Jonas Moll

Communicative Functions of Haptic Feedback

In this paper a number of examples are presented of how haptic and auditory feedback can be used for deictic referencing in collaborative virtual environments. Haptic feedback supports getting a shared frame of reference of a common workspace when one person is not sighted and makes haptic deictic referencing possible during navigation and object exploration. Haptic guiding is a broader concept that implies that not only a single action, like a deictic reference, is made but that a whole sequence of temporally connected events are shared, sometimes including deictic referencing. In the examples presented in this paper haptic guiding is used by participants as a way to navigate while at the same time explore details of objects during joint problem solving. Guiding through haptic feedback is shown to substitute verbal navigational instructions to a considerable extent.

Audio makes a difference in haptic collaborative virtual environments

In this paper a study is presented which aimed at exploring the effects of audio feedback in a haptic and visual interface supporting collaboration among sighted and people who cannot see. A between group design was used and the participants worked in pairs with one sighted and one blindfolded in each. The application used was a haptic 3D environment in which participants could build composed objects out of building blocks. The building blocks could be picked up and moved around by means of a touch feedback pointing device. In one version of the application, used by half of the groups, sound cues could be used to tell the other person where you were, and to get feedback on your own and the other persons actions. Results showed that sound cues together with haptic feedback made a difference in the interaction between the collaborators regarding their shared understanding of the workspace and the work process. Especially, sound cues played an important role for maintaining awareness of ongoing work - you knew what was going on, and you got a response on your own actions.

A Haptic Tool for Group Work on Geometrical Concepts Engaging Blind and Sighted Pupils

In the study presented here, two haptic and visual applications for learning geometrical concepts in group work in primary school have been designed and evaluated. The aim was to support collaborative learning among sighted and visually impaired pupils. The first application is a static flattened 3D environment that supports learning to distinguish between angles by means of a 3D haptic device providing touch feedback. The second application is a dynamic 3D environment that supports learning of spatial geometry. The scene is a room with a box containing geometrical objects, which pupils can pick up and move around. The applications were evaluated in four schools with groups of two sighted and one visually impaired pupil. The results showed the support for the visually impaired pupil and for the collaboration to be satisfying. A shared understanding of the workspace could be achieved, as long as the virtual environment did not contain movable objects. Verbal communication was crucial for the work process but haptic guiding to some extent substituted communication about direction. When it comes to joint action between visually impaired and sighted pupils a number of interesting problems were identified when the dynamic and static virtual environments were compared. These problems require further investigation. The study extends prior work in the areas of assistive technology and multimodal communication by evaluating functions for joint haptic manipulation in the unique setting of group work in primary school.

Pointing in multi-disciplinary medical meetings

In this paper a field study of using laser-pointing during multi-disciplinary medical meetings is presented. The pointing behaviour adopted by radiologists and surgeons to communicate about and collaboratively analyse patient data such as CT images today is illustrated based on field observations of pre-operative meetings. In a field test, laser-pointers were introduced in pre-operative meetings. How the dialogue and gesturing changed compared to meetings where laser-pointers were not present were investigated. Results from our study show that the multi-disciplinary medical meetings are clearly affected by the introduction of laser-pointer devices and we believe that the participants would benefit from a future gesturing tool if it was carefully designed. The implementation of an application that provides touch feedback in three dimensions of the anatomical structure of blood vessels as well as tumours is described and related to our results.

The Effects of Audio and Haptic Feedback on Collaborative Scanning and Placing

This paper presents a study aimed at exploring the effects of different modality combinations on collaborative task performance and employed joint task-solving strategies in a shared interface. The ...

Haptic feedback combined with movement sonification using a friction sound improves task performance in a virtual throwing task

In this paper we present a study on the effects of auditory- and haptic feedback in a virtual throwing task performed with a point-based haptic device. The main research objective was to investigate if and how task performance and perceived intuitiveness is affected when interactive sonification and/or haptic feedback is used to provide real-time feedback about a movement performed in a 3D virtual environment. Emphasis was put on task solving efficiency and subjective accounts of participants’ experiences of the multimodal interaction in different conditions. The experiment used a within-subjects design in which the participants solved the same task in different conditions: visual-only, visuohaptic, audiovisual and audiovisuohaptic. Two different sound models were implemented and compared. Significantly lower error rates were obtained in the audiovisuohaptic condition involving movement sonification based on a physical model of friction, compared to the visual-only condition. Moreover, a significant increase in perceived intuitiveness was observed for most conditions involving haptic and/or auditory feedback, compared to the visual-only condition. The main finding of this study is that multimodal feedback can not only improve perceived intuitiveness of an interface but that certain combinations of haptic feedback and movement sonification can also contribute with performance-enhancing properties. This highlights the importance of carefully designing feedback combinations for interactive applications.

On threats and violence for staff and patient accessible electronic health records

Abstract Does patient accessible electronic health records (PAEHR) result in increased risk of threats and violence? This study was conducted one year after launching PAEHR in Uppsala to examine whether staff whose patients had gained access to the patient portal perceived greater risks of threats and violence, and were exposed to more threats and violence, than those whose patients had not yet gained access. A total of 174 (35%) professionals responded to a web survey. 83 were from the emergency department, whose patients had online electronic health record access, and 91 were from the psychiatric department, whose patients had not. 40% of all participating professionals believed that risks of threats and violence increase after launch. The results did not support a correlation with more incidents of threats and violence, and only one respondent reported that patient access had played any significant negative role in relation to an incident.

Using Critical Incidents in Workshops to Inform eHealth Design.

Demands for technological solutions to address the variety of problems in healthcare have increased. The design of eHealth is challenging due to e.g. the complexity of the domain and the multitude of stakeholders involved. We describe a workshop method based on Critical Incidents that can be used to reflect on, and critically analyze, different experiences and practices in healthcare. We propose the workshop format, which was used during a conference and found very helpful by the participants to identify possible implications for eHealth design, that can be applied in future projects. This new format shows promise to evaluate eHealth designs, to learn from patients’ real stories and case studies through retrospective meta-analyses, and to inform design through joint reflection of understandings about users’ needs and issues for designers.

Patients Experiences of Accessing Their Online Electronic Health Records - Results of a National Patient Survey in Sweden (Preprint)

Background Internationally, there is a movement toward providing patients a Web-based access to their electronic health records (EHRs). In Sweden, Region Uppsala was the first to introduce patient-accessible EHRs (PAEHRs) in 2012. By the summer of 2016, 17 of 21 county councils had given citizens Web-based access to their medical information. Studies on the effect of PAEHRs on the work environment of health care professionals have been conducted, but up until now, few extensive studies have been conducted regarding patients’ experiences of using PAEHRs in Sweden or Europe, more generally. Objective The objective of our study was to investigate patients’ experiences of accessing their EHRs through the Swedish national patient portal. In this study, we have focused on describing user characteristics, usage, and attitudes toward the system. Methods A national patient survey was designed, based on previous interview and survey studies with patients and health care professionals. Data were collected during a 5-month period in 2016. The survey was made available through the PAEHR system, called Journalen, in Sweden. The total number of patients that logged in and could access the survey during the study period was 423,141. In addition to descriptive statistics reporting response frequencies on Likert scale questions, Mann-Whitney tests, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and chi-square tests were used to compare answers between different county councils as well as between respondents working in health care and all other respondents. Results Overall, 2587 users completed the survey with a response rate of 0.61% (2587/423,141). Two participants were excluded from the analysis because they had only received care in a county council that did not yet show any information in Journalen. The results showed that 62.97% (1629/2587) of respondents were women and 39.81% (1030/2587) were working or had been working in health care. In addition, 72.08% (1794/2489) of respondents used Journalen about once a month, and the main reason for use was to gain an overview of one’s health status. Furthermore, respondents reported that lab results were the most important information for them to access; 68.41% (1737/2539) of respondents wanted access to new information within a day, and 96.58% (2454/2541) of users reported that they are positive toward Journalen. Conclusions In this study, respondents provided several important reasons for why they use Journalen and why it is important for them to be able to access information in this way—several related to patient empowerment, involvement, and security. Considering the overall positive attitude, PAEHRs seem to fill important needs for patients.