Regina Bernhaupt

A methodological variation for acceptance evaluation of Human-Robot Interaction in public places

Several variations of methodological approaches are used to study the social acceptance in human-robot interaction. Due to the introduction of robots in the home, working practice and usage typically informing the design of new forms of technology are missing. Studying social acceptance in human-robot interaction thus needs new methodological concepts. We propose a so called breaching experiment with additional ethnographic observation to close this gap. To investigate the methodological concept we have been conducting a field trial on a public place. We gathered feedback using questionnaires, in order to estimate whether this method can be beneficially to evaluate social acceptance. We could show that breaching experiments can be a useful method to investigate social acceptance in the field.

Usability and usage of iTV services: lessons learned in an Austrian field trial

How users experience interactive TV (iTV) is determined by various factors; usability is a major one. In industry, usability is often seen as the key element that determines acceptance of new technologies by users. We present some of the results of an MHP-based (Multimedia Home Platform) iTV field trial in Salzburg, Austria concerning usability issues and iTV usage. We give an introduction to the field trial and an overview of its methods to ensure usability of iTV services and to measure their use. We present results from a usability test, give design recommendations, and discuss whether using iTV is an active or a passive user experience.

Trends in the living room and beyond

Investigating the context home becomes more and more necessary for future developments of interactive TV services and of new interaction techniques. In this paper, findings from two ethnographic studies are presented. In these studies a new methodological variation of cultural probing called creative cultural probing (CCP) was developed. The aim of our research was to investigate activities and interaction techniques in the living room and beyond. In this paper, the results of the studies are presented and some major trends for the home context are highlighted. The studies indicate that supporting social interaction and personal activities as well as personalization, security and communication needs have to be addressed in the future more thoroughly.

Supporting Usability Evaluation of Multimodal Man-Machine Interfaces for Space Ground Segment Applications Using Petri nets Based Formal Specification

This paper describes the issues raised by the evaluation of multimodal interfaces in the field of command and control workstations. Design, specification, verification and certification issues for such Man-Machine Interfaces (MMIs) have been already identified as critical activities. This paper focuses on the issues raised by evaluation of their usability evaluation. We first present a formalism (Interactive Cooperative Objects) and its related case tool (PetShop) for the specification of such MMIs and then show how the models built can support the usability evaluation phase. As a case study we present a multimodal interaction for 3D navigation in a 3D satellite model.

Focusing on elderly: an iTV usability evaluation study with eye-tracking

Elderly people often experience difficulties using interactive TV. This paper presents the findings of a usability evaluation study in combination with eye-tracking conducted for an information oriented interactive TV application. We explored two user groups: elderly users (50 years and above) and users between 20 and 30 years of age. Our focus was on how elderly people perceive and interpret a navigation oriented iTV application. Apart from the standard usability data we used eye-tracking data to gain more insight on why iTV usage seemed to be more difficult for the group of elderly.

Model-Based Evaluation: A New Way to Support Usability Evaluation of Multimodal Interactive Applications

Multimodal interfaces are becoming more common, even in the field of safety critical interactive software, mainly due to the naturalness of the interaction that increases the bandwidth between the user and the system they are interacting with. However, the specificities of multimodal interactive systems make it difficult to gather information from the use of modalities and to extract from this information recommendations for improving the multimodal user interfaces. This chapter aims at presenting how abstract information described in models can be fruitfully exploited to improve the quality of evaluations of multimodal interfaces. The approach presented in this chapter combines model-based verification (based on simulation scenario extraction generated from models) and empirical methods for usability evaluation. Our aim is to try to bring together two separated (and often opposite) issues, such as usability and reliability, into the development of safety critical systems. This approach is illustrated via a Space Ground System of a satellite control room, whose multimodal interaction technique is fully described by the means of formal models.

NEmESys: neural emotion eliciting system

This paper describes the development of a new model of agent emotion elicitation called Nemesys. It enhances interfaces with emotional and social information. Nemesys is based on an artificial neural network and is able to learn six basic emotional states. The elicitation of emotions is based on models drawn from the state of the art in modeling emotions in the field of psychology. Further the described framework includes the Five-Factor Model of Personality to represent different agent personalities.Nemesys (called after Nemesis, the Greek goddess of righteous anger) is designed to perform in various types of interfaces. The usage of Nemesys is presented with an application scenario employing a commercial 3D game-engine. Additionally a critical review of the current elicitation behavior of Nemesys is presented and discussed.

Game jam: [4 research]

Recent years have witnessed a rise in Game Jams - organized events to create playable prototypes in a very short time frame. Game Jams offer a unique and quick way to prototype games. Beyond that, we believe Game Jams can also be seen as a design research method, situated in the research-through-design tradition, to create knowledge in a fast-paced, collaborative environment. The goal of this Game Jam is thus twofold: first, participants will use the Game Jam approach to investigate a research question; second, participants can, through actual practice, identify advantages and disadvantages of Game Jams as a research method. Hereby the Game Jam workshop provides a unique opportunity for HCI practitioners and researchers to gain experience in applying game-oriented methods for research.

Evaluating User Experience for Interactive Television: Towards the Development of a Domain-Specific User Experience Questionnaire

This paper presents a questionnaire-based approach to evaluate the user experience (UX) while interacting with interactive Television (iTV) systems. Current contributions in the field of UX propose generic methods applicable to various application domains, whereas our contribution is dedicated to the specific domain of interactive TV systems. Based on a classification of UX dimensions from a literature review, the first version of the questionnaire is focusing on the dimension’s aesthetics, emotion, stimulation and identification. A validation study with 106 participants was performed to assess the relations between the evaluated UX dimensions, as well as their fit to the underlying theoretical assumptions. Results showed that the UX dimensions aesthetics, emotion and stimulation are important for the domain of iTV, while identification was not confirmed. The study revealed significant correlations between the type of IPTV system used and the emotional and stimulation dimension. Additionally, a significant effect of the TV reception mode and the type of IPTV box owned on the emotion towards the system was observed. Beyond the contribution of the questionnaire that is directly applicable for any iTV system, the findings described in the paper demonstrate the need for user experience evaluation methods targeted at specific domains: the validation of the questionnaire shows that identification is not a central dimension of user experience when interacting with interactive TV.

User experience evaluation with a Wizard of Oz approach: Technical and methodological considerations

User experience evaluation in human-robot interaction is most often an expensive and difficult task. To allow the evaluation of various factors and aspects of user experience, a fully functional (humanoid) robot is recommended. This work presents technical and methodological considerations on the applicability of the Wizard of Oz (WOz) approach to enable user experience evaluation in the field of Human-Robot Interaction. We briefly describe the technical aspects of the setup, the applicability of the method, and a first case study using this methodological approach to gain an early understanding of the user experience factors that are important for the development of a human-humanoid interaction scenario.