International Journal of Human-Computer Studies最新文献

The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations worldwide to switch to remote work paradigms. This paper examines how users adapted to online meeting environments, specifically in the context of official council meetings at a Brazilian university. Transitioning from traditional in-person to virtual meeting platforms required re-evaluating participation dynamics, including how council members and the public interact in these spaces. We interviewed 19 council members who were used to participating in in-person deliberative public meetings, aiming to delve into their adaptation process, examining how individuals adjusted to the virtual meeting format and related challenges. Our findings show that online meetings broadened attendance and engagement but also introduced complexities with meeting protocols and personal attention. We discuss how participants navigated the nuances of online meeting formats, from managing technical issues to redefining public and private meeting boundaries. Our analysis suggests that user adaptation is multifaceted, encompassing the adoption of new technologies and modifications in communication strategies and meeting etiquette. Through this lens, we reflect on the essential role of user-centric approaches in designing and facilitating online meetings to enhance collaborative outcomes and mitigate the potential for breakdowns. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the resilience and flexibility of meeting cultures in response to unforeseen global changes.

The Proteus effect refers to the tendency for individuals to conform to the stereotypes related to the visual characteristics of the avatar used in a virtual environment. If the phenomenon has been widely observed, underlying mechanisms (e.g., self-perception, priming) and moderation factors, such as avatar embodiment, need confirmation. The sense of embodiment emerges when the properties of the avatar are processed in the same way as the properties of the biological body. The objective of the present study was, first, to investigate the effect of avatar embodiment on the Proteus effect related to the influence of an elderly avatar on motor imagery, and second, to examine the extent to which this relationship is explained by a change in self-perception. In two virtual reality studies, the agency and the self-location components of embodiment were manipulated through visuo-motor synchronization and visual perspective respectively. The time required to perform motor imagery displacements while being embodied (visuo-motor synchrony and first-person perspective) or not (visuo-motor asynchrony and/or third-person perspective) in an elderly avatar was measured. The results showed that the Proteus effect was not stronger the more participants embodied the elderly avatar, which does not support that embodiment moderates the Proteus effect. Moreover, analyses did not confirm that change in explicit self-perception mediates the relationship between embodiment and the Proteus effect. The Proteus effect is discussed in the light of the avatar identification process and the active-self account: crossover between these mechanisms could offer new insights into understanding the influence of avatars on individuals’ behavior.

Minor violations of traffic regulations are common today and partially socially accepted. Automated vehicles (AVs), however, will be obliged to keep to the letter of the law. This can lead to situations where user requests cause the AV to reach its legal boundaries, creating novel user-vehicle conflicts. To investigate whether traffic-violating driver interests are transferred to the automated context, we conducted an online survey with three conflict-prone scenarios (N=49). The results indicate that legally compliant AV behavior is desired but that users would intervene in the vehicle’s behavior to enforce interests. In a subsequent Virtual Reality study (N=30), we evaluated the effect of legal boundary-handling strategies (Responsibility and Control Shift, Responsibility Shift, No Shift) and other traffic participants’ violating traffic regulations on behavior, conflict, and trust in a legally conflict-prone parking scenario. Results show that conflict is perceived significantly higher in all strategies compared to the manual baseline, while situational trust in the vehicle is higher in the automated conditions but independent of the handling strategy.

Age factor is a significant barrier in adopting mobile banking mainly due to low competence in using the system and security concerns. Thus, this study presents a conversational artificial intelligence agent-based mobile banking app that is specially designed for seniors considering their needs and physical characteristics. Voice modality and lip-movement were identified as the important factors to improve seniors’ mobile banking service experience and the effect of them were empirically tested by conducting a controlled experiment with between-subject design. In total, 91 participants who were 55 years or older used the app to complete the given tasks of online banking. Results showed that those in the two voice modality conditions, compared to text agent condition, reported higher levels of trust, perceived ease of use, and social presence. The effect of lip movement of the agent also showed significant results in those three dependant variables. The result of mediation analysis revealed that agent's lip movement increased social presence and perceived ease of use, which further increased trust toward the agent. The results are meaningful especially because trust and perceived ease of use were listed as the main reason for not using online banking services among non-users. The implications of the study were discussed.

We study Congruent Indirect Touch (CIT) interaction in a desktop context. CIT only differs from direct touch in that the motor and display spaces are separated: touch occurs on the horizontal desk; while users’ visual focus is on a vertical display where small pointers show the position of the fingers. We introduce an accurate fingertip tracking approach based on optical tracking and fingertip modeling as a sphere. This allows updating the pointer when the finger is hovering above the surface and implementing an efficient CIT interaction. This interaction was evaluated in a longitudinal user study. Six participants with no experience with CIT performed target acquisitions on eight different days. Throughput was measured with CIT and mouse. In the last session, two participants had similar throughput with both interactions; the four others were notably more efficient with CIT. Averaged across all participants, throughput improved by 14%. This study promotes the study of CIT as a potential efficient replacement for the mouse on the desktop.

Social science experiments in virtual reality (VR) frequently manipulate the perspective from which a user views an avatar and the identity of an avatar to change participant perceptions and attitudes. However, avatar embodiment may also influence physical behaviors—i.e., the way participants move—during the VR experience. For example, users may shift their position to align with avatars they see from a first-person perspective, a phenomenon known as the self-follower effect. We conducted a between-subjects, pre-registered study to understand how common techniques such as manipulating perspective and appearance might affect participant movements while in VR. We demonstrate that even when participants do not have agency over their avatars' movements, viewing avatar movements influences their own actions, whether these are viewed from the first or the third-person perspective. These phenomena hold potential as interventions to prompt participant movements in other contexts.

This paper describes the development of a cartoon animation system usability scale (A-SUS) based on the established text-based SUS questionnaire. We propose a methodology and design a short graphic interchange format (.GIF) animation for each SUS item. Experimental evaluations confirm that the scale has satisfactory psychometric properties (e.g., structural validity, reliability factor structure, concurrent validity, and sensitivity). A second experiment is used to evaluate and compare the questionnaire experiences associated with the SUS, a pictorial SUS (P-SUS), and the developed A-SUS. The results indicate that A-SUS performs well in terms of recommendations, aesthetics, motivations, and completion time. Compared with the SUS and P-SUS, the animated version is more interesting, and the overall questionnaire experience is better.

Smart Home Heating Technologies (SHHT) have been designed to improve demand flexibility and energy conservation. SHHT rely on rational theories of energy use postulating that people will use less energy when the energy cost is higher. The inclusion of AI within SHHT is poised to optimise energy use in the future as the introduction of lower carbon energy sources place new demands on the grid. When SHHT is introduced in the home, however, they become situated in temporal heating practices that are shaped by an interplay of materiality, meanings, and competencies. We report findings from a mixed methods field study involving eleven households utilising an AI-enabled SHHT probe ‘Squid’. Taking a temporal focus throughout, our study contributes a new lens as to why households may not fully engage with SHHT's rational design, given that energy conversation is already embedded in their ongoing socio-material practices with heating. Focusing on the AI-human relation, we articulate the necessity for human agency where heating is involved, whilst also advancing an understanding of the new forms of hidden labour that households incur before they can engage with the AI. Crucially, our research informs the ongoing HCI concern over how humans understand AI, raising the question of who is responsible to assess the appropriateness of AI when the effects of human-AI performance remain opaque. Our findings contribute a new theoretical perspective into the intricate relationship between individuals and AI in the home and raise several new design implications for SHHT.

Animation fluency is an important factor of user experience in smartphone applications. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of time duration in different sections of application usage on users’ perceived fluency. We manipulated the duration of different phases, including the click-response delay (CD), duration of animation (DA), and duration of loading completion (DL), in an open app task and an in-app page switching task. The participants evaluated the perceived fluency during their smartphone use. The results showed that the CD and DL had a significant effect on perceived fluency and that the CD, DA and DL showed significant interactions in some situations. These results could supply detailed parameters for smartphone design and could be used to build a model to guide manufacturers to provide a better user experience.

This experiment systematically examines whether, in safety-critical environments such as Air Traffic Control, the negative effects of increasing automation associated with static automation concepts can be mitigated by adaptable automation. Adaptable automation is a form of flexible automation in which the human operator (rather than the system as in adaptive automation) can decide when and to what extent to delegate tasks. A special focus is on its effects on human perception in terms of perceived autonomy and competence, satisfaction, and human role perception. We conducted two online studies using the same dual-task paradigm. Study 1 was conducted with a novice sample via Prolific (N = 93) and study 2 with an expert sample of Air Traffic Controllers (N = 126). Participants were either supported by static information automation, static decision automation, or an adaptable solution that allowed them to switch between the two automation stages. The findings of both studies are similar. Results indicated that, even when humans rarely switched, adaptable automation could increase perceived autonomy, led to high satisfaction, and had positive effects on role perceptions without impairing performance or workload. Furthermore, satisfaction was found to correlate with performance. From a human-centered perspective, flexible concepts seem to be particularly suitable when automation increasingly takes over parts of a job task not only at the stage of information analysis but also at the stage of decision-making.