Eloísa García-Canseco

Assessing the user experience of older adults using a neural network trained to recognize emotions from brain signals

The use of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies as a means to cope with problems that arise due to an increasing and aging population is becoming usual. AAL technologies are used to prevent, cure and improve the wellness and health conditions of the elderly. However, their adoption and use by older adults is still a major challenge. User Experience (UX) evaluations aim at aiding on this task, by identifying the experience that a user has while interacting with an AAL technology under particular conditions. This may help designing better products and improve user engagement and adoption of AAL solutions. However, evaluating the UX of AAL technologies is a difficult task, due to the inherent limitations of their subjects and of the evaluation methods. In this study, we validated the feasibility of assessing the UX of older adults while they use a cognitive stimulation application using a neural network trained to recognize pleasant and unpleasant emotions from electroencephalography (EEG) signals by contrasting our results with those of additional self-report and qualitative analysis UX evaluations. Our study results provide evidence about the feasibility of assessing the UX of older adults using a neural network that take as input the EEG signals; the classification accuracy of our neural network ranges from 60.87% to 82.61%. As future work we will conduct additional UX evaluation studies using the three different methods, in order to appropriately validate these results.

On the Effect of Previous Technological Experience on the Usability of a Virtual Rehabilitation Tool for the Physical Activation and Cognitive Stimulation of Elders

We present and discuss our findings on the identified causes for the differences of the results of two usability studies on the borrowed use of Gesture Therapy, a virtual rehabilitation tool for the cognitive stimulation and physical activation of elders. The studies focused on usability aspects including perceived usefulness, ease of use, intention of use and user experience. In the first study, we used self-report techniques to gather data, and found that previous technological experience had a significant effect on the perceived anxiety of elders; while on the second study, we used indirect observation techniques to gather data, and found that previous technological experience had a significant effect on the perceived enjoyment of elders. After a further analysis of the video recordings of the playing sessions, we identified that elders developed two different approaches to their using the application (explore-and-learn and score-and-compete), which could be related to their previous technological experience, and explain the identified differences. We observed that in the presence of problems, the response of participants was different depending on the adopted behavior. Based on this evidence, we distilled a set of preliminary guidelines to foster or inhibit certain behaviors and outcomes related to the effect of previous experience that were observed during our evaluation studies of virtual tools for the cognitive stimulation and physical activation of the elderly.

Ontology-based Design Model of Virtual Environments for Upper Limb Motor Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients

Today, the development of virtual reality (VR) applications for upper limb motor rehabilitation is still a difficult and time-consuming task. It requires developers to be skilled in motor rehabilitation, interaction devices, and stroke survivor characteristics, among others, to be able to develop a virtual environment (VE). In the literature there are several recommendations to aid in the design of VEs. However, to integrate the recommendations it is necessary to understand key domain concepts in motor rehabilitation. In this paper, we introduce VEULMoR, an ontology-based approach for designing VEs for Upper Limb Motor Rehabilitation. This approach uses the domain expertise coded into the ontology to shorten and facilitate the design of a VE. The information contained in the ontology can be used to denote the design factors that integrate the VE.

Revisiting the User Experience of a Virtual Rehabilitation Tool for the Physical Activation and Cognitive Stimulation of Elders

We report the results of an indirect observation usability and user experience (UX) study on the use of the Gesture Therapy (GT) rehabilitation platform, as a physical activation and cognitive stimulation tool for the elderly. The results from this study complement those of a former self-report study [8]. Elders perceived the system with high usefulness, usability, and UX, as well as generating low anxiety in both studies. Also, the results allowed us to analyze and evaluate the impact of elders’ previous experience on computer use on specific aspects. Interestingly, the significance of the effect of previous computer use experience on perceived anxiety and perceived enjoyment aspects of UX was different in both studies, although there is an important overlap for ease of use factors. These results, although not conclusive yet on the causes for the difference, provides us with further evidence to establish that elders’ previous experience (or not) on computer use affects their user experience on the use of the GT platform.

Design Factors of Virtual Environments for Upper Limb Motor Rehabilitation of Stroke Patients

Stroke survivors are often left with motor disabilities. Virtual environments for motor therapy are an emerging strategy to motivate, entertain or engage the rehabilitation patient to the therapy after stroke. The design of these specialized virtual environments requires to meet the needs of patients and therapists, which is not a simple task. To support the design of these applications a number of recommendations for the developers have been proposed in literature. Here, a taxonomy is proposed to classify the identified principles, criteria, implications, usability factors or guidelines on which the recommendations are based. The taxonomy identifies key factors in the design of virtual environments for upper limb motor therapy. The taxonomy is organized into three categories corresponding to different stages of the therapy: configuration of the exercise, assistance during the execution of the exercise and management of therapy results. We believe that agglutinating and organizing design factors into a taxonomy may reduce development times, facilitate communication between developers and clinical counterparts and increase chances of therapeutic validity.

Design Principles for Hapto-Virtual Rehabilitation Environments: Effects on Effectiveness of Fine Motor Hand Therapy

We propose a set of principles to facilitate the design of haptic feedback virtual environments, which is expected to contribute to the effectiveness of the fine motor hand therapy. Firstly, we conducted a contextual study in a rehabilitation center to identify preliminary design elements using grounded theory. Based on these results, we defined a set of principles aiming to aid in the design of haptic feedback virtual environments to favour therapy effectiveness and patient’s safety. Secondly, in order to evaluate the proposed design principles, we developed a haptic feedback virtual environment based on them and conducted a formative evaluation with five patients and three therapists. Preliminary results provided promising evidence, indicating a high perception of usefulness, ease of use and intention of use of the proposed environment and principles. Finally, to validate the impact of the design principles in therapy effectiveness, we carried out a second study with thirty participants, from which fifteen elderly had hand motor impairments. We found no significant differences in task execution time between healthy adults and elders with hand motor impairments. We found significant differences in precision or accuracy of the exercise. We confirmed the importance of key principles to facility the design of hapto-virtual environments that contribute to the effectiveness of the fine motor hand therapy. Further evaluations are needed to validate our results from a clinical viewpoint. We confirmed the importance of key principles to contribute to the effectiveness of the fine motor hand therapy. Further evaluations are needed to validate our results from a clinical viewpoint.

Emotions Identification to Measure User Experience Using Brain Biometric Signals

There are different techniques e.g. direct or indirect observation, questionnaires, etc. with which it is possible to estimate user experience. Biometric data obtained with different devices e.g. EEG, EMG have been used as a source to infer user experience. In this work, as part of the construction of an evaluation model of user experience, we present a preliminary study that seeks to identify emotions using records of brain electrical activity through the visualisation of preset images that stimulate emotions known a priori. The results include identifying emotions of joy and displeasure through brain activity using the Emotive device in older adults.

Processing EEG Signals Towards the Construction of a User Experience Assessment Method

This paper proposes a neural network to identify pleasant and unpleasant emotions from recorded electroencephalography (EEG) signals, towards the construction of a method to assess user experience (UX). EEG signals were obtained with an Emotiv EEG device. The input data was recorded during the presentation of visual stimulus that induce emotions known a priori. The EEG signals recorded were preprocessed to enhance the differences and then used to train and validate a Patternet neural network. The results indicate that the neural network provides an accurate rate of 99.61 % for 258 preprocessed signals.

Haptic Mobile Augmented Reality System for the Treatment of Phobia of Small Animals in Teenagers

Some of the fears of small animals present in childhood are maintained and cause significant discomfort until the adolescent stage, even causing phobias. A treatment used in the traditional therapy of phobias is the live exposure to the object of fear, however one of the problems with this treatment is patient resistance and eventual therapy abandonment. The use of intelligent environments is an alternative that allows to support the therapy through the virtual, gradual and controlled exposure of the patient to the animal to which s/he is afraid. In this research, we present the design, development and evaluation of a haptic mobile augmented reality system for the treatment of small animals phobia using the TPAD haptic device. The proposed haptic system includes features that allow (i) diagnosing the level of phobia of small animals, (ii) self-adjusting the phobia treatment using support vector machines, and (iii) user progress statistics based on the estimated stress level and time touching the screen. A usability and performance evaluation of the system with 14 teenagers, suggests that the haptic system is perceived as useful and usable, while providing an effective and accessible way to treat the patient and to adjust the therapy challenge level.

Evaluation of an Affective Wearable Tool for the Transmission of Affection Gestures Between Geographically Separated Loved Ones

This paper presents the design, development and preliminary evaluation of an affective wearable device for the transmission of affection gestures between grandparents and grandchildren who are geographically separated. A preliminary evaluation of the device with 33 subjects showed that it is possible to evoke affection gestures. Moreover, such gestures of affection can be tuned in such a way to appear to be real, in order to allow a closer and constant relationship between geographically separated loved ones.