Mo. shared music, shared moment

Music incorporates extensive social functions, with joint listening being a central part of it. Interestingly, existing technology rarely addresses the specific requirements for creating a shared music experience. The present design case presents Mo, a music player addressing social and emotional aspects of joint music listening. Based on insights from an interview study, Mo particularly supports the social phenomena of sharing music, influencing music and music functioning as a souvenir. In line with the experience design approach, the actual object of design was the shared music experience. Functionality, interaction and presentation were aligned with that experience.

 

  NordiCHI '12 Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design

 

Interaction design in a complex context: medical multi-disciplinary team meetings

In order to improve collaboration on, and visualisation of, patient information in medical multi-disciplinary team meetings, we have developed a system that presents information from different medical systems to be used as a support for the decision process. Based on field studies, we have implemented a high-fidelity prototype on tablet-sized displays, and tested it in a realistic setting. Our evaluation proved that more patient information can efficiently be displayed to all meeting participants, compared to the current situation. Interaction with the information, on the other hand, proved to be a complicated activity that needs careful design considerations; it should ultimately be based on what roles the meeting participants have, and what tasks they should complete. Medical decision-making is a complex area, and conducting interaction design in this area proved complex too. We foresee a great opportunity to improve medical work, by introducing collaborative tools and visualisation of medical data, but it requires that interaction design becomes a natural part of medical work.

NordiCHI '12 Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design 

A gamified mobile application for engaging new students at university orientation

The term gamification describes the addition of game elements to non-game contexts as a means to motivate and engage users. This study investigates the design, delivery and pilot evaluation of a gamified, smartphone application built to introduce new students to the campus, services and people at university during their first few weeks. This paper describes changes to the application made after an initial field study was undertaken and provides an evaluation of the impact of the redesign. Survey responses were collected from thirteen students and usage data was captured from 105 students. Results indicate three levels of user engagement and suggest that there is value in adding game elements to the experience in this way. A number of issues are identified and discussed based on game challenges, input, and facilitating game elements in an event setting such as university orientation.

 

OzCHI '12 Proceedings of the 24th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference 

GaussBits: magnetic tangible bits for portable and occlusion-free near-surface interactions

We present GaussBits, which is a system of the passive magnetic tangible designs that enables 3D tangible interactions in the near-surface space of portable displays. When a thin magnetic sensor grid is attached to the back of the display, the 3D position and partial 3D orientation of the GaussBits can be resolved by the proposed bi-polar magnetic field tracking technique. This portable platform can therefore enrich tangible interactions by extending the design space to the near-surface space. Since non-ferrous materials, such as the user's hand, do not occlude the magnetic field, interaction designers can freely incorporate a magnetic unit into an appropriately shaped non-ferrous object to exploit the metaphors of the real-world tasks, and users can freely manipulate the GaussBits by hands or using other non-ferrous tools without causing interference. The presented example applications and the collected feedback from an explorative workshop revealed that this new approach is widely applicable.

CHI EA '13 CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 

We need to talk: HCI and the delicate topic of spoken language interaction

Speech and natural language remain our most natural form of interaction; yet the HCI community have been very timid about focusing their attention on designing and developing spoken language interaction techniques. This may be due to a widespread perception that perfect domain-independent speech recognition is an unattainable goal. Progress is continuously being made in the engineering and science of speech and natural language processing, however, and there is also recent research that suggests that many applications of speech require far less than 100% accuracy to be useful in many contexts. Engaging the CHI community now is timely -- many recent commercial applications, especially in the mobile space, are already tapping the increased interest in and need for natural user interfaces (NUIs) by enabling speech interaction in their products. As such, the goal of this panel is to bring together interaction designers, usability researchers, and general HCI practitioners to discuss the opportunities and directions to take in designing more natural interactions based on spoken language, and to look at how we can leverage recent advances in speech processing in order to gain widespread acceptance of speech and natural language interaction.

CHI EA '13 CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems 

The digital economy: a case study of designing for classrooms

We present the results of an empirical study of elementary school classrooms and show how these results informed the design of a mobile web application for teachers to manage "digital economies" in their classrooms. A Classroom Economy is a program that aims to teach financial literacy while encouraging focus and on task behavior. The Digital Economy captures transaction data as students participate in a Classroom Economy, replacing paper-based transactions and record keeping. The design of the Digital Economy application builds on our own prior work in which we partnered with teachers to collaboratively design ubiquitous computing technologies for classrooms. Our design is based on our analysis of classroom observations, interviews with teachers, design workshops and a usability study of a prototype application. We consider three major guidelines for designing for classrooms: classroom flow, individual assessments, and peer groups. We describe the negotiation of these guidelines when designing for the management and curriculum goals of teachers. This case study demonstrates how guidelines that emerged from the design research process were negotiated in the development of this financial literacy tool for classrooms.

IDC '13 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children 

TOTA: a construction set for the impending apocalypse

Toys of the Apocalypse (TOTA) is a construction kit with an immersive narrative that allows children to create their own toys with simple components and homemade polymers. It gives children an entry point to electronics and programming that allows for complete creative control of both aesthetics and mechanics. The objective of TOTA is to introduce children to the basics of circuitry, programmed behavior, and mechanical engineering.

IDC '13 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children