype. This paper describes how the challenges of designing and evaluating a prototype have been addressed in the design of SnowGlobe. The system was evaluated in a longitudinal field setting with 12 users. The prototype enabled extensive data collection on the user experience and usage of such a tangible awareness system.