International Journal of Human-Computer Studies最新文献

For patients with severe conditions such as stroke, passive exercise is commonly used in the early stages of their rehabilitation training. This study aimed to assess the effect of passive training on stroke rehabilitation and track brain function changes and the patient's rehabilitation progress, by employing a robot glove to perform a passive flexion-extension task. Specifically, functional near-infrared spectroscopy data from 26 patients under resting and right-hand passive interactions (task state) were recorded before and after a one-week interval, respectively, to explore the variations in the brain network of the patients. The results showed a stronger functional connectivity in both states of the two experiments in the left and right homotopic brain regions (p < 0.01). The effective connectivity network between brain regions maintained a consistent trend during the same test. Changes in functional connectivity and effective connectivity networks may represent the advantages of motor rehabilitation tasks and patient treatment duration, providing a perspective for an easy understanding of the mechanisms of stroke-related brain changes. This study demonstrates the feasibility of passive training strategies in the field of intelligent rehabilitation by applying neuroscientific diagnostic methods based on physiological data to the field of human-computer interaction.

There is an increasing interest in combining interactive technology with food, leading to a new research area called human-food interaction. While food experiences are increasingly benefiting from interactive technology, for example in the form of food tracking apps, 3D-printed food and projections on dining tables, a more systematic advancement of the field is hindered because, so far, there is no comprehensive articulation of the grand challenges the field is facing. To further and consolidate conversations around this topic, we invited 21 HFI experts to a 5-day seminar. The goal was to review our own and prior work to identify the grand challenges in human-food interaction. The result is an articulation of 10 grand challenges in human-food interaction across 4 categories (technology, users, design and ethics). By presenting these grand challenges, we aim to help researchers move the human-food interaction research field forward.

Chinese bronze is a significant symbol of Chinese rich history and culture. However, disseminating bronze culture to children is challenging due to the lack of effective approaches to engage them. A survey of 467 Chinese children showed that their knowledge of bronzes primarily comes from traditional teaching methods, such as books and exhibitions. Hands-on opportunities for children to interact with bronzes and experience how they were made thousands of years ago are rare. Therefore, we designed MakeBronze, an interactive system mainly composed of a robotic arm, a drawing tablet, and cameras to allow children to experience the lost-wax casting and create their own artifacts. A study with 60 children showed that MakeBronze could better help them understand the fabrication process and raise their interest in bronze culture. Our work offers insights into how technologies that are easily accessible to children can be exploited for bronze culture preservation.

Conceptual design is a fundamental stage in a design process. Traditional conceptual design tools impose limitations on the intuitive creation process of 3D objects, hindering their full potential. Applying hand-based interaction in mixed reality (MR) provides an immersive and intuitive creation mode without dimensionality transformations, facilitating conceiving ideas in 3D conceptual design. Although studies on hand-based languages have explored different gesture design methodologies and techniques from many individual perspectives, they lack holistic understanding and comprehensive suggestions for gesture application in conceptual design scenarios. This study aims to establish a set of hand-based languages that are available in cognitive, physical, and system-based aspects for 3D conceptual designs in the MR environment. A two-stage study was conducted in an MR environment, combining an elicitation design and a comprehensive evaluation experiment. Through the elicitation design, approximately 930 gesture actions, focusing on 31 targeted functionalities, were collected. By performing an evaluation experiment, a set of theoretically optimal hand-based interaction languages for 3D conceptual design was proposed, and the corresponding guidelines for hand-based interactions were clarified. Our results can further expand human-computer interactions in MR environments and inspire software builders to create novel hand-driven interaction modes or tools.

The decision of whether to cross a road or wait for a car to pass, humans make frequently and effortlessly. Recently, the application of drift-diffusion models (DDMs) on pedestrians’ decision-making has proven useful in modelling crossing behaviour in pedestrian–vehicle interactions. These models consider binary decision-making as an incremental accumulation of noisy evidence over time until one of two choice thresholds (to cross or not) is reached. One open question is whether the assumption of a kinematics-dependent drift-diffusion process, which was made in previous pedestrian crossing DDMs, is justified, with DDM-parameters varying over time according to the developing traffic situation. It is currently unknown whether kinematics-dependent DDMs provide a better model fit than conventional DDMs, which are fitted per condition. Furthermore, previous DDMs have not considered reaction times for the not-crossing option. We address these issues by a novel experimental design combined with modelling. Experimentally, we use a 2-alternative-forced-choice paradigm, where participants view videos of approaching cars from a pedestrian’s perspective and respond whether they want to cross before the car or to wait until the car has passed. Using these data, we perform thorough model comparison between kinematics-dependent and condition-wise fitted DDMs. Our results demonstrate that condition-wise fitted DDMs can show better model fits than kinematics-dependent DDMs as reflected in the mean-squared-errors. The condition-wise fitted models need considerably more parameters, but in some cases still outperform kinematics-dependent DDMs in measures that penalize the parameter number (e.g., Akaike information criterion). Introducing a starting point bias provides support for the novel hypothesis of rapid early evidence build-up from the initial view of the vehicle distance. The drift rates obtained for the condition-wise fitted models align with the assumptions in the kinematics-dependent models, confirming that pedestrians’ decision processes are kinematics-dependent. However, the partial preference for condition-wise fitted models in the model selection suggests that the correct form of kinematics-dependence has not yet been identified for all DDM-parameters, indicating room for improvement of current pedestrian crossing DDMs. Developing more accurate models of human cognitive processes will likely facilitate autonomous vehicles to understand pedestrians’ intentions as well as to show unambiguous human-like behaviour in future traffic interactions with humans.

Players who enjoy challenging games frequently face failure and must demonstrate persistence to succeed. Persistence through failure, albeit difficult to learn, is a skill that is valuable across many aspects of life. It may be useful to study how those who seek out challenging games understand and deal with failure, and how game design contributes to this experience. This study aimed to deepen the knowledge available using a qualitative methodology. Ten participants played the challenging platform game “Celeste” for a week before taking part in a 30 min semi-structured interview. Reflexive Thematic Analysis generated five primary themes: (1) Making Meaning of Failure, (2) Seeing Purpose in Failure, (3) Accepting Difficult Experiences, (4) Drawing Persistence from Design and (5) Differentiating Persistence in Life and Play. Results emphasize the centrality of goals and consequence in shaping player responses to failure, and outline that an encouraging, learning-focused game environment where failure is functional favours persistence. Challenge-readiness, striving for growth and mastery, analytical thinking, break-taking, involving friends in gameplay and self-efficacy also facilitated persistence, with the latter being transferred across the contexts of life and play. Directions for future research, implications for game design and suggestions for interventions targeting positive failure responses are discussed.

Smartwatches enable interaction anytime and anywhere, with both digital and augmented physical objects. However, situations with busy hands can prevent user inputs. To address this limitation, we propose Fireworks, an innovative hands-free alternative that empowers smartwatch users to trigger commands effortlessly through intuitive gaze gestures by providing post-activation guidance. Fireworks allows command activation by guiding users to follow targets moving from the screen center to the edge, mimicking real life fireworks. We present the experimental design and evaluation of two Fireworks instances. The first design employs temporal parallelization, displaying few dynamic targets during microinteractions (e.g., snoozing a notification while cooking). The second design sequentially displays targets to support more commands (e.g., 20 commands), ideal for various scenarios other than microinteractions (e.g., turn on lights in a smart home). Results show that Fireworks’ single straight gestures enable faster and more accurate command selection compared to state-of-the-art baselines, namely Orbits and Stroke. Additionally, participants expressed a clear preference for Fireworks’ original visual guidance.

Making in a digital fabrication laboratory (Fab Lab) using Fab Lab processes is generally challenging for novice makers, particularly for families with young children. We conducted a qualitative study on family engagement in open-ended digital fabrication activities in an informal Fab Lab setting, where families engaged in 2D/3D designing, laser cutting, and 3D printing. We observed challenging transformations when families moved from brainstorming to digital designing and, subsequently, from digital designing to machine-making a physical object. Fab Lab instructors’ work, parental approaches, and oral discussions, which were all intended to facilitate children's participation in the activities, were central in and intertwined with these transformations, and led to the engagement or disengagement of children. Through this study, we shed light on the challenges families faced and provide insights into how to reduce the complexity of digital fabrication for families who have no prior experience of it as well as into how Fab Lab instructors can help enable young children's participation in the related activities.

Driver’s instinctive responses and skill-based behaviors enable them to react faster and better control their vehicle in dangerous situations. This study incorporated dynamic spatial information design (DSID) in an augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD) under manual driving conditions. By integrating the skill, rule, and knowledge (SRK) taxonomy and situation awareness (SA) theory, our AR-HUD successfully evoked drivers’ instinctive responses and improved driving safety. First, we converted symbol and sign information processed at the knowledge-based and rule-based levels, respectively, into signal information processed at the skill-based level. Then we developed four AR-HUD interfaces with different dynamic designs for use in a hazardous scenario at an intersection. Finally, we investigated each design’s impact on drivers’ SA and driving performance. Experimental results demonstrated that our DSID enhanced drivers’ SA and accident-avoidance capabilities while reducing their cognitive workload. Among the four AR-HUD interfaces, the one that incorporated all three information elements under study (i.e., lateral warning, dynamic driving space, and speedometer) performed the best. This indicates that our proposed framework has potential applications in other similar dangerous driving scenarios, thus contributing to the development of safer and more efficient driving environments.