Enrico Costanza

Intimate interfaces in action: assessing the usability and subtlety of emg-based motionless gestures

Mobile communication devices, such as mobile phones and networked personal digital assistants (PDAs), allow users to be constantly connected and communicate anywhere and at any time, often resulting in personal and private communication taking place in public spaces. This private -- public contrast can be problematic. As a remedy, we promote intimate interfaces: interfaces that allow subtle and minimal mobile interaction, without disruption of the surrounding environment. In particular, motionless gestures sensed through the electromyographic (EMG) signal have been proposed as a solution to allow subtle input in a mobile context. In this paper we present an expansion of the work on EMG-based motionless gestures including (1) a novel study of their usability in a mobile context for controlling a realistic, multimodal interface and (2) a formal assessment of how noticeable they are to informed observers. Experimental results confirm that subtle gestures can be profitably used within a multimodal interface and that it is difficult for observers to guess when someone is performing a gesture, confirming the hypothesis of subtlety.

Doing the laundry with agents: a field trial of a future smart energy system in the home

Future energy systems that rely on renewable energy may bring about a radical shift in how we use energy in our homes. We developed and prototyped a future scenario with highly variable, real-time electricity prices due to a grid that mainly relies on renewables. We designed and deployed an agent-based interactive system that enables users to effectively operate the washing machine in this scenario. The system is used to book timeslots of washing machine use so that the agent can help to minimize the cost of a wash by charging a battery at times when electricity is cheap. We carried out a deployment in 10 households in order to uncover the socio-technical challenges around integrating new technologies into everyday routines. The findings reveal tensions that arise when deploying a rationalistic system to manage contingently and socially organized domestic practices. We discuss the trade-offs between utility and convenience inherent in smart grid applications; and illustrate how certain design choices position applications along this spectrum.

Designable visual markers

Visual markers are graphic symbols designed to be easily recognised by machines. They are traditionally used to track goods, but there is increasing interest in their application to mobile HCI. By scanning a visual marker through a camera phone users can retrieve localised information and access mobile services. One missed opportunity in current visual marker systems is that the markers themselves cannot be visually designed, they are not expressive to humans, and thus fail to convey information before being scanned. This paper provides an overview of d-touch, an open source system that allows users to create their own markers, controlling their aesthetic qualities. The system runs in real-time on mobile phones and desktop computers. To increase computational efficiency d-touch imposes constraints on the design of the markers in terms of the relationship of dark and light regions in the symbols. We report a user study in which pairs of novice users generated between 3 and 27 valid and expressive markers within one hour of being introduced to the system, demonstrating its flexibility and ease of use.

Mixed Reality: A Survey

A multi-point-to-point conferencing system comprising a plurality of terminals connected by a network including data and control channels is disclosed. In a particular embodiment, the network is an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) having data (B) channels and a control (D) channel. The conference is established in a manner that does not waste connection setup attempts or data channel connect time by attempting to establish a conference when a participating terminal does not have the necessary data channels available. The terminal initiating the conference communicates with at least one participating terminal to determine the use status, or availability, of the required number of data channels. If a participating terminal decides to join the conference, either automatically or through user confirmation, the participating terminal (1) reserves the required data channels for a limited time such that connection requests are only accepted from conference terminals and (2) communicates its decision to the initiating terminal. Now knowing that data channel connections can be successfully established between those terminals ready to participate, the initiating terminal initiates a conference using normal multi-point-to-point connection procedures.

SensorTune: a mobile auditory interface for DIY wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) allow the monitoring of activity or environmental conditions over a large area, from homes to industrial plants, from agriculture fields to forests and glaciers. They can support a variety of applications, from assisted living to natural disaster prevention. WSNs can, however, be challenging to setup and maintain, reducing the potential for real-world adoption. To address this limitation, this paper introduces SensorTune, a novel mobile interface to support non-expert users in iteratively setting up a WSN. SensorTune uses non-speech audio to present to its users information regarding the connectivity of the network they are setting up, allowing them to decide how to extend it. To simplify the interpretation of the data presented, the system adopts the metaphor of tuning a consumer analog radio, a very common and well known operation. A user study was conducted in which 20 subjects setup real multi-hop networks inside a large building using a limited number of wireless nodes. Subjects repeated the task with SensorTune and with a comparable mobile GUI interface. Experimental results show a statistically significant difference in the task completion time and a clear preference of users for the auditory interface.

Energy advisors at work: charity work practices to support people in fuel poverty

We present an ethnographic study of energy advisors working for a charity that provides support, particularly to people in fuel poverty. Our fieldwork comprises detailed observations that reveal the collaborative, interactional work of energy advisors and clients during home visits, supplemented with interviews and a participatory design workshop with advisors. We identify opportunities for Ubicomp technologies that focus on supporting the work of the advisor, including complementing the collaborative advice giving in home visits, providing help remotely, and producing evidence in support of accounts of practices and building conditions useful for interactions with landlords, authorities and other third parties. We highlight six specific design challenges that relate the domestic fuel poverty setting to the wider Ubicomp literature. Our work echoes a shift in attention from energy use and the individual consumer, specifically to matters of advice work practices and the domestic fuel poverty setting, and to the discourse around inclusive Ubicomp technologies.

Understanding Energy Consumption at Work: Learning from Arrow Hill

Most work around technological interventions for energy conservation to date has focussed on changing individual behaviour. Hence, there is limited understanding of communal settings, such as office environments, as sites for intervention. Even when energy consumption in the workplace has been considered, the emphasis has typically been on the individual. To address this gap, we conducted a study of energy consumption and management in one workplace, based on a combination of workshops with a broad range of stakeholders, and quantitative data inspections. We report and discuss findings from this study, in light of prior literature, and we present a set of implications for design and further research. In particular, three themes, and associated intervention opportunities, emerged from our data: (1) energy wastage related to “errors”; (2) the role of company policies and the negotiation that surrounds their implementation; and (3) the bigger energy picture of procurement, construction and travel.

Data Work: How Energy Advisors and Clients Make IoT Data Accountable

We present fieldwork findings from the deployment of an interactive sensing system that supports the work of energy advisors who give face-to-face advice to low-income households in the UK. We focus on how the system and the data it produced are articulated in the interactions between professional energy advisors and their clients, and how they collaboratively anticipate, rehearse, and perform data work. In addition to documenting how the system was appropriated in advisory work, we elaborate the ‘overhead cost’ of building collaborative action into connected devices and sensing systems, and the commensurate need to support discrete workflows and accountability systems to enable the methodical incorporation of the IoT into collaborative action. We contribute an elaboration of the social, collaborative methods of data work relevant to those who seek to design and study collaborative IoT systems.

Connecting the things to the internet: an evaluation of four configuration strategies for wi-fi devices with minimal user interfaces

The availability of low-power Wi-Fi radio modules opens up opportunities to leverage the existing prevalent Wi-Fi infrastructure for large-scale trials and deployments of Ubicomp technology. In this paper we address the challenge of supporting end-users, especially when they are not technical experts, in connecting new low-power, low-cost Wi-Fi devices with very minimal UIs to an existing, secure Wi-Fi infrastructure. We report two usability studies through which 30 participants, with no formal technical training, compared 4 alternative configuration techniques, selected based on cost and consumption constraints, and on adoption in off-the-shelf products. Through an analysis of success rate and causes of failure, our results indicate that two techniques are noticeably more usable than others. These are a web-based configuration mechanism, where users connect to an access point on the Wi-Fi device, and one that makes use of a standard audio cable to connect a smartphone to the device to be configured.

IdleWars: An Evaluation of a Pervasive Game to Promote Sustainable Behaviour in the Workplace

Energy reduction is one of the main challenges that countries around the world currently face, and there is potential to contribute to this by raising awareness towards sustainability in the workplace. We introduce IdleWars, a pervasive game played using smartphones and computers. In the game, workers’ proenvironmental or wasteful behaviour is reflected in their game score, and displayed through eco-feedback visualisations to try and call attention to energy wastage and potentially reduce it. A field deployment, over two weeks in a medium sized organisation, revealed that the physical and competitive elements of the game work well in engaging participants and stimulating discussion around energy wasted and conservation. However, the game turned out to encourage also some anti-conservation behaviours, as participants appropriated the game and extended its rules, sometimes in a way that favoured engagement and fun rather than proenvironmental behaviour. More in general, our study uncovered how both the game and idle time reduction in itself can rub against the daily practices of the workplace where the study was run.