#baychi2014

More than touch: understanding how people use skin as an input surface for mobile computing Abstract: This paper contributes results from an empirical study of on-skin input, an emerging technique for controlling mobile devices. Skin is fundamentally different from off-body touch surfaces, opening up a new and largely unexplored interaction space. We investigate characteristics of the various skin-specific input modalities, analyze what kinds of gestures are performed on skin, and study what are preferred input locations. Our main findings show that (1) users intuitively leverage the properties of skin for a wide range of more expressive commands than on conventional touch surfaces; (2) established multi-touch gestures can be transferred to on-skin input; (3) physically uncomfortable modalities are deliberately used for irreversible commands and expressing negative emotions; and (4) the forearm and the hand are the most preferred locations on the upper limb for on-skin input. We detail on users' mental models and contribute a first consolidated set of on-skin gestures. Our findings provide guidance for developers of future sensors as well as for designers of future applications of on-skin input.

Consumed endurance: a metric to quantify arm fatigue of mid-air interactions Abstract: Mid-air interactions are prone to fatigue and lead to a feeling of heaviness in the upper limbs, a condition casually termed as the gorilla-arm effect. Designers have often associated limitations of their mid-air interactions with arm fatigue, but do not possess a quantitative method to assess and therefore mitigate it. In this paper we propose a novel metric, Consumed Endurance (CE), derived from the biomechanical structure of the upper arm and aimed at characterizing the gorilla-arm effect. We present a method to capture CE in a non-intrusive manner using an off-the-shelf camera-based skeleton tracking system, and demonstrate that CE correlates strongly with the Borg CR10 scale of perceived exertion. We show how designers can use CE as a complementary metric for evaluating existing and designing novel mid-air interactions, including tasks with repetitive input such as mid-air text-entry. Finally, we propose a series of guidelines for the design of fatigue-efficient mid-air interfaces.

MouStress: Detecting stress from mouse motion Abstract: Stress causes and exacerbates many physiological and mental health problems. Routine and unobtrusive monitoring of stress would enable a variety of treatments, from break-taking to calming exercises. It may also be a valuable tool for assessing effects (frustration, difficulty) of using interfaces or applications. Custom sensing hardware is a poor option, because of the need to buy/wear/use it continuously, even before stress-related problems are evident. Here we explore stress measurement from common computer mouse operations. We use a simple model of arm-hand dynamics that captures muscle stiffness during mouse movement. We show that the within-subject mouse-derived stress measure is quite strong, even compared to concurrent physiological sensor measurements. While our study used fixed mouse tasks, the stress signal was still strong even when averaged across widely varying task geometries. We argue that mouse sensing "in the wild" may be feasible, by analyzing frequently-performed operations of particular geometries.

tldr; Adults and children in Germany and Ecuador can distinguish between different types of interactions (chasing, playing, fighting, courting) from motion cues (aka mouse movements) alone. Abstract: One of our most fundamental cognitive adaptations is the ability to infer the intentions of others. Whole-body motion is a reliable, valid, easily perceived source of information about intentions because different kinds of intentional action have different motion signatures. In this study, we report four experiments that examined the ability of German adults, German children, and Shuar adults from Amazonian Ecuador to distinguish, on the basis of motion cues alone, between six categories of intentional interaction: chasing, fighting, courting, following, guarding, and playing. Naturalistic motion trajectories were elicited from untutored participants in a game-like situation with performance- based monetary payoffs and were categorized by other participants in a forced-choice design. On a six- category task, German adults correctly categorized intention 75% of the time (where 17% represents chance performance). On a four-category judgment task, children’s performance was above chance by age 4, with a mean of 64% correct. A final study compared the judgments of German adults with those of Shuar hunter-horticulturalists. Performance was identical and well above chance in both populations, suggesting that cognitive adaptations for inferring intention from motion deserve further research as possible universal components of human psychology.

This is a good exercise for sketching and interacting with sketched watch interfaces.

The opportunity to reconceptualize things is something that mental simulations does not offer. It is a major reason "externalizing" what is in mind is a more powerful strategy than working with things in the mind alone.

The designers of Dark Dreams Don't Die, an episodic adventure game, want players to feel empathy during game play and created a world best suited to exploration via Kinect. The game features plenty of punching and some gruesome comedy, but is a gem for the interactions incorporated into the story.

Buy a copy of the book super-cheap on Amazon