Designing an Empathy Training for Depression Prevention Using Virtual Reality and a Preliminary Study

As virtual reality (VR) is labeled by many as 'an ultimate empathy machine,' immersive VR applications have the potential to assist in empathy training for mental healthcare such as depression [21]. In responding to the increasing numbers of diagnosed depression throughout COVID-19, a first-person VR adventure game called 'Schwer' was designed and prototyped by the authors' research team to provide a social support environment for depression treatment. To continue the study and assess the training effectiveness for an appropriate level of empathy, this current article includes a brief survey on data analytics models and features to accumulate evidence for the next phase of the study, an interactive game-level design for the 'Reconstruction' stage, and a preliminary study with data collection. The preliminary study was conducted with a post-game interview to evaluate the design of the levels and their effectiveness in empathy training. Results showed that the game was rated as immersive by all participants. Feedback on the avatar design indicated that two out of three of the non-player characters (NPCs) have made the intended effect. Participants showed mostly positive opinion towards their experienced empathy and provided feedback on innovative teleport mechanism and game interaction. The findings from the literature review and the results of the preliminary study will be used to further improve the existing system and add the data analytics model training. The long-term research goal is to contribute to the healthcare field by developing a dynamic AI-based biofeedback immersive VR system in assisting depression prevention. © 2023 IEEE.

The Effects of Information Layout, Display Mode, and Gender Difference on the User Interface Design of Mobile Shopping Applications

Online shopping has revolutionized our daily lives in the modern era. We can purchase needed goods on mobile shopping applications (apps) anytime and anywhere without leaving home. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have become increasingly dependent on various mobile shopping activities. However, the visual design of the shopping app interface often affects the user's interactive experience and the efficiency of browsing product information. In addition, gender differences are also worth being considered in the shopping interface design process. To achieve the goal, the research conducted a user study (N=40) of a 2× 2 x 2 mixed factorial design (i.e., information layout x display mode x gender difference). Each participant performed four tasks during the experiment. The authors measured the task completion time, collected the subjective responses from the SUS and the 7-point Likert scale questionnaire, and interviewed participants. The results revealed that: (1) females perform faster in lighter mode when searching for information location, while males perform faster in darker mode. (2) The information layout affects the user's visual search performance and subjective evaluation;females prefer the list style, but men prefer the matrix style. (3) Participants (both males and females) perceived matrix style as more popular than list style in dark mode;however, the result was reversed in light mode. The findings generated from the research can serve as a good reference for the development of user experience in the user interface design of mobile shopping apps. © 2013 IEEE.

Towards Augmented Reality Guiding Systems: An Engineering Design of an Immersive System for Complex 3D Printing Repair Process

Over the past decade, additive manufacturing (AM) has become widely adopted for both prototyping and, more recently, end-use products. In particular, fused deposition modeling (FDM) is the most widespread form of additive manufacturing due to its low cost, ease of use, and versatility. While additive processes are relatively automated, many steps in their operation and repair require trained human operators. Finding such operators can be difficult, as highlighted during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Augmented reality (AR) systems could significantly help address this challenge by automating the training for 3D printer operators. Given multidimensional design choices, however, a research gap exists in the system requirements for such immersive guidance. To address this need, we explore the applicability of AR to guide users through a repair process. In that context, we report on the system design as well as the results of the AR system assessment in a qualitative study with experts. © 2023 IEEE.

Dead Users' Profiles on Facebook: Limited Interaction Beyond Human Existence

Death has become increasingly visible on social networks, especially after COVID-19, and Facebook addresses that with double standards: while some profiles remain active, others turn into memorials. This article investigates how Facebook's system deals with dead users' profiles either to support or restrict interactions concerning users' deaths. Our qualitative analysis of data from 54 public profiles of people who died between June 2020 and March 2021 showed that (i) Facebook fails to communicate the criteria for transforming profiles into memorials;(ii) no information about their contacts of deceased users' profiles is given;(iii) the frequency of interaction with memorials and with active profiles is different;(iv) profiles' privacy settings shape interaction. Our results exemplify how a sociotechnical system influences people's interactions with dead users' profiles. We herein highlight implications for interaction design and evaluation, besides the need to consider interaction as existence, which raises big challenges to the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community.

Donate Yourself: An AR trail exploring the future of organ, tissue and body data donation

This article explores how communication and interaction design were used in the augmented reality experience, Donate Yourself. It aims to demystify some of the ethical and personal concerns around the donation of organs, tissue and body data for scientific and medical research. The research finds different modes of provoking thought around a central question: can augmented reality be used to open debates on who has access to our biological and digital traces beyond death? Taking into account how COVID-19 has made the public deeply reconsider their biological and data bodies, the paper documents and contextualizes the making of Donate Yourself, which was created in collaboration with interactive design collective body>data>space and scientists from the Human Cell Atlas project (HCA). In doing so, it explores the contested histories of human tissue in research and contemporizes these relations by looking at the way HCA members use and care for human tissue and data in their work. A range of methods that were used to capture diverse public attitudes and ethical concerns about donation using participatory approaches included: the co-creation of design probes with HCA scientists, online workshops, qualitative interviews, a documentation zine and public maker jam. These methodological lenses, and the data they produce, were used to construct a non-linear narrative and digital bricolage that is experienced as a hybrid public walking tour. Five themes were generated for the augmented reality experiences: care, trust, immortal, consent, future. This triangulation of science, technology and the arts was materialized in a webAR walking trail that ran during November 2021, which was accessed by the public via QR codes as part of the larger One Cell At A Time online exhibition, funded by the Wellcome Trust. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

Remote Moderated Usability Testing of a Web-Based Translation: A Case Study

A new design of web-based translation, also known as easyTranslate, is proposed for non-native English-speaking students to translate a paragraph of academic text. However, there is a need to determine whether this new web-based translation is usable or not for students during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, this paper describes a remote moderated usability testing of a web-based translation. Five undergraduate students took part in the usability testing through an online video conferencing tool. The results showed that all students successfully completed the given tasks and the new web-based translation is considered usable. The advantages and challenges of the remote moderated usability testing are discussed. © 2022 IEEE.

Sasirangan Cloth Recognition and Shopping Experience Simulation Based on Virtual Reality Game with Non-Player Character Integration

Sasirangan cloth is one of the traditional cloths owned by Indonesia and is a typical cloth originating from the province of South Kalimantan. This Sasirangan cloth has many motifs and is unique. Sasirangan cloth is also one of the potentials that can attract local and foreign tourists to visit South Kalimantan. However, in recent years, tourist visits to South Kalimantan have decreased due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then it also has an impact on the delay in the implementation of the Banjarmasin Sasirangan Festival which is usually held annually. The next impact is a decrease in turnover and interest in shopping for Sasirangan cloth, so that employees who work for Sasirangan cloth craftsmen are dismissed and reduce people's income. So the purpose of this study is to report the results of the development of a Virtual Reality Game application called VR-SasiranganKu by integrating the interaction of Non-Player Character (NPC) behavior with the type of narrative in the simulation genre game. VR-SasiranganKu is recommended to introduce and at the same time promote Sasirangan cloth to users, then justify the reaction to knowledge and shopping experience, and evaluate user experience using the UX Honeycomb method. Respondents involved as many as 100 people who are local and national tourists. The results show that the interaction of NPC behavior can provide good direction to users regarding the introduction of Sasirangan cloth by presenting an appropriate interaction design based on the narrative and the theme of the NPC that has been adopted, the results of justification using VR-SasiranganKu can provide knowledge reaction and very good shopping experience, and based on user experience evaluation that VR-SasiranganKu has adopted a very good UX with an average score of 4.91. © 2022 IEEE.

The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices

With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people leverage technology to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging while eating. In this paper, we look at digital commensality and we explore its inherent playful potential with the aim to inspire the design of engaging technologies that can support, enhance and augment this form of interaction. For this, we used a situated play design approach to document and analyze the behavior of 36 people (including pairs of friends and strangers) sharing meals online. Our analysis surfaced a set of play potentials of remote dining - i.e., playful things people already do and enjoy spontaneously while sharing meals online. We present those play potentials as inspirational material: they can motivate and enrich the design of future digital commensality technologies by responding to people's desire for playful and social interaction with, through, and around food. © 2022 ACM.

Gaining resolution when creating imagery of aging.

In seeking to support healthy aging, designers have struggled to reduce their assumptions and biases toward older adults, been seen to interpret the worlds of later life through unfiltered imagery, as well as engage with stigmas, ultimately diminishing the technologies they construct. This article seeks to critically analyse this state-of-the-art from a design research perspective while engaging with the growing interdisciplinary study of aging and technologies. Toward this, we proposition "resolution" as a concept indicative of the level of detail that seeks to characterize the fidelity that representations of later life have. This concept is explored through a cultural probe study that investigated the sentiments of several older Australians regarding the inequities and social isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing a diary alongside photovoice and mapping tasks, the study captured perceptions of social technology, practices, networks, and wellbeing, offering a diverse and complex picture of aging and technology. Through reflexive thematic analyses of some of these materials, this case study offers designers pathways to understanding and including older adults in their work. In determining the resolution of these images of aging, we discuss how transparency about the limitations and qualities of such participatory methods through incorporating reflexivity can influence the degree of detail such imagery gains. Ultimately this concept builds on the notion of participation configuration, supporting designers to realize better images of aging and representations of later life.

Interaction Design for Interactive Learning in MOOCs using User-Centered Design Approach

Education is the key to progress the development of a nation because a great nation must have a strong educational foundation. However, the poor quality of education becomes the obstacle that often occurs. The quality of education is influenced by the interaction of communication in the learning process. Therefore, the interactive learning method could be the solution to improve the quality of interaction and communication in the learning process. Even more, interactive learning could improve the learning gain and conceptual understanding through the interaction of students in the learning process. However, several challenges are faced in the learning process due to the pandemic. Interaction in learning is limited to break the chain of COVID-19 transmission. The learning model has to be adaptive during the pandemic to improve its continuity through online learning. Therefore, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) could be the answer to offer the course for the learning process in an organized and structured online classroom environment. Based on the user research, we analyze the user needs and requirements to implement interactive learning methods, discussion and think-pair-share using user-centered design approach in ISO 9241-210:2010. The outcome of this research is to create a high-fidelity prototype that has usability goals efficient to use, effective to use, and user experience goals helpful for students. We validate the interaction design using usability testing with SEQ, SUS, and Completion Rate during testing with the user. © 2022 IEEE.

The Effect of Different Feedback Strategy on Learning Outcome inMicro-video Course Learning

The outbreak of COVID-19 promotes the development of online learning. Micro-video course has become the mainstream learning resource of online learning because of its concise theme, strong pertinence and vivid content. However, there are few researches on feedback strategy of micro-video course in basic education. Based on the principles of multi-media design and ADDIE instructional design model, a micro-video course of robot knowledge was designed in this study. Different feedback strategies(i.e., descriptive feedback (DF), evaluative feedback (EF), suggestive feedback(SF), guiding feedback (GF)) were embedded in the micro-video course. The effects of four feedback strategies on students' learning outcome, cognitive load, and learning motivation were explored through experiment. The results provide some suggestions for the production of basic education micro-video course. © 2022 IEEE.

Future Experience Boundary and Interaction Design Integration Path

Our lives are still not back to normal because of the novel coronavirus epidemic, and people around the world are looking for ways to compensate for the limited experience. The global buzz around Metaverse can also be seen as a concern to upgrade the experience, and the trend toward virtual world interaction is unstoppable, in the future, the boundary between virtual world and real world will be a direction of further exploration in the field of interaction design. If the meta-universe can be developed into a future society, it should not be viewed as a mere technical question. Whether this future is worthy of human pursuit requires us to think more. So based on the future doomed to borderline ambiguous social forms, the establishment of a new order first needs to clarify the virtual world and the real world and the relationship between the difference. This paper critically interprets the concept of meta-cosmic society, and discusses the thinking of the boundary definition in the future context, it is hoped that this discussion will provide a valuable perspective for interaction design to be integrated into the new experience pattern in the future. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Designing Legal Interfaces: Transforming the Digital Services of a Legal Aid Clinic

CJ Digital is the academic and procedural platform implemented by the Legal Aid Clinic (LAC) of a private University in Colombia. This technological platform seeks to transform the academic space where students of the School of Law continue their training process by giving legal advice to people in vulnerable situations with the support of a professor. With the dissemination of Covid-19, the LAC platform underwent an accelerated validation of its functionality, which revealed usability issues and opportunities for improvement. Among the problems was the difficulty in managing and visualizing case files and the academic management by advisors. The article presents a case study of a LAC platform based on the relation between design thinking and systems thinking approaches applied to interaction design and user experience (UX). System thinking was used to understand the dynamics related to consultations and cases of the areas and legal clinics of the LAC. Design thinking was used to understand the needs and motivations of students and advisors. Based on the findings, we developed a concept for the platform that integrates to main features a new architecture for shared folder management and the development of a procedural timeline. Also, some support functions were improved, such as auto-save, editable grading rubrics, notifications, a text editor, and space for coaching, tutorials, and FAQs. These functionalities can make CJ Digital a national and international reference in creating and deploying legal services. CJ Digital remains a platform for the management of internal processes between students and advisors. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Linguistic Difference of Human-Human and Human-Chatbot Dialogues about COVID-19 in the Russian Language

This work describes the quantitative analysis of the linguistic difference in human-human and human-chatbot dialogues. The research is based on conducting a set of experiments where respondents communicate with a human or a chatbot in the domain of COVID-19 questions. In the case of the human-human dialogues, the approach of the inverted “Wizard of Oz” experimental setting is used. During the experiments, 35 human-human and 68 human-chatbot dialogues in Russian language were performed. The dialogues were collected during 4 months and thereafter analyzed with a set of quantitative text measures such as descriptive statistics of a text, syntactic complexity, lexical density, and readability. As a result, a set of measures demonstrated a statistically significant linguistic difference between the language structure of questions that were asked to the human and to the chatbot. Specifically, respondents were using shorter sentences and words, simpler syntax while communicating with the chatbot. Moreover, lexical richness of the human-chatbot dialogue data is lower while the readability is higher – these markers indicate that humans use simpler language constructions while speaking with a chatbot. © 2022 Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. All rights reserved.

Pepe: An adaptive robot that helps children with autism to plan and self-manage their day

Covid19 has heightened physical and mental challenges for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). One of the main difficulties that parents of children with ASD faced during the pandemic was to plan and structure a daily routine for their kids. The disruption of the routine, together with the difficulty of combining work and the care of children has resulted in behavioral problems and stress, and anxiety for children and their parents. For these reasons, the main goal of this work was to develop an adaptive robot that helps children with autism to plan and self-manage their day, allowing children to become more independent. While most interactive tools for children with ASD are meant for professional use in therapy, Pepe robot is developed as a support tool for these children to use along the way, with adaptability, agencies, senses, and playfulness at the core of the design. By collecting information from the performance of the kid, it is able to adapt its behavior to the child's (and parent's) needs and desires, and therefore progress with the child. Building upon the principles of Positive Behavioral Support, emotional crises are prevented by embracing a long-run negotiation process, by which the child gets gradually closer to the end goal of self-autonomy. Intended to be adapted to the accentuated needs of these children, the robot combines traditional and computational elements to make the most out of the experience. This project included in-depth user research together with parents and experts, an interdisciplinary design approach, and a prototyping phase in which a prototype was tested with children with ASD. © 2021 Owner/Author.

Speculating on Biodesign in the Future Home

The home is a place of shelter, a place for family, and for separation from other parts of life, such as work. Global challenges, the most pressing of which are currently the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change has forced extra roles into many homes and will continue to do so in the future. Biodesign integrates living organisms into designed solutions and can offer opportunities for new kinds of technologies to facilitate a transition to the home of the future. Many families have had to learn to work alongside each other, and technology has mediated a transition from standard models of operation for industries. These are the challenges of the 21st century that mandate careful thinking around interactive systems and innovations that support new ways of living and working at home. In this workshop, we will explore opportunities for biodesign interactive systems in the future home. We will bring together a broad group of researchers in HCI, design, and biosciences to build the biodesign community and discuss speculative design futures. The outcome will generate an understanding of the role of interactive biodesign systems at home, as a place with extended functionalities.

Full-Body Interaction in a Remote Context: Adapting a Dance Piece to a Browser-Based Installation

This paper describes the process of adapting a dance piece to an interactive installation. To cope with COVID-19 restrictions, the installation runs on a browser, allowing for remote access, and is based on camera tracking of movement. We describe the adaptation of the dramaturgy, with a primary focus on translating the interaction design aspects from the performance to the browser-based installation. We invited five users to test our working prototype, and we report on their feedback. This paper offers insights on how to adapt a dance piece to an interactive browser-based installation. We also highlight the benefits of using machine learning for motion capture in this context. Finally, we identify the potential of using interaction design with sound for embodied perception. © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Resonant Webs: An International Online Collaborative Arts Performance for Individuals with and without a Disability

In this paper we discuss the creation of an international online sound arts performance developed in collaboration between artists in Australia and Japan. The COVID-19 global pandemic has made community activities related to the arts more challenging due to restrictions on personal mobility and international travel. We report on a hybrid workshop approach that combines online and face-to-face interaction, which has enabled sound artists with intellectual disability to participate in activities with international outreach. Specifically, we describe the design and technological implementation of a live performance and an interactive audio-visual artwork that translates audio data to visual effect from an Australian ensemble of sound art musicians with intellectual disability, and a professional Japanese Noh singer and performer. Based on the artists initial reflections in developing the performance we discuss opportunities and advantages of online digital spaces for international collaboration and co-creation in community arts contexts that may be utilised in the future. © 2022, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Interaction Design for the Next Billion Users

As the first pandemic wave of Covid-19 hit India and the Indian Government announced a nationwide lockdown in March 2020, [1] it left millions of interstate migrant workers/daily-wage earners without a source of livelihood. Many of them had to return to their hometowns, often hundreds of kilometers away, with many walking a major part or the entirety of the distance [2]. This situation called for a design that could empower migrant workers to thrive in the new normal. An app was designed to enable migrant workers to search for jobs, learn about micro-entrepreneurship, get mental health assistance and develop skills. In terms of usage and interaction, this app proposes several unique features - a result of researching about and understanding our target demographic. At the core of the interaction is a chatbot. It asks questions to the user through text and audio, but the user replies through clickable buttons only. This makes it easy, even for those who may not be literate. The keyboard has been removed from this app. Another unique feature is the usage of interactive videos to explain various things, such as micro-entrepreneurship, skill training, etc. These videos make use of buttons for the users to make choices. In this paper, we discuss these two new interactions that will introduce a visual input method and an interactive video interface which will be inclusive of those less-privileged in terms of literacy in our ever-expanding tech world. The contents of the paper are targeted toward helping the next billion users. However, some of the things proposed may go on to improve interactions for all. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.