Robert Tscharn

Substituting Color for Haptic Attributes in Conceptual Metaphors for Tangible Interaction Design

Studies in tangible interaction have investigated how physical object attributes can stand for abstract content (e.g. IMPORTANT IS HEAVY). A less expensive and more practical alternative to dynamically change, for example, the size, weight or temperature of tangibles, could be using color-to-abstract mappings. Grounded in embodied cognition theory, a number of color-for-haptic substitutions are derived (e.g. DARK COLORS ARE HEAVY). These substitutions are then tested for their effectiveness with 15 conceptual metaphors (e.g. IMPORTANT IS DARK COLOR). In four conditions (haptic, color, haptic-color congruence, haptic-color incongruence) 48 participants matched objects of different colors, sizes, weights or temperatures with abstract words. The results indicate that color can replace haptic attributes in metaphoric mappings and that designers need to explicitly design for color, because metaphor-incongruent colors can hamper the effectiveness of metaphorical mappings. The results also indicate that an embodied experiential view can circumvent arguing about specific colors with high-level symbolic meanings.

Evaluation of an Application Based on Conceptual Metaphors for Social Interaction Between Vehicles

Due to an increasing level of automation whilst driving, users will gain additional spare time while travelling in the future. This allows passengers to indulge in non-driving activities, e.g. staying socially connected with their friends or entertaining themselves via mobile devices, which would otherwise be considered too distracting. To facilitate this, we designed an in-car infotainment system to replace the multiple mobile devices currently necessary to satisfy those needs. Our design approach employed a combination of Contextual Design methods and the Image Schema Theory for the first time ever in the automotive domain, which promises to be intuitive-to-use, and have innovative and inclusive interfaces. A first-time comparison with market leading products indicated higher efficiency, innovation scores and preferential scores while showing equal results for effectiveness, inclusivity and intuitive use. Furthermore we provide a set of conceptual metaphors which can inform future design and research efforts in the automotive domain.

Ambient light as spatial attention guidance in indoor environments

Ambient light has been utilized in different application domains and holds promises as a valuable and aesthetically pleasing information channel while at the same time being very unobtrusive and requiring minimal attention. An understudied domain is the use of ambient light for subconscious guiding of spatial attention in indoor settings. We conducted a pilot study to analyze the influence of slightly different ambient light conditions on gaze directions of the participating subjects. Even though no participant reported to have noticed the different illumination levels within a single room, their gaze was drawn to the side which was more illuminated by ambient light. We will proceed to further investigate the potential of guiding spatial attention with ambient light and want to test this approach in a more realistic setting like subconscious attention guiding in a working context.

Towards Intelligent and Implicit Assistance for People with Dementia: Support for Orientation and Navigation

To date, most healthcare technologies for orientation and navigation for people with dementia or with cognitive impairments have been developed for outdoor environments. These systems require skills in handling smartphone or PDA applications from users. In this paper, the authors focus on the needs of people with moderate and severe dementia, who are unable to use smartphones and are living in nursing homes or specialized fulltime care facilities. A new approach is presented, based on iterative people-centered design processes, explores calm computing and implicit interaction paradigms for guiding people with subtle cues integrated in the indoor environment. This intelligent and implicit assistance is supported by a three-part framework: a tracking system, a separate guiding system and an intelligent system. The guiding system approach has been tested on several people with dementia. The first results are promising and the feedback from stakeholders is positive but more participants are needed for an empirical analysis.

Senior, follower and busy grumbler: user needs for pervasive participation

Following contextual design in a real world setting, we identified individual and social aspects, as well as needs and desires of different citizen groups that motivate citizen engagement. Through eight in-depth interviews and observations we gathered detailed qualitative data on why and when citizens participate and derived requirements for pervasive devices that aim to advance citizen e-participation. Addressing citizens personally, interaction among co-located people, communication of the opportunity to engage and low participation barriers turned out to be the key drivers for creating user-accepted pervasive participation concepts. Also, we present different identity models that capture personal values relevant to participation. Scientists and practitioners alike can use these data to create meaningful and effective ubiquitous applications for situated civic discourse and participation.

Multimodal Effects of Color and Haptics on Intuitive Interaction with Tangible User Interfaces

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) allow users to sense and manipulate digital information through physical objects. Although haptic properties are emphasized, TUIs are presented in and perceived through multiple modalities. Especially visual properties like color shape the users expectations about the relation between tangibles and the abstract data they represent and control. Viewing TUIs as multisensory percepts, we present an empirical study that quantifies benefits of an explicit design for color for intuitive interaction. In a cross-cultural experiment, 75 participants (Germans and Japanese) matched tangible objects of different colors, sizes, weights or temperatures with abstract words. The results indicate that multimodal representations increase the efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction, but only if colors and haptic properties evoke congruent associations. Incongruently designed tangibles led to a 17% increase in response speed, -28% lower accuracy and -61% lower preference ratings compared to congruently designed tangibles.

Creativity in Design: Using Cognitive Metaphors to Unveil Knowledge About Relationships in the World

Image-schematic metaphors are a concept from cognitive linguistics that describes basic building blocks of how we make sense of the world. These metaphors represent users’ mental models and following them in interaction design increases intuitive use. In this paper, we empirically test whether the predictions of the metaphors “important is heavy – unimportant is light” and “black is heavy – white is light” as well as their combination “important is black – unimportant is light” hold true. For this, 20 Japanese subjects had to judge the physical weight of differently colored and weighted objects and infer on the importance of data which was stored on or contained by them. We found that data stored on or in black (compared to white) and heavy (compared to light) objects was perceived as more important, confirming the metaphors.

Smart lighting in dementia care facility

The growing number of people at old ages (demographic change) entails more age-related deficits and diseases. One of them is dementia, a complex neurodegenerative syndrome, which affects patients cognitive abilities (e.g. short-term memory, attention, problem-solving, language, and spatiotemporal orientation). As the people with dementia (PwD) get difficulty in using technology (explicitly control system), our research was aiming at context-awareness and implicit interaction using automatic/adaptive lighting via the internet of things. In this paper, we present our preliminary work and examples of applications in using lighting in dementia care context.

Turn Left After the Heater: Landmark Navigation for Visually Impaired Users

Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Existing technologies promise to provide support for autonomous way finding; however, the accuracy of low-budget approaches is low and can lead to frustration amongst users. The presented ongoing work is based on suggestions in the literature that contextual information such as sudden changes in the surface structure or landmarks could supplement distance estimations to improve the user experience during navigation tasks. Following a user-centered design approach, a real-time interactive prototype with localization was implemented and evaluated. First results from a pilot study confirmed the hypothesis that user experience is improved by contextual information and showed that contextual information are accepted and appreciated by users.

HCI in der Lehre – am Puls der Zeit?

Die fortlaufende technische Entwicklung als auch neue Erkenntnisse im Bereich der Human-ComputerInteraction erfordern eine ebenso hohe Aktualität und Variabilität von Lehrveranstaltungen. Diese ist im Rahmen von unflexiblen Modulstrukturen und festgeschriebenen Prüfungsformen oft nur bedingt erreichbar. In diesem Positionspapier werden daher Voraussetzungen an Universitätsstrukturen und Rahmenbedingungen für die Durchführung von für jedes Semester neu anpassbaren Veranstaltungen reflektiert und Empfehlungen für Lehrende im Bereich HCI formuliert. Die einzelnen Punkte basieren aus Erfahrungen mit dem Bachelorstudiengang Mensch-Computer-Systeme und dem Masterstudiengang Human-Computer-Interaction.