Suleman Shahid

Alone or Together: Exploring the Effect of Physical Co-presence on the Emotional Expressions of Game Playing Children Across Cultures

In this paper, we investigate the influence of physical co-presence on the emotional expressions of game playing children. We show that the emotional response of children belonging to different age groups and different cultural backgrounds varies when they play a game alone or together with their friends. A simple but quite effective number guessing game was developed to use as a tool for inducing emotions in an ethical way, which was played by Pakistani and Dutch individuals and pairs. The audiovisual emotional data thus collected was used in two perception tests in which Dutch viewers observed and classified the emotional response of Pakistani and Dutch children. Results show that the correct classification in both cultures is higher for children playing games in pairs, thus children in pairs are more expressive than individuals. Furthermore, both Pakistani individuals and pairs are more expressive than Dutch ones.

Video-mediated and co-present gameplay: Effects of mutual gaze on game experience, expressiveness and perceived social presence

We study how pairs of children interact socially and express their emotions while playing games in different communicative settings. In particular, we study how such interactions can vary for environments that differ regarding the level of mediation and the associated feelings of social presence. Overall, the study compared three conditions (one face-to-face gameplay condition, and two video-mediated gameplay conditions; one allowing for mutual gaze, the other not) and focused on the social presence and non-verbal behavior of children in three conditions. The results show that the presence of mutual eye-gaze enriches the feelings of social presence, fun and game experience; conversely, the absence of mutual eye-gaze dramatically effects the quality of interaction in the video-mediated environment. The results of this study stress the importance of mutual gaze, and we therefore argue that it should become an integral component of future VMC systems, particularly in those designed for playful settings and children.

Child-robot interaction across cultures

We examine the effect of culture (individualistic vs. collectivisitic) and age in child-robot interaction.8Years old children are more positive about their interaction with a robot than 12year old children.While interacting with a robot, Pakistani children are more expressive than Dutch ones.Children playing a game with a friend are more expressive than those playing with a robot.The factors culture, and age are crucial for designing better child-robot interactions. The present study investigates how children from two different cultural backgrounds (Pakistani, Dutch) and two different age groups (8 and 12year olds) experience interacting with a social robot (iCat) during collaborative game play. We propose a new method to evaluate childrens interaction with such a robot, by asking whether playing a game with a state-of-the-art social robot like the iCat is more similar to playing this game alone or with a friend. A combination of self-report scores, perception test results and behavioral analyses indicate that child-robot interaction in game playing situations is highly appreciated by children, although more by Pakistani and younger children than by Dutch and older children. Results also suggest that children enjoyed playing with the robot more than playing alone, but enjoyed playing with a friend even more. In a similar vein, we found that children were more expressive in their non-verbal behavior when playing with the robot than when they were playing alone, but less expressive than when playing with a friend. Our results not only stress the importance of using new benchmarks for evaluating child-robot interaction but also highlight the significance of cultural differences for the design of social robots.

Child-robot interaction during collaborative game play: effects of age and gender on emotion and experience

In this paper we investigate how boys and girls of 8 and 12 years old experience interacting with a social robot (iCat) during collaborative game play. The iCat robot and a child collaborated together to play a simple card guessing game. Post-game questionnaires revealed that 8 year old children rated their subjective gaming experience significantly more positively than the 12 year olds. All interactions were recorded, and fragments were shown to judges in a perception experiment, which showed that 8 year olds were more expressive than 12 year olds, and that 12 year old losers were more expressive than 12 year old winners. The implications of these findings for designing child-robot interaction are discussed.

PMD: designing a portable medicine dispenser for persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease

In this paper we present the user-centred design of a medicine dispenser for persons suffering from Alzheimers disease. The prototype was evaluated in two phases with two caregivers and two Alzheimers patients. Caregivers evaluated the device positively. The Alzheimers patients faced usability problems while completing tasks due to the virtual interaction medium of the medicine dispenser. However, patients and caregivers found the concept useful for medication intake.

You make me happy: Using an adaptive affective interface to investigate the effect of social presence on positive emotion induction

Affective user interfaces are usually characterized as interfaces that try to recognize, interpret and respond to human emotions. In this paper, we take a different perspective and investigate if and how a digital, interactive adaptive mirror, which is a game-like affective interface, can induce positive emotions in participants and how the social presence of a friend affects the emotion induction. Results show that participants systematically feel more positive after an affective mirror session and co-presence of a friend is shown to boost this effect.

Never too Old to Use a Tablet: Designing Tablet Applications for the Cognitively and Physically Impaired Elderly

People live longer than ever before and the population of elderly is increasing. Many elderly visit day care centres in order to avoid loneliness and continuously look for new methods of entertainment. A possible new mean of entertainment can be found in the use of tablet applications. However, due to the physical and/or cognitive impairments of these elderly, most tablet applications are not accessible. This research tries to design an elderly-friendly entertainment application. Several design guidelines were determined via a literature review and a contextual inquiry for the design of three prototypes. These prototypes successfully eliminated problems concerning button size, navigation, readability of the fonts and swiping. Furthermore, results indicated that the elderly had a strong preference for the design which had a low number of icons, a more direct way of giving information, no deep hierarchy, larger buttons with immediate feedback when pressed, a clear notification that the screens had changed and the screens which used bright colours were more effective.

Who is more expressive during child-robot interaction: Pakistani or Dutch children?

In this study we have tried to determine if the cultural background of children has an influence on how they interact with robots. Children of different age groups and cultures played a card guessing game with a robot (iCat). By using perception tests to evaluate the childrens emotional response it was revealed that children from South Asia (Pakistani) were much more expressive than European children (Dutch) and younger children were more expressive than the older ones in the context of child robot interaction.

Day pad: a daily life assistant for autistic children

Most people suffering from autism have a desperate need for clarity and structure in their lives. There are various applications (agendas, daily planners, pictograms, etc.) that support autistic individuals in their living. However, not many applications out there make it possible for a person with autism to live a structured life on his own, in a variety of contexts, with minimum human guidance. Day Pad is an application that helps individuals, especially children and early teenagers, to organize their lives independently. This application can support the lives of individuals in a variety of contexts (home, daycare, market, school, etc.) and run on variety of mobile devices (PDA, tablet PC, etc.) depending on the context.

Exploring social and temporal dimensions of emotion induction using an adaptive affective mirror

This paper investigates if and how a digital, interactive affective mirror induces positive emotions in participants. We study whether the induced affect is repeatable after a fixed interval (Study 1) and how the social presence affects the emotion induction (Study 2). Results show that participants systematically feel more positive after an affective mirror session; this effect is shown to be repeatable, and co-presence of a friend is shown to boost this effect.