Paweł W. Woźniak

Flow is Not Enough: Understanding the Needs of Advanced Amateur Runners to Design Motivation Technology

Motivation studies on running are often focused on how to convince non-runners to run, mainly through designing for extrinsic motivations such as health concerns or external reward systems. In contrast, we conducted a structured inquiry into understanding how to design technology for those whom are already committed to running and participate in organized races. Through interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observation, questionnaires, and design-based research over the course of two years, we investigated the needs of the advanced amateur runner community. An analysis of the gathered data led to five design themes -- Festival, Competition, Practicalities, Togetherness, and Support -- to inform future runner motivation technology. While flow theory appears to be a convenient tool to understand support during a race, we observed a number of other factors that need to be considered. Through combining the themes with previous research, we conclude by presenting nine guidelines for designing technology for this domain.

RUFUS: Remote Supporter Feedback for Long-Distance Runners

This paper explores remote cheering during amateur races through a formative design inquiry. Friends and family of advanced amateur runners are part of their running experience. Runners rely on support during the race day and it is usually provided in the form of co-located cheers. RUFUS -- a prototype remote ambient runner support system -- was developed. The system enables supporters to send three types of signals to runners during a race and runners can send signals back to supporters. Input from supporters is sent through a webpage and received by runners through a device designed to lower distraction. An in situ study was conducted to evaluate the prototype during an organized race. Results show that two-way communication between runners and supporters was achieved. We also found that our system reflected varying user needs correctly. Runners and supporters reported increased motivation and enhanced race experience through feeling connected.

Thaddeus: a dual device interaction space for exploring information visualisation

This paper introduces Thaddeus---a mobile phone-tablet system for mobile interaction with information visualisations. Our work is motivated by the roles smartphones and tablets play in everyday interactive spaces as well as anticipated developments in mobile sensing technology. We also aim to meet the social challenges of a data-driven society. We designed and implemented a system that uses mutual spatial awareness as an input mode, producing new interaction patterns for mobile settings. We gathered extensive user insight from two design studies and evaluated the system in a controlled experiment. We used qualitative and quantitative measures in the final evaluation. The results show that the system does not have a significant impact on performance, but users perceive it as pleasurable and easy to use. Thaddeus offers an enhanced user experience when exploring information on the go, and provides insights for future designs of mobile multi-device systems.

Tangible tabletops for emergency response: an exploratory study

Effective handling of location-based data is important to emergency response management (ERM). Expert team members co-located around maps typically discuss events while drawing freeform areas or while using physical placeholders representing incidents. Key ERM functions are filtering data, selecting information recipients, searching datasets, drawing time-dependent freeform areas, and zooming in on one region while leaving others unchanged. Under time pressure the mouse and keyboard could be insufficient; intuitive graspable solutions, such as tangible user interfaces (TUIs), may be better suited for ERM. We present CoTracker, a tangible tabletop system with expected potential for ERM teamwork. On an interactive map expert team members can discuss an operational picture using TUIs like bricks, frames, and pens. With the participation of domain experts for cognitive walk-through studies, we examined how generic and specialized TUIs can support ERM-related functions. We present some insights into the design of ERM-focused tangible tabletops.

Using Crowdsourcing for Scientific Analysis of Industrial Tomographic Images

In this article, we present a novel application domain for human computation, specifically for crowdsourcing, which can help in understanding particle-tracking problems. Through an interdisciplinary inquiry, we built a crowdsourcing system designed to detect tracer particles in industrial tomographic images, and applied it to the problem of bulk solid flow in silos. As images from silo-sensing systems cannot be adequately analyzed using the currently available computational methods, human intelligence is required. However, limited availability of experts, as well as their high cost, motivates employing additional nonexperts. We report on the results of a study that assesses the task completion time and accuracy of employing nonexpert workers to process large datasets of images in order to generate data for bulk flow research. We prove the feasibility of this approach by comparing results from a user study with data generated from a computational algorithm. The study shows that the crowd is more scalable and more economical than an automatic solution. The system can help analyze and understand the physics of flow phenomena to better inform the future design of silos, and is generalized enough to be applicable to other domains.

Your Eyes Tell: Leveraging Smooth Pursuit for Assessing Cognitive Workload

A common objective for context-aware computing systems is to predict how user interfaces impact user performance regarding their cognitive capabilities. Existing approaches such as questionnaires or pupil dilation measurements either only allow for subjective assessments or are susceptible to environmental influences and user physiology. We address these challenges by exploiting the fact that cognitive workload influences smooth pursuit eye movements. We compared three trajectories and two speeds under different levels of cognitive workload within a user study (N=20). We found higher deviations of gaze points during smooth pursuit eye movements for specific trajectory types at higher cognitive workload levels. Using an SVM classifier, we predict cognitive workload through smooth pursuit with an accuracy of 99.5% for distinguishing between low and high workload as well as an accuracy of 88.1% for estimating workload between three levels of difficulty. We discuss implications and present use cases of how cognition-aware systems benefit from inferring cognitive workload in real-time by smooth pursuit eye movements.

Understanding the ergonomic constraints in designing for touch surfaces

While most current interactive surfaces use only the position of the finger on the surface as the input source, previous work suggests using the finger orientation for enriching the input space. Thus, an understanding of the physiological restrictions of the hand is required to build effective interactive techniques that use finger orientation. We conducted a study to derive the ergonomic constraints for using finger orientation as an effective input source. In a controlled experiment, we systematically manipulated finger pitch and yaw while performing a touch action. Participants were asked to rate the feasibility of the touch action. We found that finger pitch and yaw do significantly affect perceived feasibility and 21.1% of the touch actions were perceived as impossible to perform. Our results show that the finger yaw input space can be divided into the comfort and non-comfort zones. We further present design considerations for future interfaces using finger orientation.

Personal or social?: designing mobile interactions for co-located interaction

Personal mobile devices such as mobile phones, tablets, fitness wristbands, and smart watches are becoming ubiquitous and widely involved in our daily activities. However, these devices are designed and considered by the users as personal -- not as shared or collaborative. As a response to this, the workshop aims to explore the design of new application ideas for mobile devices that explicitly encourage users to engage in face-to-face interaction. The research question is firstly how to design for face-to-face interactions. Secondly, it is how we can utilize various possibilities e.g. combining mobile devices (e.g. phones + tablets); extending commercial mobile-devices with hardware peripherals; utilizing social networks, geo-location services or proximity-based connections; or utilizing software to turn the personal devices into tools of face-to-face interactions.

Notes from the front lines: lessons learnt from designing for improving medical imaging data sharing

This paper presents results from participatory design studies conducted in a childrens hospital. We conducted extensive user studies to understand the specific needs and design constrains in a foetal-heart imaging unit. We describe the lessons learnt in the design process, focusing on the peculiarities of the setting and providing insights to help with the design of future systems in similar environments. We conducted panel discussions, semi-structured interviews, shadowing and constructed two system prototypes to learn about user interactions. We provide a description of the environment, a summary of the important stakeholders and an assessment of the current infrastructure. We noted a significant discrepancy between our case hospital and reported hospital practice. Our main contributions are: (1) a thorough understanding of a unique clinical environment gained through an extensive user study; (2) a detailed account of a participatory design process conducted in the setting and (3) a set of seven design considerations (lessons learnt) for future inquiries.

Untangling running: designing for real-life runner experiences

Running has become a key fitness activity included in local and national health strategies, as it has low entry costs and is widely available. Training programs intended to help people start running are reported in the mainstream press, attracting interest from people intrigued by the sports health and leisure benefits. Marketing campaigns have been launched to expand national runner communities and persuade more people to be part of the running experience. Many design efforts in human-computer interaction (HCI) have investigated how to design systems promoting a more active lifestyle.